This Is The Year

Last week I told you our family was going to have an "unplugged weekend".  I had been thinking about doing this for a while, and finally got around to discussing it with Hubby.  With him on board, we presented it to the kids, starting out with watching this short message as a family: As parents, hubby and I are pretty conservative when it comes to a lot of the technologies of today.  We don't allow violent video games in our home, our children were probably some of the last of their friends to get Facebook accounts and I know that Bookworm (our only child with a cell phone for now) was the last of his friends to get a phone.  It has nothing to do with not trusting our kids and everything to do with what we felt was or wasn't necessary for our family's circumstances and what we did or didn't feel was the most uplifting or healthy way for our family to spend their time. Of course there is a fine line between giving them everything, and allowing them...

So here's how my day went yesterday: Wake up, get kids ready for school. Drive kids and Hubby to school (hubby is driving the 6th grade to the McCullough space center for a space simulation field work). Get back home. Answer email and shop correspondence while Baby Girl attempts to feed herself oatmeal (yeah, she's at the whole independent stage). Clean up oatmeal from table, chair, floor and Baby Girl's face, belly, arms and hair. Attempt to clean up in my bedroom while Baby Girl naps (yeah right - she napped for 14 minutes). Get in the shower while BG plays on the bathmat, waiting her turn to get in and get cleaned.  Hey it worked the last time I needed to have a shower and I was by myself with Baby Girl so don't you judge me. Get all lathered up when I hear a huge crash followed by instant wailing from Baby Girl.  I jump out of the shower, dripping wet and sudsy to see my poor baby flat on her back on the tile.  She had attempted to climb up something...

We shall see about that . I recently decided to take the 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home Challenge from Money Saving Mom.  I didn't start up when she did, so I'm not really part of the "group" who is participating and linking up and all that jazz.  I intended to, but I just couldn't get started last week for various reasons. But I did start this week and I'm a little excited.  I feel like I have a WAY bigger monster to tame than what her challenge will fix.  Like a lifetime of being disorganized + a husband who is equally as disorganized + 5 kids.  It's an equation that equals basically a whole lot of chaos to reign in.   And every time I determine that I am going to tackle that chaos, I just don't know where to start.  Bringing order to one area of my life or home or family is dependent on something else being brought to order first, which itself is dependent on another aspect being in order and I just feel overwhelmed with the hugeness of the u...

(Cough, cough), it's a little dusty in here... I guess when you neglect the blog for like 7 months, it can grow a few cobwebs.  I'm going to try again to get my blog groove on.  So much has happened since I last blogged.  Perhaps I can get you caught up a little bit at a time over then next little while.  Hopefully.  Maybe.  Probably not.  And by "you" I mean the imaginary people I'm pretending to write to since I'm not sure anyone remembers about this ole blog of mine.  That's what happens when you disappear for ever  a while. A few highlights from the past 7 months: We went on a family trip to California in November - actually over Thanksgiving!  The kids thought that Disneyland was totally overrated.  Which is what I thought the last time I went in 1990.  They LOVED Sea World, and Universal Studios.  We also stopped and visited all the temples along the way.   I'll share pics in an upcoming post! This girl...