Personal Goals 2012

All this week I've been talking about things I want to be intentional about trying to do in 2012. I've shared about my Mandarin goals, DIY projects I want to try, some of my goals in my family relationships, and the last area I am going to share about today is my personal growth goals.

In 2012 I'd like to:

• Try some more natural face and hair cleansing products
• Do some stomach exercises several times a week (I'm in decent shape and our lifestyle gives me quite a bit of exercise naturally, except for my stomach muscles which I really do need to work on)
• Continue to exercise my brain by:
• learning more Mandarin
• reading at least l book a month
• doing 1-2 RN CEU hours each month
• blogging several times a week
• My editor/husband wants me to go through a grammar course we have, so I am going to try to complete it by the end of this year. Refreshing my knowledge in grammar should help my writing, but it will also help me in teaching our boys in years to come.

My hope in sharing these goals is mainly that I'll be more motivated to work on them throughout the year. Blogging is good for me because I tend to do a better job of recording our lives when I want to share it with others. I tend to be to lazy to journal consistently for just myself, but if He wills, I'll try to give an update here at the end of the year how these goals went.

Mandarin Mondays: 再见

My parents came for about two weeks, and we had a great visit together. We were very busy and did lots of fun things that I'll write more about soon. But the one thing that is always hard is saying "goodbye" at the end of the visit, and I've been thinking I should learn a lesson from the Chinese on this one. Perhaps instead of saying "goodbye" we should all learn to say as the Chinese do "zài jiàn" (再见). Literally this means "again see." Saying "until we see you again" seems more positive to me.

So, remember how much we love you (wǒmen ài nǐ, 我们爱你), and we will see you again (zài jiàn, 再见) soon, even if it is just on Skype for a little while.

Three-Year-Old Sweetheart

This is my three-year-old; he is turning into quite a sweetheart. Sure he can still throw quite a fit, even bigger ones now, but they are much fewer and further between. And there is much more intentional unprompted sweetness mixed into his behaviors. More "I love you mommy," more hugs, more "I like your hair down mommy," and more flowers. Today he picked the biggest bunch yet. Sure, they are only clover in a peanut-butter-jar vase, but he spent a long time picking them, for me....

Help me to demonstrate real love to him and remember these moments of sweetness more than the trying moments.