Little Things

This is about a little change I made this year to make life a little easier. My kids already have certain chores assigned to them. And as they grow older, I think it is a good thing to assign them a few more responsibilities. Right now Jameson and Connor make their own school lunches, clean their rooms and unload the dishwasher daily. Then on Saturday's or other select times, in addition to cleaning the bathroom they use the most, they are called on to vacuum, sweep or whatever else I need help with.

So, this year to their daily repetoire I am adding filling water bottles and taking out the trash. I moved my the dishes we use every day to a lower drawer so Genna can now have the responsibility of setting the table each day.

Since moving in we have never had hampers or laundry baskets in any of our bedrooms. My thinking in not having them, was to encourage everyone to just automatically when they leave their room, take it straight to the laundry room. It hasn't been an all bad thing. Unforunately one of my children really struggles with getting his clothes into the laundry room and so I might try some pop up hampers. But for now my little change was to post some labels over the baskets and encourage the kids to sort their own laundry, instead of just throwing it in the room, like normal. So far, so good on the kids sorting their stuff out. The only problem with this was I didn't laminate my labels and over the weekend, the whites pile surpassed the sign and the ink ran. It is no longer readable, but hopefully until I can get a new one posted and laminated, the sorting will continue on.

Scrapbook Challenge

My sister Lorilee and I are doing a challenge where we create one scrapbook page a week, this is to be completed by Sunday evening. I know one is a small goal considering the number of pictures I have that need to be scrapbooked, but hey, you have to start somewhere, right? Plus, it is kind of like potato chips, it is hard to stop at one. My page was completed at 12:45 this morning. I didn't quite make the deadline. As late as it was, it still felt good to scrap again. I picked something really easy to get me back into it. I had to pass right over those birthday and holiday pictures waiting to be done- they are not good to do for your first page after several months of not scrapping. So without further ado- here it is:

Missionaries

We had the missionaries over for dinner tonight. We had my favorite marinated chicken, twice baked potatoes, green beans with cheese and bacon, homemade rolls and then ice cream sundaes with homemade hot fudge. It was really yummy, especially after fasting. We love having the missionaries in our home. We have awesome Elders serving in our ward right now. We have really grown to love them. Elder Barfield is being transfered this week. We wish him the best.

One of the reasons I love to have the missionaries in our home is because I think it is such a good influence for my own boys. We talk a lot about when they get older what it will be like for them to go on a mission. Troy has lots of great stories about when he served in the Texas Houston East mission and he shares those often with the boys. Troy and I both hope that the boys decide to serve a full time mission. Troy agrees with those who have said it was 2 of the best years.

Just in case anyone would like the recipe for marinated chicken- it is super easy. Marinate chicken breasts in 1 part oil, 2 parts soy sauce and 3 parts 7up or Sprite. Grill. The longer you marinate the chicken, the better it tastes. I always let it sit at least overnight. The last several times I made the marinade when I got home from the grocery store with the chicken. Just throw it in a ziploc bag and put it in the freezer. A day before you are ready to eat it, let it thaw in the fridge.

Family Goals for 2007

At the beginning of last year I didn't have a working printer. After our family goal setting FHE, I wrote our list down and it sat in my drawer until a few weeks ago when I cleaned it out. I do actually think we got it out a couple of months later and did a review on how we were doing, but besides that brief excursion, it was stuck out of sight, out of mind. I was hoping I had actually put a few of our goals on my blog, so I would have something to refer to as we reviewed tonight, but I just had to go by memory. So with that said, I think I will post our family goals here, although I already did better than last year and printed them out. They will be posted in our kitchen tomorrow.



Our family Goals for 2007
Spiritual:
* regular Family Home Evening
* Family Prayer- especially at night
* Daily Scripture Study

Physical: work to make a House of Order
* clean garage by Jan. 31st
* clean storage room by Feb. 14th
* More physical activity & healthy foods

Social/Creative:
* during selected FHE's “do” each other’s hobbies

Intellectual:
* Limiting TV/GameCube
* Memorize an Articles of Faith each month
Family:
* Respect one another & our home
* Go out of our way to serve one another
* Be punctual

This was the shortened version to be placed in sight in the kitchen. Additional information on those goals" I will make a FHE schedule to follow. We will adjust the time so we can have FHE every Sunday. We will choose a different song to start our scripture study every month. This month is Love at Home. If we miss a morning of reading scriptures, we will make that up at dinner time or bedtime, whichever works best. I will plan our Hobby nights into the FHE schedule. Gamecube & TV will only be watched on Friday & Saturday's unless special permission is given. We will work on Article of Faith #8 this month. I will be making a cleaning check list to place in the various rooms- for those who don't clean because they don't know what needs to be done. Connor helped us draw names from a hat of the person we are going to do secret acts of service for this week. We are going to plan to arrive at least 10 minutes early to wherever we are going.

Goals Troy and I set:

*Attend the temple once a month

*Take tithing out in cash when we get paid and seal it up right away

*Pray as a couple, right after the kids are put to bed

*Have a weekly planning/finance meeting on Sunday night

And last but not least we chose our family theme: Doctrine & Covenants 109:7-9:
7 And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith;
8 Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of corder, a house of God;
9 That your incomings may be in the name of the Lord, that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord, that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord, with uplifted hands unto the Most High—

Some is better than nothing

Ok, I am really hoping that this post makes sense. Genna was up a lot last night with a high fever and despite my sweet husband getting the boys off to school for my this morning, I am still feeling a little fuzzy.

But I am excited to participate in the Lazy Organizer's Smart Habit Saturday. I, of course, have huge plans for this year. I really like what Lara said about setting smaller goals that will help form habits. I am usually always gung ho in January. I grew up setting goals and we traditionally held a FHE about goal setting every year- just like we do now with our kids. One of my biggest challenges for myself is to make sure I keep going past summer vacation, past holidays, sicknesses, and all those things that throw “normal” day to day life a little out of whack.

So, one way I hope will ensure that I can follow through on my plans for the year is to set monthly goals right now. Each month will focus on a different area. I won't be burned out on organizing in February because I am not focusing on it until April. January’s focus is on Physical Fitness. That's not to say I won't have small challenges for myself in other areas.

I stopped working out last June and haven’t picked up an exercise DVD until this week. Well, and once I went on vacation and lived it up, it was really hard to back to eating right. After all Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas were coming. Unforunately, I am not one of those people who can eat whatever they want without paying a price.

I am finally at the point where I am disgusted with the price I paid to eat whatever I wanted. I really want my good fitness goals to be lifelong habits. I want to get to January next year feeling really great about my efforts. So I am really trying to make do-able goals so they become habits. I am also going to put into place a plan to combat the bumps that come with different routine changes.

So the habits I am working on this week:
I will drink at least 64oz. of water a day
I will exercise 3 times(I’ve already done 2)
I will not eat after dinner

In a lot of areas in my life, I am an all or nothing kind of a person. I hate to scrapbook unless I have every single item I own around me. I like to clean the whole house at once or it just doesn’t feel done to me. In the past I have done South Beach and other versions where I completely give up sugar and processed carbs. I am trying to change my thinking to be that some is better than nothing. Normally at this time of year I would have expected to be a picture of fitness perfection. This week I decided it was ok to just do my 15 minute Walk Away the Pounds DVD. Like I said, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I was working on a big scout training thing today- so it would have been so easy to just not exercise today. I read once that you should exercise first thing in the morning or late at night-at a point where you haven’t eaten for 3 hours. The new me today said, it was maybe not going to physically be optimum for me to workout at 2:30 pm, but it was going to be helpful for the working out every weekday habit that I would like to work up to.

Next week in addition to the things I am doing this week, I will try and make healthier eating choices and add one more day of exercise.

Is this going to get me to my weight loss goal as quickly as other methods? Probably not, but I truly hope that I will develop life long habits of eating healthy and exercising.

Wow, I sure have rambled a lot and I apologize. I was even going to talk about some little things I decided to do in other areas that will be my main focus in months to come, but I’ll save those for another day.

Calendar

I am on a huge kick to get my calendar/life organized right now. We got this free desk calendar from our bank. I have previously been printing up a monthly calendar to go in our family organizer. Troy thought it would be good to place the calendar on our desk in the kitchen and it would be easier to add & notice what was going on. I liked that idea but then we all started writing on it. That's when it got ugly. Literally. I don't like my handwriting and unless I slow down or have lines to help- it is really not nice looking. So I spent a good portion of my evening transferring over the text boxes from my small calendar to a word document. Maybe not my best use of time, but the results made me feel much better. Plus you now you can actually read what's going on. The new rule is to write on it only in pencil. Important additions might even get printed up on a small label and slapped over the handwritten version. Next month it will be a breeze as I saved everything and I can just make adjustments in Word. Too bad it has the ugly bank info on the sides. In a couple of months when my life is completely organized and I am just sitting back twiddling my thumbs, maybe I will alter more of the calendar with pictures and or cute clip art.

A White New Year

Well, the Christmas festivities are now over and the decorations are nestled in their snug little tubs. My small collection of snowmen are now on display.



On Sunday it snowed. Except for the scary ride home from church, we were all so excited to see the world change from brown and drab to wintery and white. Sunday afternoon celebrated New Year's Eve, with some good friends. We ate and played lots of games and made a lot of noise to ring in the new year. One new game they got was 10 Days in the USA, it was very fun and educational.



The kids were thrilled to be able to play outside today. They go back to school tomorrow. Although, it has been such a fun break that has went way too quickly, getting back into our old routine will be good too.



Once there was a skater snow dude, tall, tall, tall!



In the night someone smashed him small, small, small.



Apparently, some kids get their thrills by going around and smashing other people’s snowmen. How rude!!

Oh well, he was going to melt tomorrow anyway! And as I was putting my decorations away today, I saw a funny saying on a snowman gift bag- it said, "Don't Flurry, Be Happy!!"

I hope everyone has a very Happy New Year. This year my goals include- being more frugal, getting more organized, making healthy new habits and showing more love and compassion to everyone around me. I will try and share more specifics on some of those goals in the weeks to come. Lara, the Lazy Organizer, has a great goal setting challenge up on her site. Check out the link on the side of my blog.