I am about to reveal just how "type A" I am... because this is all about planning and writing things down. However, I have to give the family plan planning and initiating all to my husband it was his idea for our family. I love how he leads us :)
Almost a year ago Don came to me after he had listened to this sermon on managing your family and wanted us to create a family plan. Of course I was excited because I love lists and planning! I get all excited about calendars and writing things on them... i know that is rather dorky. Basically what it is is creating a mission statement for your family, making goals divided into different categories, and then planning on how to do them each day, week, month and year. This is our first year doing it so we have had some months were the family plan did not happen. Plus unexpected things happen and you just have to be flexible with life, but this is a great tool to help your family stay on track and focused. I am not going to share our whole family plan because it is 3 pages long, but just the basics of it:
Categories: Finances, Marriage, Family/Parenting, Outreach, Church Life
Then under each of those categories we wrote down the things that were important to us. Goals we had for each sections. Here are a few examples from each category
Finances: Maintain a monthly budget. Evaluate it as a couple. Live and give generously.
Marriage: Date night once or twice a month, Yearly getaway alone, Pray nightly together, Read 3 books a year together,
Family/Parenting: Daily family worship, Keep a family journal,
Outreach: Plan a monthly thing to do as a family to reach out to our neighbors and city
Church Life: Have someone over for dinner twice a month
The last Sunday of each month Don and I sit down and look at the upcoming month and we decide on who we want to invite over for dinner, when date nights are going to be, when family nights are going to be, what outreach we want to do. It is a great way to keep it all going. Like I mentioned before we are so not perfect at this. There are things on the family plan that we have never even done before, but it really helps.
Here is the audio and here is the blog to get the whole picture. Happy planning :)
Almost a year ago Don came to me after he had listened to this sermon on managing your family and wanted us to create a family plan. Of course I was excited because I love lists and planning! I get all excited about calendars and writing things on them... i know that is rather dorky. Basically what it is is creating a mission statement for your family, making goals divided into different categories, and then planning on how to do them each day, week, month and year. This is our first year doing it so we have had some months were the family plan did not happen. Plus unexpected things happen and you just have to be flexible with life, but this is a great tool to help your family stay on track and focused. I am not going to share our whole family plan because it is 3 pages long, but just the basics of it:
Categories: Finances, Marriage, Family/Parenting, Outreach, Church Life
Then under each of those categories we wrote down the things that were important to us. Goals we had for each sections. Here are a few examples from each category
Finances: Maintain a monthly budget. Evaluate it as a couple. Live and give generously.
Marriage: Date night once or twice a month, Yearly getaway alone, Pray nightly together, Read 3 books a year together,
Family/Parenting: Daily family worship, Keep a family journal,
Outreach: Plan a monthly thing to do as a family to reach out to our neighbors and city
Church Life: Have someone over for dinner twice a month
The last Sunday of each month Don and I sit down and look at the upcoming month and we decide on who we want to invite over for dinner, when date nights are going to be, when family nights are going to be, what outreach we want to do. It is a great way to keep it all going. Like I mentioned before we are so not perfect at this. There are things on the family plan that we have never even done before, but it really helps.
Here is the audio and here is the blog to get the whole picture. Happy planning :)
This is a fabulous idea! I think we may have to start doing something similar!
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