Peter and I often spend some time during Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening planning our coming week. First of all we need to have an overview of our own week, then we confer with each other which may mean making a tweak or two in our own plans.

I have come up with a short list of spheres of relationships that I want to ensure that we cover each and every week (when we can). This will be a check list of sorts as Peter and I discuss our coming week.

Marriage – date night

Children – education / discipleship

Christian fellowship – one on one relationships and Bible Study

Friends and Community contacts

Recreation as a family and as an individual

Business

I haven’t written these as a priority list (other than our date night!) – the ebb and flow of life and seasons will create priorities enough but what this list does is makes us consider each of the spheres of relationships that are important to us and makes us ensure that we being diligent in all that we set our heart towards.

Today being Sunday Peter and I have spent time planning, actually, we spent most of the afternoon talking about not only the coming week but the coming month. January is going to be a time where our family can work together on various projects though we hope to take breaks every so often and enjoy the beauty and fun of the wet season – rainy days and waterfalls!

We plan to:

• declutter every room and cupboard in the house
• declutter the shed
• declutter the verandas
• various building and maintenance projects such as putting legs on our coffee table and finishing the top level of the cubby
• prune the garden, take clippings for more plantings, plant grass runners
• write reports on the children’s education and plan 2010 education goals/plans

So we are going to be very busy! In talking our plans over with our children we made the distinction between busy and productive. We tend to see busy as a negative thing but really if we are busy doing productive things that is a good thing – it is the busy that brings stress that we should avoid. So often the busy that brings stress is when we are busy doing good things not the best things – we need to be able to discern which is which and go for the best things. So our focus, our theme for January is Productivity and our goal is Order.