October: Family Goals

Over on my healthy living blog, Running With Tongs, I like to share my monthly health, fitness and personal goals.  I often find myself having a few other goals that don’t really fit over there because rather than being personal goals they are goals that I have for our us as a family unit.  That being said I have decided to share our family goals here and would love to have you share your own family goals for the month of October in our comments or by linking your own family goals post in the comments.

When making goals I like to be as specific as possible and I also like to limit the number of goals I set for myself at any given time. That being said we are going to focus on five goals each month, because five seems like an accomplish-able number.

So here are our five family goals:

1. Eat 90% of our meals at home. I don’t know what has happened to us but over the last 9 months we have been eating out WAY TOO MUCH. I’m talking on average 3-4x per week. Not all of these are full out meals but often appetizers, lunches or dinners. I looked over finances last month and we went way over our dining out budget and this month we need to reign it in. Honestly not only this month but every month from here on out. There is no need for us to eat out as often as we do! (P.S. Over on RWT I am having a challenge related to this).
2. Spend 30 minutes per day all together without electronics. I often find that it isn’t until the weekends that both Neil and I actually take time to sit down and do things as a family sans phones or computers.  Most mornings one of us is checking into work things while the other one cooks/makes coffee/preps lunches and plays with Edith. At night Neil gets home from work and I finish dinner, we eat and then I’m often ready to retreat to my computer to take a break from Mommyville and to get some work done. So this month I’d like for us to spend 30 minutes after dinner/before Edith goes to bed just playing, singing, dancing or whatever without our phones or computers.
3. Do something outside the house 3 days out of the week with Edith. This is just for weekdays. Since the rain has started I am trying to keep myself motivated to get out of the house at least three days out of the week. They also have to be inexpensive so I see trips to OMSI and The Children’s Museum in our future since we have memberships and also to the library story times which are free and open play at our community center for $1.
4. Do at least one Fall activity. I want us to get out as a family and do at least one Fall activity whether that be a hayride, apple picking, pumpkin carving, attending a harvest festival, ect. Although it is raining buckets right now I want to at least pretend we are having a New England Fall and get out and do something fun and Fall related.
5. Create a warm and comfortable home. We are still in the process of moving and unpacking and we are still living in the land of boxes. My goal this month is to get everything unpacked, put away and pictures up on the walls. I want this place to be home right now. Every other place we have lived we haven’t really totally moved into and honestly still had tons of unpacked boxes that we moved here (I guess that made moving easier, eh?) Anyways I want Edith to feel at home and I want to enjoy being home (so far I really do).

So those are our five goals for the month or rather the five goals that I have set out and hope to convince Neil that they are worth achieving. (Next month we’ll discuss these goals more before I post).

What are your five goals this month?

Also check out these pumpkin recipes– yum!