These Days

These days I treasure my quiet mornings on the porch, with my cup of tea.

My head is clear, my soul is quiet and my heart is full.

I march forward into my day, juggling all the moving pieces of a family schedule.  

His peace surrounds me.  His priorities fall into place in my mind.  

His words fill my mouth.  I breathe out prayers of petition, words of thanksgiving, songs of praise.

I'm grateful for days to work at His eternal plan.

Sewing with Blossom3

Blossom3 is so excited to see progress on her sewing project.  

Mama is too!

She and I agree that her fabric is divine!!!

I was so pleased with how much better she is at controlling the sewing machine's speed and feeding the fabric through.  She has made such progress from the last time we sewed together.

Last Week

The CHAP convention is a very busy week/weekend for me.  This year, we tacked on two extra days of the girls visiting Grammie and Pappy.  That meant that I was on critter feeding duty!  Yep, so while I had a lotta peace and quiet, I also had a whole lotta animals to feed!  It took me about an hour each morning.  

I also spent a whole day painting doors!  Very exciting, I know, but I really wanted to paint the rest of the doors in our bedroom.  Whilst painting, I previewed books and listened to book reviews on YouTube, in an effort to check out some other books and authors.  

I also listened to some 2019 Christian music playlists, perusing artists for more good music.  I like to keep good media in our girls' minds and hearts and that requires work and research on my part.  

After a thorough inventory of our school room, curricula and art supplies, I had my convention agenda all mapped out.  The days start early at the convention and I wanted to be prepared.  

At the end of day #1, I was positively exhausted.  

Walking, thinking, talking, asking, walking, looking, listening, walking, more walking...

I really loved having my Mom all to myself.  She helps me think outside the box, talk through options and stay calm.  After a late supper of wings and sweet potato fries, I spent more time looking over and sorting all the information I'd gathered.  Mom had gone to bed earlier and when I finally crawled into bed, I heard her quietly say, "...In Jesus' name."  When asked, she told me that she was just praying for me to have peace.  

Perhaps you can imagine what that meant to me.  

I'm spending two days researching, asking questions, purchasing curricula and generally planning another year of the education of our four Blossoms.  Looking at high school and college education information was also weighing heavily on my mind.

Thank God she is in my corner!

Plus, she is always a willing accomplice in ice cream escapades!

I'm thankful to be back home with solid decisions made.  

Dominique

Some More Details

When I make a daily schedule, I'm not going for "pretty," as you can tell.

There are blocks of time that are free for the girls, which is something I think is healthy for children and teens alike. 

I've established a rise time that the Rugged Mountain Man and I think is appropriate for the girls for summer. 

I tend to round up for how long I think something is going to take.  It's a great way to put cushion in the schedule and keep things in a lower stress arena. 

I try to plan for how long things actually take, instead of how long I think they should take.

Often, we have the majority of things tackled by lunch, so sometimes I don't even bother scheduling the whole day.

This is such a practical tool for little by little getting the job done.  

I'm so thankful that the Lord answers our prayers, even down to the little details of managing our family's days and responsibilities.

Dominique

What's Working Lately

Inevitably, school ends, we soak up the initial burst of freedom and then we find ourselves in that gray area of so much freedom that we don't quite know how to complete all the tasks still necessary in our summer.  We flounder a bit.

There's still multiple musical instruments to be practiced daily, 4-H books to keep up on, posters to be worked on, showmanship knowledge to be studying, showmanship skills to be practicing, Bible Quiz material to study, sewing projects to tackle, in addition to the demands of extra animals on site and all the daily chores associated with that.  Add in a busy social calendar and regular homestead work and the very idea of keeping everyone moving in the right direction can feel very overwhelming to me.  

I spent some time praying about this because I didn't quite know how to facilitate all of these things.  The solution came to me clearly shortly after.  

A one size fits every day schedule has NEVER worked for our summer 

because our summer days vary so widely...

as opposed to the school year when we have much more continuity.  God gave me the idea to do a loose schedule designed specifically for that day.  

Please don't stop reading.  It's not as hard as you think.  

Nightly I have been sitting down and mapping out a basic schedule.  

Are we headed to the park in the morning?  

What needs to happen before and after that? 

Do we have company coming in the afternoon?  

What needs to be accomplished beforehand? 

Will we have a busy stretch of time running errands and meeting up with friends?  

What should we tackle first so that we can have more fun later?  

This is working for me and it's working for the girls.  They actually enjoy themselves more, knowing that they have a system for juggling all the needful things.  I can embrace the fun, because I know we're doing the steady plodding that makes good progress.

Dominique