Happy New Year! This time of planning and goal setting is one of my very favorite times of year. Even though our plans fail, and each new day is full of the unexpected challenges that make up life, there is something satisfying about laying out on paper my best goals and plans for the year.

Eva is rapidly approaching her 1st birthday and we’re finally getting our sea legs in this life-with-three-kids. The first 8-9 months after introducing a new member to the family are like being dropped into an orchestra pit at the beginning of the season: everybody has some idea of what’s supposed to be happening, but there’s a lot of sight-reading, and it’s chaos. Thankfully, I think we’re moving past that stage now. Couple of practice sessions down, and we’re paying attention to the conductor–things are coming together and we can turn our attention to the finer points of the music

Anyways, nerdy music analogies aside, here are my 17 goals for 2017. 

1. Finish formatting my new book; send it to Beta readers. 

2.Publish on Kindle, and make arrangements for print edition. 

3. Complete a first draft on a COMPLETELY NEW project. (SO excited for this)

4. Get Eva on a napping schedule and sleeping through the night again. Between teething and colds she’s gone from being a great sleeper to terrible in a matter of weeks. Hoping we can reverse the damage now.  

5. Implement our “Kindergarten” for Sophia. I’ll have another post(s) on what we’re doing to prepare Sophia for 1st grade. It’s all easy stuff right now. We’re just dipping our toes in the water, gearing up for the big splash. She is already reading very well, so we’re mainly building on that. 

6. Read to the kids every day and keep a consistent reading list for them. I tried keeping a notebook last year, but I’m not crazy about the idea of trying to keep track of a single notebook for their books indefinitely. I think I’m going to start a goodreads account for them.

7. Read 120 books–at least 40 nonfiction. In addition to books about homeschooling, I need to educate myself about different aspects of business, finance, and continue my study of networking. I’m also going to be reading Hazlitt, Bastiat, Hayek, Read, and Mises, and doing a comparison of The Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers. 

8. Get outside with the kids for at least 15 minutes every. single. day. 

9. One extra outing every 2 weeks. We go to the library once a week already, but I want to make sure we’re getting out to the park or hiking, and really taking advantage of the outdoors. I’d love to do weekly outings, but feel like I’d better start with just biweekly and see how it goes. 

10. Take time to recharge. Get up early. Go to the library alone. Just find some time for quiet every day. I’m a much more patient mother when I find time to be quiet, and less frazzled when chaos inevitably erupts. 

11. Play my violin for at least 30 minutes every day. Practice time is the first thing to go lately when life gets crazy and I don’t like it that way. Other things are less important. 

12. Stay off social media during the day, unless it’s work related activity. It just sucks up too much time. 

13. Write every day. Journal. Blog. Novel. To-do list. 

14. Create better storage solutions and get rid of unnecessary stuff. Our house feels pretty small sometimes, but smart storage would help, and I can always find more things to get rid of. I think my word of the year might be Declutter. Or maybe, Organize. Is that too lame?

15. Make our home beautiful. I really intend to make an effort this year to make things not just serviceable, but beautiful. They can still be simple–have to be, with three little kids running around–but there are definitely things I can improve, even without money. 

16.  Be more decisive. I do have opinions, but too frequently I squirrel around them. It irritates me whenever I hear myself doing it, but somehow it has become a habit. I want to go ahead and back myself out of it now.

17. Rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice in every circumstance, every crazy change that comes our way, because I know that whatever my God has ordained for me is perfect. 

Happy New Year!