Q: How in the world do you actually find time to educate your children,take care of your household duties, and find the energy necessary to do all those cool crafty projects you always show us? All of that, and still manage to keep your sunny personality and your faith so strong! I wish I just had an ounce of that!
(I’m answering the part in bold today)
Well, I’m Wonder Mom.
Yeah right! Actually, I don’t find time to do it all. When I focus on any one given area too much, then another area gets neglected. I used to be really on top of things, keeping up with the house, getting some great rubber stamping and scrapbooking done, making dinner. But when we had the house flood and moved so quickly, we never recovered like we wanted to. The first priority when moving into the new house on Thanksgiving Day was to get enough of the house unpacked to be able to pull off Christmas. All the pictures of Christmas look great because what you can’t see is the chaos of boxes just out of the picture. We spent the next year just trying to get into the groove. We’re still working on it.
Really though, educating the children isn’t that hard. I use a great curriculum (Sonlight) which has everything laid out for me. If I wanted to, I could pick up the instructor’s guide every day, read the day’s assignments and off we go. I do a little more customizing than that, but it gives me such a great foundation that all I’m doing is adjusting the schedule faster or slower as needed and adding in a few extras. With a 1st and 3rd grader, our school day is over by noon. That leaves the afternoon free for everybody.
As for the crafts, most of those I tackle in the evenings when the children are asleep. I watch tv or movies with Phil and work on the craft du jour. The children get a nightly video, too and depending on the craft, I can work during that time, too. I’m in the room with them which makes them happy, and I can knit at the same time, which makes me happy.
As far as the house, well, you’ve seen the before shots of the corners of my home. It’s not pretty. We’ve got far too many corners like that which still need work.
One thing I do for meals is to limit myself to making only dinners that take 30 minutes or less of prep time. They can cook for longer, but any direct input by me needs to be minimal. That means I don’t cook many of our favorites anymore, but at this stage of our lives, that is what is needed. Someday I’ll have more time to cook and I’ll make those meals again. For now, we let my mom make them when she’s here visiting. She likes to cook and we love it when she makes the old favorites!
In all things, you’ve got to make choices and have priorities. Some days it’s ok to play more than work. Other days you’ve really got to get some work done. Most of the time, though, I try to strike a balance -a little work and a little play every day. I’m a huge list maker and that helps, too.
