(This month we are starting a new series on #momgoals for 2017! We’d love to hear yours! )

I jolted out of the bed at the sound of my alarm – because for the love of everything, turn it off as quickly as possible lest the tiny sleeping humans hear it in their dreams and flock to our room! This really is a blessing in disguise because little else but the threat of my children being awake for the day at 4:45 a.m. could coax me out of the bed into the cold Colorado air. I stood there, bare legged, freezing my patooky off, trying to decide whether I should reset the alarm and dive back in bed for 45 more minutes, or take a few more steps toward my bathroom, throw on my bathing suit and sweats, and drive to the pool in the frigid, say-all-the-bad-words cold. And I had a moment where I thought, “I don’t want to go stupid work out at the stupid gym. I haaaaaate to work out.” But then I thought, “Whatever, woman. Get over it. You want to get back into shape – and if it actually is important to you this is the only way to get there.”

The truth is, I’m the queen of starting things. As in, on any given day I may have no less than five hundred and eighty three brilliant new ideas for projects, businesses, parenting techniques, crafts, blogs, books, recipes, menu plans, schedules, TV series to start. I will probably start one hundred-ish of those. However, my finishing record is shameful – shameful! I am also very good at passionately presenting my position and declaring how very important each of these new ideas is to me. I can and will convince you that these are the best ideas there ever were in the history of the world. I’m good at talking about them, and that’s about it.

Am I the only one? Do you do this, too?

Not this year. This year I’m going to start living like the things I say are important to me ACTUALLY ARE important to me – without all the fanfare and hoopla, without all the pretty words. Who am I kidding? Still with the pretty words, probably. I have done a lot of research about this very thing – I am so good at researching and formulating a plan for all the things that are important to me. Here’s the secret all of the people who make their important things actually important in their lives:

• Wake up and do the things. Day in and day out.
• Work out when it’s cussing cold.
• Stop making dinner, shake the crying baby off your leg, and kiss your husband like you mean it when he comes home.
• Look your girls in the eyes when they tell you their stories when there are ten other things begging for your attention.
• Pray together as a family every night especially when you’re all spitting mad at each other.
• Sit down every single naptime and write, even if you throw it all out the next day because it’s so awful.
• Be a friend when all you can think about is how badly you need one.

Persistence. Let’s not necessarily look to do grand, impressive things. Let’s look to do the things in front of us, to do them well, to finish them. We live in a land of big dreams coming true - and coming true loudly in front of our faces at every turn because of the dear, sweet social media. But I think maybe it’s more valuable to do the small things, the things right in front of us, well and completely. I think maybe big dreams are important - but they don’t mean a thing without the foundation of a meaningful start.

So, let’s show up. Do the things. Start living like we mean it. Bring it, 2017.