Just in case you ever wondered what kind of machinery runs our home these days, this post is for you. If you care nothing of such things, then stop reading now, for I’m going to recount to you our mostly typical day.
I need to begin with my morning routine, which begins between 5:15 and 5:30 If I didn’t get my own things done before the children got up, then I would never get them done at all. So before the first child comes in to cuddle, I have had my devotions, exercised (today was a 3-mile neighborhood run with Aimee), showered, dressed, checked our money program, email, and FB and unloaded the dishwasher. Makes for a smooth beginning.
At 7:30 the fun began. The boys dressed, had devotions, cleaned their room, and helped with the girls in various ways—Bradford read the Bible to them, Nate got their supplements, and Ben began taking orders for bagels. Before that, though, I helped the four girls through their morning toilette. Grace is getting more independent and helpful—she sorted and began a load of laundry under my direction. If I’ve run towels the previous night, we’ll fold them together and she puts them away while I proceed to make breakfast, but today there was nothing to fold. After breakfast was teeth brushing and morning chore. The four older children rotate who has breakfast and lunch clean-up for the day, and all but Patie have an assigned chore each morning. Chores range from simply refilling our soap dispensers and making sure each bathroom is fully stocked to vacuuming to washing window glass. This morning I cleaned the kitchen and mopped.
At 9:00 school began. Each older child has a half hour of one-on-one time with me and the twins and Patie share a half hour of preschool time. The kids rotate through their subjects on a schedule because we need to make sure two kids aren’t wanting the piano, computer, or history book at the same time. I begin with Preschool time, and this morning it was Pattern Blocks, at the request of Sadie. We played with the blocks, Patie messed them up, Grace worked on handwriting, Bradford worked on math, Ben did Latin, and Nathaniel did history. I do have a spare half hour without one-on-one tutoring during the course of the morning, and it is during that chunk of time that I switched out laundry, folded clothes, and checked on the boys at their school tasks. So it went throughout the morning, with kids practicing instruments, playing with the sisters, and doing their school work.
As you can see by reading this, I’m a big fan of schedules. I couldn’t get done even half what I do without one. But I am in control of the schedule and make changes as necessary. Like today, when I got a call from my mother that our friend in the Chicken Mafia had 5-lb bags of thighs and legs available for a buck a piece. Oh, yeah. For a deal that great, I re-arranged our schedule, got the boys on task, threw the girls in the van and went to pick up 125 pounds of chicken.
Lunch at 12:30, and when we were done and things were cleaned up, they went outside to watch the road pavers in front of our house while I cleaned the downstairs bathroom. Because of the free entertainment, I got out of reading to the girls before the Twins’ nap and made a phone call. Bradford coming in with a wasp sting ended that conversation.
Littles down for a nap, all the others occupied by school work or quiet activity, I had time to straighten the house a bit, call another friend to offer her a great deal on chicken, and work at my desk until 3 p.m. when I read out loud to the boys for forty minutes.
Prepared the chicken for dinner, Wendy came by to pick up 6 bags, Mark came home, and dinner was served.
After dinner is when I go to my Thoughtful Spot on my chair in my bedroom and blog or read or sit and look out the window. Today I blogged, and you are reading what I wrote.
If we don’t end up swimming tonight, I’ll bathe the girls, we’ll have family devotions and Daddy Time, and then it’ll be time for bed. And tomorrow we’ll get up and do it all again.
So that’s it. We’re busy, but not impossibly busy. Discipline is an absolute must for our household to run at all smoothly. I’ll leave you with our Theme Verses, which we are daily striving to live out:
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ~Colossians 3:12-14
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