Twenty Twelve I love you already!

I am a HUGE lover of new beginnings.  Not a huge fan of change-which doesn't make much sense-but I love the newness of a new year.  I hate seeing Christmas & all the decor go, but as soon as December 26th hits, I am a mad woman.  I love the cleaning, the deep gutting of our home, the tossing of things less important over the year, and the bright hope of the future.  I love setting goals, getting organized, and the thought that although we can't go back & change our past, we can-at any time-change our ending.  Love this. The power to be our best selves is in us.  Along with Heavenly Father's help, of course.  So grateful for this knowledge.

2012 feels like a good year.  It feels like a fun year.  I love saying twenty-twelve.  I think it's cool. (:  Lots of fun things planned for this year.  So many exciting things happening.  Love it.

Because I'm such a big goal lover, we have a few at our house.  However, I'd like to start by talking about my word for the year.  I have been processing & praying a lot over the past month about what I'd like to focus on most for this new year.  I felt guided into choosing the word I chose and yet feel it takes some redefining and explanation on my part for your understanding.  When I told Zac about it recently he was totally on board & is focusing on this in his life, too. 

The word I chose is Minimize.  And another form of this word-Minimalist.

If you look the word minimize up in the dictionary, it has a rather bland & somewhat negative connotation.  This is why I wanted to clarify.

For me, I chose it because I want to focus on what's most important and the things that matter most to me.  In this way, I want to minimize everything I can.  I want to say no to more things which sounds awful, but I tend to say yes to everything, so this will free up time for me & my family.  I want to minimize my expectations.  Not positive ones, those are great & should be large.  The negative expectations and the indifferent ones are those I'll be focusing on.  I tend to have unrealistic expectations about a lot of events in my life and especially toward my kids, which isn't fair to them.  So, I'm working on minimizing my expectations and being happy with whatever life & God hand to us.  I'm also working on not holding onto so much stuff, letting go of things & emotions more quickly, and getting rid of any clutter areas in our life. 

To start on my road to becoming more of a minimalist, I'm choosing one goal a month personally for this year {to be decided on throughout the previous month} rather than a list of goals all at once.  I feel like this is more attainable & realistic for me and the hope is that the goals I accomplish each month will just continue to be done throughout the following months, resulting in a super fulfilled year.  More to come on these monthly goals as I finish them.

As a family we also just chose one goal to focus on in 2012: Reading our scriptures daily together

Zac has started on his goals toward a healthier body by working out 6 days a week and significantly cleaning up his diet.  Grayson & Beckham are working on growing into even more amazing little guys & we are all looking forward to this great new year & the growth it will offer us.

Lastly, the New Year's card we sent out to ring it in {pic taken by AFP}.  Happy New Year!