Busy days with kids!

Good morning everyone!

Today I'm sitting here at my dining room table, breakfast and tea in front of me, blogging at 8:50!! That is a first!!! There is reason for this though... My mom is working with a friend today, so I'm babysitting today. I have a crazy day today! Babysitting, gym day, going to the mall with friends, then babysitting other kids! It's a lot to wrap my mind around. But I'm feeling less stressed about it all than I was yesterday. Today I'm going to share some thoughts and tips about feeling less stressed on busy days; especially days being in charge of little kids!

When you wake up, pray! Pray for the day, for patience, (kids are really frustrating!) pray for peace when things go wrong in the day. I know that's one thing I struggle with. When one kid stops listening, it throws everything off! I tend to get really stressed out, then over react. And that's not ok!

Figure out exactly what is happening or needs to be done. Write out a list of the most important things, and there times if applicable. For example, I wrote a list and had all the start times of everything I'm doing today.

If you aren't motivated to get up in the morning, think of something you enjoy doing to do first thing when you get up. For me today, it was blogging while eating breakfast. I decided that I would get up, get dressed, and make breakfast, then I could sit down with my laptop and blog for awhile. Right now my siblings are watching kids shows on TV, so I am free to just blog and enjoy myself.

Coming to mind as I tell my little brother to sit down on the couch, if you tell a child to do something, make sure they do it. I told my brother to sit down and stop touching the TV, and I waited until he did. If kids think they can get away with anything, they will. Be firm, but gentle.

Try and get the most important tasks done first! Today, I have decided I'm not going to expect to get any schoolwork done, because it's just not going to happen. Instead, I will make sure I spend quality time with my siblings, and get any housework done that needs to be done immediately.

Realize that with kids, not everything is going to get done, and that is fine! Sure, it's not ok to just sit around being lazy, but understand that if you're a student, it's impossible to get all your work plus babysitting plus whatever else done.

And last but not least, just have fun! These crazy days of babysitting siblings will pass by quickly. Soon it will be you with your own kids. Just relax and enjoy these times, and don't worry if not everything goes according to plan. Take things as they come, and just go with the flow! (Even if that flow is the flow to losing your mind even faster.)

An awesome weekend!

Hey

I have had an awesome weekend!! There's nothing like a Friday night party with friends, followed by a sleepover :D My friends are the best! We played games, we laughed, we ate, (I got something in my throat and coughed for two minutes) we went outside in the wetness, ate candy, watched a movie, and danced around to Toby Mac and other artists!! In other words, it was an awesome party! (anyone who thinks home schoolers don't party, think again. We party hard, but in a good way!) After the party, I slept over at my friend's house. (same friend who hosted the party.) After we got everything cleaned up, we had tea with her mom, and had some great conversation. Then went “to bed” and talked for 2 more hours... Finally we went to sleep around 1:30. Needless to say, we were quite tired today!!

Later after I was back home, my mom, little sister, and I went shopping. Thrift stores are normally great, but didn't have so much success with what I needed today. Party because I wasn't in the mood to sort through racks and racks of clothes that weren't organized well at all. I did buy three scarves though, so that was nice!! (Seriously, don't pay 20 bucks for a scarf! Get one at the thrift stores for less than 5!)

Tonight, I started writing my NaNoWriMo novel! For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it was founded by someone on the cliffs of insanity. Oh wait, no it wasn't. But the person who found it might have suffered from insanity! (By the way, auto correct thinks I mean noncriminal. I assure you, us writers aren't criminals, no matter what may appear in our search histories!) NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. So basically, participants write as much as they can of a novel, without editing. The goal is to encourage people to just write, without critiquing too much. It's just to have fun, and get a story out of you! For people who want their writing published, it's an opportunity to work really hard to get the first draft out. I'm doing the young writers part of the program, with a word count goal of 20,000. That is just a brief summary of NaNo. It's really a lot crazier than that! I might write another post going into it more.

Anyways, that is what has been happening in my life this weekend!! Tomorrow will be lots more writing, and... studying for science and Bible tests on Monday... whoopdeedoo... I hope you are all having a great weekend!!