A New Year's Resolution - What I Won't Say in 2012

When I was little I remember baking all sorts of different kinds of cookies at Christmas time with my mom. I remember scooting one of the kitchen chairs over to the counter to help add the ingredients into the bowl. I remember picking and choosing cookie cutters and trying to figure out how to get them all to fit onto the rolled out dough like a jigsaw puzzle.


The past few years I have not made any Christmas cookies. I could say that "I didn't have time" to bake. But I really hate that phrase. We are all guilty of saying it. Especially us moms. Our lives and schedules are so busy. There is so much that we want to do. I don't have time to bake...I don't have time to scrapbook...I don't have time for______ . You fill in the blank. But it is such a negative statement. If you think about it, we all get the same amount of time every single day. We all get 24 hours. We get to choose what we will do with that 24 hours. 


How did you choose to spend this first day of 2012. Did you take a nap or play a game with your kids? Did you take down Christmas decorations or watch a football game? Did you spend the day with friends or did you scrapbook? All choices. So instead of saying, "I didn't have time" to bake before Christmas, I say that I chose to be the room mom for Ryan's and Molly's classes and planned their holiday parties. I say that we chose to go to NY for Christmas and so I had to wrap and pack to get ready for our trip. 


I remember a while back getting together with a bunch of teacher friends. We started talking about scrapbooking. Some of us do it and others do not. The ones that do not, said that they "didn't have the time." Now they are working moms and so you might say that they don't have the time but as the conversation continued they said that they hated doing bulletin boards and that scrapbooking reminded them of those bulletin boards. They dreaded every month trying to come up with a new idea for them. So all those things that we "don't have time for" do we really not have the time or is the real question do we really want to be making that scrapbook, baking those cookies, organizing those closets? My friends that didn't scrapbook would probably not choose to scrapbook even if they had more time. 


So the next time you find yourself saying, "I don't have time for that" ask yourself if it is really something you want to do? If it is something your really want to do and enjoy doing then you need to choose to do that fun thing...whatever it is.


Before Christmas, I made different choices and did not choose to bake cookies. But I really enjoy doing it and so Molly and I made New Year cookies. At 11:42pm New Year's Eve Molly and I were in the kitchen rolling out cookie dough.

                                           This morning it was time to decorate.

These are suppose to look like melted snowmen. They don't look exactly like the picture we had but we had fun making them.

So in 2012, I am going to enhance my life by not saying, "I don't have time for that." It is either something I really didn't want to do in the first place or it is something that I need to choose to do because it brings me happiness.

This year Molly and I chose to make our cookies at 11:42pm on New Year's Eve. We just might have started a new tradition in the Nealon House. Another pearl was just added to the necklace of family memories.