Family Planning | Choosing to lead

We have been thinking about family planning in a different way.

Our family planning has less to do with prenancies and more to do with family direction; creating a plan for our family that creates goals and purpose.

I belive that a family is like an organization and like any well ran successful organization, there are common goals, guidelines, and a clear vision.

There is a great blog named Simple Mom that features a great library of knowledge. Information on family activities, finances, recipes, home organization, self care and much more can be found. So when we wanted to create a family mission statement that was the first place I looked.

They have a great template that I used. It can be found here. We thought the questions were thought provoking so one night we put the kids to bed and began answering.

Here are a few of my favorite questions and answers:

1. What are a few strengths of each member of our family?

TP- Outgoing, creative, knowledgeable about outside resources, networks well, health conscious

Meg- Time manager, integrity, tradition keeper, able to see possibilities/not possibilities, sense of color and design

Bean- Keeps us laughing, smart, empathetic, curious, observant

Reid- Relaxed, quick to smile, patient, gives us a sense of peace, keeps a schedule


9. What would we like people to say about our family as a whole in 30 years?

That despite society being over dependent on technology we were able to push past that and get back to family basics, that no matter what good we did in the community we started doing good at home first, we put our family first,  we have a great family that stemmed from a strong marriage


13. What are the top four priorities we want our family to value?

Our marriage comes first
Organizing and planning
Saying no to things that impede on our family time
Being on one accord


This was an excellent exercise for our family, something we will look back on each year to modify because our lives and our family is always evolving. 


The exercise has a part two that we plan on completing before the New Year, a new direction just in time for a new beginning.