A Day Off
After three weeks of Family Boot Camp (Is it boot camp or work camp, I can’t remember?) we took a day off. I was up WAY too late last night and when I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7:00 the kids asked if we could have a lazy day. I don’t know where they get these ideas but the house was still spotless from the night before and I was too tired to think let alone work so it sounded good to me.
Swiss Family Gallagher – Remember when I talked about working the children so hard that studying felt like a holiday? It’s already coming to pass. We lazed around all morning doing “school”. We read, practiced the piano, studied our scriptures, planned a Halloween Carnival, worked on our memorizing, etc. Then we had lunch and did some more school stuff. It was a nice break.
Normally the schedule goes like this.
7:00 Breakfast and Personal Chores
- For the children breakfast is always cooked rolled oats (and other whole grains that have been soaked overnight). I blend some rice or almond milk with dates to sweeten it.
- I eat a couple pieces of fruit and drink a glass of water for breakfast and then I have my green smoothie later when I make a blender full for everyone as a snack.
- The kids do their personal chores like combing their hair, brushing their teeth, making their beds, and tidying their bedrooms.
- I get myself and the little girls dressed and ready to go.
- I check everyone’s rooms to make sure they are spotless. I wasn’t kidding when I said Zero Tolerance.
- If their beds aren’t made nicely then I pull all their blankets and sheets off and they get to start all over again during their free time after lunch. Remember the three steps back rule? If I don’t follow through they will be lazy and their sheets and blankets will be hanging on the floor every single day. Silly children.
8:00 Family Jobs
- Muscles starts on dishes.
- Persistence does a quick sweep of the whole house (picking things up and putting them away) and vacuums.
- I start in my bathroom, straighten, wash a load of laundry, clean up the laundry room, and move to my bedroom to make the bed and clean up.
- When the kids are done with whatever they are doing they come to me and ask, “Now what do you want me to do?”
- I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.
10:00 Break Time
- Persistence or I make green smoothies for everyone.
- Our green smoothie of choice these days includes spinach, frozen bananas, fresh pineapple, and a frozen fruit mix from Costco. The frozen bananas really sweeten it up and give it a creamy texture.
- The children read while they drink their smoothies and I usually sit down and check my email.
10:15 Back to work
11:30 Family Activity
- This is when we are supposed to have a 30 minute fun family activity as a reward for all the hard work we did but I’m still not good at doing this because we’re usually running late and rushing to get things wrapped up for lunch before everyone perishes from hunger.
12:00 Lunch
- We eat lunch that is always left overs from dinner the night before or veggie sandwiches. We all love the veggie sandwiches (including the picky four year old and the one year old baby) and can eat them every day. We use lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, shredded carrots, avocado, veganaise, spicy mustard and whatever else we feel like putting on them.
- Clean up and dishes again.
1:00 – 3:00 Free Time
- I get to sit down and read or blog. Lately I’ve been doing more reading than blogging as you can tell.
- The children can do any approved activity they want. Sometimes they will have tea parties and/or play horses and dress up but for the most part they read, write, play the piano, draw or paint. Muscles does assignments for his youth group and as they get older this will turn into hard core study time.
- If the children owe me any extra jobs they do them now. Both my older kids work really hard most of the time but if one of them has a bad day with complaining, fighting or getting distracted while we work then they will owe me extra jobs during free time. They really hate that and so do I because I like to see them get a fun break and because the house is getting so clean that extra jobs are getting harder and harder to dish out.
3:00 – 5:00 Kid School
- This is the time when I share things with my children. We read scriptures, memorize poems, scriptures, I read to them, we talk about family issues, plan our week, etc.
5:00 Dinner Hour
- Persistence usually helps with dinner while Muscles plays with the girls and then he washes dishes while Persistence takes a bath with the girls and helps get them ready for bed.
7:00 Bed Time
- The kids are in bed. I sit in the hall between their rooms and read to them.
- I’ve usually read to the little girls before this and they are already asleep but if they’re not then they just listen too. Moving my three girls into the same room was the best thing I ever did but I had to learn how to parent first or it never would have worked.
7:30 My Time
- I am still working on getting to bed early and getting up at 5:00 to study. I was doing really good for a few months but I’ve been failing for a while now. I have a new plan though and will blog about it soon.
What kind of jobs do we do?
- The tricky part is keeping everyone busy while still accomplishing something myself.
- If I don’t have a job for someone at the moment I will assign them to do a fun activity with the little girls. Usually they will play with a toy or read to them.
- Some day I will make some sort of schedule for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly jobs but for now we just do things as needed: washing dishes, watering plants, laundry, vacuuming, mopping, organizing drawers, cupboards and the basement, washing walls, scrubbing toilets and bathrooms, cleaning off the front porch, cleaning and vacuuming out the van, etc.
- Bake and prepare upcoming meals.
- We have also started doing other home projects such as sanding doors and scraping windows.
- When we are done with the doors I am going to paint the studio, finish building my girl’s closet and a hundred other things.
Did I tell you everything? I’m really tempted to turn my comments on so you can ask me questions if you need to or so you can accuse me of using my children for slave labor while I watch tv and eat bon bons but then I would be checking my email all day tomorrow instead of working. If you really do have a question please email me and I will try to answer you as soon as possible.
You do realize that we don’t have T.V. here nor do we eat bon bons right? Just checking.
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