It’s the middle of the month and I’m just now posting my 2014 goals. My good friend, Victoria, along with many others, says there’s nothing magical about January 1 and I need that reminder constantly as a new mom trying to balance caring for our brand new little one with photography and sleep and taking care of our home. 🙂 However, I also believe it’s great accountability to write goals out where others can see them and hold you accountable.

2014 is going to be a year of many firsts for us as a family. I wanted to set goals for the year, but also wanted to show myself some grace as new mom trying to figure all this out. I won’t get it all right. Our lives won’t be perfect and that’s OK. Progress, not perfection. I’ve spent the last several weeks working through Lara Casey’s goal-setting series on her blog, along with my #2014powersheets, and both have been especially helpful. When Nic and I sat down to talk through our 2014 goals, we looked at the goals we set last year for our family and both businesses. It was so encouraging to see how many goals we had accomplished. The scary part was that we accomplished many business goals, but not many family goals. My big lesson learned is that businesses can’t grow at the expense of family growth. We have to set boundaries! Nic kept reminding me that we did have a baby in 2013 and I spent much of the year pregnant. He is right! I digress. 2014 is a fresh start, and it’s going to be a great year!

2014 Goals:
1. Honor God by living out our faith in our family and with our church family… This includes praying together with Nic, spending time daily in God’s Word, finding mentor relationships, and faithfully serving in our church.
2. Be good financial stewards of what God has given us by diligently managing our monthly budget and focusing on increasing our emergency fund, working to pay down our house, funding our HSA, setting up wills, opening a college savings account for Rachel, saving for retirement, and working to improve the Teasley Photography yearly and monthly budget. Whew! I’m tired just thinking about these things.
3. Stay active and healthy through exercise and food choices. This year I want to plan our meals more, eat clean foods, and make sure the we have made time for exercise each week. I want to raise our daughter to love and enjoy God’s creation! This means spending more time outdoors.
4. Simplify our lives. We have too much stuff! It’s time de-clutter, give things away, sell things, and learn to live with less. If this is a struggle for you, I encourage you to check out Nancy Ray’s contentment challenge! This also means clearing the clutter in our minds by cutting time on social media and television. It means more date nights (since I’m a quality time person), and family time without lots of distractions.
5. Continue to learn and grow through reading. I want to learn in grow in my FAITH, FAMILY and BUSINESS. Nic and I will be reading a few books together this year in each of those categories, and my reading goals are very small and simple. In the past, I’ve pushed myself but with unrealistic expectations. This year the expectation is much more realistic and hopefully we can make progress on it.

January Goals:

• Explore Bible study options for the months ahead with opportunities from church.
• Order prayer journals. So excited about this! I actually did it while writing this blog post. 🙂
• Get Nozbe set up for our family and start using it.
• Start eMeals.
• Begin de-cluttering our house: Master bedroom and bathroom.
• Buy a freezer, even though that sounds counter-intuitive to our “simplify” goal. (We plan to purchase some local grass-fed beef and want to freeze more fruits and veggies.)
• Complete one social-media free weekend.
• Send lenses off for cleaning.
• Get outside for a walk 2 or 3 times each week. Invite a friend to come along!