Manic Monday

Oh my, have I mentioned how much I love rainbow order? This arrangement served no purpose other than to make my heart happy!

If you're anything like me, Mondays are the most crazy and ambitious day of your week. For me, the start of a new week is important and gets me motivated to start new projects (that often go unfinished), clean the house (which is quickly de-cleaned by the other members of my household), and sit the kids down for "school" (a word that is thrown around quite casually here and an undertaking that I usually last 3 days maximum).

I recently ordered a new book from Amazon (using my Swag Bucks Amazon.com gift card rewards!) called The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections
by Amanda Blake Soule. I am really enjoying it and have decided to read it through once and then go through it again but take the time to implement and document the ideas, activities, and journey of enriching my family's life through creative means. I consider myself a creative person but I am not very motivated and I tend to be rather lazy. However, that does not mean that I don't care about my family or what they are learning and experiencing in their everyday lives, I just need motivation to get into it and that is what reading does for me. So I'm hoping that I can inspire some others to do the same. So look for that to come in the near future. I already have lots of ideas swimming about in my head!

So anyway, for today I just want to share with you what a typical (if there is such a thing around here) Monday looks like in our home.

We don't go by any real schedule. Unless there are appointments to go to (Jenna goes to speech therapy twice a week) or activities planned (Awana, Girl Scouts), we pretty much hang out and do whatever all day. Some days I am more organized and have things planned and other days I am pretty relaxed and the kids spend most of their time playing, drawing, reading, watching TV, or whatever else suits their interest at the moment. When winter closes us indoors we can get pretty exhausted trying to think of things to do (something I'm trying to improve upon daily) but now that the weather is warmer the kids are able to be outside as much as they like and I am so happy for that. The only thing missing is a fenced in yard so that I could let Alex play outside without having to stand next to him the entire time so that he doesn't run out into the street (which, of course, seems to be the only place he wants to go when he's out there)!

Today I started the day with some computer time because I need that in the morning. I'm not a morning person. Not at all. So I usually try to start out with 30 minutes of checking email and Facebook and a couple of blogs before I get going on stuff. This morning I was happily surprised to find my brother messaging me on gmail so I got to chat with him for a bit, which is very rare.

After I get everyone their breakfast I start up a load of laundry and then work on one room of the house, usually the kitchen or living room because they are the most messy and lived in areas of our home. I put on some good music (today it was Sing Over Me) and get to work.

By the time I get through with that it's time for lunch and then Alex takes a nap. This is when I get to spend some quality time with the girls and today we made the most of a rainy day by painting with watercolor, making friendship bracelets, and getting some little things done for the dollhouse (which I've been promising them for about a year now that we would decorate).

Their still life assignment was to paint Jenna's new fish, Wave, in his flower vase habitat.

You can see the blue fish Marah painted. Looks pretty good!

Jenna took this very seriously and had a nice, relaxing time with it.

Creating a friendship bracelet for her new friend, Camryn.

Marah's bracelet ended up being a necklace length because she had a hard time with making a tight braid. Still, she enjoyed the process.

Practicing with the focus on macro mode. Marah didn't realize I was trying to take a photo of her finger and she just wanted to make silly faces!

Seriously, how pretty is the embroidery floss? Makes me want to start a new embroidery project... maybe tomorrow!

We had some fun talking about underwater adventures and played a little math game and then the kids went outside to play and get lots of exercise. I took a nap. Naps are nice.

Then it's crazy time as we have supper (pizza night on Mondays), play some more, watch a little TV, take baths and get to bed. A nice story time and it's lights out and finally I get a little time to get some work done.

Tomorrow I'll start again with more goals and ambitious plans that will likely not all get done but I'm taking it moment by moment and just enjoying the time I have with these wonderful people. God has greatly blessed me and I don't want to forget that.

Make each day count!