Happy New Year! It's a brand new calendar year, a time for fresh starts and setting new goals. Ever wondered why we make new year's resolutions? Apparently it's an intuitive thing when starting a new year, the tradition has been traced all the way back to the Babylonians. They believed whatever a person did on the first day of the new year had an effect all year long, which is a good reason to start some healthy habits at the beginning of the year.

For many of us, New Year's resolutions do center around health and well being. Exercise more, eat healthy, stop smoking. Even if you're adding some financial resolutions to the list, it still helps your well being by lowering your stress level and helping enhance your happiness.

This year, when making your healthy New Year's resolutions, make them for the entire family. Resolving to eat more healthy? Make healthy meals for the whole family. Keep healthy snacks in the fridge for your kids, like carrot sticks and apple slices. Resolving to exericse more regularly? You can involved the family in this too. Get out those bikes they got for Christmas and start taking some rides around the neighborhood. Strap on some roller blades for an active family outing. Or even start training for a family 5K!

For some more great ideas for healthy New Year's resolutions for you and your kids, check out these ideas from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

There are also some other areas besides health that make great family resolutions. Make it a goal this year to volunteer more, and take your kids with you to the food bank or delivering meals on wheels. Make a resolution to become more green and get the kids involved by turning out lights in the house, turning off the water while brushing teeth and recycling all those milk cartons.

There are  a lot of good habits to start for this year. Set a few attainable goals, and celebrate at the end of 2010 how your whole family helped reach them together!

So tonight's the big night, a night that really is about nothing but parties as we ring in the New Year. After years of having young kids and figuring out whether to get a babysitter or stay home and ring in the new year quietly, parents of teens have a whole new set of worries as they face tonight. Do you let them go to a party? Do you entice them to party at home? And do you think it's okay to let them drink a little bit, if it's supervised drinking?

It's a big question, and one that parents are divided on. When the ball drops at midnight tonight in New York and you and your spouse toast with champagne, will you be letting your teens take a sip? And is that any different than letting teens have parties with more than a sip of alcohol involved, as long as it's supervised? It sounds good to say that allowing kids to take a sip of alcohol, seeing adults drink responsibly and learning that it's not a big deal is a good way to teach them. And if this is where you stand on the issue, you're not alone. One in four adults feel it's okay for teens to drink with adult supervision.

But on the other hand, teens who have their first drink before the age of 15 are more likely to become alcoholics than those who first drink at 21. Teenagers brains are just wired differently, and they're not ready to make some of the big decisions and handle the responsibilities.

For even more  information on this topic and the pros and cons of letting teens drink, check out this article from the Canadian Press.

So what will you do? Will you let your kids partake in a toast with you? Or will you get a non-alcoholic beverage for the under 21 crowd to drink? Whatever you decide, be safe, have fun, and happy new year to you and your family.

In my opinion: Yes!! The gifts have been opened, the kids are playing with their new toys, and now, during this week where there's no school and a little more time at home, is the perfect time to sit down and write those thank  you notes to Grandma and aunts and uncles. Maybe in some circles the handwritten thank you note is becoming obsolete, as seen in this slideshow of 12 Things That Became Obsolete in this decade. But when it comes to Emily Post and other people in the know as far as etiquette and manners, the thank you note is still very important. And plenty of parents agree, as seen in this poll in Mom2Mom, where most answers were yes and sometimes rather than no. Especially for friends and relatives who couldn't be there when the presents were opened, thank you notes show that their gift was appreciated. And for that reason, thank you notes should be specific and thoughtful, according to Miss Manners.

It might not be easy to tear the kids away from the brand new Wii or their beloved baby dolls for a few minutes with pen and paper, but it's important for so many reasons. It can help them improve their writing skills, it teaches them basic etiquette, something that will serve them well at social occasions throughout the year, and helps enhance those morals we all want our kids to grow up with, of caring and thinking about others.

To help make it fun and not torture, make an party out of it. Get out the last of those Christmas cookies and make some hot chocolate, you can have a festive snack while writing those notes.

Let kids' thank you notes have a personal touch. Whether it's their own writing, or if they're still young, a few pictures, the recipients will enjoy something that obviously came from the heart.

Keep it simple. They don't have to be long epistles, just something short and sweet, but remember, specific and thoughtful!

For some more help, check out these sites:
Hitched Magazine's Thank you note etiquette
Parenting at iVillage: Advice for kids' thank you notes

We probably all got a gift card or two over the holidays. But if you have teens in the house, you probably ended up with more gift cards than presents! Good thing they're out of school this week, so you have time to tote them to the mall and everywhere else on their list, returning the gifts they did get and don't want, and spending those gift cards on all the things they've been dreaming of for weeks.

The big day after Christmas return rush is over, but stores are still pretty busy this week as people trickle in with returns. A couple of things to keep in mind if you're going the return route: make sure you know the store's return policy before you go, and don't take the item out of the packaging if you know you're planning to return it. Visti the Better Business Bureau for more return tips. And remember, all those discounts and sales might look inviting, but now is the time to be smart and use restraint while shopping, they're meant to lure you in!

Once you've returned what you need and have even more store cards to spend, help your teens be smart about their gift card purchases. You can use them to help pay for a big purchase you otherwise might not get. It pays to use them to buy something that costs a little more than the gift card amount, to ensure you use every penny that's on that card. If you end up with just a couple of dollars left, you might never go back and use that card, and that's just like money lost. USA Today has more tips for wise use of gift cards. Most important, make sure you check if there's an expiration date. Most have done away with them, but some are still there!

Today on Dr. Phil: Drunk Driving Moms. Honestly, I rarely watch this show and probably won't today. But the promo caught my attention, partly because I just saw a segment on the Today show last week that covered the same topic. The holidays can be a pretty crazy mix of stress, adult parties and lots of time with the family. Many of us are at home today, looking forward to a week with the kids out of school and all holiday activities over with mixed feelings. Sure, we love our kids. But what happens when you feel stuck in the house, you can't take the whining anymore, and it's still hours until your spouse gets home from work? Apparently, some moms are turning to alcohol, even during the day, and yes, even when the kids are still around.

The high-profile story of Diane Schuler, who killed 8 people in an accident while driving intoxicated, brought to light the horrible trend of moms drinking and then driving. While men are still the primary culprits in DUI cases, the gap is closing as more women are convicted, often with kids in the car. The scary thing was that Schuler's husband didn't even know she had a drinking problem. Apparently it's not hard to hide the drinking, as this USA Today story reports in "The Secret Lives of Alcoholics."

Blogger Stefanie Wilder-Taylor of Baby on Bored shook up the blogging world when the writter well-known for her books, "Sippy Cups are not for Chardonnay" and "Naptime is the New Happy Hour," announced in August that she realized she had a drinking problem and was going to quit. It's a great example for all of us as the New Year approaches. Do you know someone you think might have a drinking problem? Maybe you make a resolution to talk with them about it and help them seek help. There are plenty of resources to turn to in the Triad, here are a few:
Alcoholics Anonymous, North Carolina
Mother Baby PEP Talks: join other moms for support and fellowship Wednesday at the High Point YWCA.
Guilford County Substance Abuse Coalition
Addiction Recovery Care Association in Forsyth County