My word of the year for 2016 was intentional.  I felt like giving myself the word to focus on for the year really helped focus on the more important parts of life.  I felt like I was more intentional about everything that I did this past year. I don’t want to forget about that word because I think it’s very good word to use daily before I go to do ANYTHING.   

 This year my word is going to be simplify. This world is always in a hustle and bustle state. I have a desire to slow down and really enjoy family.  This life is only a vapor, I want to think and ponder on what really truly matters.   

 The days are long and the years are short and we need to take this time to intentionally simplify our life.  Simplify means to make less complex or complicated, make things plainer or easier. 

So I was thinking what does simplify mean for my family? I think one of the first things would be to slow down even more than we did this past year. Stop and think through everything more.  Life is so short we need not be overwhelmed with the things around us.  Perhaps its putting to much on our plate, doing too much in one day, filling our time with “stuff” that doesn’t matter as much (like wasting time on our phones, social media, research, anything that takes time away from the more important).  

Another thing for us, we need to “gut” the house.  I need to be able to part with things, the stuff that we don’t use, and the stuff that we don’t need, the stuff that is taking up space that can be used for something else.  Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and it’s because there’s too much stuff.  We are a family of 8 in a pretty small house and we are always trying to save on space!  The desire for stuff needs to go. Simplify our life means to make things easier,  less overwhelming.  This year I hope to accomplish some cleaning projects and to get more organized and in that, it will simplify some of our life.  I also feel that spending we need less time watching TV & on devices and replace that with board games as a family, or reading, and/or talking.  It’s not like we don’t already try to simplify life. However, I think one can always do more and I’ve been feeling a pull to try to do more in this area.  I’d love to see our family get out and do more hikes too.  This year we got ZOO passes for two different Zoo’s, so I hope we get to make some Zoo trips as a family.  One must choose to make God and family a priority.  It surely can get lost in all the shuffle of life and we don’t want that at all!

I think I will need to be very intentional about keeping this simplify word in the front of my mind!!