Family goals

Have I told you about our family goals? No? Well, I will. Right now.

Tim's sister owned a Wii that they never used. I approached her last year about buying it from them but they weren't quite ready to part with it. This year we were e-mailing about some other things when she asked, "Are you guys still interested in the Wii?" I told her that we sure were and was she ready to sell it to us? (obviously, we could go buy one at the store, but I'd rather give my money to her than Walmart). She told me they were ready to get rid of it and so the Wii was ours. Awesome! The only problem was, Christmas was mere days away and the gifts were already purchased or made and I knew that giving the kids a Wii would eclipse everything else and I didn't want to do that so we decided to wait. But then I thought, well I don't want to just give them a Wii, like it's normal to suddenly have these awesome things appear with no rhyme or reason and then I thought (are you still following me?) that it was January and this would be a great time to talk about resolutions or goals or things you want to work on--whatever you want to call it.

A few months ago, a friend and mother I admire introduced a family goal month where each child and she and her husband picked something they wanted to improve on during the month and then they reported back at the end of the month and had a special dinner. I loved that idea so I "borrowed" it and decided that the Wii would be our big prize (and a pizza party). For our first FHE in January, we talked about goals with the boys and told them about the Wii and then we all decided what we wanted to work on. I tried really hard to let the boys come up with their own goals and I think I most(ly) succeeded. Here they are:

Eli: Getting dressed by myself the first time Mommy asks.
Owen: Be nice to Eli.
Marcus: Not waking up the brothers in the morning.
Me: Learn 3 new hairstyles.
Tim: No yelling and lose 5 lbs.

We drew pictures of our goals and wrote them down and then drew a big sign that said Wii!! and we taped them all to our kitchen wall so we could see them often. It has been so great. One thing I hadn't planned on was how we could also talk about how sometimes we mess up and have a bad day or a bad moment but that doesn't mean we should just stop trying to work on our goals. We keep at it. The boys have worked really hard and I've definitely seen improvement on their goals. Tim hardly ever yells anymore and I am finally breaking out of my pony tail every single day routine. It's great! And I think the boys will especially enjoy and appreciate the Wii because they've worked so hard to earn it.