Do we start over tomorrow?

That's what 4 year old Owen asked me yesterday as I was taking down the Christmas decorations.

"Mom, is Halloween next?"

"Well, Owen, Halloween won't be here for a long time."

"Oh. (long thoughtful pause) So, do we start over tomorrow?"

"Why yes we do, Owen. We start over tomorrow."

And that's what today feels like. Starting over. Fresh and new.

A new year.
New chances.
A clean slate.

I took the kids out to dinner tonight and explained to them the concept of New Year's resolutions. I told them that they were like promises to yourself about changing things in your life for the better.

So, I asked the kids to tell me what some of their resolutions were, and I wrote them on the Chili's kid menu in blue crayon.

Owen didn't really get the concept of a resolution. So his ideas were things like...go to the store more, buy more toys, open presents from Santa, go to Walmart (he's NEVER even been to a Walmart!)

Jordyn came up with a couple. The first was to go to church. Since I'm not huge on organized religion and there's no way on God's green earth we'd ever get Kevin to go to church, I wanted to understand this resolution of hers a little bit better. OK Jordyn, so what church? How are you going to get there? Why do you want to go to church? I wasn't asking her in a "you can't have this as one of you resolutions" tone, it was more of a genuinely curious tone. She couldn't really answer my questions and then decided that the thought of going to church actually made her nervous (she couldn't explain why...maybe it was all my questions), so she decided not to keep that one on the list.

The second one was to save her money. She has been blowing through her babysitting money as soon as she gets it. So, I thought this was a very interesting and responsible resolution for her to make.

Liam had no shortage of resolutions ideas. As a matter of fact, he was the first one to come up with one....RECYCLE. OK, good start. It might be hard to get dad on board with that, but recycling is something I already do, and if he wants to be more on board and in tune with that, I think that's great! Once he realized that he could have more than one resolution, he added "be nice to my brother and sister" to the list, which Jordyn promptly complained that she was JUST about to say that. I explained that it was perfectly OK for them to have some of the same resolutions. Just because Liam has it, didn't mean Jordyn couldn't also have it.

He also added these resolutions to the list. Write 'em down, mom!

• eat healthy
• be thankful to God
• clean up
• help each other

Then I decided that we needed to create a couple of family resolutions that we're all going to work on.

First and foremost, a moratorium on the word HATE. We all over-use this word, and I'm probably the biggest offender. I hate these shoes. I hate this show. I hate traffic. I hate snow. I hate how my butt looks in these jeans. So, no more hate. POSITIVITY.

Secondly, MANNERS. I think my kids are already pretty well-mannered, but it can't hurt to zoom in on the importance of having good manners.

As for me, personally, my only resolution this year is to focus on scrapbooking. I need to make it a priority and my first goal is to finish each of my kids' birthday albums by Owen's 5th birthday on April 25th. Owen has 2 of 4 birthdays scrapped, Jordyn has 1 of 13, and Liam has 0 of 7. So, that's 21 birthdays that I need to scrap in the next 4 months.

I better get cracking!