Decisions, Decisions.

I am not one to make "New Year Resolutions". Yet, the beginning of each New Year is ushered in in the midst of a holiday break from school with the kids home, a lot of non-routine activity, and reflections on the past year as it ends. Once the kids resume school and the decorations are put away, it is natural that some changes take place. There is an initial shuffling about of activities and priorities as we try to find where exactly the balancing point is.

We therefore have a few changes to our life that will be put to the test in the coming months to see which will last and become part of the norm, and which will pass on to the graveyard of good intentions.

I have already mentioned here my involvement in the Camera Club and my hope to improve my photographic knowledge and skills. I will be putting some of what I have learned to use with my film camera as well. Follow through once the images are captured will be a challenge as I don't want to simply dump them into the black hole of my external hard drives, only to linger in unfinished obscurity. I need to get printed and copied to disk those that are worth keeping, and eliminate those that aren't.

I have also mentioned the girls' dietary shift to vegetarianism. We are still figuring out how to better accommodate that. I'm thinking that they could plan at least one or two meals a week that will be entirely veggie, and I can use the many resources that I have already at hand to increase the variety of meat-free dishes that are served at each meal. This is still a work in progress.

Through the inspiration of a friend in Florida, some of our family have begun training to run in a 5K race in the Spring. Following a program called the Couch 2 5K running plan, which is designed to take couch potatoes to a 5K run in 9 weeks, we are entering our second week of training tomorrow. Another family from church are joining us in the understanding that a little accountability helps us to keep to the schedule and aim for our goals.

Our most important goal this year, indeed, ever, is to train our children in the ways of the Lord. We have been able since the beginning of the school year to maintain a routine of family devotions each morning before the kids go to school. This has been working well, for the most part, but we seem to have compressed our time with a lack of discipline about waking up in the morning and losing our focus on the importance of our family worship. We are attempting to renew that focus and re-invigorate our devotional time with emphasizing how very vital it is to each of us and our relationship with our Heavenly Father, as well as our family relationship one to another.

Along similar lines, my own personal piety is always in need of improvement. I am still attempting to finish my reading of Calvin's Institutes. I had hoped by now to be moving on to Jonathon Edwards, yet that shall have to wait. I'm pretty sure that finishing Edwards in a year would require being stranded on a deserted island with his books, but I digress.

So there it is. Personally, and corporately, the goals and desires that have developed for myself and our family in the past weeks. Let's see if we can truly incorporate them into our lives this year.