On to September...

September was a little tough.  Alex left the end of August for a 2-week business trip to Scotland and Italy.  That left me to take care of everything at home.  I also had cross country meets and football games, back-to-school nights, and youth activities to attend.  I also delved into organizational projects around the house and garage.  The palm tree out by the sidewalk in the front yard decided to produce a ton of seeds that covered the ground.  Savannah wiped out on her bike one morning because of those big seeds.  She scraped up her knee pretty good.  After getting her off to school, I worked on cleaning up the seeds, which I had to do several times until Alex got back to get up there and cut the whole leaf down that had all the seeds.  

I also had been having to deal with a leaky water heater.  Before Alex left, apparently it had been leaking a little bit.  Alex just put a water bucket out there to catch the water, and Jared was supposed to check it occasionally and empty it out.  When I went to start organizing the garage, I noticed water all over the ground.  I spent the rest of the day cleaning up wet paper and things that were on the floor.  I needed to move out bikes first too, so when I went to take them around to the side of the house, the bushes were so overgrown that I couldn't even get through.  So I spent the morning clearing out a path through the bushes.  It was Alex's birthday, so I sent him a picture of the yard work I'd done, wishing him a "happy birthday..."  

After a few days of emptying out the filled water bucket every 3 hours from the water heater and cleaning up the night's overflow, I'd had enough of that. So after I cleaned up another round of palm tree seeds, I called a friend who is a plumber.  I got a migraine shortly after calling him and spent the next couple of hours recovering my blurred vision.  Luckily I got a handle on that before our friend got here.  He diagnosed the problem and said we needed a new water heater (it was 18 years old).  Thankfully he took my credit card, bought a new one, and installed it the next day.  I still had a headache and felt really tired, but I was able to drive the hour or so to Jared's cross country meet that afternoon. The tender mercy for the day was the traffic wasn't bad coming or going.  

I ended up getting Covid that weekend as well... although my symptoms were mild.  (I took a test because one of the youth had recently had Covid).  Anyway, some friends brought over dinner and flowers one day, which was really nice of them.  I wasn't feeling very bad, but I was really tired and also tired of cooking all the meals too.  

Since I needed to stay home for the week, I decided to finish the garage.  I went through several things, got rid of a lot of stuff, and got some organization in the garage.  It was a big project, but I really wasn't supposed to be going out and about with Covid so it was a good chance to get some home projects done. That just meant I wore myself out though...

I also had some challenges with my church calling, with some conflicting thoughts on activities and how much the younger girls should be teaching.  My calling had changed a couple weeks prior from 2nd Counselor to Secretary in the Young Women's program.  I wasn't overseeing the activities anymore, but I was still helping teach the younger girls.  Then my role changed again, and I wasn't teaching at all either, which I really enjoyed doing.  So I was a little depressed with the whole situation.  It didn't really get resolved the way I wanted it to, but I did find peace in what we had been doing since the beginning of the year.  I watched several videos on the church website and read through the handbook.  I did feel peace regardless of what had been decided moving forward, and I was grateful for that.  I think that's what we have to find these days - inner peace regardless of what's happening around us.  For a while my motto has been, "She who is flexible never gets bent out of shape" and that helps me in times when things aren't going quite the way I hoped.  I did come up with a new idea on a way to open up discussion among the girls during the introduction to the lesson.  I came up with different things to do for the categories of LIVE, CARE, INVITE, and UNITE.  The girls randomly pick out one to-do item, work on it for 2 weeks, and then report what they did during the next meeting.  It's designed to get them thinking about and actually doing things to bring themselves and others closer to Christ.  

To top off the challenges I was dealing with, my collage making program removed the collage feature, so I got behind on my photobooks and blogging... I am still not happy with the "grids" feature on Adobe Express, but Canva doesn't produce collages with high enough resolution for my photo books.  So I'm having to work with a feature that requires a lot of manual manipulation to create a collage. 

I spent a little more time at the piano during September, which was also comforting.  Savannah took some videos of me playing one Sunday.  I hadn't played for a bit, so I was a little rusty on the notes, but I'm glad she wanted to record my playing.  

I think Alex may have had the better deal in September...

What I was doing... at least the meal and flowers were nice.

A couple of piano pieces:

Once Upon a Time

Over the Rainbow

Teaching the value of work

We tried to get back into our chore routine again today.  The boys had the summer off and time to adjust to school.  Now I'm introducing the routine again.  IT'S A LOT OF WORK.  I forgot how hard it is to supervise the chores and keep everyone on task and semi-on schedule.  It may very well be easier to just do the work by myself.  But that doesn't help teach the value of work and discipline, does it?  It will get better.  I'm sure it will be worth it.

We are already enjoying some of the fruits of our labors from last year's efforts in some areas.  We encouraged Nathan & Jared to get their own breakfast in the morning (cereal, except a couple of mornings where we have eggs or pancakes) and then to make their own lunch for school.  It was such a pain last year to get them to be independent.  Jared still needs more prodding in making his lunch, but Nathan is getting pretty good at it.  I have to peek and make sure they're packing enough things, like a sandwich, and not just pretzels and pudding.  But they're getting the hang of it.  They don't need me much anymore!  They can get up and get dressed, eat breakfast, make their lunch, and walk to school on their own.  I am hoping that the chores and homework and routine will become more natural as well.  It will take time, but I'm determined to make these boys (and girl) into responsible, independent people who know the value of work!  (I think our country could use a few more people like that...)

Here's a peek at our schedule for this afternoon and evening:

3:15-3:30.   Unpack and snack
3:30-4:00.    Homework
4:00-5:15.   Free time
5:15-6:00.    Dinner and clean-up (dishes, table, floor)
6:00-7:15.    Family home evening
7:15-8:00.    Bedtime routine (including a 10 minute toy pick-up)

Tomorrow will be about the same, but no family home evening and extra chores from 4:00-4:30 (putting away laundry and cleaning the bathrooms).

We'll see how this goes!  We're not doing fall soccer, so that helps.

What works well for you?

new arrangement

It's tough being in a small house, but we've been pretty successful at organizing things.  Last month, we came to our senses and made our baby/guest room much more functional.  We had a full size bed in Weston's room, which made the room mostly unfunctional.  We took out the guest bed and shoved the mattress into the closet.  The closets don't have doors or anything anyway.  They're completely open.  The dresser and contents of the closet sit right in front of the mattress.  It doesn't look very pretty, but it's more functional.  We put up a bed for Owen and moved him out of Nathan & Jared's room.  Owen was just on a mattress on the floor in their room.  He loves his new real bed and has done well with Weston.  Weston likes having a buddy and actually doesn't cry when we put him to bed since Owen is in there with him.  I was skeptical about the new arrangement, but they do sleep through the night and nap sometimes in the same room!  

Another advantage of the real bed is the storage underneath.  I can put some of my things along the wall and then have room for their toys.  It's very convenient to have their toys in containers under the bed and easy to clean up too.  Ideally everything is organized into different buckets, but we can throw everything in the big tubs in a hurry.  I also got a shoe organizer for the door in hopes of helping with the problem of missing shoes.  It seems like we're always looking for shoes when we're trying to head out the door.  I think some of the times when I'm the most frustrated or stressed out is trying to get out the door in time.  Organization has really helped with that (as long as we remember to put the shoes and things where they belong right?).  I have already breathed easily several times knowing the shoes are hanging right behind the door.       

Nathan and Jared like the new arrangement too, because they have more room for their stuff.  Besides the train table, we separated all the big kid and little kid toys into their respective rooms.  Nathan & Jared like being able to have their legos everywhere.  We can mostly shut the door to their room while they're at school.  Owen's dresser is still in their closet and O & W play with the trains on the train table, but other than that, they have their own room and their own toys.  Some day we might be able to paint, decorate, and fix things up to look nice, but for now we just have to go with functional.

collages

Some of you have asked about my collages - I was doing them in Powerpoint and saving them as jpgs, but I realized that if I tried to print them out, the images weren't a good quality (they still work well on the blogs, but I hate trying to re-do them if I want to print them).  So I switched to Picasa, which some of you already use.  It's a free service - I think you get 1 GB of free photo storage.  I haven't explored all the features, but it's really easy to make a collage (and edit the pics you're using - red eye, crop, colors, etc.) and once you "create" one, you can also add text on it.  It's been serving as my scrapbooking right now.  Anyway, I can't remember exactly where or how I downloaded the software - I think you can go here.  (I didn't choose to put any of my pictures in the public gallery).  I've loved it so far.  Once you make your collage, it's a jpg that you can upload to blogger like any other picture from your computer.  You just go under the folder "Picasa" and "collages".  Good luck! 

time to get organized!

This week I decided to try to live up to my claim as supermom and really be one, so I got organized and also ventured out.  I figured that if I didn't want to go crazy, I'd better get organized, get some exercise, and teach the boys how to work.  They also need some fun structured time with me.  So...
I ran in the morning 3 times this week, we made our debut at playgroup, Jared started joy school, we went to the library, and the boys have chores to do.  They also have a "chore of the day" and "activity" each day.  On their chore chart are things like making the bed, picking up dirty clothes, brushing teeth, picking up toys, their weekly chore (sweep, trash, or set table), and chore of the day.  They get to put a sticker on for each completed chore and will earn something like an outing to the zoo with a certain number of stickers.  I love having a chore of the day, which they do after Nathan gets home from school in the afternoon.  I can see what is needed for that day, like folding clothes, vacumming, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the van, or whatever, write it on the board, and we work on it together.   

     They have a weekly chore (meaning they do it every day that week), sweeping, taking out the trash, or setting the table.  And they have a specific assignment for toys or books to pick up in their room.  That makes cleaning their room not so overwhelming if they're in charge of just a part of it. 

I also wanted to have something fun each day, so I'm doing an activity of the day.  I think I'll try to keep the same theme for each day of the week, like Mondays - cooking, Tuesdays - craft, Wednesday - game, Thursday - park, Friday - video, Saturday - outing, Sunday - coloring.  Monday we have Family Night (lesson, activity, songs, treats), so it would be great for helping make treats.  Nathan has an early day on Thursday, so we have about 3.5 hours before dinnertime - it's a good day for an outing.  (They get a break from chores on Sunday...)

I don't know if we'll be able to stick with it, but it felt great to be organized for a week.  The boys felt good about helping and they had fun.  And what did we get from our outings?  Sick.  Oh well, that's what happens.  We'll be better soon.

I would love to hear any ideas that you have about chores or activities - things that have been successful or things that haven't worked.  We're also talking about doing a small allowance (not related to chores) so they learn about money, tithing, and saving.  Any thoughts?