Our Hopes & Goals for 2018 / Family Bucket List

Hello and Happy New Year to you all! I hope it was a good one. I am still somewhat in Christmas mode – craving lazy days and lots of chocolate, but am trying hard to get the kids out and enjoy the school break, as well as get cracking on losing that mum tum! I have, all of a sudden been frantically planning my life and wondering what this year will bring (and what I will go and get!). I have generally just being trying to get into January mode and back to normal life, whilst embracing a new year with new opportunities.

With that you may notice a few changes over here, specifically with a new header and a few other little things. There is something about this new year that has made me want to once again faff with my blog layout/design, as well as think about content and perhaps what I may want to start writing about and then change!

I have now, lots of personal goals, as well as goals for my blog, but the focus at the turn of a new year seems to have been about the family and what we hope to see, achieve and do together in 2018.

Our Hopes and goals for 2018

I have been somewhat in denial with this new year approaching, and subsequently the sudden need to make goals and plan our life. But after several days of pondering and chats in the car together, we have set some goals of things we hope to do this coming year.

Improve our home / Family life

First of all we spoke a lot of the need to improve our home both physically (hello DIY) and also with how we speak to one another.  The kids name call, we fall out sometimes, raise our voices, and get cross. Yes we are a normal family, but I always feel bad when I shout/lose my temper, and I cringe when I hear my kids being rude to one another or Nathan and I!

We want to shout less, be firmer in our discipline and help them be less lazy and rude to others! We want to do better at daily scripture reading with our kids, and help Ethan understand more about church…He turns 8 in October and will then be old enough to be baptised which we are all excited for, so we want to help him prepare for that and know what he is choosing.

Discover New things and places each month

Looking at the adventures and exploring side to life, we were rich in ideas of what we wanted to do and places we wanted to see. I guess this is where our 2018 bucket list comes in. We obviously plan stuff to do each season/holiday to make the most of that moment in time, but we often take that from a general yearly bucket list too that we have created at the beginning of the year. So for 2018 we want to:

Go to America…see our friends & family / Have an epic road trip
UK Water park
Climb a mountain
Go Glamping
Chatsworth House
Go to a Castle
Beamish Museum & Durham
The York Dungeons
London Eye / Christmas Lights
See a musical
Steam train to the coast
Norwich to see family / The Norfolk Broads
Scotland with cousins
Flamingo Land
Eden Camp
Air Museum

Take more time for the kids

I find I spend a lot of my time, when at home, cleaning, doing laundry, and cooking meals. I rarely take time to just ignore it all and play with my kids or do things together. Whilst I am good at being in the moment and taking them out, when in the home I see so many things to do that I often get on task with those and leave them to it. Talking with them in the process.

I played with them more over Christmas, building new toys and such, and had a stark reminder of what I was missing out on and what they needed more of from mummy. So yes – I really need to take more time for them and either work smarter in the home when they’re at school, or just let it go for an hour or 2!

We also want to take them each on little regular one to one dates, alternating between mum and dad. Just so we can strengthen our bonds, get to know them and their troubles and hopefully give them more. We hope it will increase respect and relationships, but more so give them confidence that we are in their corner and they can tell us anything – because we have the time to listen.

New years a such a great opportunity to reevaluate life, relationships and work, and I look forward to hopefully improving and building each of these, as well as creating some wonderful memories through some epic adventures with my loves! Let me know ideas you have to make this year great – you may have something I would love to adopt too.