Busy as a queen bee can be!
Birthdays - yes we had them. They were sort of lame this year due to illness. One thing that I did that was both really smart and really yummy - I made Josh a birthday dessert a day early. I had every intention of making something else ON his birthday, but it worked out well because I was too sick to actually cook anything super yummy when the day arrived. But what I had made earlier were German Chocolate Cake cookies - found HERE. They were DIVINE. Divine, I say! Not too tricky and totally worth the effort.
So since October has been filled with colds and such, school has been fritzy and scattered. It's happened, though. Several habits have eased my life.
1. I printed and laminated a morning job list and a start-the-school-day list for the younger girls. Now instead of reminding Natalie half a dozen times to do various things, I just refer her to the list and check up on her periodically. Kudos for kids who get the list done without reminders (as I like to say, "You are on FIRE today!" They love being told that). Laminated to keep from getting ripped off by baby hands. Stuck to their door with adorable teal, chevron-printed, washi tape that I found at walmart one day. Cuteness adds to their willingness to work, I've found.
Anyway, it helps get them dressed, teeth brushed, and bedroom mostly clean. Then they start their school list while I finish getting myself organized. I means they get at least a little math practice, writing, and reading done before I even start school officially.
2. Meal planning. Whenever my life seems totally out of control I usually find that I've been neglecting this one big area of my life. Feeding 8 people three times a day is NOT something that you can just flub your way through! I've been working on getting more organized in my meal planning. For starters, I've been pinning all my recipes. I love that I can search my pins so easily AND have a visual reference for each meal. I've even gone through my clipped recipes and found links for those to pin. I have more to do, but it helps. I also maintain a google doc that has a list of recipes that my family loves. When I meal plan, I browse that list FIRST before heading to pinterest. I rarely open my cookbooks and the meal planning in general gets done a lot faster than it used to.
Finally, I have a google spreadsheet that I re-use every time I meal plan which lists all the days of the week and the three meals a day. I plug in the plan for each meal and on the left I start listing ingredients I need to remember to buy for those meals. I can access this spreadsheet via my phone when I'm at the store, so it turns into my grocery list as well (or I write stuff on a piece of paper and snap a photo before I head out).
Lately what has also helped is that I acknowledge the craziness and try to roll with it. It's funny how my mental state is so important to my ability to deal with my kids' busy schedules. If I get hung up on the amount of family time we are not having or the fabulous dinners (yeah, I meal plan but I didn't say it was fancy!) we are not eating, or the fun family activities that we are not doing, I get way stressed. I've been telling myself on a regular basis - "I have six children. Life is going to be crazy. Enjoy it and don't worry. "
It helps!
I noticed that I mostly take pictures of Faith. Can you blame me? She is SUCH an enjoyable baby. She is busy but so happy. And she's my buddy.
Waiting for the kids at the school so we can show them this fabulous post-nap hair-do.
So since October has been filled with colds and such, school has been fritzy and scattered. It's happened, though. Several habits have eased my life.
1. I printed and laminated a morning job list and a start-the-school-day list for the younger girls. Now instead of reminding Natalie half a dozen times to do various things, I just refer her to the list and check up on her periodically. Kudos for kids who get the list done without reminders (as I like to say, "You are on FIRE today!" They love being told that). Laminated to keep from getting ripped off by baby hands. Stuck to their door with adorable teal, chevron-printed, washi tape that I found at walmart one day. Cuteness adds to their willingness to work, I've found.
Anyway, it helps get them dressed, teeth brushed, and bedroom mostly clean. Then they start their school list while I finish getting myself organized. I means they get at least a little math practice, writing, and reading done before I even start school officially.
2. Meal planning. Whenever my life seems totally out of control I usually find that I've been neglecting this one big area of my life. Feeding 8 people three times a day is NOT something that you can just flub your way through! I've been working on getting more organized in my meal planning. For starters, I've been pinning all my recipes. I love that I can search my pins so easily AND have a visual reference for each meal. I've even gone through my clipped recipes and found links for those to pin. I have more to do, but it helps. I also maintain a google doc that has a list of recipes that my family loves. When I meal plan, I browse that list FIRST before heading to pinterest. I rarely open my cookbooks and the meal planning in general gets done a lot faster than it used to.
Finally, I have a google spreadsheet that I re-use every time I meal plan which lists all the days of the week and the three meals a day. I plug in the plan for each meal and on the left I start listing ingredients I need to remember to buy for those meals. I can access this spreadsheet via my phone when I'm at the store, so it turns into my grocery list as well (or I write stuff on a piece of paper and snap a photo before I head out).
*********************
It helps!
I noticed that I mostly take pictures of Faith. Can you blame me? She is SUCH an enjoyable baby. She is busy but so happy. And she's my buddy.
Waiting for the kids at the school so we can show them this fabulous post-nap hair-do.
Learning to play piano?
Logan working on his Halloween costume for this year - can you guess what he decided to be?
Can't get enough of this darling girl. She can stand up by herself now and she is SO proud!
She also climbs on everything. Much to the cat's chagrin!
We studied skeletons this month, mostly focusing on the
human skeleton (...the ankle bone's connected to the leg bone...)
but we also talked about vertebrates and invertebrates and learned about them. It was fun!
We have so much stuff coming up in the next two months. It already feels like a whirlwind, but I am so excited for the fun family times and the holiday season. LOVE this time of year!
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