First of all, I have left my camera at my mom's and have no pictures to post. I know, boring!
This past few weeks have been hard for me. I have decided that I detest the month of January. It doesn't help that several of our friends from our neighborhood are currently on a cruise and this week it is bitter cold! Tomorrow the low is zero degrees!! I have just been in a funk of all sorts. I was sick with a cold for the last 2 weeks and haven't been consistently exercising so I am sure that has added to it. It is SO hard to get up at 5:45 am and run in the cold. Oh, I can hardly wait for spring and then my favorite..SUMMER!!
But back to January..
It seems my whole household is in a funk. Kids are fighting more than normal. The house seems to be a mess. Mom is grumpy. Dad is grumpy. Mom feels sad she is not on vacation right now. Dad is frustrated with mom for being sad. You get the picture, right? We had a "Family Meeting" last night. The kids love those! (not!) I even had a written out agenda. It looked something like this:
1. Housework- Assign areas to keep clean
2. Fighting- Cell phones/XBOX
3. Weekly Schedule- Dad leaving town
4. Plan Family Vacation
I admit, when I start getting overwhelmed and grumpy with the house, I still resort to immature tactics. They usually involve a little bit of cupboard door slamming, tossing things into people's rooms with a little more effort than usual and a few mumblings under my breath. Something was reaffirmed to me last night. My family responds much better when I just talk to them about the problem. Our family meeting was a success. Each of the kids agreed to be responsible for a certain area of the house on a daily basis. It seems there are 4 areas of my house that are constantly attracting clutter. They each willingly agreed to take a weekly turn on their area. We came up with serious consequences for the fighting that goes on between the two oldest boys. Cell phone taken away for Zach. XBOX taken away for Noah. (Get them where it hurts the most) and we ended on a positive note by discussing ideas for a family vacation.
Here were our ideas:
1. California for a week w/Disneyland included
2. Missouri for a week staying w/relatives and going to Nauvoo (this was actually Alan's idea)
3. Florida for a week going to Disney World/Beach
4. Jackson Hole Weekend and short Disney Land weekend (2 separate vacations)
We agreed that Missouri would be the cheapest and still a lot of fun but would allow us to maybe do another short vacation to Jackson Hole or somewhere within driving range. So far, that's in the forefront.
My purpose of this post is to remind myself that I sometimes need to treat my family like a small company and I am the President. (Don't tell Alan this!) It's so helpful to just sit down and talk through issues and get everyone back on the same page again. However, I have learned if I do this too often it's not as effective.
We all needed something to look forward to. I woke up today much more ready to brave the cold weather and am even okay with the fact that Alan is going on a "guy trip" this weekend. I guess if we didn't have "January's" in our lives we wouldn't appreciate the "July's" as much.
P.S. Sorry to any of you out there who have a January Birthday!
P.S.S. I also just realized it's Feb 1st today!!!
