The DOE announced a totally new process for Kindergarten admissions for New York City Public schools for September 2009. I feel bad for this poor crop of parents who had to go through the comedy of errors that was the newly centralized Pre-K admissions system and now have to go through a completely different, but also new Kindergarten admissions system. Perhaps Joel Klein's arch nemesis has a child in the class of 2023.

Just when parents think they've figured out how to secure a decent public school education in this city, the industrial grade carpet has been pulled out from under them. The new kindergarten admissions policy will begin much earlier this year, on January 12th and also end much earlier, March 2.

In one major change, families that move into a zone after the deadline of March 2 will not get priority for their zoned school if there is a waitlist. So if you were planning on moving into a different zone before the Fall, congrats, you've got 6 weeks to find your dream home.

Some other significant details:

One of the things I love about New York Family Magazine is that they really do try to make a difference for parents. Maybe it's because it's written and edited by real New York parents, rather than interns and corporate flunkies, but I believe the people there really know what the deal is and do their best to make things easier for us.

New Year's resolutions are free, and with this year being on such thin ice economically, I decided I'd snap that bargain up and take 12. Yes, I've got 12 New Year's Resolutions this year, one for every month. I'm trying a new system to see if it will help my resolutions stick. I've picked 12 little habits in my life that I'd like to change and each month I'm going to focus on one, giving myself a whole month to replace it with a new and improved habit. For instance, in January I'm focusing on eating breakfast. I usually skip it and it's really bad for me. So for all of January I'm going to make sure to eat breakfast. I'm hoping by the end of the month that one will have stuck and then I'll move on to resolution number two.

The idea comes from the principal that you need to repeat a new habit many times to make it stick and also that it's more effective to focus on really specific little changes than something more general, like "eat better".

What are your New Year's Resolutions? Share them in the comments.

In our links for this week find out top resolutions for moms, a response from Crains explaining why NYC isn't heading back to the 70s and more.

This summer we wrote about some great day and weekend trips near New York City. From the farms of Westchester to the parks of Long Island and even places you can visit without a car. You can find more family friendly day and weekend trip ideas in our archives under the weekend trips category.

Here are our top 5 day and weekend trips posts from 2009:

In the South they visit friends and eat Hoppin' Johns on January 1st . In New York on New Year's Day we try to get out of the house with an activity that parents can enjoy as much as the kids. Lots of things are closed, but there's still lots of fun stuff to do. Here are some ideas of what to do with kids in New York on New Year's Day 2009.

What will be open on New Year's Day in NYC:

Yesterday I posted my Top 5 New York Websites. Besides browsing hundreds of websites, I also have a very full in box and subscribe to dozens of email newsletters that keep me informed on events and activities going on in the New york City.

I skim the best kid event newsletters looking for unique tidbits, but many of the email newsletters I read the most are not kid-centric. I like to read adult event newsletters to find unusual activities that are good for the whole family in addition to the regular kid stuff to do.

Here are the top 5 daily and weekly New York email newsletters that I check in with the most:

New York City is always changing and there just seems to be more and more great things to do for kids and families every year. In 2008 we saw the opening and reopening of some terrific family museums and kid friendly eateries.

Here are our top NYC openings for kids and families in 2008:

People are always asking me how I ca n possibly stay up to date with so many different events that things to do in New York. The short answer is that I read A LOT. I have well over 200 websites in my RSS reader (if you don't know what an RSS reader is learn about it here. It's a great way to keep up to date on lots of sites without having to visit them all each day) and I like to skim through them all to find out about the little gems that I can share with you.

I thought for this end of year week it would be appropriate to share some of my top 5 lists for 2008, starting with the top 5 websites I enjoy reading to keep up to date with everything NYC.