I'm ashamed to say that sticking to things is hard for me. In fact, a few years ago I got home from a mom conference and sat down with Emma and Kelsey and sheets of paper to make some plans and procedures. Emma wrote this heading on hers: "Things Mom Says We Will Do But We Won't Actually". She was joking, but I knew it wasn't a joke. I think we are all like that, to some degree. And I would rather live life as a human than a robot, stuck in a procedural manual. However, I started 2017 knowing that we had to establish some systems in order to survive and that starting them as a family of 4 before we became 7 would be beneficial. And thus was born my (very loosely fitting the definition of) Bullet Journal Notebook and Sunday Night Family Meetings. And I'm here to tell you that every single week of my notebook is filled and we had a family meeting EVERY SINGLE WEEK (although two times we held them on Monday instead of Sunday and once even on TUESDAY).
If you're looking for some structure in your family, I highly recommend whatever variation of this works for you. In my notebook, I have a page for each week and headings of itinerary (self explanatory), meal plan (also self explanatory, although I will say that Kraig and I rotate weeks of cooking (and the kids rotate weeks of taking one meal a week with hopes of expanding that) and it has saved our relationship this year), to do (this is my own to do list), notes (love this-- I just put special details of things we want to remember from each week), prayer (some are longstanding, others change weekly) and praise (it's been so faithbuilding to see prayers answered before our very eyes). On the page opposite, I update our family chore rotation (this has evolved some-- we had two kids on dishes each week but inevitably only one kid did all the work so we went to just one), van seat rotation (this is another sanity-saver), and devotional lead rotation (every week someone different leads our family meeting devotional).
Our family meetings take the following format: We start with the person in charge of the devotional doing that with us. Then I take prayer requests, go over praise reports, and the devotional leader leads us in prayer. After that, I go over the weekly itinerary and meal plan (each kid has his or her own planner that they update if they want to-- some want to know every detail and others just go with the flow), chore rotation, seat assignments, and devotional lead for the next week. We finish by having time for people to mention things they want to discuss. Sometimes Kraig and I have specific things we want to say to everyone or remind them of (see Cuss Word Chalkboard Spectacle circa September 2017), sometimes we don't. I have also used the meetings for things like motivational talks and the love languages discussion a few weeks ago.
Again, it may not work for everyone and it probably won't look the same for everyone, but it has been great for us and it's honestly one of my proudest accomplishments of 2017. That and the fact that my better sleep patterns and water intake of fall 2016 have carried through 2017. And oh yeah, other valuable things too. 😂
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