2016 Resolutions

A few years ago I came upon and really liked the idea of having one word to encompass your New Years Resolutions. Last year was EMBARK! I'd like to say I rocked it, but I think 2015 kind of sunk us and we were lucky to keep treading water through the rest of the year. On to a new year and new hopes, right?!?! 

(Previous resolutions posts here and here.)

This year is going to be FUNDAMENTALS. 

I don't know if this is less lofty- if I'm trying to recharge from last year- or less ambitious, but I do feel really strongly about making sure I am doing the basics first. Not just going through the motions of the basics either, but really and truly FOCUSING on the basics. 

"At a university you cannot register for a graduate course in chemistry, or even an advanced course, until completing the basic or elementary courses. This principle of prerequisites is well understood in everyday life. It should not surprise anyone when it is applied to the ordinances of the gospel. That is common sense...Chemistry might be called a vertical field. A foundation of information must be built before one can proceed upward. Someone may think himself a genius who could register for a graduate course in chemistry and, without the prerequisite courses or even an introduction to the fundamentals, survive and pull down a top grade. That would take a genius indeed! If you attempt to master the advanced course first, you will end in confusion...This elementary principle of prerequisite courses applies to virtually every discipline and relates to virtually all subject matters...(he relates an analogy between himself and a statistics course that he put off and struggled through the advanced course later) I passed the course but I learned how important it is to learn the fundamentals before moving to advanced work. Now, not all of us are going to use the higher rules of statistics or chemistry. Most of us may manage quite well without having had an advanced course in these subjects. But there are some courses that must universally be mastered if we are to find happiness and fulfillment in life. Essential life activities must be mastered in the same way, fundamentals first and then more advanced ideals built on the foundations of the basic principles."

Boyd K. Packer

These are the fundamentals I am going to REALLY focus on:

The only things that really need to be accomplished in the home are daily scripture study and prayer and weekly family home evening.

Linda S. Reeves

That quote above is going to be my guiding star this year. If I can fall in bed at night and check off those three things, then I am doing 100% awesome. We have already started putting a really strong effort at having scripture study with the kids every night (we struggled with this for a while because they are so small, wiggly, and I'm just so ready to have them ASLEEP) and having a routine in the morning of making their beds and immediately kneeling beside it and saying morning prayers. So, we just have to keep the ball rolling, right? And that, my friends, is enough for 2016. Because if we survive 2016 without the sinking ship and treading water that was 2015, then I will be one happy girl.  Things like that start with the basics, right? Not that we are terrible at the basics, I just think they are a lot more important than we sometimes give them allowance for and I want to make them the biggest priority so my children know that they truly are that important. Because quote after quote seems to tell us that the only thing we can really do to protect our children is to send them out with a testimony of Christ. Which means they have to have the basics to build that testimony.

I have a little niggling thought in my head about working out three times a week, going to bed early, and trying to finish baby books. That could be the cherry on top, right?

HERE WE GO 2016!