Keeping My Head and other treasure

My lovely, creative-parenting sister wrote an article about how she plans to keep things cool at her place this summer. Go ahead, peek at her ideas, I'll wait. You won't be sorry. (Then you can cruise through some of our family camping photos)

Back? Let me just say that I'm so blessed to have such a great resource in my sister. She has been working with kiddos for many years & she is the girl I call when I'm stuck on a kid-conundrum. Her input has shaped my parenting in beautiful ways. If you're not already, you should be a little jealous of this sweet sister I have. If you're curious, leave a comment on her blog, she loves to share her parenting ideas. Little sister plug.

Keeping Cool: We've set up the pool, I'm setting up more camping dates, and reserving my mornings and evenings for gardening, or bluntly put, weeding. I'm making up fruit smoothies and freezing them into popsicle molds for the sweetest treats.

I've been a mom for nearly 10 years. I'm a slow learner, I guess, but I feel that I'm finally beginning to get this summer-ing thing down. I have discovered some treasures, some anchors that help keep me sane in and out of the school year.

Routine, simple or complex is necessary when we're lounging around the summer house. I'm a type S person (S for Spontaneous), so I like to keep a very, very loose schedule. But I have a little checklist for the days of summer (that we're around home) to help keep me grounded. It looks like this:

Bible

What’s for dinner?

Where’s your laundry?

Bible and Memorize with Kids

Teeth

Eat

Play/Project

Eat

Read

What’s for dinner?

Where’s your laundry

Rest

Dinner

Play

Read

Bedtimes

Teeth

Chillin’ with My Hubby

Notice I'm reminding myself to do key things...laundry and dinner? That's because I'll seriously forget otherwise. No joke. Dinner? What dinner?? (Keeping Cool: Today I've got the crock pot going on the deck to keep the hot outside).

Treasure for me: simple, relaxed, routine.

By having a bit of an outline for the days *I remember to do the things that are important to get done, even in the sloppy summertime. *Also, the boys have light structure rather than sitting around all day wondering what to do. *Maybe my favorite part is that I still get some good face time (Bible Study, reading aloud) with them. Honestly, if I don't stop and see my kids, they could run around and play all day without any interaction.

That is just too, too sad.

You'll notice the "tooth brushing note," this reminds me that I'm working with the boys on good cleaning habits. They've been slacking some, and I just have to stay on top of things with my big boys. I wrote it down so I won't forget.

I love summer as much as the next mama, I love the sunshine, the way it glorifies everything it falls on, the chaos and laziness of it all. But I'm rattled by too much sloppiness so this works for me.

A little order in chaos, beauty in summertime.