Take Back Your Family

“hi everyone and welcome happy new year and i'm very excited for this video my first video of the new year and it's going to be a chatty one i'm going to just probably ramble on about random topics you guys seem to seem to like the last video that i did like this so if you're up for that then join me and i'm going to do some laundry while i'm talking to you guys and get that done i also have my tea here so if you have laundry or dishes or ironing or something to do um you can do that while you listen to my random rambling er and make sure you have a tea because everyone everyone deserves tea don't they so i thought we'd just start off with a little chat um yeah very excited i've missed you guys i've not filmed a couple of weeks because i took a little break and i feel like i missed it i've really missed chatting with you guys and interacting so i'm very excited to be back and back with a good old chatty video alrighty so i'll just update you guys on what's been happening with us so it's been it's been we've had it's been christmas we've had christmas um obviously i hope you guys had a good christmas our christmas was pretty good we really enjoyed christmas and christmas day itself everyone was well thank goodness i know a lot of people who are sick over christmas so we were lucky that we were well over christmas um and christmas day itself was great we didn't have i think we had a single tantrum from samuel on christmas day which was amazing because i thought you'd get overtired and super upset but actually it was totally fine we went to my mom's house and had dinner there and did all sorts of fun things and had all the presents and all the usual things so we had a great old time but then this last week we've been sick just just not not a huge sickness just like a little sickness so we've had colds yeah samuel got the cold first and then noah got the cold and now i've got it and philip's got it so i'm a bit i'm feeling a bit under the weather but i'm not that bad you know it's fine like compared to what i could have it's fine isn't it so that and but we also the major thing we had in our house this week was conjunctivitis we've not had conjunctivitis since samuel was a baby so when samuel was a baby he had conjunctivitis and it was horrible because it gave us this horrible like thick ointment which was impossible to put into a baby's eyes like literally impossible to put anointment to baby's eyes but we were somehow managed and it was actually very effective but it was just really hard so we went to the pharmacy and tried it to get something similar and they wouldn't give anything for no one because he's under two i need a gp appointment and like this week everything's shut so it's impossible so that's that was fun yeah so he's not got anything and simone we managed to get some drops for samuel but annoyingly samuel's eyes have cleared up really fast and within only a couple of days but noah's still got hair conjunctivitis so we still got this bacterial conjunctivity sticky one which is fun yeah that seems to be the case in our house this week but what we have been doing so i'll just give you a little tip if you guys have conductivities we're going to get in the future a little tip is to get all the rid of all the green stuff with a salt water um because that helps to clear it you can put a little bit of salt water in the eye as well was recommended and that really helped i think with samuel and then we also put breast milk in the boy's eyes because again that's what's really a great thing to help and give it a bit naturally so i seem to have worked really effectively with samuel not so much with noah so we're going to continue persevering with noah and it's still not good next week we're going to go get him some drops of ramen whatever they want to give us so that's been our little fun this week so we have been a bit under the weather i'm kind of just staying inside a in the night between christmas and new year it's now uh new year's eve um but by tim you see that she'll be new years so happy new year's guys very exciting i know a lot of people are a bit dubious about the new year i wonder how you are all feeling about it in terms i know a lot of it's to do with covered and all that i'm not really going to chat about that because i just don't like to travel stuff like that really because it's just kind of depressing isn't it but i'm um i mean i'm gonna say i'm optimistic because i'm not an optimistic person but i am cautiously optimistic for the coming year i'm trying to force myself to be optimistic that's all going to be good and i'm making plans for what we're going to be up to so yeah leave me a comment let me know how you're feeling about the new year ahead in terms of your life or just clear the world in general because in terms of my life i'm feeling good in terms of the world in general maybe not so much but that's just kind of a thing that's i just feel like the world everyone knows the world's getting worse it's getting there's more horrible things happening every single year and it wasn't really something that bothered me particularly until i had kids and now you're thinking about the world your kids are going to grow up and you know and so it's a bit of a different story but again what can you really do about it like how much are we going to we can't add a single hour to our life by worrying as it says in the bible so i just try and focus on that i'm not very good at it i need to get better at that it so yeah that's that's my thoughts currently on the new year i thought i would just chat a little bit about new year's resolutions now just keeping with the theme of new year's er and talk about the new year's resolutions audits disney's oh i hate that when you can't sneeze you know it's like tingling your nose oh so i thought new year's resolutions and i'm not really a person that makes new year's resolutions i i do think in this week between christmas and new year i think of what do i want to do next year what do i want to achieve if that kind of thing but i read jefferson bethke's two books actually he's got two books now which i've read so i then take back your family which i did really enjoy and i also read to hell with the hustle which is what i when i read first because he bought it out first but those books are really great and then the first one to hell with the hustle he talks about new year's resolutions and how they're not really effective because you're thinking about the kind of long-term goal which is kind of it seems too far away and so when you fail which are never going to fail at some point in the year then you just feel like a complete failure so instead of instead of talking about new year's resolutions he's just you talk about it more like habits and forming habits and that's what's really effective and this backs up a lot of our stuff that i've watched where people say to do to get something done like to to start something and it seems like a huge task you want to just give yourself say half an hour and just say i'm gonna do a little bit i'm gonna do half an hour every day and half an hour every day seems a lot more achievable than say i want to achieve this by the end of the year which seems so far away and so difficult so you can achieve half an hour every day pretty much and one day if you don't don't do it one day it's just one day you know you can do it the next day and half an hour every day is really the way to start building habits and what jeff is talking about is how habits are really how you build your the identity that you want and the character that you want which is what ultimately the goal is so for example instead of saying i want to eat healthy this year which is such a broad kind of statement isn't it you can say i want to eat an apple every day this year or i want to eat a banana five days a week and that's much more of a small achievable goal the example that he gives in the book is running a 10k so this instead of is running so instead of saying i want to run a 10k by this time next year you can talk about identity and saying i want to be a runner so i'm going to run 30 minutes five days a week and it's such a smaller habit yeah that you can get into so i'm really interested in that concept and so i think we're going to focus on habits because habits is really what drives our identity and changes us and that's kind of the important thing to me anyway so one of the habits that we want to get into and i've tried and i've convinced philip i think to get on board with this as well as we want to get into the habit of having sabbath in in terms of having so we're christians if you did you guys didn't know so instead of having the sabbath being just a paranormal day but we go to church kind of thing which kind of is what it ends up being with kids we want to make the intentional sabbath where we don't work we don't look at our phones or the social or social media which is a difficult one we don't do certain things so that we can make space for doing things that are filled with meaning which is when you've got little kids has to be spending time with your kids and doing something meaningful together as a family to uh having a special meal maybe with candles really it's gonna be really simple things because we do have really little kids so it's gonna be very very simple things um we want to try and do that we want to work up to maybe being a weekly thing but we're going to start a two-week thing of a 24-hour period where we don't where we do all these things so from like i don't know for example a saturday night to a sunday sunday night we will do all of these things and we will be very intentional about it and all this and what jeff is talking about in the book is how the world is so against us taking a break like this and taking time away from it and how it's really just so essential to our well-being all of you guys will know if you're mums and you get and you feel burnt out that's because we're not taking time to stop and kind of a just be in in with ourselves with god on the sabbath so that's how i i felt that burnt out this year because we haven't taken that time so i think we really want to try and take that time what it's going to actually look like has yet to be determined it's going to be very simple and basic with little tiny kids but we really want to be intentional about that and the thing that i really want to be intentional about is the turning off of the phones and the social media because social media comes to drive drives a lot of aim i mean it's not like i look at it a lot of the day but if you're looking at it a little bit throughout the day it's starting to change and shape who you are isn't it and do it do i really want the world through the culture to be shaping changing and shaping who i am or do i want to be good and so in order for it to be god you have to kind of change your habits to suit that so the sabbath is one of those things small habits that i need to reinstate like you need to make sure bible study gets done every day for like half an hour that wasn't it happened hasn't happened a huge amount this year because the baby when i really reinstate that habit things like reading for a little bit every night being more intentional with praying uh sewing like i mean i mean he's doing this little sobbing deer thing if you guys have been watching my videos for a long time you'll know i've been doing this little deer thing for a very long time and it really needs to get done but things like that like a little a little deer sorry i think i'm not really into crafts but i know crafts can be a really great way to kind of relax your mind and that's really what's needed be more intentional about self-care pick my nails every now and again all that stuff so that's what i'm thinking trying to instill good habits in for us and for our children though we have that we have typical kind of ones like we don't want to eat more healthy but we don't know what that's going to look like as hard as our habit yet and similarly with um exercising i want to exercise more and actually brings me on to my priorities so my priorities for my kids when they're little and it has been this for quite a long time i try to keep it really simple my habits for my kids are my habits my priorities for my kids are outdoor time and reading for me in the young years that i personally think that is the most important thing for them to be doing almost every day if not every day so we really try and incorporate that into our day we're really good at reading i'd like to read with the kids so i read the title every day we always do it bedtime but we do it throughout the day usually as well so i feel like we're quite good at that one but outdoor time not not so good because in scotland it is a dark and wet and i just don't want to go outside but that's more of a me thing rather than them thing so we want to make sure we're doing a lot more outdoor time and those are the two kind of priorities that i have for my kids and that looks like trying to get outdoors every day even just for five minutes and it looks like bed reading at bedtime and then throughout the day as well but we're quite good at the reading one um also another thing i want to think about this year is i want to make sure we focus on the things that we can do and not on the things that we can't do because i get so caught up this is something about social media and watching people on youtube there's so much good content out there there's so many good things you're being encouraged to do you're being encouraged to spend your time on this like charity or giving money to this charity and you wouldn't be encouraged to share this with this cause and that and or spend your time on all these different things and these are all good things to spend your time in and there's so many causes out there that you think that is an amazing cause like there's just so many amazing causes out there that you can spend your time and invest your time into but when you have little kids like you really need to pick and choose what you can actually spend your time i mean no one can spend their time on everything right you have to pick like your thing especially in short terms like years when you have little kids so i'm really trying to focus on what is it that we are going to do this year and not try and do loads of things completely burn ourselves out because that's not helpful for anyone so for example we don't go to the bible studies almost ever felt sometimes goes i never go to the bible studies at our church i never make the prayer meetings we barely we we do always make the weekly sunday meeting but that's the only meeting we tend to make and it's a bit of a shame actually because um we kind of miss out on time with our church family and stuff but i just think we just can't do it at this stage in our lives like it's just not something we can commit to whereas we help well we run the children's club on a wednesday night at our church and that is something we've committed to and that we need to do and that takes up a lot of time during term time and so that is something that we are doing that's one of that's like one of our major things that we do and we want to put a lot of energy and effort into that rather than splitting our time with all these different things and doing none of them right you know you want to do one or two things you want to do them right so our children's club is what we do for at our church and then we do a church meeting on a sunday yeah but when it comes down to it like that plus just living life with our kids trying to be intentional with our kids outdoor time reading all that stuff informing the habits like sabbath it takes up a lot of time you know and you can't i don't have time to go out and volunteer anymore or to go and help this cause or that cause or you don't mean like i can't go and help at a soup kitchen or i can't do super amounts of things that i would maybe like to so we have to pick and choose what things we're gonna do and this year we're doing our junction children's club which is called the junction we're doing a children's club we are focusing a lot on the things we're doing with the kids building habits farming habits that are very important i think yeah for our kids because of course they are the priority in our lives especially when they're so tiny and those are kind of things that we're focusing on so let me guys let me know what you guys are focusing on for this coming year if you're building habits or you've got goals or whatever so interesting for me to hear all everyone else's perspective especially with people with young kids if you've got young kids let me know what your goals are for this year is your goal just to survive because i feel like that was my goal last year the year before we were just kind of we were surviving like because it was a tough few years for literally everyone of course it was not bad in terms but it was tough in terms of we had a new child and that so we were just kind of trying to be surviving as best we could and be the best mom that i could and now i feel like we can move past that a bit and start to thrive within certain areas so i finished doing my lawn you know there wasn't pretty much laundry there was there i feel like i did like only a few pieces of laundry oh by the way this is what noah wore on christmas day and it's the cutest thing like i forgot how cute little kids looking shirts look how cute that little green shirt is if you head over to my instagram you can see a picture of noah in this shower and it's so cute isn't it i can't handle it still one of my favorite things in the world is dressing my children in cute edward life it's like so sweet i think it's just so cute okay okay i'm trying not to remember too much but i'm feeling very tired and like i don't feel very well so i'm going to talk now about this channel because in the new year every person in their life and every youtube person says oh i'm going to change something this year so i'm going to be that person i'm going to tell you what i'm changing this year on my channel and i want to say that i'm not changing a huge amount so what i'm mainly doing is i'm changing the way that i pres that i give you my information so i do a lot i've been doing a lot of vlogs i've been doing a lot of kind of lots of sporadic random videos on different topics and i'm going to kind of niche down slightly in terms of the topics i'm covering but i'm still going to give you the information that i have been giving you so for example um every sunday my plan is to release a video like this if you guys enjoy this uh or like a vlog something like that something that you're really used to and then in the other videos during the week i'm planning to focus on preschool activities and toddler activities because i think that's a way i can really add value i really want to add value to your guys lives in the best way that i can and i feel like the best way i can add value at the moment is by sharing a lot of activities with you that i do with my preschooler and my toddler so that's what i'm going to be doing these are things i already share with you guys but in the form of vlogs and so i'm just going to show them a slightly different format slightly more condensed so that other people will also watch the videos and get value from them so that's what the kind of plan is kind of the same content just kind of repackage slightly different in a slightly different way uh you guys sometimes ask me how you can support me if you want to support me more i have a patreon which you can click on the link in the description box below and go and follow me in there if you want to no pressure feel free not to you don't have to nothing changes here regardless of whether you go on my patreon or not but if you're interested in going my patreon and supporting me that way then please do that because i'll be very grateful so there are so many updates for my channel i'm very excited to continue making loads of videos this year leave me comments down below let me know or on my instagram dms let me know what videos you want to see what kind of content you want to see i'll try and give you the content that you want to see especially on a sunday video i can just do i'm going to make that miscellaneous kind of random video sharing real mom life stuff whether that's vlogs or hauls or whatever so let me know what you want to see more of that okay i think that's all i had to say you guys i am just i'm feeling very happy i'm really very excited for the year i hope you guys are feeling positive if not then my heart goes with you goes out to you feel free to message me in my dms about anything at all and i love to interact with you guys it's so fun and i really enjoy connecting with you so please do message me i love receiving messages from you and i just hope you've had a wonderful new year's day and yeah i'm very grateful for your support over the last year and i'm looking forward to the coming year ahead so i'll see you guys in my next one guys bye”