Scheduling 101

Today I sat for almost an hour making appointments for everyone in the household. As I did this I realized that I haven't told you about how I manage our schedules so that everyone gets where they need to be on time (or well....as close as possible to on time.) I have two calendars. One is a small one I carry with me whenever we go and the second is a bigger one that I post on our refrigerator. Both have everyone's schedules on them. They are the "Master" calendars. Other members of the house may have individual calendars and they only copy what pertains to them on their calendar but my master calendars allow me to easily see what is supposed to happen on any one day.

The beauty of this is I can see at-a-glance if I need to call in a relative to help with transportation because I am double booked, or I can see that I need to plan a picnic dinner because we may need to eat on the road in transit to another event. Some may say that for the size of our family we do too much, and maybe that's true. However we want our kids to be able to pursue their individual interests without feeling like the "family" has held them down. Thus the master calendar is an awesome tool in my homemaking toolbox.

To give you an idea of what kinds of events we have scheduled, this week we have: girls basketball practices, hockey practices, gymnastics practice, AWANA (at our church), civil war club, Church, dentist appointments, physical therapy appointments, and then of course the work schedule and school schedule for Steve. Whew. It's a lot but it's our crazy, happy life and I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Our Chore Chart

So after we sat down and discussed what exactly needed to be done in the house, we realized we needed to come up with a motivation for the kids to want to help. Enter the points. Each chore was assigned a point value and by doing your chore on your day you can earn that point value. There is also a chart listing what the points can be redeemed for.

For some kids the allure of earning money is enough and so there are a certain number of points earn $5, $10, and $25. Other kids are not as driven to earn money yet so they can earn things like extra xbox time or even a night of McDonald's or Burger King for themselves. The biggest thing for us was having someone to stay on top of the dishes each day.

Now there are only a few days that I have to hobble in to the kitchen and work on that. And when that happens it's to train the 5 year old so she one day can help. There are also ways to earn extra points. One of them is if a chore is not done promptly then it is offered to the other children. Or one of my favorite is showing Christlike behavior. You can't point to yourself and say, "I did this for him or her" but if Mom or Dad sees you doing something nice we can reward that wonderful behavior.

The results of this month old program are that the house is looking more presentable. (Not perfect mind you, I do have kids who live here. Smile.) And some of the kids are really starting to pick up a do for others attitude. Katerina will now clean up all the toys in the living room or tidy the kitchen and put a table cloth on the table (one of my favorite things to do to brighten the kitchen) just for the joy of a smile on mine or my husband's face.

It's been a long road, Part 2

So we were quickly realizing that some changes needed to be made in the basic structure of our schedules. Simply asking if anyone wanted to help clean was not working. Nor was it going to work. We had led the kids to believe that it was okay not to do much around the house. The time for them to help with the cleaning was before a big party or if their rooms were messy.

In retrospect I can't believe it took me this long to decide that something had to be done. For so long friends would tell me that I needed to get the kids to help more. I would get so stressed out that it seemed that nothing got done. And this was before the accident. Afterwards we managed to limp by until December.The kids ate a lot of highly processed foods and we ate fast food quite a bit, but we were getting by. Then Steve went back to school full time, along with working full time. I needed to let him have all his spare time for studying, not cleaning and cooking. So we sat the kids down and had a heart to heart with them. What came out of this meeting was a thing of pure beauty. A chore system that wouldn't cost us a fortune from an already tight budget in a weekly allowance, but would allow them to earn a little bit of money or some xbox time. There are also other rewards too but those are the ones the kids were excited about. (They are only allowed a half an hour of xbox per day currently.)

How does this chore chart work? Stay tuned as I discuss it more in depth tomorrow.

It's been a long road

The past several months have been hard months. The kind that while you are in them you feel so alone and troubled but as you start to lift out of them you realize how much God has used the difficult time to teach you so much about yourself, your spouse, your family.

We've had some really big things happening in our lives since the end of September 2010. We were presented with some difficult news and a difficult decision. We decided we had to go for custody of my stepson James. We won custody but we also lost all contact with MaKayla. My heart breaks and the tears fall as I say that the child we have raised as if she were my husband's own daughter, we are no longer allowed to see per her mother's request. We never were legally binded to her so we must now honor this request although we will still pray everday that someday our family will again be whole. Due to this at some point you may see her name removed from my list of children. She will always be our daughter but it's unrealistic to say I have six children when in fact I will now only be parenting five.

This alone was a lot to deal with and made blogging difficult as words just seemed to escape me, but then I had my accident. On October 30, 2010 I fell off a ladder at my brother's house while helping him do some painting for his softettes. For the distance I fell it's quite obvious that God watched out for me. I had a mild concussion, from knocking myself out when I hit my head twice on the ground, and I broke the talus bone in my ankle. This was a miracle. I was okay and within a few months would recover, but it would also start a journey into self discovery of how my household should run and what my role in it truly was.

 You see I was sold on the myth that the mother should be the one doing most of the cooking and cleaning and diaper changes. Yeah I would have my older children help out but I thought they needed their childhoods and to make them do too much would deprive them. Wow, what a bunch of bologna, right? The first week or two of sitting with a foggy head from pain meds and my ankle up high went okay due to a lot of friends and family stopping by to help with the cleaning and the kids. Then Steve was back at work, the friends and family were back to their lives and we needed a plan.

Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow.