I have absolutely 100% dropped the ball on keeping up with my monthly challenges blog posts. The good news is that we are still keeping them alive and well though, in our family & home.

So, here’s the latest on what we’re calling 12 in 1:Unstuck…

Our family is definitely still loving and working through our monthly challenges for 2014, although the newness and excitement from the beginning of the year has absolutely started to wear off a bit.  But we aren’t quitters…or at least Jimmy & I aren’t, so we’re plugging away determined to show our kids that this is worth seeing through to the end.

March was Books over TV month, where we set limits on how much TV we watched, replacing that habit instead with time reading…either alone or together as a family.

Surprisingly, giving up our TV time came quite easily.  The kids never had it on during the week (and rarely even asked for it!), and had at most maybe an hour a day on the weekends, while Jimmy and I stuck to an hour or less just a few nights a week.

But the books part of the plan?
Um ya, not so much.

All of Taylors free time was spent with the Rainbow Loom, crafting up hundreds (it appears) of bracelets I’m pretty sure he’ll never wear but simply wanted the challenge of making, and I found that I love love love Instagram & YouTube more than I ever had before the T.V. was turned off.  Although, I will admit that Jimmy and Chloe, however, did awesome with this part of the challenge. Chloe read to me during nearly every one of my baths and showers, and by the end of the month was even bringing books with her every time she headed to the potty. And I lost count of how many books Jimmy consumed for the month, though mostly because he was working hard to finish a seminary class before our trip to London.

For the month of April, we chose to go along with my friend Laura’s idea, and give up uttering anything negative. And let me just say….Dang. That’s not as easy as I thought it would be. As it turns out, we’re all just a bunch of Isrealites wandering around the desert in this house. I’m kind of thinking we should have done the jar idea like Laura’s doing. But the good thing about all this is, at least we’re now more aware, and spending 30 days being hyper focused on it HAS to bring about some change, right?!?

Ya, more on this at the end of the month.

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I still need to write a post wrapping up all that we experienced and learned throughout our February challenge of service and kindness, but given that we are now into the first week of March, I thought I better first address our new months challenge.

This is the month that we’ve decided to limit the T.V. watching and instead focus more on reading and writing books, both individually and as a family. (more on the writing a bit later!)

~ I have some writing to get done & some books stacked up that I have been meaning to read for over a year now…
~ Jimmy has books to finish for his seminary classes…
~ We’ve always wanted to choose a book to read together as a family…
~ And I want the kids to be reminded that reading is actually fun and not just something that needs to checked off a homework list for the day.

And so we’re limiting our TV watching to one hour on the weekends and a half hour each weekday night, (Might be a little more now that I have a dear friend to cheer on!), and instead replacing the extra time rekindling our love for writing and reading books.

Already, I am seeing the changes and I love it.  Just yesterday as I was taking an extra long shower to escape my day for a bit, Chloe found her way in with a stack of books ready to read to me all my quiet time long.  She reminded me it was “book month,” and that she needed to read me some stories so I wouldn’t be alone during my shower.  Never in my life have I ever wanted to give up my quiet shower time more than I did in that moment.  She even took the extra time to poke the book past the shower curtain so I had an opportunity to see each picture that went with the words she was so graciously reading to me.

We also started a new book about Jim Elliot, an incredible missionary, that we’re reading together as a family each night that we’re all able to sit together at the dinner table.  It’s amazing.  We’re making memories.  And I cherish it more than I ever thought I would.

In addition to this challenge, we’re also choosing this month to bring back the first two months challenges as well: Health & Kindness, and do our best to successfully juggle all three. I think every three months, we might bring back the old so as to really keep things a part of our lives and really solidify our new habits.

I have to say, I am LOVING these monthly challenges.  I love that my family is so involved in this with me and that we are actively working together to make positive changes in our lives.  I love that we can already look back and reflect on all the ways we’ve been able to make 2014 really count.  We haven’t been perfect, but we’ve certainly done our very best…making sure to pick ourselves back up the next day when maybe the day before had been a bust.  And in breaking all our hopes, dreams and goals up into 12  thirty(ish) day challenges, we are already so much further ahead in accomplishing our 2014 goals then we ever have been in previous years.

12 in 1: A year to getting unstuck… it’s good.  It’s really really good.

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Every month for 2014, our family has decided to choose a different challenge to focus and work on.
We’re calling it 12 in 1: Getting Unstuck.
12 different challenges in 1 years time to truly getting our family unstuck.

And for February, the month of love, we fittingly chose to focus on kindness.
An entire month dedicated to serving others.
Loving others selflessly.
Thinking more of others than ourselves.
Being kind at all times, even when it may not come naturally or easily.

Before February began, we went around the dinner table discussing ideas on how we could put this focus into action.  We asked ourselves and the kids, “How can we individually make an effort each and every day to show kindness and love, and how can we as a family serve together?”

I took notes quietly, with misty eyes, as I listened to my children excitedly suggest one kind gesture or loving act of service after another.  Their hearts were alive, as most hearts tend to be when the focus is taken off itself.

Their simple thoughts of kindness, before ever being executed, were already changing lives.
Theirs.
And mine.

And while we have big ideas, exciting ideas, and some ideas we’ve already put into action….after reflecting on this post, it seemed the right thing not to list them publicly.

I want my kids to learn to serve and to love and to do kind things, because that’s how we were made to be.  Because that’s the kind of Love we’re called to live.  Because Loving this way is what repairs hearts and lives, ours included.

But not ever to get noticed or praised.  Not ever.

We love and we serve, because He loved and He served.
And so each morning for the next 28 days (less when this posts), we will be waking up thinking of others first and how can we love better throughout our day.

Yet, just like last month, we will continually cling to grace.
We understand we will falter.
We will be unkind.
We will be selfish.
We will forget to think beyond what was comfortable for us.

But each night as we sit together as a family, we’ll share where we failed and we’ll share where we found success, and most importantly we’ll remind each other that tomorrow’s a new day.
A new day filled with fresh hope and opportunities to love, to serve, to be kind…to try again.

“It’s not about being the best.  It’s about trying for better than yesterday.”

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