New Year

Well it's a New Year!!  I know I'm a little behind and no it wasn't because of the New Year's celebrations.  We in fact had a great New Year's party in our house.  My wife, my three daughters and I turned out the lights and had a dance party that seemed to last a couple of hours and included gooey gums (Noli's term for Jube-Jubes), chips, chocolate milk and root beer!!  It was grand.  There's nothing like seeing the joy in your kids' faces at something so simple as spending an evening together, listening to some good tunes and busting a move.  We pulled out some classics (Jump-jump!!) and some real classics (Keep on Rockin' in the Free World and I Wanna Rock and Roll (all night)) before slowing it down with a little Oasis. 

And of course what comes with a New Year but new resolutions!!  Ah yes - I almost reached last year's resolution...always those last few pounds that get you!  Actually I've never been one to really make any resolutions - but last year, after stepping on a scale (which is something else I usually don't do either because I think being weight obsessed can be a dangerous thing - it's not always a true indicator of health) I realized that maybe being a little weight aware (not obsessed) was in order (my blood pressure was inching up too).  Regardless of the whole resolution business, it isn't a bad idea to pause from time to time and take stock of what you have done and consider the things you want to do or achieve.  If you don't have a destination in mind, you'll never know if you're getting to where you want to be.

Last year was pretty great - I mean how do you top the birth of your third kid (my wife gets the glory for that one though)?  On top of that I took 9 months off of work, took my two oldest girls on a ten day Daddy-Daughter road trip way up north, built a fence, knocked down two walls in my house, put up an eaves trough (which the ice has recently ripped off), used a chain saw to shred a few trees in the backyard, lost twenty pounds, wrote a book, started a blog,  and generally just really enjoyed life. 

So now it's time to think of what I want to accomplish this year...hmmm...ummm...well, I dunno.

How's that for an answer?  For the first time in quite awhile I feel like I'm standing on a precipice and looking beyond the next couple of years.  So it's still kind of fuzzy.  The last 7 years or so have been so filled with huge life events and we just sort of got swept up in the inertia of it all and only now are we starting to ask ourselves more specific questions about what we want in the future.  I think this will be the first year that my wife and I haven't moved, been pregnant, had a baby, started or ended a job, or gone back to school since we've been married. 

It has been a wild adventurous roller-coaster ride (I'm not sure my wife would describe it as such)!!  The past 7 years have been so full of the unexpected that I wouldn't rule anything out for 2013.  But back to the resolution...I think what I want to accomplish is to determine some very specific long term goals for our family and develop a strategy and plan on how to achieve them.  Yes - that sounds good to me. 

You know the one other thing that comes to mind...something a little more tangible...is this book I wrote this past year.  I want to get that thing published.  So there...I hereby resolve to:

1. Establish, in consultation with my beautiful wife, well defined long term goals for our family;
2. Develop a plan on how to accomplish the goals defined in resolution 1; and,
3. Publish my book.

How about you?