November Goals

1. Buy all advent calendar stuff.  24 days x 3 kids is a lot of stuff.  I like to have it all bought before Dec 1 so I can plan what to give when.  I may need to make a printable to keep it all straight ; )

2. Plan Christmas gift shopping and budget.  My Santa app is a big help, I just wish it had a bar code scanner.

3. Keep running.  3 miles 2-3 times a week should be doable. No more long runs, I'll start that up again when the weather gets better.

4. Give the house a good deep cleaning.  We have both sets of parents coming in over the holidays and ideally if I pick one task a day of deep cleaning, then the pre guest cleaning won't be so bad.  I've got a bunch of printables from other sites, just need to start using them.

5. Make curtain for laundry area.  The sliding doors have finally annoyed me so much that I removed them, which makes the space easier to access, but it's an eyesore.

6. Sew flannel duvet cover for Little Hugger.

7. Get passports for the kids

Back And Forth

At the beginning of this series I wrote about my new old fashioned time management system. Yesterday I had one of my most productive days yet, but still had lots of good time playing with Little Man.

We.....
dropped his sisters off at school and ran a quick errand
had a snack
dusted/vacuumed the basement
played superheros
sorted two loads of laundry
played with Legos
I posted a couple of things on here
We had lunch
tested all of last years' Christmas lights to see which still work
built a pile of leaves and jumped in it
changed the light bulb in the garage
played soccer
changed an exterior light bulb
cleaned leaves out of the pond
and a few more things that I now forget

The funny thing is even though I got a lot of things done, it didn't feel overwhelming because we went back and forth between chores and fun stuff.  Little Man has gotten so used to this back and forth system that now whenever the cuckoo cuckoos he'll ask me what that cuckoo means, and if I hadn't already planned on doing something, I'll say he's just saying hi.

I know some people are more efficient cranking out 3 hours worth of tasks and then enjoying the rest of their day with the fun stuff, but right now with a 3 year old in the house (all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays) that's just not going to happen, so I'm glad I finally found something that works.  I was still feeling good after the kids were in bed, so kept the momentum going tackling some of my crafting projects while watching Scandal (my guilty pleasure show).

I'll start tomorrow, I swear

I spent the weekend figuring out the best plan of attack for the cleaning schedule and had great intentions for starting today. I was supposed to dust the whole house and clean the two bathrooms upstairs. What did I do? None of it.

But, I did make some progress on my project of the week. I got some fabric at Joanns for the storage closet "door". I also finished entering my list of weekly projects into this blog and then I updated the layout of the blog itself, moved some stuff around. Overall it think it looks much better, still basic, but that's fine.

My daughter had her first Junior Great Books meeting today. It's an optional lunch time book club that meets once a week for 8 weeks. They are assigned a little extra reading and some homework every week. The classes are taught by parents (sometimes former teachers, but also just parents who want to be involved somehow with the school). They read and discussed the Princess and the Frog (the original version not the Disnefied one). There are only 3 other kids in it, all from pm kindergarten so she didn't know them well but still had fun.

My son is still obsessed with the Lion King and insists that he is Kiara or Simba and my role changes from Nala and Rafiki. He likes to make me Rafiki so I can pick him up and "present" him to the rest of the animals like Rafiki does in the movie with baby Simba. He has taken to referring to our house as Pride Rock :) He even refers to his food as wildebeest (bananas), zebra (berry banana) and antelope (pear squash).

I love that he has such a great imagination, but I have to admit I am getting tired of him getting upset with me when I call him by his proper name and not whatever character he is playing.

Tomorrow an occupational therapist to evaluate our little man. We'll see how that goes. I'm kind of hoping that they say that he doesn't also need that kind of therapy. I know this stuff is all important but I miss my long days to do errands and other things (or even just stay home and play).

Snow Day

Well, sort of...the snow only started after I dropped my daughters off at school. We drove so I could do a couple of quick errands before going home. Then at 1045 I got a call from the school. My oldest wasn't feeling well. She said her tummy hurt and the nurse had her in the bathroom in case she threw up.

I bundled up my son and went and picked her up. She was sitting on the bed in the nurse's office looking all kinds of pathetic. She had not thrown up but said around 930 she had started feeling bad and her teacher sent her to the nurses office. On the way out I saw my youngest daughter's teacher who asked if we wanted to me her too so I wouldn't have to come back (especially since it had just started snowing and she only had 45 min left anyway). So we did.

We got everyone home and my oldest up to bed. She didn't have a fever but also told me that before she went to the nurses office her ears started ringing. I asked her if she had gotten light headed. She didn't know the term but once I told her what it meant she agreed, that her vision had gotten blurry and dark. I told her what to do next time.

She was home about 30 minutes before she did actually throw up, and spent most of the afternoon resting in her bed. So it was good she came home.

My son got a nice long nap that afternoon since I didn't have to leave for pickup. I did do a bit of shoveling and snow blowing, before it got dark . About 4 inches at that point and still falling. I unplugged the Christmas lights :( Admittedly we were among the last in town to have them turned on, and it does cost a lot in electricity to keep them on.

Back inside I had a beer and played Jenga for a while. First with my youngest daughter and then the older one came down to join us. Resting had made her feel better but it got kind of boring once she read all the new books she had in her room. She just finished the new Magic Tree House book about Abe Lincoln so was telling us all sorts of facts about him.

Dinner was tortellini with Alfredo sauce for my husband and I, plain for my daughter and a couple of chicken nuggets for the sick one.

As I was cleaning up, I saw that I had received an invite to Pinterest and started setting up the account in my phone. For some reason you have to do the initial setup from a FB or Twitter account (I guess to facilitate the following) but I didn't want to do it that way, since it's more to link to this blog that I want it. I unfollowed any names I recognized and then played around with it after the kids were in bed. I can definitely see how it can get addicting. I found some cool kid crafts, a couple of recipes, and some home organization/cleaning tips in a fairly short time. Those last ones will come in handy since I had to let our cleaning lady go today. She's been great and I hated doing it, but it's hard to justify $100 every other week when we have $90000 in debt. I kept trying to rationalize having her come one last time to give me a base line clean before I implement whatever new cleaning plan I come up with, but again that doesn't make sense either. So I figure this weekend I'll come up with/start the plan. Hopefully I can give the kids a couple of more useful chores too.