NYR 2013

After taking a year off of New Year's Resolutions (I knew last year would be hard with the "new baby"), I wanted to continue the idea of a "top ten" NYRs for this year.  When I did this in 2011, I found that we really did stretch ourselves to do more, have more fun, improve our family, etc.  Here's what we came up with for this year:

1 new hobby

2 new plants

3 new sewing creations

4 new restaurants for date night

5 new recipes per month

6 new all-family field trips

7 books read

8 boxes in the garage cleaned out

9 feast days celebrated

10 musical contributions for Mass

I'm excited to get started, and the blog will hopefully show some of the things we are working on.  I think the easiest will be the feast days, just because I'm rarin' to go on those (I follow a great blog that has inspired me) and hopefully the recipes (the 2011 goal of 2 per week was a little lofty; this year is more do-able).  The new hobby will be fun because I have an idea of what I want to do and I sure hope it works out.  The hardest ones will be the books (who has time to read?) and the field trips (I take the kids new places, but to do it as a whole family takes planning).

As a recap for 2011:  
1 new activity per month--I think we did pretty good on this one; the blog chronicled a lot of them
2 new recipes per week--definitely did NOT do this! but we did try a ton (just not 104 of them)
3 rosaries per month--didn't to this I am sorry to say.  I guess we are not a rosary family.
4 dates with each child--this went pretty well with some purposeful dates and some casual ones
5 minutes a day outside--easy in the summer, harder in the winter
6 date nights--yes!
7 creations--if you count individual Halloween costumes then yes!
8 books read--yes! thanks to some quick fiction
9 massages per month--Marcus wishes!  (I was going to give him more back rubs with the intent that it meant more time together, watching TV or whatever, but in actuality he was gone so much that this was a really hard resolution to keep and I gave up after a few months)
10 participations in Mass--yes!

So overall I think 2011 was a successful year even if we didn't quite hit the bullseye.  Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades...and new years resolutions!  Any improvement is a good improvement!