Happy New Year!

With all the meme's floating around, it looks like 2016 was not the best year for a lot of people. We actually had a great year in our house, getting some major goals accomplished, finishing up our first year of "real" homeschooling (as in, a grade with a number and not a letter :-), visiting lots of family and doing pretty well health wise. I can't complain. But I hope that if you didn't have a great year, that this will be a nice corner for you to turn. I just love new starts. New days, new seasons, new years. Pretty much any excuse to make a new list is a good thing in my book.

And I am making lots of new lists in my new bullet journal. My last one took two years to fill up but I made it stretch through these last few weeks, using both my old and my new because I wanted to be lazy and put future things in my new one. But today, the old one gets put up for a while (I can't throw it away until I know I don't need any of that info!) and the new one becomes my bosom friend.* The last thing I did with my old one was add the last few hours spent outside this week. Grand total for 2016 = 881! Not quite 1000 but I'm very happy with it!

But despite my love of new years, I didn't actual plan to stay up. The kids are too cranky if shortchanged on sleep still and Craig was out side-hustling for our mini-van. I planned to spend an hour or so trying to finish up the 2016 scrapbook on Shutterfly then read a bit before going to bed at a decent hour but all of a sudden I looked up at it was 11:45! So I speed read the last bit of my last book. I have to end my book count on an even number so it really was speed reading but I did it! Whew. And it was just a cozy mystery so no harm done. 92 books read in 2016. And despite being in my 30s now, I wasn't asleep by 9pm. Although today I'm kinda wishing I had been - or at least that I drink caffeinated beverages.

I never think I have too many goals at the end of December but then by the time January rolls around, I've got a nice list. This year it's:

- Reading

• My Classics Challenge books
• Other 2017 Reading Goals - I'm sure I'll add to this as the year goes on, but its a good start. 

- Mother Culture

• A mommy sit down time. During the summer, I have a regular routine where they play outside and I have bible reading/prayer time. But when it gets cold, that kinda falls apart. I've started it up again and trying to enforce the "you can handle issues for 15 minutes without me." Trying. It's kinda like making a phone call though, they are just fine when I'm unloading dishes but pick up the phone or sit down with my bible and suddenly its a crisis. I read somewhere about a mom who put out a special thing (ceramic bird?) when she was busy. Maybe I should try something like that. 

• On a very similar note, I've got a couple books on my list that need more than a casual reading so I want to have a time to sit down and read when I can actually take notes. Along with that I want to do better about commonplacing and filling in my Book of Centuries. I wanted to last year but 80% of my reading was probably done on my phone while nursing. This year I should have a better shot at this now that Norah is toddling around.

• Stay off Facebook. I like instagram because it isn't a time suck but facebook doesn't seem to add too much to my life. I don't plan to give it up for good but I'm taking a break and I want to take them frequently and/or reduce my automatically going there when I've got 10 seconds to relax. Starting school up again will help as all my relaxation time becomes potty breaks anyway. 

• Be more consistent in my vitamins. It's not new stuff but I get out of this routine so easily and I really do feel better when I'm not deficient in B12 or anemic. Shocking, right?

- Family

• Blog/Scrapbook more of the fun everyday family stuff again. The cute things the kid's say, the things I want to remember. Dragging the nice camera out. Taking videos. We all love looking back on those things but I have to record them in order to do that.

• Stay close to current on scrapbook. I'm actually pretty close to finishing up the scrapbook as I've been able to work on it regular this year on evenings Craig is gone. I'm having a hard time now because I've done the big events but I have a lot of cute but totally random photos from my phone that I'm having to kinda compile together into pages. I like that I take pictures all the time with my phone now but I do want to be better about getting my nice camera out too. Once 2016 is gone I'll print both it and 2015 and that will probably motivate me even more because we look at ours all the time. 

• Continue to get outside a lot (but I'm not tracking it this year because I think we have the habit now) but also do more camping/hiking/outside our normal spots stuff. We've got the good habits now I just have to keep them!

• Increase kid's responsibilities. They do well with what they've got but its very routine. I want to start teaching more skills, especially to Lucy as I feel like she is getting to the point where she needs the real work. They've asked to plan and cook dinner more often and while right now that is a lot of work for me, I know it will pay off so I need to get it into the schedule.

Looking back over my list, it's pretty much exactly what I as thinking when trying to come up with a theme word for the year:

Consistent.

I want to be consistent. Nothing is new, nothing is a 180 from my current life. It's all the same stuff, I just need to do it like I'm Mike Mulligan and more people have come to watch me (i.e. - a little better). And having said all that, I have a feeling God has some deep stuff for us this year. That's always a bit scary but I trust Him. Let's see what 2017 brings!

*I just finished watching Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea with the kids so sorry/not sorry but I'm sure my next few posts will be full of anne-isms.