Homeschool Memoirs 19

THEME

This week I want to set our minds on setting some goals for next year, whether personal, for the whole family, or for school.

Ooh, this is a toughie for me. Whenever I make up a list of goals, I'm always nervous that people will look at the list and, well, I don't know. It was so tempting to go and read everyone else's lists first and then just sort of pick the best parts and rewrite in my own words and voila...my goals list is born. At which point, the conscience kicked in and reminded me that that would be cheating. I need to actually put in some effort and come up with a real live goal list of my own. So, here goes:

*Work on making our house a home, a haven away from the stress of life out there. I want it to be a place where The Man can come into and feel stress and worries wash away. A place where the boys know that love and joy abound. A place where I am able to be creative and express myself in simple ways. It will about the little details, I'm just not sure exactly what yet.

*For myself, I have a few goals.

Health - I don't have a goal weight to get to or anything like that, but I just want to be healthy. I have this thing called atrial fibrillation which doesn't bother me much, but enough to really dread and sometimes worry that it will happen on a day which I have something wonderful planned. I have the option of having some surgery done, but I want to be healthy before I do that. So exercising 5 days a week and really paying attention to my meal planning.

Creativity - For Christmas this year, I've had such fun planning and making gifts, but I don't want to stop that just because Christmas is over. I'm also setting aside more time to work on my music. Maybe, I'll actually even work on writing something this year. (probably not though, that's on the scary side)

*For homeschooling, basically just a bit more structure to our days. We are really great about getting Bible, math & grammar done daily. Usually, Latin gets in there also. Science and history happen a couple of days a week, but they are usually condensed down to those couple of days. I want to get a better schedule going and stay on top of the record keeping so the boys get music and art regularly. Kind of strange that the children of a musician don't get a whole lot of music. It's all about planning and organizing really. We all just need more of a regular plan to our days.

*Organization - Well, this is just an overall goal for the house. We do so well when I make the menu plans. When I stay on top of the planning, there isn't any last minute scrambling for dinner and the meals are healthy. I'm also working on a bit more of a cleaning schedule for the house. Since I regularly have students here, the first floor of the house stays pretty cleaned up most of the time, it's the laundry, bathrooms and bedrooms that need a better schedule.

*Service - We have started to realize that as much as we love being able to give our boys a wonderful life, they are getting so comfortable that they aren't always as caring as they could be. We want this to be a year to help them understand compassion and mercy, through our own actions as well as activities that we do together as a family.

Ok, are those good goals? Doable goals? Not enough? Too much? I guess I'll know come next December 31st.