#52 Stories: Story #14

What goals do you hope to achieve this year?

I don't always post new year resolutions, but I do make some goals for myself each year.  When the kids were at home, I'd make a point of teaching this in Family Home Evening each new year--for them to take time and think about what they wanted to accomplish and then refer to the previous goals to see what they'd achieved.

These were my goals from 2014, for an example (& these are still hanging on the bulletin board in sight of the computer):
Attend the temple once a month
Keep up with the Sunday school reading
Eliminate the word "crap" as an expression
Watch what I eat
Write to missionaries once a month

In 2014 to the present, I kept some of these better than others.  I ended up being a temple worker in the Mt. Timpanogos temple for a year about 2015.  That kept me at the temple almost every week.

My SS reading was a hit and miss thing--but now I am teaching Gospel Doctrine every other week, so I have no excuse NOT to keep up.  I have to!

"Crap!" as an expression is slowing leaving my natural speech pattern--but "Holy Mackerel" and "Holy Smokes" have made a raging reappearance.

I have watched what I have been eating--specifically since last March.  I began using a little app on my phone called Lifesum and it gives me a calories counter and exercise tracker.  With that help I have lost 23 pounds.  I'm not done yet, but I will still be continuing with this one.

Writing to missionaries?   You'd think that I could do this with my eyes closed almost since we can email missionaries now. I've slowly pulled back this goal but I will like to write to my family members who are serving missions--right now that means Sister Green in Pennsylvania.  I used to write the each of the missionaries serving form our ward, as well as any of the stake committee YM or YW that I served with in my Stake YW calling. Those letters were hand written and sent in the mail with a stamp--all over the world--for about 6 years.  Currently we do not have any young full time missionaries from our ward.  But I'm still up for this for our niece McKay.

So this year, for 2018, what will my goals be?
1) continue working with my little phone app to count calories and exercise more regularly to loose a few more pounds to be healthy and in better physical shape.
2) write to Sister McKay once each month as she serves a mission in Pennsylvania.
3) call my parents more regularly--once a week or so.
4) find out what I need to do to renew my teaching certificate and get things in place to do that
5) attend the temple monthly