Setting Yearly Family Goals
I don’t know about you, but I’m too old for New Year’s Eve. I’m all about those Netflix countdowns for the kids, the ones you can play AT ANY TIME. Like 9. Or 7. The past few years, we’ve gotten together with several other families and let our kiddos run wild and crazy until 9 or so, then shot off some tame fireworks, before calling it a night. It’s been great.
The last several years, my husband and I have come home from the party, put our kids to bed (with noisemakers on high; stupid fireworks), poured ourselves some champagne, and talked about our family goals. We talked about all the serious goals: paying off credit cards, how many more years we’d get out of our cars, any medical stuff we thought would be coming up in the next year, etc. And we talked about the fun goals: vacations we wanted to take, big purchases we were thinking about making (wallpaper anyone?), even whether or not we were finished having kids (the answer is very much yes).
This intentional couple time was not, at first at least, meant to be anything more than just hanging out together and seeing if we could make it to midnight, But I’ve come to look forward to our yearly pow-wows. There’s something magical about New Year’s Eve; the ending of one year, the start of something new, something fresh. And though we’re well past ball drops and sequined dresses, it’s nice to have some quiet time to talk about where we’ve been and where we’re going. Purposeful, intentional conversations with your plus one are often difficult to have in the craziness that is day-to-day parenting; it’s often hard to even REMEMBER to have those types of conversations when “What are the kids eating for lunch tomorrow?” and “Can you remember to grab milk on the way home from work tomorrow?” dominate nearly all of your day-to-day mental bandwidth.
But it’s important to talk things out. It’s important to set family goals. It’s important to have hopes and dreams as a family. I don’t even set a personal resolution anymore, but our family has a trip coming up this year that was first dreamed up last New Year’s Eve. And this year, my husband and I have made it a goal to take a trip WITHOUT the kids! Because, while we’re good about scheduling date nights, we’re not so good about taking extended time for ourselves. So that’s our big goal for the year.
