Our Morning Routine (And How I Shifted Responsibility for my Kids to my Kids)

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is the way it has relaxed our mornings. I never have to wake the baby up to take the kids to school and there is no hurried packing of lunches or frantic searches for matching shoes. (I remember those mornings well from last year when we went to a traditional school 2 days a week...yes even 2 days a week stressed me out. I have a very low threshold for being stressed out by parenthood.)

Nowadays we don't actually HAVE to go anywhere in the morning, which is great, but early on in the year I discovered that by the time breakfast was over, I already felt behind on the day. The kids would run off to play and I was left staring at the kitchen mess. After straightening the kitchen I would go in search of the kids and pass three messy unmade beds along the way before finally locating the PJ clad  crew by the scent of either their not-so-fresh morning breath or not-so-fresh diaper. Yikes.

By the time I was done supervising basic hygiene I was worn out and irritated and not exactly the inspired teacher I had planned to be when I got out of bed that morning.

Y'all know I am all about the kids' taking responsibility for themselves, so I went on a mission to impose order on our morning routine. I wanted to distribute more responsibility onto the kids' shoulders and also free myself up to get ready for the day. (If I am still in PJs by 10am, I have been known to declare it "PJ DAY!" and turn on Magic School bus for two or three episodes hours. Fun for a day but supposedly not a great "long-term educational plan" for my four budding scholars.)

Over the past year we have finally fallen into a somewhat predictable morning routine that looks like this:

• Mom wakes up, works out and/or has quiet time. 
• This is paramount to my day. I do the Kayla Itsines BBG program 3 mornings a week and on those days, I have an abbreviated quiet time afterwards. On my off days, I still get up before the kids and stumble to my sacred space for Bible reading/prayer and some meditative time. I am not one who can wake up pleasantly to tiny humans demanding my attention. I wake up pleasantly to coffee and Jesus. If I slack off on the early wake-up call, I regret it by 8am. Not optional for me. 


• The kids arrive in the kitchen for breakfast. 
• Most mornings I offer them eggs or oatmeal, they counter with a demand for cereal and/or pancakes and we compromise on Eggos slathered with peanut butter. 


• After breakfast the kids (and I) do our "High Five" tasks. 
• This was a genius little idea I got from fellow blogger and friend, Sally. The kids have five tasks they have to complete before getting a high five from Mom. This combined with our chore chart have truly changed our mornings. What's on the list? 
• Make your bed
• Eat breakfast
• Brush your teeth
• Get dressed
• Do your chore 
• The kids actually LOVE this and it saves me from having to go over the same list of to-dos again and again. Once they get their high five, the kitchen has (somewhat) recovered from breakfast and we are all (mostly) ready to tackle the day. 

Our chore chart still looks like the one from this post. I simply looked around in the morning and picked 3 things I was tired of doing that I knew the kids could handle. For us, those are Feeding the Dog, Sweeping Under the Table and Emptying/Loading the Dishwasher. Once they tackle those things and I put up the breakfast fixings, the kitchen looks semi-clean. At least clean enough that I am not stressed out every time I pass by it until lunch.

I love that I am not hounding them with a list of things that need to be done and they are not making a new mess while I'm trying to clean up the one from breakfast. 

Now it's your turn: what does your morning routine look like? Have you found any little tricks that make it run more smoothly? (If so, share please. #thankssomuch) Would you say you dread the morning routine or do you embrace it?!

How I'm Planning to Work Myself Out of a Job (aka How to Get your Kids to Help Out Around the House)

I read the following online last week: Sometimes we are moms who do too much because we have kids who do too little. Make it your goal to work yourself out of a job. 

To whoever had that brilliant thought and posted it on the grand inter web might I say to you....#challengeaccepted.

The combination of four little kids + homeschooling means that our home is ground zero for chaos and destruction every. single. day.

This little guy is the chief culprit. I could spend an entire day just following him around cleaning up the debris he leaves in his wake. One thing I am constantly preaching to anyone who will listen is that having lots of kids is a huge blessing because it finally overwhelms you into admitting you cannot do everything (though you never could) and that you need some help (though you always did). 

Around here help looks like house cleaners that come 2x a month and these little munchkins taking some accountability for the wear and tear they inflict upon the household. For about a year now some form of a chore chart has been on the fridge and our current chart looks like this. 

Gosh Katie who did you get to illustrate this thing? I know it's pretty awesome. I am in fact for hire, just give me a call.  But hey, simple works. 3 chores, 3 kids. They rotate daily, so I just move their magnet up and down the line.

Feeding the dog - seriously, I have enough mouths to feed around here.

Sweeping the floor - the amount of crumbs that cover the floor after one meal is mind-boogling. I thought having to sweep might incentivize the kids to minimize their crumb-making, but so far no luck. Whatever kids, it's your life.

Emptying the dishwasher - I am great at filling it up and pushing the green button that makes it go. Emptying it out? Not so much. Kids to the rescue! Even Ben at age 3 is completely capable of stacking plates, bowls and cups on the counter below the cabinet they belong in. Anything in a lower cabinet they all know how to put away flawlessly. Even though this is the job that takes the longest, I can see in their eyes a real sense of pride when they finish. This isn't some fluff chore, this is REAL work. 

There is nothing sacred about these chores in particular, they were just ones I was finding myself annoyed by. I also chose activities that all take place in the kitchen and are somewhat related to meal-times, thinking they would be easy for me to enforce and supervise. We are all together at breakfast and dinner and that is the time when the dog needs to be fed, the floor needs to be swept and (typically) there are clean dishes awaiting a nice home in the cabinets.

We do pay the kids for these chores. Each kid gets 25 cents on Saturday if they did their chores throughout the week. 75 cents a week for never having to feed the dog, empty the dishwasher or sweep the floor seems fair enough to me. The kids are also required to do other things simply for the privilege of living here. These include brushing their teeth, making their beds, putting away their laundry and cleaning up the playroom and their bedroom (yes singular as in, the three big kids all share one bedroom) at the end of the day. 

So tell me, how do you handle the chore thing? What did your parents make you do as a kid? Are you interested in working  yourself out of a job?


P.S. Check out the new pictures on the FAMILY page at the top of the blog!!  If you're reading this in your email, click on over to the blog for some eye candy. So fun :)

How (& Why) We Squish 4 Kids in a 3 Bedroom House

Once upon a time B Daddy and I were newlyweds living the dual-income, no kids lifestyle, which meant eating out and wine that wasn't Two Buck Chuck -well let's be honest, it was still Two Buck Chuck, but there was more of it.

In the past 9 years we've added 4 kids and subtracted one income. Today (thanks to the grace of God and B Daddy's work ethic) we're living on slightly more than we made together 9 years ago. Again, plus 4 kids and adjusted for 9 years of inflation.

Our home is a major reason this math still works. Y'all, I LOVE our home. The location, the neighbors, the history, the us-ness of it. We love it for all the reasons I've written about before and the not-so-insignificant detail that we can definitely afford it. 

While we are still paying the bank each month for the privilege of living here, we have aspirations to be mortgage-less sooner rather than later. Therefore all six of us are squeezed in a 1700 square ft, 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house and we plan to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

Bringing home the first two babies really wasn't a big deal - they each got their own room across the tiny hall form us and life proceeded as usual. When #3 came home things got interesting.

April 2012 - our third kid in three years is scheduled to arrive. I am in full blown panic mode for months. No one I knew had kids who shared rooms. Or multiple children who required naps at the same time. Everyone asked us when we were moving. Making the decision to put a toddler bed and a crib into the same room had me up at night debating the goodness of God. But we did it because we couldn't find a solution we liked better and it was...fine.

Here's how it worked:

Night time: the first weeks we played musical beds with our newborn and 16 month old. There was a crib in the nursery and a crib and a toddler bed in the "toddler room." We would put our 16 month old and our 3 year old down in separate rooms and when it was time for the baby to "go down for the night" (ha!) we would move our 16 month old into the crib in the toddler room and put the baby down alone in the nursery.  It was a bit of a pain, but once baby #3 was sleeping through the night most of the time we stopped the musical bed routine and just had the boys (a 3 yr old and the newborn) in one room, and our toddler daughter in the other. There were a few hard nights at the beginning when the baby would wake up and cry and I'd have to race in to scoop him up and nurse him in the living room, but since #3 truly starting to sleep through the night they rarely, if ever, woke each other up in the middle of the night when they were sick or fussing.

Nap time: Our 3 year old transitioned to napping in our master bedroom. We'd have one kid in each bedroom and I just stayed away from the back of the house. Important detail: everyone has sound machines.

December 2013 - we found out we were expecting #4 and bought bunk beds for the boys' room.

July 2014 - New Kid was born and he slept alone in the nursery. The other 3 kiddos slept in the bunk beds and the toddler bed in the "Bunk Room"

2015 and beyond - The New Kid is sleeping through the night, so he and our 5 year old share a room. (This is the nursery I decorated thinking the baby and our 4 year old daughter would share) and my middle munchkins share a room (we've stopped calling it the "Boy Room" at last...now it's just the "Bunk Room.") We did this based on sleep schedules rather than gender - the 5 yr old is tired after a day with no nap and wants to sleep in (til 7:30am) so he and the baby are pretty similar with their nightly sleep needs. The middles still nap and they tend to chit-chat at night in their beds and are up at 7am on the dot.

I think once I let go of the notion that each room was for a particular set of kids and relaxed a little about who slept where, most of the stress went away.

As far as naps go, my 5 year old has mostly given them up (although he is napping in the playroom as I type this) so the bedrooms go to my 3 little nappers each afternoon and he and I work out of different rooms in the main part of the house for our "quiet time" each day.

OK, so that was A LOT of words on beds. All to say - managing lots of kids without lots of bedrooms is doable. It seems like an accepted misconception that more kids means you automatically need a bigger home. It takes some flexibility and these will probably not be the rooms our kids leave for college from, but for now the squish is worth it to stay in this neighborhood and in this home.

Did you share a bedroom growing up? Did you love it or hate it!? How many kids do you have and how many bedrooms is your house? Would you do the musical bed thing like we have?  

Love One Another

"Love one another, as I have loved you." 

John 15:12

Valentine's Day is tomorrow! I remembered much earlier this year than I usually do and decided to get fancy with some computer paper. That banner up there took me ten minutes and cost 0 dollars. My kind of decor. 

Flowers from B Daddy and handmade Valentines from the kids complete our household nod to the holiday. (Full disclosure: I did not make these with the kids. When my kids ask me to make crafts with them these days I usually pretend I can't find the glue sticks. We have an AMAZING sitter every Sunday night who has the endurance to tackle things like this with them. God Bless Her.)

The kids and I did roll out some cookies to pass around to their little buddies in the neighborhood.  They rolled and cut, I decorated. Clearly.

As far as what we're "doing" for Valentine's Day - B Daddy and I were supposed to be attending an event called Married Life Live at our church tonight, but all this ice means the event was cancelled. Luckily for us we had a day date set up for Saturday afternoon anyway.  Some friends are going to watch our kids for us and we'll return the favor for them in a few weeks...so far we've thrown out the idea of getting massages, getting tattoos and going rock climbing - we haven't settled on anything quite yet, but if we get tattoos you'll certainly find out about it.

Happy Valentine's Day! 

#2 This House is Home

Originally published 08/01/11

I never knew what to say when people would ask, "where are you from?" Our family moved around so much... there wasn't a city, a house, a state that I could answer them with. Wherever our family was became home and that was pretty good. It was a great family. And so it never bothered me much, that I didn't have a physical place I called "home".

Most of my mom's family live in the Savannah area and we'd go there for Christmas and Thanksgiving now and then growing up. I think I came to think of it as a sort of home. But then we'd be there and they'd have to give us directions to the Piggly-Wiggly or they'd talk about high tide and I'd realize Savannah wasn't home. It was their home, but it wasn't mine.

Georgia was the closest thing I ever had to a geographical home. I guess that's why I applied to three colleges here even though I went to high school in England and Illinois. I wonder if that's a universal thing, people gravitating towards home, or if it's just something I did out of a subconscious need to belong somewhere.

Once B Daddy and I got engaged we started looking for a home. This house was the 2nd place our realtor showed us, 2nd out of what was eventually dozens. B Daddy felt home right away. It took me much longer.  We came back twice with the realtor and brought our parents and our friends to see it before it was ours. We'd walk up on the back porch so they could peek in the windows and we'd imagine ourselves out there with a glass of wine staring into the trees.

B Daddy moved in before we got married and slept in the guest room. His grandparents gifted us a king size bed for a wedding present and I remember the day we went out and brought it home, strapped to the top of his green Ford Explorer. We finally got it down the tiny hallway and set it on the box springs and jumped on it like little kids.

On our wedding night we came back to this house and B Daddy picked me up and carried me over the threshold and down the same tiny hallway to our room for the first time ever.

That king size bed was where I lay the night we lost our first baby. And B Daddy held my hand and drove to the store at 11pm to get me Tylenol and I curled up in that bed and wept when it was over.

We came here -home- from the doctor's appointment telling us our second baby too was gone and that hot afternoon we knelt and planted red and white flowers in the front bed. To remember.

I cried the night we got in the car and left this home for the last time as a couple with no kids. I cried all the way to the hospital and wore sunglasses while I checked in so no one could see my ridiculous tears. And when we drove back down the street towards home three days later, the first thing I saw were the two signs on the black front door welcoming Elijah Brock home. 

Our daughter now sleeps in the guest room and so there is no guest room. And there is no half bath. And there is no playroom. And we'd like to fix up the porch and change out the fireplace and re-tile the master bath. Friends ask how long will you stay? Will you move when you have a third? Won't you need more space?

For now the answer is that we'll stay as long as we can and the kids will share rooms and they'll play outside instead of in a playroom. Because this place is rich in memories and this place is deep in love. The feeling of belonging is thick in the air.

This house is home.

My Favorite Pinterest Tricks for the Home

Pinterest can be awesome. And terrible. And everything in between (useful, a waste of time, inspiring and totally defeating.) I've made it a habit to only jump on Pinterest when I have something to look up (like a recipe) or when I'm actually pinning something to a board from a website I'm already on. This tends to minimize the negative effects of looking at all those beautiful (staged) pictures. Along the way I have come across some absolutely BRILLIANT things that have changed my life.

If you're in need of some life change this morning, here you go.

1. You're opening a banana wrong.

2. Vinegar, baking soda, Borax, Dr. Brommer's Castille soap and Dawn are pretty much ONLY cleaning agents you need for your home. Windows, floors, counters, clothes, babies' bottoms - done.

3. Everything is prettier in a mason jar.

4. If you rinse your berries with a water/vinegar rinse (1 part vinegar: 5 parts water) they last WAY longer. (See #2 above)

5. Cooked chicken breasts can be shred perfectly in your Kitchen-Aid mixer. No lie. I didn't believe it either. Changed my life that right there did.

6. Spraying guacamole with a fine mist of olive oil/ oil will keep it green longer.

7. Making salads ahead of time for the entire week in mason jars is pretty, healthy and smart. Win win WIN.

Pinterest can definitely lead you astray as well. I have experienced some epic fails - most notably in the baking department. Never fall for the cookie recipe that looks epically indulgent and claims to be low-calorie and full of fiber. FAIL. My latest failure was the pin that claimed cleaning your blender was as easy as filling it with soapy water and turning it on. Not true my friends. Not true.

Now it's your turn - what tip/trick/pin has changed your life?

Small House Love

The baby naps in our closet. There's no formal living room. Our guests use the same bathroom that our little boy uses, which means...well you know what that means if you've ever seen a 3 year old pee all by his self. We live in a small house. There are five of us and a dog.

And we love it.

The neighbors thought we'd erect the For Sale sign shortly after we brought Sweet B home. When I started my pregnant plodding around the block a mere 7 months later, everyone asked - no really WHEN are you planning to move?

Yet here we are, crashing into each other in this house where everyone squishes and everyone shares. There's only one couch and one TV and one toilet that a toddler hasn't peed all over. 

In 2009, the average American home was 2,700 square feet. Ours is about a thousand square feet smaller than that. The size of the average American family is 2.6 people; so we're roughly twice the size in 2/3rds the space.  I know we’re not the only ones living small these days. Maybe you think you’ve outgrown your space. You don’t need a realtor to sell you on the virtues of a bigger place. One with a playroom. A jacuzzi tub. A walk-in closet. A real pantry.

I, however, feel the need to tell you how AWESOME small houses are. Yup, I’m going on the record to say that small houses are freaking awesome.  If we ever sell, the flyer in the front yard will proudly declare:

·     Only two bathrooms to clean!

·     Never haul laundry (or children!) up or down a flight of stairs again

·     Only 10 steps from your car to the kitchen. Unloading groceries is quick and easy!

·      No need for baby gates or baby monitors

·      Fewer rooms to decorate!

·      Each room serves a multitude of purposes

·      Children will share out of necessity – they might start enjoying it. Or at least tolerating it.

·      Low low utility bills!

·      One closet for two kids means less time spent putting clean clothes away.

·      No room for extra stuff means you’ll spend less money on stuff you don’t need anyway!

·      Kids can hear you from any room in the house. If you can't hear them, they're up to no good.

·      Less space inside means you’ll enjoy that beautiful front yard every day!

I’m rooting for the little house. The one that the House Hunters always seem to be leaving. We're not moving til the HOA tells us we've outgrown their household capacity limitations. 

Brown Thumb

I bought a houseplant today. With this addition the total number of plants in our home comes to...one.  I'm notorious for killing them. I wanted to go public with the addition so you can help me mourn in a few short weeks when it inevitably bites the dust.

Decking the Halls

This year I was determined not to spend a penny on Christmas decorations. Well, besides the money I've already spent buying fabric to make stockings for the kids. (Update: that is SO not happening in the next 7 days.) So given that restriction, we have a half-lit tree (curse you lights that go dark in the middle of the night!) a half-lit garland around the front door and several other half-decorated rooms in the home. But I'm going to show you my newly decked halls anyway.

I just wasn't feeling the tree skirt we've had for the past seven years so I begged my sister to loan me these coffee sacks she had laying around her basement. Score!

Even if it's only 2/3 lit up now, there is something magical to me about walking out of my bedroom in the dark winter morning and catching a sight of this twinkling tree. It ain't fancy (exhibit A: coffee sacks above...) That's not really how we roll. Ours is covered in meaningful and handmade ornaments from mine and B Daddy's childhood as well as a rapidly growing contingency of sticker-laden and crayon-adorned construction paper beauties by Squirt and Sweet B.

Our stockings are hung by the chimney with care - only 4 this year because I bailed on the stocking project. (But my fabric is SO cute, maybe I'll show you in March or April.) Blue Eyes will have to share. Seeing as how the only thing in his stocking will likely be a toothbrush, that should work out just fine. 

I LOVE having a mantle to decorate!! This is only our second year with a mantle and because the TV sits so low on the wall, I don't have room to go crazy, but the evergreen branches were free and I love the natural look. I always snag as many cast-offs as possible (with permission) from wherever we buy our tree and then scatter them around the house wherever we could use their amazing pine scent and Christmas cheer.

Our Christmas cards are hung from this shelf right above the couch where we can all see our sweet family and friends smiling back at us. I LOVE ME SOME CHRISTMAS CARDS. If you're reading this, please put me on your list and send me a card. I. love. them. They stay up year round to remind us how blessed we are and to remember to pray for y'all. I mean, you know you need it.

This little baby was a great-grandparent crafty gift FAIL. It looks okay up on a high shelf, but up close it's a hot mess. Ah well. We'll keep it and send pictures of the kids like we always do instead. 

Jingle bells on the playroom door help me keep track of the rug rats AND look festive. Bonus points.

Of course the nativity gets a special display spot front and center. This version is from Southern Living at Home. I have another Willow Tree nativity that is beautiful as well, but this year I lost my will to decorate a bit and the Southern Living one made it out of the attic first. Does anyone have a kid friendly nativity? I was dying for this Little People version, but $57.95?? Cough cough. I think my kids can just continue to look and not touch for a while.

Christmas books brighten up and "seasonalize" the bookshelves.

 Some rosettes made out of scrap linen fancy up this fake wreath just enough for the dining room.

I love Christmas cards so much I keep and display ours from years' past in a shadow box. What happened to those little babies!?! 

Whether your Christmas tree is real or fake, a 12 foot behemoth or a table-top tiny, full of twinkling lights or maybe only 2/3 lit...we hope your holidays are merry and bright this year! 

Turning Billys into Built-Ins

The bookcases are finished! We're still tweaking the overall arrangement...but it's a bookshelf, it's meant to be in constant motion as a matter of principle.

We started with this strange little alcove in the corner of the living room. I have no idea what its intended purpose was in 1979. When we bought the house it was a wet bar, which we found out was a DIY job probably done in the early 80s. Within a few months of moving in we ripped out the wet bar and shoved a console in the space to hold our 29" rockin' tube TV. When Uncle Tonny came to demolish our fireplace and put in the doors leading out to the porch (now playroom) he removed the molding and extra drywall that had been installed by the wet bar folks. We immediately realized that bookcases would be a perfect use for the space.

Trouble is, we did the playroom first and found ourselves out of money for unnecessary aesthetic house renovations yet again. For the next year this little space was home to a ladder shelf and a random table that made me cringe each time I saw them (basically all day long).  I finally put Pinterest to work and found this blog post from Centsational Girl with her fantastic solution: turn Ikea's "Billy" bookcases into a built-in for a fraction of the cost. Within a few days, we were DIYing by candlelight again.

Evening 1: Assemble Billys and push into place.

Day 2: Return to Ikea and purchase the height extension units we thought we needed, but weren't entirely sure about. Bonus: Sweet B and I got to share an Ikea cinnamon bun for our trouble.

Day 3: Invite in-laws over for "football" and enlist their help cutting trim to size and pulling assorted cables through.

Day 4: Nail trim pieces into place, make trip to Home Depot to buy supplies like extra trim, can lights, caulk and Frog tape.

Day 5 - 7: Admire the partially-completed view and rest. (Please note the in-progress slipcover as well in this picture. We like to tackle multiple big projects simultaneously around here.)

Day 8: Invite father-in-law over again to wire the nook with small can lights. :) 2nd trip to Home Depot for supplies.

Day 9: Decide to paint the backs of the shelves a mustardy gold color...3rd trip to Home Depot to purchase sample pot of Torchlight by Sherwin Williams.

Day 10: Ponder color choice.

Day 11: Decide to go for it. 4th Home Depot trip for more paint. Paint the backs of the shelves while watching Hocus Pocus. (In all it only took 2 sample pots, less than $6.00!)

Day 12: Corral all our books into one location and start the never-ending process of arranging and re-arranging. 

I love how the bookcase helps draw your eye up and emphasizes the height of this room. It also balances out the hallway opening on the left side of the room.

A place at last for my collection of classic novels! The painting is a memento from our honeymoon in Italy. 

My mom lent me her collection of classic reads, the "Junior Deluxe" Editions...I have loved the look of these books since I was a little girl.

We store our limited DVD collection in some clementine crates from last winter. I love the color and style of these crates. And they were...FREE! My favorite.

And since this is a highly functional bookcase, the bottom two shelves are filled with children's books, board games and toys. I absolutely LOVE having all the kids' books in one spot and it helps remind us that this family room should be used for reading and playing games at least as much as it is used for watching TV. 

We spent under $200 total on this project - and I think the impact it has in the room makes it one of our biggest "bang for your buck" projects to date.