Happy New Year!!!

It is now 2007. We have said our goodbyes to 2006 and, as I told our children last night, it will never be 2006 again. Profound stuff, right? ;) We took the children to an early evening of family fireworks in town, which were awesome. I cried as I looked back over the year 2006 and expressed my joy to the family and my praise to God. It has been a good year. God blessed us, as usual, more than we deserve. The most wonderful news is that all of our three children publically professed Christ as Saviour and went through the waters of baptism. All at different times....with the last one being baptized on Christmas Eve Day..Sunday December 24, 2006. I am humbled by God's grace to our family. In spite of my sin and failures as a mother, He has poured His mercy out upon us. Praise be to our God who blesses us more than we can ever imagine!!!

I generally do not make official New Year's Resolutions. I always have good intentions, but you know what they say about good intentions!! Instead, I am generally a *goal setter*. I know what I desire and I go for it. Generally speaking, I usually reach my goals, by the grace of God. I figure that if I make my goals public...okay, only a few souls actually read my lovely blog, but still, that is more public than my personal journal..I figure that will help me hold to them with more gusto!! So, without further ado, here are my goals for 2007.

1) Read through the entire Bible in a year again.
It has been a few years since I have done this, and obviously I think it is a worthy pursuit.
I am using this plan because I like the way there are 4 different passages every day.
http://www.navpress.com/Assets/PDF/Product/Sample/1576839745.pdf

2) Be more hospitable. We like to have people into our home for meals and fellowship but I think that we can increase the number of people we minister to even more.

3) I desire to be more like Christ. There are so many things I see about myself that need improvement. It can become disheartening. If I could pick just three areas...out of the dozens...they would be:

i) To be more patient.
ii) To guard my tongue.
iii) To love others more.

4) Lose weight, exercise and eat healthy. Yay. How could I not have this one as a goal? Homeschooling has brought many things into my life over the past two years...*more of me* being one of them. Staying home all the time, feeding children meals and snacks all day long, has definitely compounded my struggle. I hope to be able to report my weight loss on here!

So thar ya go!!! It is official. Now, please be a friend and encourage me to hold to these goals!