Two weeks into school we seem to have gotten into a routine of sorts. The alarm goes off at 6:30 and after I groan for a few minutes, I get up and go into the living room. Typically Josh is already up and dressed and has eaten a banana or something. Clara stumbles out when she hears us get up and is much slower about things (like her mama). I make my smoothies and put Josh's lunch together (at his urging) and make sure that Clara has something to eat. By the time we get all of that done, it's usually around 7:30. At 7:30 we read scriptures and say family prayers and then we brush teeth, rub OnGuard and Citrus Bliss on feet, and get shoes on.
If I can get any of my cleaning done during this time, I try to. I also holler things like, "Is your aquarium turned off, laundry in your basket, and your room clean enough to walk through?!" The answers are varied, but generally they seem to be realizing that this old mom is not going to give up on the daily cleaning schedule. I have placed the responsibility for picking things up in the hands of Dave, Josh and Clara as much as possible, and then I do most of the actual cleaning, although I leave some of the bathroom stuff to Dave. In general, our house has been substantially cleaner the past few weeks than all summer and that makes me happy.
Every day we drive our neighbors to school and their mom picks the kids up. I'm a morning person (forced, but whatever) and she is most definitely not. So it works out for both of us. School gets out at 3:30 and she picks them up at 3:45. Josh runs to Kate's class and they try to get as much homework done as possible together, so he is coming home with it mostly done. That has been a nice aside for the crazy evening schedule. He comes in the house and I give him an hour of screen time (computer, tv) to relax. Then at 5:00 I generally start making dinner and he finishes up his homework and works on reading. After dinner we read a lot and the TV stays off. It has been nice with the TV downstairs because we don't focus on it nearly as much in the evening. We have been reading The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis and will work our way through The Chronicles of Narnia this year.
Clara started her second preschool and her teacher primarily speaks Spanish to her. She said after about two months she probably won't need to speak English at all because all of the kids will understand her. Awesome. Clara probably won't speak it, but it will give her a head start for the charter school where she will learn Spanish as well. She now goes to preschool every morning and is so tired by the end of the day that she falls asleep often about an hour earlier than bedtime. Bonus.
That's the news - I need to take more pictures, but we really haven't done that much lately!
1 comment:
Your schedule sounds a little like mine! Al get ths girls up and breakfast fed....then I get up get dressed and get them dressed. All the while yelling across the house, "Put your dirty clothes up, pick your room up." We are lucky though in that no toys, except stuffed animals are allowed in the bedrooms so that eliminates ALOT of the room cleaning problem. Now upstairs.....I'm learing to just close the door! HAHA
And Clara sounds like Ashlee....before school the girls would go to bed around 8 or 8:30 and Ashlee would wander around her room talking and "reading" to her animals for sometimes an hour or more. Now, by the time we say prayers and out Ashlee to bed, go put Ally to bed, come back to find Ashlee asleep. Full time school is wearing her out!! =)
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