New Year, New Goals

I am a goal girl. Some people hate them, I LOVE them. Our family goals for last 2016 are as follows:

• Sara
• Try not to yell at my children. I'm not sure how successful I was at this, but the constant reminder was definitely helpful.
• Read Jesus the Christ. Completed and what a wonderful experience it was. My love and understanding of my Savior and just what he went through skyrocketed because of this book.
• Read all of Matthew's books. Completed. I am in constant awe at what this man's mind is capable.
• Make a vegetarian meal once a week. I did pretty well with this, but probably not as diligent as I could have been. My efforts more often than not, tended towards cop out, let's have egg-salad sandwiches for dinner. I'll call it 70% successful.
• Do some sort of exercise 5 days a week for at least 30 minutes. Other than a bit on vacation or while I was sick, I was really good about this. I would say I was 90-95% successful on this one.
• Spend one evening a week reading. Total fail. I'm pretty sure I only spent a max of 5 evenings reading. It's not that I don't want to read, but my evenings with Matthew are generally spent watching a show together while he worked on his puzzle and I sewed or otherwise crafted. Reading for the evening would have meant being by myself and that didn't seem very fun. 
• Matthew
• Get shopify site up and running. Fail. I think he decided it just wasn't going to be worth it. We also didn't know anyone with experience to help us.
• Edit books 2 and 3 of the Wordsmythe Chronicles and get them published on the site. Mostly successful. They didn't get published on his shopify site, but the entire series (Books 1-4) got self-published by the end of the year.
• Finish and frame last cross stitch. Completed. I feel kind of bad though that Matthew finished it in April, but we didn't get it framed until 3 days until the end of the year. 
• Finish Aelef series. Complete. It's pretty awesome. We both hope it also sees the light of day someday in the future.
• Start weight-lifting. Somewhat successful. We never got around to buying weights, but Matthew did start doing push-ups and pull-ups, effectively giving him guns and pecs for probably the first time in his life.

This year we have new goals. I am excited to see if we can be as generally successful this year as we were last year.

• Sara
• Pay off student loans. We both feel very strongly about this. Right now we have about $30,000 left. I know with Heavenly Father's help, we can make this happen.
• Perform 10 temple ordinances for deceased ancestors. 
• Run 10 miles (at one time). Right now I can do 3. This makes me excited and nervous at the same time.
• Learn how to play all the games I own. In the last few years we have gotten a fair number of games. But because it's just Matthew and me playing them and because they are kind of complex, we haven't gotten around to playing them. Hence my goal.
• Read the Church History Student Manual. In gospel doctrine class this year, we are studying the Doctrine and Covenants. In conjunction with our Sunday lessons, I felt I should re-read this book that details the beginnings of the church and gospel I love so dearly.
• Matthew
• Pay off student loans.
• Finish Malcontent and Tabitha series. Two new series I am excited to read.
• Determine course of action on books (editing more series, doing more marketing, etc).
• Attend the temple at least quarterly.
• Have 100% home teaching.
• Don't purchase any new computer games.
• Have daily scripture study.
• Exercise 3 times a week.

So that's it. A brief analysis on the results of our previous year's goals as well as an introduction of this year's goals. With luck we can make this a productive and fun year.