Survived Week Two

We successfully added Awana, ballet and racquetball to the schedule this week. Also went to zumba on Monday morning. The teacher moved the class time up a little bit for me. I'll still need to leave before the end so I can go home to shower and get ready for work. Trixie brought school work to do at zumba. Cards stayed home and did his work. We had to do quite a bit in the afternoon, mostly stuff with Trixie. So I took PE off of Monday's schedule and off of Friday's so we can go grocery shopping. We didn't do any music last week. Just trying to figure out when the best time to do stuff. The morning schedule is running fairly smoothly. Still a few kinks, but overall, I'm pleased with how it's going. Dash has been doing well with going off to school. A little slow in the morning. His chore chart was filled in this week, but he really didn't do all of them or did a really poor job. Trixie did awful at chores. She just doesn't want to do them. Cards has been doing really well. I found out that he is saving up to take me on a date. He'll do his chores if he needs money for something. However, if he isn't saving for something in particular, his motivation drops off. I told him that he'll have to pay for his youth group activities so hopefully the motivation will continue. Sibling birthdays and Christmas are coming, too. I've been the worst offender when it comes to chores. Need to better map out my day and fit things into those spare minutes that I don't know what to do with myself. The to-do list gets so long, I freeze. I need to take the list and think, I can plug vacuuming this room here. And I can plug doing this little thing there.

The GMG Bible study of Colossians starts tomorrow. To fit it in, I'll continue to get up at 4:15. That will give me 15 minutes to get up and dressed. At 4:30 I'll work on the study. 5:00 I'll go to the gym. Meeting with a trainer at 5:30 so I'll get back around 6. That's computer time. Not always the most productive time as I now have over 200 messages in my inbox. Partly because that is when I catch Doc on Skype. 6:45 time to start breakfast and pack Dash's lunch. Kids up at 7. Leave at 7:55 for school to drop off Dash. Come back and start school with the others. Zumba at 9:45 (Mondays). Leave class at 10:30 so I can go home and shower, check on Cards' school work. Go to work at 11:15. Home around 1:15. Finish school with the hopes of maybe taking a brief nap before picking up Dash at 3:30. Monday, Tuesday and Friday have nothing on the calendar after school. Need to better organize these evenings. Wednesdays have ballet, zumba and youth group. Thursdays have racquetball and library. Still feels really crazy. Onward and upward!!!

School Is Now In Session

Well, it starts today. I know it's a holiday, but Cards and Trixie are starting school at home today. A test run with lots of explanation of expectations and tweeks. Dash goes to school tomorrow. Hoping to be able to find things to keep him busy so the others can get their work done in a timely fashion. Got stuff in the workboxes yesterday afternoon. Kind of feel prepared for most of the first week. Being gone a month really set me back. Really want to be planned out a little further. I'll just have to squeeze it in when I find breaks of time.

Introduced a new chore schedule. So we'll be working the kinks out of that. Also have a sheet for everyone for input in the dinner menu. Everyone rotates for the main course based on certain categories like sandwiches on Sunday, meat on Monday, vegetarians or pasta on Tuesday, pizza on Wed, foreign or fish on Thur, soup & salad on Friday, and favorites on Saturday. Then someone will pick the veggie and someone else picks the fruit. So every dinner will have at least 1 thing they like. Hoping they'll be willing to try different things. Dash refused to eat the lasagna on Saturday. But was happy to eat the corn, applesauce and garlic bread. Eat what's for dinner or don't eat until bedtime snack. Just can't afford to have them eat something else for dinner when I have 2 home for lunch now. So they just need to fill out their choices for the rest of the month so that my shopping is more productive. I can catch sales on things I might need later in the month.

Have lots of lists and charts. Need to figure out the best way to keep those organized so we can keep on top of all this. Have a list of things, maintenance kind of things, like updating the budget, lesson plans, yard work, just running the house things I'm not sure where to put on the schedule. Other than school, not everything starts this week. Ballet, Awana, youth group....all that starts next week. So we will definitely be working out our schedule for a couple weeks.

So with prayer and best intentions, we begin a new season of adventure.