A few photos from this past week (Recognize anyone?)

Tags: Abby, Anne, Ben, Dennis, Elle, Emily, Family, hospitality, Jay, Joe, Katie, Photos, Rase

An evening storm

Jayden

Tags: Abby, Anne, Birthday, Emily, Eric, Family, hospitality, Jay, just fun, Katie, Photos, Rase

Monday was Miss Abigail’s 4th Birthday. With that big event, came the privilege for her to get to go onto the front entryway and go into the kitchen. We train our little ones for boundaries.

Checking out the kitchen.

Now you are probably wondering what these whacked out people are doing by not letting their crawling babies and toddlers into the kitchen and onto the entryway. What’s up with that? That’s a good question!

There are snakes in them thar parts! Our front door is left open most of the summer. There are too many ways in which a little one could be in danger if they wandered out by themselves.

Have you ever had a toddler try to “help” you by cleaning up and throwing away their shoes, toys, and what not? Have you become exasperated when the little ones get into cupboards? Have you had close calls when they are under foot and you are carrying a heavy boiling pot of potatoes across the room to drain? Yikes! This can all be avoided with training.

Maybe this put a new idea into your mind. Maybe not. Are there areas in which you wish your babies and toddlers didn’t have access to? Do you put up baby gates or train? I’d love to hear from you.

The little ones do, indeed, go into the kitchen, but they are always carried by someone to their seat.

Tags: Abby, Birthday, Child Training, kitchen cares

Those in our family, who are old enough to hunt (that’s 8 people), are gone this week. The “littles”, as I call the younger set of 5, and I are having a fun time of cleaning and playing in the snow. Well, for them, it’s been play. For mama, it’s been shoveling. We have about 6 inches so far and today it is snowing again.

The snow is just beautiful as it sits heavy on the pine trees. The tall, dry grasses in our field stand tall with snow intertwined. The garden, looking sad and abandoned has taken on a new look of beauty. As I write this, three deer are in the garden. The kids are watching out the back, surmising that they are a mama, daddy, and baby deer. They are watching them dig for grass, coming up with their faces covered in snow. They have had several occasions to watch them jump over fences. How beautiful!

As I shoveled snow yesterday, Jayden (4) asked what would happen if he spit in the snow. Is this a boy thing, or what? Tess crafted a cute little snowman, hoping it would remain until the hunters returned home to see it.

We have a list of things “to do” a mile long. Well, that might be exaggerating, but just cleaning the pantry has taken several days, alone!!! The first task we tackled was the refrigerator. Rase stood inside it and wiped it down really well while I washed the shelves and Tessila (8) wiped them dry.

Rase (6) has been my little man, going around the kitchen with a screw driver, checking all the cupboard doors and tightening the ones that need tightening. We discovered one that was complete broken. He removed it for me and we took it to a shop to get replacement parts. He reinstalled the hardware for me!

It’s been interesting cooking for such a small crowd! I use small pots and pans.

The hunters called last night from Red Lodge. They had come down from the mountains to get propane, a meal, and check on parts for the heater, which stopped working in one of the trailers. I was so glad they called! We sure miss them! They said they had received about three feet of snow!!

I wish I had a digital camera so I could take before and after photos of the refrigerator and pantry! That’s all for now. Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

Tags: Abby, fall, hunting, Jay, Mama, Rase

MOTH = Managers Of Their Homes

In theory, it’s supposed to streamline and organize your family.

Reality is another thing…or is it?

This year, I sat Anne down with me to help me work out our schedule.  You see, the main reason we’ve been using the MOTH is because we have 3 networked computers and a handful of students and I needed a way to coordinate everyone doing their Switched on Schoolhouse Language Arts and their DIVE math CD in order to do their Saxon, not to mention all the “earned” computer time and educational “stuff.”

We got the schedule down.  It looked like a dandy!  It was beautiful!  I was pleased.

A few things have changed since last year due to Benjamin graduating and working full-time, as well as Anne taking on a new job of sewing hunting decoys for MT Decoy and Cabela’s.  (She does this from home)

The first day of our schedule arrives.  We are poised.  Mom is excited and motivated to take on the days ahead!  The schedule has been gone over, checked and rechecked.  By the end of the first couple of hours, it becomes very apparent something’s amiss!

I knew that something was wrong when Emily came to me and said, “Mom, you forgot my SOS.”  Ok.  I could deal with that minor oversight.  Another child came to me and said I had forgotten to schedule them for a bathing!  Hmmm  Later, Elizabeth came to me and said, “Mom, you forgot my SOS, but put me down for reading three times.” (Poor girl. Imagine that! What a rough schedule when reading is your very favorite thing to do in life!)

Of course, I got the usual complaints, “Mom, can you reschedule us to feed and care for the chickens at, say, 7:00?  6:30 Is too early.  “No, sweetie.  If I did that, then you couldn’t eat breakfast.”  “Mom, I don’t like that my ‘free time’ is scheduled.  It doesn’t feel free if it’s scheduled.”

Back to the drawing board…or in our case, Excel.  I work our MOTH in Excel.  Since there are so many of us, it seems to work well.  Some great ladies at the Titus2 forum, since closed to any ol’ yahoo, helped me out to learn how to monkey with the cells to get them to conform to my likeness. At least that is the hope.  In the past, I color-coded everyone, but this year, I am trying something new by color-coding times in which a person is on a computer in order to keep it all straight! It also helps that each of our computers have names.  My computer is fondly called “Mother” or “Mothership.”  Since the other two computers came from our office, we lovingly named them after the people who used them, “Darren” and “Valarie.”

I finally made the unfortunate decision to delete Abigail (1) and Jayden (2) off the schedule since we were hanging off the edge of the paper and I couldn’t find my tape to print more pages to put together like a puzzle.  I didn’t want to attempt “landscape,” for this old brain of mine just couldn’t handle further confusion.

Well, after a week of stumbling through my first draft of the final schedule, or was that the final draft of the first schedule… I sat down and revamped it once again.

Of course, there is an exception to every perfect schedule and our exceptions are those of Thursdays when one son has guitar lessons, every other Wednesday, two sons work in the morning, they just began a job each afternoon at a neighbors “until the snow starts flying”, Monday’s Daddy’s home, so we have to remember that we may not always follow schedule on Mondays…shall I continue with the “exceptions to the rule?”  Of course there’s sick babies, and sometimes, sick mama’s.

We used to have a “loose” schedule.  Up by 8 o’clock, chores and fed by 10 o’clock then start school until lunch, finishing in the afternoon.  When baby number 9 was on his way, I knew a few things had to change:  One, we needed curriculum that freed me up a bit, and two, we needed more order and discipline in our lives.  However, many other benefits have come from this schedule:  I can make sure we are doing everything Daddy wants us to get done in a day, if laundry is sitting there, I am assured it will be taken care of “in it’s time.”  You know the old saying, “A place for everything and everything in it’s place?”  Well, using this MOTH schedule is like that.  We could say, “A time for everything and everything has a time.”

Tags: Abby, Anne, Ben, Bethy, Emily, Eric, Family, Jay, Joe, MOTH, Organization, schedule, school