Category: that’s just life

Pushing Myself and Rising to the Challenge

Well, as I posted on facebook earlier this morning, I came across a family blog, Raising Olives, which talks, among other things, about homeschooling. I love the way the family uses the Word as a basis and a foundation of homeschooling, so of course my ears were perked at the posts. In reading the argument and finding a few new ideas, I have been doing some research over the past few days and putting some serious thought into homeschooling.

But no, worries, people this post will not be all about homeschooling. 😉 Don’t abandon me now, just hang with me a second.

It was from scrolling through the site a bit that I began to wonder the very question most homeschoolers of more than one child wonder – how the heck am I to balance it all and really teach each of my kids without neglecting the other.

While some curriculum is written as a wholistic study for the whole family- LOVE- there are the nitty gritty’s of individual grade requirements that still do not vanish. While we all could be participating in the history lesson, for example, a five year old processes the lesson on a much different level than a 3 year old and therefore has a different outcome expectation.

This is true with all life, but I’m not going to go there.

I started thinking about the dishes stacking up, the laundry taking over and the other repercussions of a full day of homeschooling and being 110% for each kid on our house and schedules. Then I came across the post on putting your family on a schedule. Does this sound so Type A Personality? So of course it perked my ears. 😉

The concept was to think about the things each family member (women, don’t schedule your husbands – not a good relationship helper) needs to get done during the day and would like to get done during the day. Then allot a time period for each thing, realistically, and think through the schedule requirements (ex. nap time, family time, breakfast time, dinner time). Hmmm. This sounded interesting.

So I started with me and made a list of the things I want/need to get done during the day. I came up with about 5 hours worth of stuff to get done between 6:30a and 4pm (when Matt gets home). That’s 5 hours worth of stuff to do in 9.5 hours of time. And why am I falling behind sometimes? Intentionality. So this week I’ve stopped making excuses and been intentional about my time. I’ve found that some days tasks take longer (reflects on Abi’s needy day and it’s repercussions on my workload) but most days I find I have less to do when I have done the workload from yesterday. And I’ve also come across this weird thing called…. clustered free time. What is that to a Mother, you ask? Freedom! I find if I work hard in the mornings that I feel accomplished and like a contribution to my family – let alone coming across this free time stuff. Huh! Who would have thought actually applying Proverbs 31 would get you such nice results? (Hits head).

Through this intentionality I realized I have strayed away from our adventure missions reading routine. When Abi was littler, I used to rock her to sleep in the rocking chair before Rachael and Abi’s nap times, thus allowing a good half hour of reading to the girls daily. As Abi has grown out of the rocking phase I struggled to find a good time to read to the girls beyond picture books. Missing my adventure mission novels, I struggled to put them in during random outside sandbox play and various other times, going for weeks without picking up the book and finding the need to keep renewing the book from the library. Well, sitting down and thinking about it earlier this week, I came up with this idea: post-lunch quiet table play = adventure missions reading audience.

Abi had made it a habit to play in her crib for at least 40 minutes post lunch after I put her to bed, thus keeping up Rachael as well. After 40 minutes, Abi would process lunch, need a diaper change and then go to bed. So, since we were all going to be up anyway, I came up with the idea of table play coupled with missions reading. And I am happy to report IT WORKS!!!

So each day after lunch the girls play quietly (as quietly as a three year old – you’d be impressed- and a 21 month old can play) while listening to me read two chapters. I’ve been impressed at the training opportunity to play quietly and contently by themselves for a half hour. The first day was a bit rough; puzzle pieces hitting the ground, Abi’s constant talking and constant reminders of the need for quiet (not silent) play, my peripheral vision becoming quite distracting while trying to keep solo play going. But the next day got better. And then better. And here we are on Friday, with minimal distractions and the majority of the 30 minutes of quiet play being just that…. quiet. I really am impressed with the girls!

It was about a year ago that I first heard of this idea from a homeschooling, missions-minded Mom of like a bajillion kids (8) who made a missions presentation at the Orphan Seminar that Matt and I attended. We were fresh into the “looking into adoption” group and thought a conference with Sara Groves (come on people) would be a nice “weekend away” for Matt and I to pray and think and pray about the whole prospect. While in the breakout session, the Mom handed practical ideas on how to incorporate missions into your family’s everyday life, many of which we have enjoyed catering to our family’s heart for missions. She mentioned while homeschooling her children (aged tiny to teenager) she had a specific reading time established daily in which everyone gathered in the living room and listened to her read various mission accounts for TWO HOURS!!! I was utterly shocked that her smallest of small kids would sit there and play quietly for such time (though she never once alluded to not having to stop for a break or two so I’m not sure if the two hours was in rapid succession or two or three chunks of time throughout the day). But still, I was impressed. And slightly bewildered.

“It takes training,” was my next thought.

Now while I feel in no way a need to compete or model our family missions love after the exact model of her household, clear expectation and realistic quiet play for busy hands has been such a blessing in my personal reading life, as I have mentioned above. And while at almost 2 and 3 years old they are only retaining handfuls of information (if anything at all some days), it is all in training for the priority, self-discipline and gradual worldview of God’s heart for the lost and dying world.

So as we continue to tweak parts of our schedule and I continue to evaluate and pray through my own contribution and service of my family through my daily schedule (which is subject to flexibility as always), we have seemed to find a good spot for adventure missions readings to be incorporated back into our daily lives. And for that alone in this revamping, I am VERY grateful. =)

***For those of you interested, we are currently reading Amy Carmichael in the Christian Heroes: Then and Now series written by husband and wife team Geoff and Janet Benge. We get borrow them for free from our local library and have enjoyed this husband/wife team’s creativity in taking the biographies of “the big missionaries” in the faith and writing them into a 6th grade friendly adventure novel charting that missionary’s life and work. I have learned so much and look forward to continuing to incorporate these 22 out of 38 novels available free form the library into our lives in the present and future. We’ve already read five of these novels and found great joy in their pages. I am seeing visions of book reports in my children’s future. They also have unit study books available for these novels.  😉

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Survivor: Toddler Style

It started out as a great little adventure. The children had visited the playground, saw the farm animals and were beginning to settle in after their lunch. We were out with the cousins at a local park when we decided, “Sure, let’s walk a short trail before we head on home.”

The trail was littered with a few old carnival items, remnants of bliss hundreds of years ago. So with our plotted map of distractions, we set out.

I’d like to take a moment to list the items we left for our walk with because they will matter as the story goes on.

First of all, there were 7.5 of us going out on this adventure. Five children were age almost 5 down to Abi, 21 months. Then there was pregnant me, bell pepper baby and my sister in law, Ellen. Ellen and I have laughed about “mating season” because out of her three children, my two nephews are each 3 weeks older than Rachael and Abi. So that put pregnant me, bell pepper baby, Ellen, five years old, two three year olds and two a-few-month-shy-of-two one year olds. Ellen brought a single umbrella stroller for Josiah (her youngest) and two water bottles. I brought the diaper bag, two sippies and a water bottle, and our single running stroller (which I now love even more than the first day we were so graciously given it).

The walk began with a small melt-down via Rachael about her desire to hold the nap and the fact that we were getting close to nap time (sigh). But since the map’s course was only a little over a half hour, I still decided that an adventure rubbing up against nap time would be okay for today. Rachael came around in two minutes of boundary confirmation and we were good again.

They all started off with a bounce in their steps, excluding Abi and Josiah who rode contently in their strollers.

Shortly into the trip we noticed that the path colors and indicators were not quite matching up with where the map said we were. But the colors still matched where the map said we were headed, so we went on cheerfully.

We found our first wreckage find, the base frame of two old cable cars. Great excitement erupted form the group of “pretty easy to entertain” kids. And with a few cute pictures of smiling faces we marched on to our next discovery.

 A little ways up the road split with pink and orange branching off and purple and orange going on ahead. We stopped to check the posted map provided by the park at the fork. The sun had faded that map into uselessness. So out came Rachael’s map again and we came to the realization that we had been on the very part of the trail we were hoping to avoid. We then plotted “the best way back” route while still seeing a few more remnants along the way. Feeling confident in our ability to entertain and have a realistic walking distance for three small and seatless preschoolers, we went on to the orange and purple pathway.

Then a hill came – taking a lot of the wind from the children’s sails. We struggled to find a nearby stream, some purple flowers and a big hollow tree to distract them into their second wind.

We found the remnant of a push car at the top of our shaded forest trek in just the nick of time as the children were quickly losing the joy of the walk. Feet were getting heavy, nap time was upon us and the walk was turning into a bit more than desired or planned. Rachael asked to ride in the stroller, so I set her in the jogging stroller straddling the front fixed wheel, thankful for the wheel shield providing the security away from the entrapment of the rotating wheel. Abi was unfazed. But Ellen was in a different predicament, poor thing, with only one seat in the umbrella stroller and three kids wanting to ride. She did what any resourceful Mom does and stacked two in the seat while one walked.

We then hit a second fork in the road, at this point our adult joy was beginning to reach it’s peak. The path again split, this time both paths were labeled with the same colors. Back to the map – only this time it was a guessing game. Should we go left straight up the crazy big hill and risk taking an extra detour? Should we go right over the pretty-straight path and hope it was not a facade for the longer path. I chose right. My back and shoulders liked the idea of the non-hilled version. And I hoped I was right.

Shortly after we were faced with a second fork in the road with both paths marked with the same colors. This time the choice was made for us – one of the paths had a log across it and non of us desired to lift 5 kids, two strollers and ourselves over that log, no matter how do-able it could be. I was grateful later to have avoided the straight up-hill path and the log path because we later found out that they were connected to a loop and were the same path. Thanks, Lord, for sparing us.

At this point we looked at the map again and took a stab that going back would actually be further than going forward, though at this point forward appeared to be a bit more unknown.

We continued on.

Then the path started getting rocky with dried clumps of dirt that proved hard for an umbrella stroller loaded down with “completely done” kids. Rachael and Abi had abandoned their socks by then and resided to riding/balancing (dear Rachael) in the stroller for the rest of the trip. Abi started to get fussy since at this time it was PAST nap time (sweet), so I busted an extra park guide from the stroller tote and introduced it to her as a book. Her spirits instantly changed and she began reading the book aloud to us.

As time and heat and spirits decreased from the overall group, I started walking ahead of the group with my girls in hopes to shout back good news as we came across new signs. Hard thing was… we weren’t coming across new signs. We were just lost. On a trail. In the woods. With a map. And five nap-time kids. And draining water rations. …. hmmm.

There came a point in which we just had to suck it up – I mean what really are you going to do? We certainly weren’t camping there and stopping wasn’t helping. Ellen, poor thing, alternated from carrying Josiah on her hip and the two older kids riding in the stroller to all of them walking while she trudged over a rocky spot to two walking and one riding to two riding and one walking. You do what you can to keep the “obviously so done” herd moving.

There was hope when we hit the road and the map FINALLY lined up with the trail markers. Pep returned to our steps a bit when we saw the “small” stretch before us to the parking lot and our “so glad to see you” cars. Small felt long at times, with fatigue starting to set in for the whole group, but my girls began singing songs to their maps/park guides and I tried to stay ahead to call back signs of hope. Alas we hit the parking lot’s edge…. 45 minutes later than desired. That made the total trek to be an hour and a half.

I don’t even think we made it out of the parking lot before Abi was out cold – such hard work riding in a stroller. And the girls slept long and hard in their beds when we got home. Ellen’s kids perked up with a packet of crackers rationed out in the car. And our adventure ended with a hug and a “never again” smile.

I called Matt on our way ojt of the park and announced in my most desperately wild voice possible, “We were lost in the woods, baby…. LOST! (dramatic pause) but we found our way out… and no one needed a tourniquet…. or medical attention…. (dramatic labored breathing).” To which came the reply, “Ok, good, honey.. I’m glad to hear that… would you mind sharing more when I get home, I’m in staff meeting.” I snapped back, “Oh yeah, sure. No prob. Sorry to bug ya, babe.” “It’s okay. See ya in a few hours. Love you.” hehehe. My bad. =)

Honestly, despite getting lost in the woods… and the hills…. and the tired kids… and the shortage of water… I really enjoyed the afternoon. The walk was nice in many spots. And I’m proud of my girls for holding it together when we all knew there was nothing we could do to change the circumstances.

And I’d probably do the walk again… just not before nap… and not with limited water rations… and not without a double jogging stroller…. and a strong husband to trade off on pushing. 😉

Actually, I think our 2 mile walks recently have conditioned us all to enjoy the outdoors more, even if we have to exercise. They proved good training for today’s episode of survivor!

– I’ll sleep well tonight.

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Wordless Wednesday: Remembering Summer

It’s cold so today I’m remembering summer heat and fun. On Wordless Wednesdays for now on words will be less, but not completely cut out and pictures will be the primary blog entry. I thought this a fun way to share some of our pictures on a pretty regular basis – even if (in today’s post) they are from the mission trip LAST summer. [This is the most typing you will see ever in Wordless Wednesday posts, most will just be a word or two below a picture.]

“Mine.” 
(“Don’t mess”)

 Joys of a playful grandma.

Daddy. 
(Enough said.)
Independent adventure bliss.
Sunshine.
(Post ice cream.)

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Diamonds

So I had a friend email me asking the average cost of a child per month in her and her husband’s attempts to have her stay home for at least the first year of her daughter’s life.

It got me thinking about budgeting and things small tips I would include in a “ways to stay home and stay on budget to best benefit your family,” guide.

Since Matt and I have been perfecting this skill for over two years now, feel free to laugh at my newbee-ness to this whole concept. But there are certainly some seriously wonderful diamonds in the rough that I have found along the way.

Babies:

  1. Cloth diapering verses disposable diapering budgets
  2. Basic essentials – though I’d add a good baby carrier to the list, you know one of those ones that straps baby onto you so you can carry on with life and supply their need to be snuggled. And i never had a Bumbo seat, despite the hype, and my kids don’t have flat heads nor were they socially deprived. 😉
  3. Hit up those $15 for all-you-can-fit-in-a-bag sales that come in the Spring and Fall at Once Upon a Child. We fit almost $250 of clothes into a bag for $15 (onesies can roll up to smalled than a toothbrush size).
  4. Check out Kidz Again if there’s one in your area. They have clothes for kids up to 12 years old for cheaper than Once Upon a Child and even match together outfits for your “the baby is screaming and we have to leave the store right now” moments for as cheap as $2. Their toy selection is also wonderful (we found a $40 reading system and 2 $10 books for $8.50 all together).
  5. Check out the Thrift Stores (like Valley Thrift or Goodwill) and you’ll be surprised how “my kids don’t look like we shopped at the Thrift store” your kids will look wearing their second-hand name brand clothes. 
  6. Check out freebies for new moms and new-again moms offered through Similac (for those of you that are going formula for feeding) and other companies. Many of the companies will mail you a “sample” of their formula which is a regular sized container in hopes to hook you on their brand.
  7. Breastfeeding is free-er than formula (just saying) so give it a good shot if you can. =)
  8. Second-hand is a WONDERFUL addition to any child’s wardrobe, especially for play clothes.  

Budgets:

  1. Don’t be afraid to set up a budget of what you need, be serious, and then add on a little “play money”. 
  2. We have “allowance money” each month to spend on whatever we’d like and it makes budgeting our other funds realistic.
  3. Always include a date night fund – unless you ABSOLUTELY cannot. Even i it’s $5 for a movie once/month and then you have free date nights in between. But by setting aside a date night fund you are placing it as a priority to invest in your spouse. Free date nights can include walking around the mall, going to a local park, walking the neighborhood, a movie night in, etc. Be creative and just try to be “just us” to keep things sane. =)

Food:

  1. Happy Homemaker Cindy does the couponing and store ads work for you (compiling multiple sites and researching all the large grocery store chains weekly). She even has a section on her site with bulk cooking recipes and meal plans to help drive the cost of each meal down. She has practical and useful tips as well in grocery store management and budgeting well in the food category. (You will need access to a printer and paper to print specific coupons so count that and time into the cost of couponing.)
  2. Make a list – and force yourself to only buy what’s on the list (And don’t bring a pen in to write more things on the list while shopping – that’s cheating).
  3. Don’t grocery shop hungry or with a cranky baby if it can be avoided. Take the time needed to really weight the cost and do the math.
  4. If your name brand picky know what areas matter and what areas don’t. Ex. Toothpaste may be a “hill to die on” but applesauce may not matter. And some things really are better name branded because they last longer and are the one with the versatile features you really want.
  5. Set up a monthly meal plan and then only buy accordingly instead of buying weekly and having to run out and buy the extra sides you forgot. 
  6. Planning is most of the battle.
  7. Think about bulk cooking – it can save time on weeknights that you would otherwise be spending in a drive through line, wasting your money on overly-priced-but-nutritious foods, or cheap-in-nutrition-and-price foods.

Children:

  1. Seriously consider child labor – just kidding! Only testing to see if you’re still paying attention. 
  2. They don’t know the difference between name brand and non-name brand until they are exposed to the need for name branded toys and characters (usually television over other kids). If you promote a one-character only toy explosion you will find yourself replacing more toys when the fad is over and the child has moved on to something else. We have found great joy in our “built to last” generic toys while finding the balance of adding on a few specific characters only as the phase continues. For example, buying a child’s clothing line in Dora wear is only as helpful and frugal (if the character print shirt was indeed cheaper) as the phase is long.
  3. Some toy name brands are indeed better and worth looking for – but don’t settle for one store’s price. Look for the item on sale or better yet – at a garage sale or craigslist. Being willing to wait for the quality item to be in your price range will save hundreds over last minute “we have to have this tomorrow” buys. 
  4. Again, planning is most of the battle.

General Expenses:

  1. Creativity and resourcefulness are very helpful in keeping your cost of living down. Check out “how to” videos on youtube or google search to see if there are ways you can make or practically substitute household tasks/organization/products. I’m not talking about using tree bark only in substitution for soap, but I am saying there are many practical and cheap methods to fixing problems verses buying an expensive organizer or product. Ex. Concentrated lemon juice ($0.89 a bottle) and sunning on the laundry line helps get those “impossible to get out” stains from clothes instead of buying a new shirt or buying an expensive stain remover product. 
  2. Where there is a will, there’s a way. And there’s also a whole lot of people out there with good ideas on how to “cut the corners” of “must have” expenses without cutting on quality and end-product. 
  3. There are also a lot of really bad and “much more expensive” ideas out there too, so be sure to check out how other people are rating the idea before putting all your eggs in one basket. 
  4. The local library – a HUGE resource bank and financial friend with movies (not just the old or dumb ones), CD’s, audiotapes, and of course books. 
  5. Redbox your movies over expensive rentals. 
  6. Netflix is quite nice allowing an $8 a month subscription with many local kids show episodes (excluding Disney for the bottom line subscription), great documentaries, and all kinds of movies. Plus, no commercials means the kids are less encouraged to be “I need that” oriented.
  7. Bunny Ears (Rabbit Ears) on a TV allow for basic channels without paying to watch TV.
  8. Less TV = more activity and free outdoor play. (I’ve found monitoring TV also cuts down on whining and neediness due to encouraging creativity and self-entertainment, let alone the family perks of doing fun things together).
  9. Check out a local site for free/cheap entertainment. In our area, activedayton is a great site to research local events with price listings and kid-friendly vs. non-kid friendly listings.

Again, where there is a will there’s a way.

Seek budget-friendly advice, cheap and fun entertainment, and look at value of experiences and products for duration and durability and lasting memories. When you start weighing the value in things, it allows you to invest in those things with the most lasting joy for all family members.

It’s about being intentional with your budget to serve your family the best you can with thankfulness for all you have been given.

– Hope this was helpful in some way to you.

And please, please, do share your tid-bits of wisdom with me in the comments section. I always love learning new tricks of the trade. 😉

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