Happy Birthday, Penelope!

This girl turned eight yesterday.

Eight.

I mean, how does this happen?

She is smart.  I mean, like, really smart.  I'm pretty sure she's a genius, as a matter of fact.  She has a mind like a steel trap.  She remembers everything she hears, everything she reads, everything she sees.  She's a whiz at math and reading alike; she loves writing fiction stories and blogging her days.  She is constantly astounding me with her vocabulary and her mastery of difficult sentence structure.

But beyond this, she is so compassionate.  She is intuitive about the feelings of others, as well as introspective and self-evaluative.  She is thoughtful and kind and helpful, and so incredibly funny.  She adores babies, and is constantly playing with Callista and carrying her around.

She is a truth-speaker.  She is passionate about maintaining a clear conscience, and is quick to confess her wrongdoings.  She has a hunger for the Bible, and is often moved and convicted by what she finds there.  She challenges me by example to be more like her.

She is an absolute joy to be around.  I can honestly call her my friend, and life is so much fun with her in it.

Happy birthday, Sissy Pants!

it's the weekly 'what's up'!

When I left you last week, I mentioned that Atticus was complaining of a stomach ache after all the younger kids had gotten the flu.  Well, he did end up spending the night throwing up - he had it the worst of any of them, and his vomiting was pretty regular over the course of twelve hours or more.  The next night, Penelope got hit.  So even though Todd taught at church on Sunday, the rest of us were unable to go hear him.

Monday morning, Penelope's fever spiked again and she spent the morning strung out and sleeping.  After she woke up, her appetite returned, and that seemed to be the last of that particular bout with the stomach virus for us.  Thank goodness - it lasted a full week, almost exactly to the hour. 

One guy at church told Todd that our kids are sick more than anyone he knows, and while that definitely would have been the case last winter when we battled sickness after sickness for almost four months straight, this year we've stayed pretty healthy.  This is actually only our second round of sickness since last spring.  BUT since there are so many kids in the house, it takes so much longer for anything to run its course through everyone, which makes us seem like we're sick all. the. time. because we often battle the same bug for a couple weeks at a time.

Anyway.  All that to say, everyone seems healthy for now, and Todd and I seem to miraculously have avoided getting sick ourselves, which is a huge blessing.

Once we were over the gunk, it was back to business as usual.  Homeschool is trucking along well, and I gave the kids the option of either continuing at our current year-round pace, which would give us about a month-long break over the summer, or picking up a bit of speed to give ourselves a little longer, and they unanimously voted for a quicker pace.  So we're doubling down and hoping to finish up here in the next month or so.

We made our weekly trip up to the Amish on Wednesday, and we packed our van to the gills.  My friend Irene needed a ride to buy some medicine for her horse, who had tried to jump a fence but didn't clear it, and ripped a two foot long, eight inch wide gash in his pectoral.  So we dropped her kids off at a neighbor's and drove a ways out to find the guy who makes the horse medicine.  For a very short trek, we had twelve people in our Town and Country, including four of the most adorable little Amish children you ever did see.

Finneas lost his first willing tooth this week.  He had one pulled a few months ago, since it had died and developed an abscess.  But this was his first wiggly tooth!  He was not a fan of the removal process, but you wouldn't know it by this happy, gappy smile.

Callista turned ten months old.  I am floored.  That is so close to being a whole year.  How has it gone so quickly?  The postpartum days feel so recent.

"How many months?  Teeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnn!"

Atticus has taken to inserting himself and Finneas into Bible stories.  Here they are, chopping off Goliath's head.

And here they are, holding up Moses' arms so the Israelite army will win against the Amalekites.

And beyond that, stuff has been ho-hum wonderful!  I cleaned my bedroom and put a new quilt on the bed.  I cleaned out my homeschool cupboard.  I finished a couple of books and started a new one that I'm loving.  Todd and I got a date night for the first time in a while.  I painted Callista's ceiling, and picked up paint for the walls in there.  (A couple of friends are coming over tomorrow to paint her room for us!)  Just your run-of-the-mill, awesome-life stuff!

VLOG: how we fit three kids in one bedroom. (Q&A)

Here are the nitty gritty details regarding how we make a single bedroom work for three kids of different ages and genders!  In this video, I answer the questions you asked on Facebook and Instagram, such as:

How do you put them to bed?

What about differing bedtimes? Differing routines?

How do you keep them from playing with one another at bedtime?

What age did you start them sharing a room?

What age are you comfortable with them using the top bunk?

Do you do mixed gender?

How do you manage decor?

How do you navigate them keeping each other up, or waking each other up?

How to juggle wake up times and expectations?

Do they all sleep through the night?

How do you navigate nap time? Hope it's helpful!

room tour: three kids in one bedroom.

Some people prefer reading posts like this, other people prefer watching stuff like this in video format... so I thought I'd do both today!  Here's a quick tour of our upstairs kids' room.

Penelope, Laurelai, and Rocco all share one room.  It is also the only room on the main level that houses any toys, so it has to accommodate a lot without feeling like a sardine can.



Basically, we have a twin bed for Penelope, a crib for Rocco, and a toddler mattress for Laurelai that trundles under Penelope's bed during the day to give the kids plenty of room to play.

When the kids wake up in the morning, it's their responsibility to make their beds - which, for the girls, means tag-teaming to get Laurelai's bed pushed under Penelope's, and putting both girls' pillows and blankets neatly onto Penelope's bed.  (Rocco's bed usually just stays messy.  Oh well.)

The toys we keep in here are kitchen/toy house items, as well as dolls, Barbies, Little People, and My Little Ponies.  I find it makes it easier for the kids to keep everything organized when there are clear categories for things - we don't have many straggly toys that don't fit a clear category, if that makes sense.

The bin to the right of the kitchen holds toy food and toy brooms; the baskets on top hold Barbies and Little People.

These bins are kept in the closet, out of the way unless they're actively being used for play.

We also keep a couple of bookshelves in here for kids' books and special items.  The two wicker baskets on the bottom shelf are for the girls to keep their special 'treasures' in - anything that is special to them that they'd like to keep out of reach of the other kids.  I think it's important when sharing rooms to give them even just a small space that is intensely personal.

And that's the official tour of their room!  You'll get a much better 'feel' of the space if you watch the video.  Tomorrow, I'll be answering your questions about the logistics of room-sharing with this many kids: bedtimes, wake times, routines, and whether they wake each other up in the middle of the night.  Stay tuned!

ask me: how we fit three kids in one bedroom!

We are no strangers to piling lots of kids into small spaces.  In our last house, we had four kids in one bedroom, so our current set up with only three of them sharing a single room feels down right luxurious!  Currently, Penelope (almost 8), Laurelai (4), and Rocco (2) all share a room, and it can get crazy - they all need different amounts of sleep, and have different sleep patterns.  (Laurelai likes to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn; Penelope would probably sleep until 8:30 or 9:00 if given the chance.)

It has taken us a lot of trial and error to figure out a room-sharing system that works... well, one that works well enough, anyway.  I'd love to share with you how we navigate fitting lots of kids into a small space without it feeling completely claustrophobic or overwhelming.

So tomorrow, I will be posting a tour of their bedroom, and later in the week, I'll post a Q&A video answering any questions you might have on the topic - so make sure to ask!

what's up weekly.

It has been a long stretch for us.  Two weekends ago, Todd was gone at a retreat for our church elders.  Then, because of class load, our babysitter wasn't able to watch the kids for Connection Group on Tuesday night, so I stayed home with the kids.  Last weekend, Todd taught at our church's Men's Retreat, and was gone again.  It was an exhausting week and a half.  Luckily, I got a much-needed nap in after church at the end of it all.

I thought the nap was for the purpose of catching up on some of the rest that I'd missed out on over the previous couple of weeks, but it turns out that it was God's preemptive grace - I was needing to rest up for the next stretch because on Monday, Rocco came down with the stomach flu.  I did pop out for a bit that evening, because it had been nearly two weeks since I'd gotten out of the house without the kids in tow and I needed a break.  Then on Tuesday night, I was quarantined yet again because Rocco was still sick, so I canceled our Connection Group sitter and stayed home.

Tuesday night, our main kitchen drain started backing up into the basement, which sent me into a meltdown.  I could go on and on and on about all the things around the house that seem to be broken at the moment.  Plus, I'm in a weird season of life where I think my hormones are starting to gear back up after being in 'breastfeeding only' mode for the last ten months. Plus, the two-year anniversary of moving into this house is looming, which is stirring up all kinds of emotion about where we are, where I thought we'd be by now, etc.  I'm just kind of an all-around wreck.  It's been unpleasant in general, and watching dirty water just pump itself all over my basement floor was just one more thing to stir the pot.

We got a plumber to come over the next day, so Wednesday was really full for us - a trip to the Amish, a visit from a friend, school, speech therapy, grocery shopping, and a service call.  Luckily, it was the one day this week that no one was sick!

Yes, that's right.  Rocco's bug was not an isolated incident.  Yesterday morning, I was awakened at 4:50 a.m. to the sound of a barfing Laurelai.  We moved her bed into our room for the rest of the morning so I could rest in between the times I needed to help her, and so she wouldn't wake up the other kids who share her room.  Around 8:00, Atticus came in to tell me Finneas was throwing up in the basement.

Those two spent yesterday totally strung out.  Laurelai spent literally all day on her mattress in the living room.  She only got up to use the bathroom or to throw up, and then would lay back down.  Even being in the middle of the busiest room of the house, she still managed to take two really long naps.  Finneas preferred resting in our bed, and also took two long naps.

They watched a lot of Daniel Tiger and WordGirl on the laptop.

By the end of the day, they were still tired, but they were in better spirits, and they had enough appetite for a little bit of plain yogurt.

Once they were on the upswing last night, of course Callista started vomiting, which in a weird way turned into a mixed blessing:  I had started painting her ceiling last night, and was worried I wouldn't get it finished before she went to bed.  But since she was sick, we put her to bed in our room, leaving her room free for me to work on later in the evening.  So that's what I was doing with my free time last night... maybe that was a stupid choice?

As of the writing of this, Atticus is currently complaining of a stomach ache.  Penelope is the only kid who hasn't been touched by the bug (yet).  Knocking on wood that we're coming to the end of this sickness cycle soon, and that neither Todd nor I catch it - Todd is preaching on Sunday, and obviously neither one of us wants to miss it!

Here's to hoping that next week is an absolute non-event.  No, I take that back.  I hope that the biggest news I have to share with you next Friday is that I got an amazing margarita at some point in the week, and spent some time in the garden, and actually got some face time with my husband.  I will consider that a really great week!  So, fingers crossed.

i'm listening to music again.

One of the books I'm reading this week is "The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction," by Alan Jacobs.  Timely.  I was struck by this passage quoted from Charles Darwin:

"My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.  A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use.  The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

Oh, how that resonates with me.  So I decided to start (volitionally) listening to music again more regularly.  Todd's good at cultivating an atmosphere of good music in our house, but when I'm alone, I rarely want to fill my own time with more 'noise.'  But I used to enjoy music so much!  (I was a professional dancer for a very short stint, and even went to college on a piano scholarship; did I ever tell you that?)  So I'm starting small and with something so easy to enjoy: Copeland.  One of my all-time favorites.

What else should I be listening to?

well.

Turns out, Rocco was sick.  Who knows why.  Who knows if it will spread to anyone else.  All I know is that he was suddenly sick - really sick.

He was acting totally fine throughout the day on Monday, eating and playing normally.  Then I laid him down for nap, and when I went to get him up later that afternoon he was just covered in vomit and running a fever.  So baths and laundry and Daniel Tiger on a mattress on the hardwood ensued.  (I take rug protection very seriously in these parts, in case you haven't noticed.)

It had been a long couple of weeks for me, so I kind of just broke down a little at the prospect of having the flu in our house again.  I took a bunch of activated charcoal to preemptively ward off any sickness in myself, and then I ducked out of the house for an hour or so to catch a breather.  I picked up library books.  I wandered around the fancy grocery store.  I went to the less-fancy grocery store and bought a chicken.  You know.  The kind of things people do in their free time.

Rocco ended up sleeping in our room overnight, and was waking up pretty often to throw up.  But then around 3:30 a.m., it stopped, and he was able to keep water down.  Yesterday, he was still running a fever and sleeping a lot, but he had an appetite and was able to keep everything down.

This whole thing was just the weirdest.  I wonder what caused it?  I'm really, really hoping it doesn't spread to any of the rest of us... knock on wood.

good, cheap, quick salmon patties that even kids will eat!

"Good, cheap, and quick" are my cooking trifecta in this season of life.  I want to spend as little money as possible at the store, and as little time as possible in the kitchen, with as few fights-slash-bribes as necessary when trying to get the kids to eat what I make.  If it's healthy, that's a bonus, too.

I've always kind of had to be a budget cook.  When Todd and I first got married, our weekly grocery budget was $30 per week.  Every two weeks, we treated ourselves to a takeout meal, but other than that, it was on me to feed the two of us on less than $5 per day.  I clipped a lot of coupons and we ate a ton of Hamburger Helper.

Our budget has obviously had to increase as our numbers have increased, so I've had to get creative with ways to keep it reasonably low - especially since I don't really do Hamburger Helper-type meals all that often anymore.

A few years ago, I came across a recipe for salmon patties.  I honestly hadn't ever heard of them, and was equal parts intrigued and disgusted by the idea.  I ran it past Todd, who said his mom used to make them a lot growing up, and he always really liked them, so I figured I'd at least give it a shot.

And you know what?  They're really good.  Like, really good.  My kids don't even fight me on them.  Plus, they're crazy-cheap.  A can of salmon at Aldi is less than $3, so I double this recipe in order to feed all of us, and it still only costs me about $7 for the whole meal, including sides of steamed broccoli and rice.  That's a HUGE win.

So here's what you'll need to know:

Salmon Patties

Total prep/cook time: 20 minutes
Makes: 4-6 salmon patties

Ingredients:

1 (14.5 oz.) can of salmon

1 egg

1/4 c. almond meal or bread crumbs

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 Tbsp. dried minced onion

1 tsp. paprika

Fresh green onions, chopped (optional)

(Feel free to mess around with seasoning quantities, or add or take out any as you see fit.  I'm not really a measurer of things, and usually just throw in whatever I have on hand that sounds good, and they always turn out fine.)

Steps:

1.  Drain salmon and mash it with a fork.  You could pick all the bones and skin out, but there are some really great nutrients in those - things like calcium and Omega-3's - and honestly, once you mix it all up, you can't even tell they're in there.  I recommend just leaving it all in there and mashing it well.  It'll be our secret.

2.  Mix in the rest of the ingredients.

3.  Heat about 1/4 c. cooking oil over med heat.  (I like to use bacon grease, but whatever you use most often will work.)

4.  Using your hands, form medium-sized balls of the mixture, and then flatten into patties (just like if you were making burgers).  When oil is hot, cook for 3-5 minutes on each side, until the outside is crispy and the inside is cooked through.

To serve, I like to mix about 1/4 c. mayonnaise with 1 Tbsp. lemon juice as a dipping sauce, or as a topping if serving these on buns.

what's up weekly.

This week has seen us trucking along towards the end of the school year.  I could not be more excited.  Granted, we do year-round school (and love it!), so it's not really like I'm chomping at the bit for our term to be over.  But there are only four more weeks of the university year left, at which point the college students will disperse for the summer and my weekly schedule will suddenly look a lot different.

I will be taking the opportunity of a slower pace to get started on potty training Rocco.  He is so ready - he's at the point where he requests to sit on the potty before he pees or poops in his diaper, so I know he's mentally 'there'. ("I poopin'!  I sit potty? MOMMY, I POOPIN' NOW!")  But we just do not currently have the available time to hunker down and really focus and set him up for success, so I've been trying to get him to hold off a bit longer.

In other news, we've been playing a lot of charades lately.  For Christmas, the kids got Todd a boxed set of family charades, and it has been so fun.  Laurelai is absolute gold.  You should have her do her T. Rex impression for you sometime.

This week's weather was really weird.  On Sunday, it was snowing.  By Wednesday, it was 82 degrees out.  On Thursday, in temperatures pushing 90 degrees, the girls and I planted potatoes and a second sowing of peas.  I'd picked up the seed potatoes and some onion sets up at the Amish on Wednesday, and I'm hoping to have enough decent weather to get the onions in before it starts snowing again this weekend.  Seriously schizophrenic stuff.  I just hope we don't get any tornadoes as a result of the wacky temperature swings - I don't tend to be an anxious person at all, but I'm legitimately terrified of tornadoes.

Um, let's move on to talking about something else.  Todd shaved his massive beard this week.  I think he was pretty sad to see it go, but I'm really liking having his face back, even if only for a little while.

And lastly, this little girl has been making the funniest faces and doing the funniest things.  She has figured out how to wave, and how to bob around when music plays, and is so close to figuring out how to clap.  I am so dang smitten with her.

I've been trying to do more reading this week than I had been lately.  So there have been lots of nursing-slash-reading sessions.

And, in case you missed them, here are this week's vlogs:







Have an amazing weekend you wonderful people!

morning quiet time with the kids.

I've kind of been slacking on my 'quiet time' routine lately - it had been the case for a while that I was really consistent, but then I fell off the wagon.  Chalk it up to a combination of things: Callista is still an inconsistent sleeper at night, so the exhaustion caught up with me; I started spending my morning time making breakfast for myself and Todd before he headed to work instead of reading; I eventually got pretty far behind in my Bible read-through schedule, so I got discouraged and lost motivation; yadda yadda yadda.

Combine this with the fact that we hadn't really instated any kind of structured Bible time for the kids, and the guilt was hitting me pretty hard.  The kids weren't reading their Bibles.  Like, ever.  I wanted to change that for them, and I also wanted to be setting a better example.

So when I put together my visual schedule, I decided to add in a routine Bible time for all of us, and so far it has been working!

So, basically, the way it's been happening has seen me getting up around 8:00 or a little after to make everyone's breakfast.  Now that the kids can tell time, I've told them to plan on cleaning up their rooms at about 8:20, so we can sit down at the table around 8:30.  We read until 9:00ish, and then I put breakfast on the table.  So far, the start time hasn't been as ironclad as would probably be good for us, but it's at least a jumping-off point.

The biggest two kids, being fluent readers, are required to spend time in the Word.  The younger ones are given the option of either sitting with us to look at illustrated storybook Bibles, or continuing to play until breakfast.  Rocco just kind of wanders around, making a bunch of noise and generally being as distracting as possible.

Is it efficient?  Absolutely not.  Some days I only finish about a chapter... in thirty minutes.  Every other word, I'm interrupted.  It's frustrating at times.  Do the kids love it every single day?  No.  And that was hard for me at first - I didn't want time in the Bible to be seen as a chore.  But then I had to realize that, just like anything that's ultimately good for them, and anything I hope they would eventually choose for themselves, I have to train them.  Self-discipline begins parent-directed discipline when they're young.  And honestly, once they're sitting down and reading, they do enjoy it - they just need the little external nudge to start.

So, there it is.  It's simple, but it is a step in a good direction, and I'm feeling good about it!

an age-old question, answered.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about a very hot topic:  Cake Versus Pie.

I would like to clear something up: the winner is Pie.  It was never not Pie.  Those who would tell you there's even an argument to be made in favor of Cake are just trying to lead you into darkness.

First of all, Cake is essentially just flavored dry bread.  Would you want to eat a piece of cake without frosting on it?  No, because cake is gross without frosting.  But I bet you've eaten frosting without cake.  I bet you didn't even really miss the cake when you were scooping plain frosting out of the bowl with your finger.

So really, if you say you like cake, what you really mean is that you like frosting, and are open-minded to having some crumbly bread attached to it.

Second of all, it's not even a contest.  Pie just wins.  Case closed.

via GIPHY

what's up weekly.

One more week in the books!  If Mondays are my favorite days of the week because of the fresh start they offer, Fridays are my second-favorites because of the sense of accomplishment I often feel.  Even at the end of mundane or hard weeks, there is always at least one thing to look back on and feel really good about.  It's a privilege to get to live this life with My People, and it's so fun to spend time each week counting and recounting those blessings.

Last weekend was all about Easter.  On Friday, a friend of ours came and 'egged' our house with plastic eggs for the kids to hunt for in the yard.  They had SUCH a fun time!  I had previously felt a little guilty for planning literally zero kid-activities for Easter, and the kids had kept asking for an egg hunt.  But then I realized that, yet again, God has used our amazing church family to provide for us.

On Sunday, we got dressed up and partied.  (By partied, I mean we picked up Wendy's on the way home from church and took naps.) I spent time recording a couple of vlogs, so I stayed dressed (an unusual feat for me - usually on Sundays, I'm in pajama pants faster than you can blink.  I basically trample the kids in my one-man stampede through the front door on my way to change).  However, vlogs are only filmed from the waist up... so I put on pajama pants under my dress, and no one will ever know the difference.

Classy stuff, Van Voorst.

The rest of this week basically reflected some of the principles I've been working on with my visual schedule - we moved Atticus' speech appointment to a different day, which meant for an extra 'down' day than we're used to.  I met with the public school speech therapist to discuss some group therapy options for him, and I'm trying to figure out which time slot she offered (if any) will work with our routine.  Unfortunately, they all seem to be scheduled for the exact middle of afternoon nap, so I'm trying to figure out how that would work.  The college students are back, so that part of my week went back to normal after Spring Break last week.

And other than that, I've spent a lot of time in my pajamas.  As per usual. 

On a totally tangential sidenote, I'm a firm proponent of pajamas-as-clothes.  I know all kinds of stay-at-home moms who do things like actually get dressed every day, or do their hair and makeup for a day at home.  I even know a few gals who put on shoes in the morning to help them stay 'on' throughout the day.  I am decidedly not one of these moms.  I like to be as comfortable as possible while I work, hence my nasty pajamas.  I'd rather spend my free time reading a book than blow drying my hair.  And I don't put on makeup everyday because, 1.) it takes time, 2.) it takes money, and 3.) I have terrible skin; why make it worse by suffocating it with makeup all day, everyday? 

Totally just a personal preference thing, but I never hear that perspective touted as an ideal in SAHM circles.  Maybe it's because I'm a nutter spewing bad advice that no one else would corroborate; or maybe it's because we all think we ought to be that other kind of mom and could stand to hear that it's fine to fastidiously wear pajama pants as a work uniform.

And speaking of work uniforms...  The boys are off to the salt mines.

And here's your Friday Bonus Gift for reading all the way to the end!  A video, just for you!

our visual family schedule.

Sorry in advance for the terrible photo quality.  We get no natural light from this side of the house, so pictures are hard to take from this direction.

Have you ever read "Managers of Their Homes" by Steve and Teri Maxwell?  If not, you should.  It is full of absolute gold.  It's basically an instruction manual for doing with your time what Dave Ramsey says you should do with your money: make it work for you.  You decide how to spend it.  You decide where it goes and what it does for you.  I don't necessarily believe as strongly as the authors that sticking to a strict daily schedule is a moral issue (I'm more of the 'routines over schedules' type), but I have found many of the principles really helpful and biblical.

Because I'm more of a routine-type, I haven't really felt the need to have a chunked out visual schedule for the family until recently, even though they strongly recommend it (and the book itself actually comes with a kit to accomplish just that).  Lately, however, I've just felt like I'm always dropping a ball somewhere - college girls will show up at my house for meet-ups, for instance, and I'm caught completely off-guard, even though they come at the exact same time every single week.  I just can't keep it all in my brain anymore.

So a few weeks ago, Penelope and I sat down to make a large poster board schedule, with color-coded Post-Its for each activity type.  It took an inordinate amount of time, and I started to worry that I was just wasting my already scattered time on a glorified craft.  (Psychotic scheduling is the crafty-fun-time of the left-brained, Type A, firstborn set.)

I keep it on the inside of the basement door so it doesn't ugly up the rest of the house, and a side benefit of its placement is that I can stare at it from the spot where I eat breakfast and plan my day.

But you know what?  THIS THING HAS SAVED MY LIFE.  That's almost not hyperbole.  Not only can I know, at a glance, what the day will hold, but I've also started using it to move activities around to more efficient time-slots.  I never realized there was a more streamlined way of doing things until I saw it on paper.

Those blue slots are discretionary time for me - helping the kids with their independent school work, running laundry through, taking a shower, reading a book, etc., all happen during the blue slots.

So, for instance, one regular sticking point for us has been Atticus' speech therapy appointments.  I'd scheduled them on Tuesday mornings, which often meant we got no morning school done, throwing the rest of the week totally off as we tried to play catch-up.  But seeing on paper that I was already running a lot of errands on Wednesdays, and very little school is ever scheduled on that day, helped me to realize that scheduling speech then would actually work so much better.  We tried the new arrangement out yesterday, and while it makes for a looooong day of errands, it also meant that it purchased back for us almost an entirely normal half a day on Tuesday.

The weeks are color-coded, too: Oranges are 'out of the house' activities, Pinks and blues are school, bright green/yellow are meet-ups/ministry, light purples are family activities.

It's also helping me brainstorm where to fit things I was frequently dropping the ball on.  I figured out how to fit family quiet time in before breakfast (I'll post more about this soon), and it has been working out really well.  I also noticed that I don't have a regular weekly cleaning time, so I'm trying to puzzle out where that should fit in.

This has been so insanely helpful to me lately; I really have no idea why I was so resistant to doing it sooner.