Making Our Family Effective

I am not one for New Year's Resolutions because ultimately I know that they end up being good intentions that are never followed through.  I do see the beginning of a month and especially the beginning of a new year to be a  time to start something fresh.  


When you look at a calendar for a new year, it's open....blank....ready to be filled up, but not too much, we don't want to be over committed now.


One of the things that my husband and I plan to do is to have a family night(s).  Those nights might be for playing board games or the Wii, talking about issues that affect our family or simply getting out instruments and having a time of worship.


Since my husband recently received training on the 8 Habits of Successful Marriages and some of Covey's other materials, we have been looking at how to make our family more effective.  We decided to go over some of the materials of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Military Families with the kids.  We had our first meeting the other night and talked about Values, Views and Habits.

The outcome of that meeting was that the top three things that were important to our family were:


Our relationship with God


Spending time with our family


Encouraging each other / Me Time   (these were tied)


We plan to have weekly meetings to go over the rest of the materials as a family.  But we don't want it to be all business.  Tonight Angel and the girls played a card game called Blink.  Since he was playing with a 4 year old and almost 6 year old, they took the game a little bit slow, but they all had fun.


I hope that as this new year is beginning, we can pick up with our plans and good intentions and make them into a reality.  


What activities have you wanted to do with your family that seemed to have been pushed aside due to busy schedules or changes in life?  Make a decision today to make your marriage and family a priority.  Make a date to get together and follow through with it.