5 Healthy New Year's Resolutions

So now that you have all this time freed up from Resolution #1, what are you going to fill it with? Well, here's an idea: fun family physical activities! We won't go into the many benefits of exercise here, but simply take it as a given that the more you can get active, the better you will feel and the healthier you will be. And exercise is a wonderful thing for you to do together as a family for a host of reasons, including increased togetherness and camaraderie, as well as increased motivation.

How to make it happen? Try making a "family activity calendar," which looks suspiciously like an ordinary wall calendar on which you can put stickers. One sticker goes on the calendar for each day you and the kids are all active for more than 30 minutes. You should have at least three stickers per week. Use your imagination to design an incentive system based on number-of-stickers milestones. Keep a running list of activities you enjoy doing as a family, such as jumping rope, hopscotch, red light green light, soccer, basketball, ice skating, sledding, foot races, obstacle courses, tag, etc.