I used part of my precious peace and quiet time to try and come up with a schedule for our family.  I had actually bought the Managers of Their Homes kit about 2 years ago, when I was expecting baby #4.  I was already feeling overwhelmed by having 3 children 5 years old and younger and I was homeschooling.  Well, like with most of my good intentions, I had failed to actually implement a schedule. I mean, we have always had a routine, kids do thrive with consistency, but a true schedule like the Maxwell’s plan out is something altogether different.  When I first read about scheduling everyone in the family (mom included) in 30 minute increments for the whole day – I just about laughed my butt off.  There was NO way that I could figure out what everyone should be doing and then also have to actually enforce it.

Then, I watched a million hours of the Duggars and decided to drag my book back out and spend several hours with my laptop figuring it all out.  Here’s the schedule I created. As we have begun to implement it, I have already been able to see some changes that need to be made but it feels like easy solutions because all I have to do is plug in different activities at different times.  Instead of having that ‘I couldn’t get it all done’ feeling each day, when we have followed our schedule I can tell myself that “yes, we did have a productive day!”

As far as getting the kids on board, it has taken a lot of pressure off of me because when they are wanting me to play a game or just spend time with them then I can say “what does the schedule say we should be doing right now?” and “that’s a great idea! Let’s do that when we have our time together at…” They like knowing that if it’s on the schedule we will try our best to get it done.  Since we now have a video game in our house for the first time (a Wii) it was really important to me that the use of it didn’t get abused.  I think it’s tempting at times to just plug your kids into a video game or tv show just to get a break. I don’t want my kids’ brains turning to mush.  I think I was actually a mush brain myself when I was a kid.  I used to come home in the afternoon and watch hours of tv until my parents got home from work.  I think the only thing that saved me from becoming a total mush brain was that I LOVED to read. I still do.

So for now, we are beginning our second semester a little behind on our “days” but we are excited about knocking out the rest of the year because we have a trip to California planned! More on that later…(=