New Year’s Dreaming Family Activity

I love fresh starts-dawn’s break after nighttime’s reign, the first day of a new school year, a fresh coat of paint on a blemished wall, and of course, the beginning of a brand new year. I’m not highly committed to resolutions, but I do enjoy dreaming about the days to come. What miracles will mark 2011? What trials? What growth? At the breakfast table yesterday we shared our “top 10 highlights of 2010,” and we were all amazed as we remembered that Maggie was neither a walker nor a talker at the beginning of last year. In a mere 12 months she has developed fast feet and a quick tongue, startling proof that much can change in the course of a year.

With that vivid truth in mind, we began to dream. What will happen in 2011? As the kids polished off omelets and orange juice, I passed them each a pen and a simple typed form to jumpstart some wishful musing.  I watched as each child pondered, smiled, and shaped a vision of what the year to come might hold.  When our dreaming was done, we stashed each completed paper in our Christmas stockings (thanks to Family Fun Magazine for this great idea called “stocking stowaways”). Then we dislodged our red and green socks from the mantle and returned them to their storage room home. What fun it will be next December to pull out each list of dreams and see how God has weaved our wishes into His perfect plan for 2011.

Perhaps you, too, can do a bit of dreaming today as you greet the promise of a whole new year. Here’s the simple form we used…