Malachai's Chart, click for larger view

They each have one customized to their needs, but they are all similar. I used her perpetual calendar to save myself some design time and just dropped in my own text. It was pretty easy and I guess I could have used any old calendar layout, but this had the “check boxes” (the date box) and everything already done.

Et voila! Print it out, stick it in a dollar store picture frame, hang it on the wall, give your kid a dry erase marker and it’s their new favorite way to keep track of their allowance!

Well, for my kids anyway. Their allowance is now 100% dependent on how filled out their chart is and how accurately it’s filled out. Mama isn’t stupid. She knows what you do all week long. She just wants to make sure you know what you do all week long.

Time with mom is scheduled, because our week is just that busy. I like to make sure I get one-on-one time with everyone, even if it’s just for an hour while we do something else. Dorian (11) makes dinner with me on Friday, so he is “excused” from tidying his bedroom that night. Mal gets me on Saturday, so he gets to skip tidying that night. Esh gets me on Sunday. It’s totally nice to catch up with my kids, find out what they are into this week and what they want to be into next week (or next month or next year).

Do I freak out if something doesn’t get done? Nope. Sometimes shit just happens, and that’s ok. It’s the beauty of being flexible, but the stuff in the boxes is the minimum expected stuff. The stuff under the boxes is mostly all extra.

Our group won gold for their age group (over all 5 – 8 ) and first place for their dance/size/age group, which is phenomenal considering most of our group is barely six (and a couple that are five, and a couple that are 7) and they were exhausted and it was the first time out for all but three of our eight. Phenom indeed. Oh, and they *might* make it onto the upcoming episode of Dance Moms. How exciting.
Oh, did I mention we had to wait around till something like 7 PM for the awards ceremony? Oh yah. We played twister. We ate. We ran. We rested. We shopped. And then around 8/8:30 we packed it in and headed home. We dropped our passengers off at their home and I decided “daddy is still at work… work is on the way home… let’s visit daddy!” So little miss raccoon eyes and I swung by the shop and hung out for a bit. We made it home around 10 PM. Then we took off the make up, and fed the bellies and crawled into bed. I bet there was more, but really, who needs more?

It took me all weekend to recovered. Kudos to those who had to be there both days. I am decidedly not looking forward to then. Maybe E won’t be participating in Company by then… but I’m not holding my breathe.

No photos please, my raccoon eyes aren't photogenic

]]> http://quirkymom.com/2012/01/29/we-got-the-hollywood-vibe/feed/ 0 http://quirkymom.com/2012/01/28/wow-i-kind-of-dropped-the-ball-on-my-plans/ http://quirkymom.com/2012/01/28/wow-i-kind-of-dropped-the-ball-on-my-plans/#comments Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:53:01 +0000 azxure http://quirkymom.com/?p=40 I haven’t stopped running this month! I know you know how it is. Whether your kids number zero or twelve, you probably don’t have time to stop and breathe, let alone inhale the lovely roses. This week I am going to try and set aside a half an hour a day to do just that. I don’t mean the half hour I spend reading and replying to emails or the half hour I spend in the carpool line (where I often read and respond to emails as well!) but a solid half hour where all I do is read something of my choice or maybe even nap! An uninterrupted half hour. Beautiful, if only it works out that way.

I have anywhere from one to two hours a day where I am alone, but I usually reserve them for catching up on work, cleaning, menu planning or something else for the “house” (read: not something selfish just for me). I’m all over this experiment, especially this week, because my next almost three months are full of booked-solid weekends. Kenahora! I get chills just thinking about it.

So, 30 minutes reading. Or gardening. Or drawing. Or something that is selfishly self-indulgent. What do you do that qualifies?

Competition season has started and we are off to Hollywood Vibe tomorrow. Now, if you are unfamiliar with Hollywood Vibe, it’s a weekend long convention that runs classes and competitions. My little one is in the “mini” category, so she (thankfully!) only goes one day, but what a long day it is! We’ll be up no later than six tomorrow morning (no big deal some of you may say, but she has a hard time rolling out of bed by 7:45 most mornings… so do I!) and we won’t be home until probably close to ten at night.

Today my day will be filled with packing up her makeup case, costume, extra clothes, her dance bag, curling & cutting her hair piece, last-minute rehearsals, it just goes on and on and yes, on. It’s now hours after I started this post. I have a quick run to CVS to make. My hair piece will not curl. Hopefully they have something close to matching that will be good enough just for tomorrow. The suitcase is packed. It’s overkill for one costume *but* it’s also holding the makeup box, all the shoes, jacket &pants… everything really *and* it should free up an arm (or two is E can pull it!)

I don’t even want to think about it.

Have I mentioned I took one dance class in my entire life? When I was maybe four? So last year I was a hot lost mess. This year I’m on the ball. This year is going so much smoother. I love this year. My little one is taking four classes this year, which is no means a lot, really, considering some of those girls are there from nearly open to close four and five days a week. It’s a lot to me though. Some weeks I feel like I never see my boys, and part of me goes “better to not see them than to drag them all over creation attending dance things where they will be bored to death” and part of me goes “but… but… we miss them we does!” (part of me is Smeagol on occasion) I think Sunday will bring some intensive family time doing something or other. Well, in between Hebrew school & music classes.

Last year I used the Listography planner and it was a hit. This year I tried to use a plain old Mead school planner and it’s a complete bust. I don’t know what the appeal is about Listography, but I suspect I am on my way to purchase a 2012 version. (I am actually trying another option this week, but Listography is on my mind… I <3 lists – they are scattered all over my home.)

This month I am cheating and using Meals by the Week, which I do not get a kick back from, sadly, and I love it! I don’t love all the meals, but I do love that I can adjust it to feed 8 without trying to convert my measurements *while* I am cooking. (I regularly feed anywhere from six to eight) I love that it gives me my shopping list all together without it taking me an hour to do it by hand.Last week I brought my iPad to Publix with me and made it through the store in under an hour. I should have enough on hand in the house to prepare next weeks menu without needing another trip out. Exciting times people!

There are some other excellent places around the web to get a free monthly  menu plan. Erica over at Confessions of a Homeschooler puts together an amazing plan every month that includes breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. She even offers it to download, for free, in both editable word doc and pdf format. It even links to recipes she’s posted in her blog. Genius.

I’ve got a million recipes. I’ve got recipes I’ve cut out of magazines. I’ve got too many cookbooks to fit on my cookbook-only six foot bookshelf. I’ve got a nifty little program called Paprika that is on my desktop and on my iPad and it syncs and it’s got a calendar and shopping list too. I’m systematically adding all of the best-loved things I make. Meal planning, at it’s most basic, means I have everything I need in my pantry, fridge and freezer and everyone knows what to expect. I often change around nights, and some nights I order in just because, but for the most part it’s a predictable plan that keeps us from eating the same thing day in and day out.

I read this book for the first time probably around 1989/1990. I’ve reread it many times since then. I’ve gone so far as to push it on my kids, although none ever took a real interest. I decided tonight to start it, and lo and behold, all three listened with very few interruptions. I got through the authors preface and 25 pages before I called it a night and my nine year old told me he likes long books when he can listen to them. (which is funny only if you know him and know that he really does like to read on his own)

We learned about Sam Gribley’s first winter storm, and how he learned how to make a fire and caught fish and found his great-grandfathers nature-reclaimed farm.

My kids asked me to read more tomorrow night.

I have a hard time getting them interested in books I loved as a child. Perhaps due to some weird generation gap. Perhaps due to gender differences (I highly doubt this however). Perhaps it’s just that my kids have so much more going on electronically than I remember having and they just don’t read as much as I did. They certainly have an extensive library – full of my and my husbands beloved children’s books as well as brand new books. We can’t leave Barnes & Noble without dropping at least a hundred dollars. Books are definitely not in shortage around here. Yet, they seem to get left by the wayside and video games and the internet prevail.

I got off track there, sorry. I am super-excited to revisit this wonderful book with my kids and hopefully they will enjoy it as much as I remember enjoying it. A camping trip might have to be in the works once we finish it. I’ll let you know I’m a fairly suburban city girl at heart. I grew up in the burbs, but within fifteen minutes of a major city. The most “rustic” I ever really got was playing in the woods behind my house, which I suspect weren’t nearly as big as I thought they were and only divided our pre-planned neighborhood from some older houses on the other side. I went looking for a tree to live in though, just like Sam. My own children will have to make-do with their ready-built “tree” house that came with their swing set – South Florida isn’t really known for it’s old, or large trees. We’ve got Palm’s in the back yard. I loved the idea of running away to the woods as much as the main character of this book did though. A nice quiet, large, deserted forest still appeals to the curmudgeon in me.

Amazon.com Review

Every kid thinks about running away at one point or another; few get farther than the end of the block. Young Sam Gribley gets to the end of the block and keeps going–all the way to the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. There he sets up house in a huge hollowed-out tree, with a falcon and a weasel for companions and his wits as his tool for survival. In a spellbinding, touching, funny account, Sam learns to live off the land, and grows up a little in the process. Blizzards, hunters, loneliness, and fear all battle to drive Sam back to city life. But his desire for freedom, independence, and adventure is stronger. No reader will be immune to the compulsion to go right out and start whittling fishhooks and befriending raccoons.

It was kind of cleansing to put away so many memories. Births and Deaths. New friends and old. My “baby” is almost seven now. I kept a blog roughly from 2000 through 2011. I hadn’t posted a single thing yet this year and it was just calling out for me to start over.

So before I start down memory lane, I just wanted to say thanks for sticking with me and I hope my newest incarnation of this keeps your attention. I’m really hoping to have more art and less bitching this time around.

Yah, not exactly life-altering, but we all get there one step at a time.