Chore Box

I don't know about you, but I am almost always behind on my chores. I spend my days cleaning, cooking, and playing with the kids. Most days when it's bed time I look around and think, "what exactly did I do today?" I like the house to be clean, I get stressed out faster when the house is dirty. Which lately is pretty much every day. So I've decided to get my chore box out. My mom told me about how she used this system way back when. I've used it before and it works so well. I just got out of the habit of using it. Now that I've got 3 kiddos making a mess during the week it's been near impossible to keep up. It's simple, and I promise that your house will stay cleaner doing just a little bit every day. No need to try to clean the house from top to bottom every day (which is what I have been doing lately). For one thing that's a lot of work, especially with kids around. With this system everything will get cleaned. You won't need to stress about it because you know it's in the box. Here is how it works:

I got his box at office depot, it's for index cards. Then I bought some calendar tabs, I couldn't find any index card sized ones, so I bought ones for a binder and cut them to the size I need. Next you need a stack of multi colored index cards. You're going to use 3 colors. Pick one color for the things you do every day. Here is my every day list:

-dishes
- wipe down counters
- wipe down appliances
- wipe off table
- sweep floor

Next make a list of the things you generally do in a week. Bathroom mirrors, toilets, sweeping bathrooms, laundry days, and so on. I like to spread my bathroom cleaning over two days. One day I'll do the counters and the mirrors, and the next I do the toilets and the floors. I don't know why, but for me it's way less over whelming when I spread it over two days. I also have a different load of laundry to do every day. One day for whites, darks, towels, Kaydences clothes, Nolans clothes, and sheets. I am always always behind on laundry. I hate laundry with a passion. Actually washing it doesn't bother me, just folding them and putting them away. And we all know laundry is NEVER done. Ever. It's hard to remember, but back when I was using my box I actually managed to stay on top of it. No more late nights folding piles and piles of laundry!

Okay, so for the third color pick things that only need to be done once or twice a month. For this one I have things like

-blinds
- light fixtures
-cleaning out the fridge
-cleaning the oven

You get the point. Some of these I do twice a month. Now let's put it together. Arrange your box by month and date. I keep the current month in front of the box, all of the others go at the back. Put your every day chores behind the tab for the first day you want to start, and then spread out your chores for the rest of the week. This way instead of a never ending list of things you have to do you have maybe 5 things to do. I don't do my chores all at once either. Usually I do all of my daily chores at one time, and the rest of the tings I need to do I pick a card when I have a few minutes. The kids are busy painting a picture? Wipe down the back door. They're playing with toys, I clean the mirrors. Now for your once or twice a month chores. Space them out through the entire month. Give yourself one or two a week. The best part about the once a month chores is that if you're having a bad day. Kids screaming, throwing up, grumpy, or whatever pick up the once a month card and move it to the next day. Don't move it more than once or you'll never do it. The point of this box is to make things easier so if moving your once a month chore is better for you than do it!

I've got my box organized again and I'm ready to roll come Monday. One of the biggest things for me is having the toys picked up, which I did NOT put in my box. I've been getting the kids to be more responsible with their toys, I usually have them pick up before rest time and before Ashley goes home. I didn't do a great job enforcing that this week and as a result my house is a serious mess. It's my fault for being lazy though.

I hope this helps some of you! I promise it works if you stick to it. Do a little every day and you will be surprised by the chance in your house after just a week.

*****I've just realized as I was using my chore box that I forgot to add how to keep the system going. Every day when you've done your daily chores take those cards and move them to the next days slot. As you finish your weekly chores move those to the correct slot for the next week. I take Sundays off chores, so if you give yourself a day off as well make sure you leave that spot empty!

Dinosaur Eggs

An update on how our Paleo transformation is going so far this week:

It's been seriously incredible. Kaydence and Nolan are both eating WAY more than they ever have before (like bottom-less pits) but also the requests for junk food have all but stopped. Even better they're finally drinking plain old water. I have always watered down their juice so it was mostly water and a little juice, but the other day Nolan had a (TMI) really nasty poop that consisted mostly of the juice he was guzzling all day. So I said Ok, no juice tomorrow. He asked for juice a few times and then that was it. That was yesterday, today he asked for water. For dinner tonight we had sausages and chicken cut up and cooked in my skillet. I added some bell peppers and an onion and we ate them wrapped up in lettuce sort of like a fajita. We had cantaloupe to go with it. At first the kiddos mostly ate the meat, but then towards the end of dinner Nolan started taking huge bites out of his plain old lettuce. No dressing or anything. I showed Sam and Kaydence looked too and decided that she wanted a few bites of lettuce as well. I feel great, better than I have in a while and it's only been a few days. Sam isn't loving it so much haha. He is not convinced about the whole "paleo thing" in his words. But he's trying!

We also made banana ice cream, which I've made (And loved) before. Today seemed like a good day to re-introduce the kids to it. They are currently on a banana kick. If you haven't made banana ice cream before you should try it! Slice and freeze a few bananas. We used 3 1/2. One for each kiddo to slice by themselves and the 1/2 because it was left over from lunch. Freeze them and then pop them into the blender. It's easier if you have a food processor, but I don't have one. I had to fiddle around with the settings for a while. Turns out that stir is the best option. It was creamy and oh so yummy. You can add strawberry, mangos, nut butter, or chocolate chips to it. I like mine plain though.

The girlies cutting their bananas. Nolan was cutting too, but he managed to be blurry in every picture I took during the ice cream party today. They were both focusing on cutting.

Doesn't that look amazing? Creamy and delicious! And you don't have to feel guilty about eating it hah!

We also made dinosaur eggs today. I made a batch before that were kind of hard, but I found a new recipe here. Basically it's just baking soda, water, and food coloring. In our case glitter too. I don't know if you're aware, but glitter makes pretty much anything more awesome. Unfortunately I didn't measure out how much I used of either. Add the water very gradually, you don't want it to be liquid. Just mushy and damp. Like so

The recipe also calls for black food coloring, which I don't have. I thought about adding all of the colors I do have, but I decided just to let the girls pick one each. They chose green and blue. 

Make a little pancake in your hand, and pop the dinosaurs inside. I used little ones I got from walgreens, I think you can find them at the dollar store too. Then put some more on top and mold it into an egg-ish shape. Ours looked mostly like blobs. I popped them in the oven for a while on the lowest temperature setting just until they dried out a bit. While they were in the oven we read our cool new National Geographic Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs. It was really fun, there is a question on each page like, "Would you rather be a meat eater or a plant eater?" Ashley said she wanted to be a meat eater because she likes meat. Kaydence gave me a "I would be a princess." So I said, "Well, what if you were a dinosaur?" and she said, "I would be a dinosaur princess. T-Rex, and I would eat the other princesses."

When they got bored with the book I filled up three spray bottles with vinegar and took them outside with the eggs. They were warm still so I picked them up and gave them each one. Playing with baking soda and vinegar is one of our favorite things to do. We also love spray bottles. It was a huge hit.

Our puppy Lady was very curious to see what was happening. She tried to eat the bubbles a few times, but she figured out they were nasty pretty quickly.

Nolan also tried several times to eat his. Apparently he doesn't mind the horrible taste of baking soda and vinegar. 

Paleo and Dinosaurs

We've decided to go Paleo for a while. If you're new to the term (I finally decided to figure out what all the fuss was about a few weeks ago) it means we're going grain/processed food free. We're going to do it for 30 days and see how we feel. After that we'll add some grains back in slowly. Sam has stated firmly that he can't do this for the rest of his life because he would miss cereal too much. I told him I would make him some Paleo approved granola. That didn't make him feel much better haha! Around the time that I had decided I wanted Sam and I to do it I started thinking about all the tummy aches Kaydence gets. And lately it seemed like they wouldn't eat anything but goldfish, animal crackers, and fruit snacks. I don't want my kids to grow up like that, I know I did and there isn't anything wrong with that. I want them to learn how to eat healthy at a young age with things like fruit snacks being a treat, not a snack. I guess I just want them to have a taste for healthy foods, and not chips. Like my awesome brother in law Jason. At first I thought it was crazy (in a good way) that he didn't eat a lot of the things I love to eat. I guess I am crazy now too.

Honestly I thought making this change was going to be really hard on the kids. You wouldn't believe how easy it was. I got a book on my iPad called Eat like a Dinosaur: Recipe & Guidebook for Gluten-free Kids written by The Paleo Parents.  It includes over 100 kid-approved recipes & projects free of grains, dairy & legumes. It includes cookies and things like that for occasional treats. Healthy cookies. There is a chapter for the parents, and then there is one for the kids. We read it for bedtime. Before we started I told them how excited I was about this cool book. If I am excited they usually are too. Happiness is infectious :) We read the book together and I asked Kaydence if she would help us to be better eaters. I told her that it was her job to make sure Mommy and Daddy didn't drink sodas anymore. (I'm still in mourning over the loss of my Diet Coke) Surprisingly the only thing she was sad about not having anymore are her soft crackers. Ritz crackers to the rest of the world. So I told her that we could still have things like that, but only as a very special treat. After that it was smooth sailing.

I also suggested that we learn about dinosaurs (again) this week since we are now going to eat like dinosaurs. Kaydence and Nolan both LOVED the times we have learned about dinosaurs in the past. When Ashley came over Monday morning we talked to her about the changes we have made too. She's having a little harder of a time about the lack of fruit snacks and animal crackers that I used to have. But  she has been happy to have apples and strawberries as snacks, so it's all good. Yesterday when we went to the pool instead of bringing bags of goldfish I packed strawberries, oranges, and cucumbers. We didn't last very long at the pool (the water was freezing and it was windy) but all of the snacks were gone before we left.


We went to grandma and grandpas new house this weekend. There is a spot with access to this little river right by them so we hiked down and played in the water. We found lots of frogs, a crawfish, and best of all these shell fossils! Kaydence helped me collect some of the ones we saw. (there was a ton)
I got them out on Monday and we looked at them and talked about where fossils come from. We read some dinosaur books and I gave them a magnifying glass to look at the fossils with.

Then we colored pictures from Nolan's dinosaur coloring book. I found a picture of a carnivore and herbivore and we talked about what they eat. They colored them and we talked about what a paleontologist is. I told them we are going to be paleontologists this week. I asked if that sounded fun and they all said yes! Ashley wasn't too sure about it though, she said dinosaurs are for boys. Once she saw that Kaydence was excited she decided it was okay to think dinosaurs are cool too. 

Doesn't that look delicious? I wish I had more, but I destroyed it. For lunch yesterday I told them I was making special noodles and meat for them. Ashley was very curious and came into the kitchen to watch me. I browned the steak bits and used a vegetable peeler to cut thin strips from carrots and zucchini. That was the "noodle"in my stir fry. I sliced an onion too. I tossed in some garlic, pepper, red pepper flakes, and ginger. I drizzled a little bit of soy sauce. (I realize that is not "paleo" but I still have a lot left and I hate to waste it.) It was SO good. Ashley ate two helping plus the fruit I gave them as a side. Kaydence and Nolan didn't eat as much, but they still ate their fair share. I ate all of the left overs for a snack in the afternoon.

Sleeping beauties. Completely worn out. This was a rare day when Kaydence actually took a nap. It was magical.

I hid some "dinosaur bones" on this page for them. I drew dinosaur bones with a white crayon and they painted over it to discover them. Not the best dinosaur bones you will ever see drawn, but they don't care. We gave them their own dinosaur names. Ashley wanted hers to be called the Ashley-o-saurus. Nolan was the Bubba-saurus-rex and Kaydence just wanted hers to be a T-Rex. 

I also got this awesome game for the iPad, the dinosaur zoo. It's cool just because of all the dinosaurs. Each one is different and when you touch it they do different things. The T-Rex growls and eventually roars at you. But there is one dinosaur that takes the cake, I won't spoil the surprise in case you get it, but one of the dinosaurs farts and poops when you touch it. You might be reading this and think, "Well, that's stupid." In fact its the greatest farting dinosaur ever! My kids think it's hilarious. Okay, so do I. Right about the time they were ready to stop playing the pooping dinosaur came along. Nolan walks around the house asking for dinosaur poop now. 

"I see saursaur poop?"

Fairy tale week part 1

Am I the only homeschooling Mom who is 90% sure that I'm not doing enough pretty much all day every day? We do a lot of things every day, but I still am wondering if what I do is enough. Hopefully I'm not the only one who is worried about that.

This week was busy busy busy. We did fairy tales this week. We spent our mornings at the pool all week. Then we packed lunch, nap, and learning into the afternoon. I'm thinking maybe next week we'll spend a little less time at the pool in the mornings. I think I'm going to break this up into two posts, because otherwise you would basically be reading a novel posing as a blog post.

Ashley's mom (Hi Megan!) checked us out a big book from the library with fairy tales. I have a few fairy tale books here, but this was nice because it was different.

On Monday I told them we were going to be reading fairy tales all week. So to start out we made fairy wands. Basically I printed a star and had them color it. Then we went a little crazy with glue and glitter.(that's what makes the magic) I taped them to drinking straws, because that's what I had. And we tied some ribbon to it.

Nolan got glitter and glue everywhere. 

When we finished I turned my Disney station on Pandora and the girls danced around for a while. Then they started playing fairies. Ashley was a water fairy, she had rainbow sparkling wings. Kaydence was a forest fairy, and her wings were hot pink. (obviously) I intended to have them sit down and help me write a story about their fairy adventures, but honestly they were having so much fun I just let them be. I didn't see them for most of the morning. While I was preparing them lunch they climbed into their fairy home for a nap.

That afternoon we took a break for Kaydence's reading lesson (I am using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons) and Ashley is crazy for counting so I brought out the dominos and we had a counting game with them.

We also spent some time cutting paper. They cute little pieces out and decided they were making "fairy fashions"

Nolan also wanted to cut, I let him try. He did not want me to help him or show him how to do it. I let him explore until he got bored. 

TUESDAY we did Jack and the Beanstalk. We read the story and came to the table to make our own beanstalks. We glued the magic beans to the bottom of the page. I helped them draw a beanstalk and they colored it in. Then I had them make the leaves for the beanstalk with their thumb prints! And we added glitter. (magic) I also let them watch Mickey and the Beanstalk. They got bored and went upstairs to play.

Plus we used my awesome chalkboard wall to make it a fairy tale theme. 

Rapulzles tower! We used watercolors to paint the back round. While they were doing that I cut a sponge up into rectangles. Then we used it to paint the bricks for Rapunzles tower. Neither of the girls were very happy that Flynn Ryder was not in the story. Ashley drew him in at the bottom of her page with Rapunzle. 

Check back tomorrow for Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White, which were two very fun days!

easiest ever DIY laundry detergent

Our first week with Ashley was kind of crazy! Crazy in a good way. I was sick for most of the week, but we still managed to have a pretty good time. I got REALLY behind on my chores though. So this morning I woke up with every intention of getting to work, instead I hung out with my friend (way better than cleaning) and went grocery shopping. Which I kind of count as a chore. And we relaxed and watched movies since Kaydence has my stomach ache now. I sort of fell asleep with Nolan trying to get him to nap and when I woke up Kaydence asked if I was finally ready to play yet. I felt kind of bad since she wasn't feeling well, but I also really wanted to clean my house. So I set her up with her dry erase numbers book and told her as soon as I was done I had a special project for us to do together. Laundry detergent is a special project, mostly because it's so easy. The kids can get involved and help me and I really need to get some laundry done. So here it is:

What you will need:

1-    3lb box of Baking Soda

1-    4lb box of Washing Soda

1 box of Borax (found on the laundry isle)

2 bars of Zote laundry soap (also on the laundry isle. It's always hard for me to find)

OPTIONAL:

1 box of oxiclean. I used this last time I made it, but I decided to leave it out this time to see if it made any difference. 

1 container of purex crystals, or something similar.  I like to use it because it adds a nice smell, but that's up to you. Today I bought downy unstoppables. I wanted to know if it would leave a longer lasting smell like the commercials say ;)

Now here is what you do.

Grab a large bucket or box you want to store this all in. I use a plastic 5 gallon bucket. I start with grating the soap. Use a cheese grater, it's so easy. Grate up all the soap. It will dissolve in any water temperature. I almost always wash on cold and I have never had any problems with the soap. Next add in the baking soda, washing soda, borax, purex crystals, and oxiclean. (if you used them) Now mix them all up. You can use a spoon or your hands, whatever strikes your fancy. And that's it! You only need about 2 TBS of this for each load of washing. I usually end up using more of it because I am used to using more, but it will get clean with as little as 2 TBS. I keep the bulk of mine in that bucket and keep a little bit in my laundry room. I use the a plastic Oxiclean box from the first time I made this, it has a little scoop in it so it's easy. You can also pour a bit of it into the purex bottle and use the lid to measure it. 

This cost me about $20 dollars. Here is the best part, besides being easy and cheap. It lasts for so long! I made my first batch of this recipe in November and I only just now ran out. And that's with using more than 2 TBS and occasionally having to wash laundry over again because I forgot about it and it got all smelly. It lasts for so long. 

UPDATE: The Downy unstoppables do leave a lovely smell. 

DIY counting cards

As of Monday we have officially welcomed Ashely into our daytime summer routine! I've been trying to write this since Monday evening, but Nolan has learned to climb out of his crib so it's been a bit crazy.

Anyways, to start off our week we made counting cards.

I took a stack of index cards and wrote the numbers 0-10 on each of them with white oil pastel. I made two stacks so Kaydence and Ashley would both have a set 0-10

After that I called the girls to the table and I told them something was hidden on each card. I gave them some watercolors and told them to paint all of the cards all over. They loved painting the cards and they called out each number as they found it.

Then we took a break to let the cards dry. I did the dishes while the girls and Nolan played dress up.

 And finally once they were dry I pulled out a container of glass beads. The kind used to fill a vase. I put their cards into two stacks. They both drew one card and told me what number they had, then we counted out the right number of "diamonds." After we counted each pile we combined them and added them together. It was a big hit. We've played this game multiple times every day this week. Except today, I put it away so they wouldn't get bored with it. We'll get it out again next week! Super fun, super easy counting game :)

Our beach week

We spent the past week visiting my parents, who just happen to live near South Padre Island. I had planned on a full week of fun ocean themed crafts and reading books. Instead we spent almost all day everyday in my parents pool. (ah-mazing) And we took two trips to the beach. So, we didn't do many ocean themed things. But we did talk a lot about oceans while we were swimming and playing at the beach. My mom got Kaydence the book The Cat in the Hat knows a lot about that: all about Sharks. I've never read any of the cat in the hat knows a lot about that books before, but let me tell you, they are great! It had so much information, it was easy to understand, and it has the cat in the hat. I am now looking to build a collection of the cat in the hat knows a lot about that books, I was very impressed. We read it every night for bedtime. Anyways here is what we did on our trips to the beach!

On our first trip to the beach we had a picnic. The spot we usually use was totally full. Turns out there was some kind of adult daycare thing going on. Anyways, we decided to stop here instead. The shore is rock, and there were people fishing off of it. The kids had fun looking at the water and asking questions about seagulls. 

It's pretty huh? Kaydence wanted to know why we weren't going to swim there. We talked about the rocks and how much nicer the sand would be on our feet. 

Check out how nice the water was. It was so clear and the waves were nice and gentle. 

Nolan was so tired, and very grumpy. He did not like being sandy, and he did not want to play in the waves. 

Kaydence on the other hand had a blast. The waves were gentle so she was able to play and jump around. Since the water was so clear we walked out near one of the sandbars. You can usually see small fish swimming around, but that day we saw some really big fish swimming in the waves! Nolan loved it. Other than fruit snacks, that is the only thing he liked from this days beach trip. We spent a lot of time standing out there looking at fish. Eventually Nolan fell asleep on Grandmas shoulder. It was so cool seeing those big fish. We talked about big fish eating the little fish. After we left the beach we talked about sharks eating fish too. No point in making them afraid of sharks. (like I am) 

On our second trip to the beach we FINALLY made it to the Sea Life Nature Center. We tried to get there during our year living down there, but they are closed in Mondays and seemed to be closed every other time we tried to stop by. It was so fun. It's only a $3 donation per person. They have tanks set up where you can touch some of the animals. Other tanks were full of fish. While we were there the lady walked around feeding the fish bits of shrimp. So we got to see them eating as well. We loved the octopus. And the "nemo fish" who I didn't take a picture of.

 Starfish! That was one of the areas where you could touch and feel. They let you hold the starfish (or sea stars, depending on who you ask) . They ask that you only hold them out of the water for 10 seconds. Kaydence was very gentle and loved holding them. Nolan was a bit freaked out and didn't want to touch anything.

She spent a while holding them under the water as well. That way she could hold it a little longer. 

We spend a really long time with the hermit crabs too. Kaydence picked up the different shells and watched the crabs hide in them. If you hold them for a while they start to come out again. We talked about how when they get bigger they find a new bigger shell. We talked about how they live inside their shells so they carry their houses with them.

Sea horses! 

They had this tortoise wandering around. Nolan thought it was awesome until it started crawling toward him. Then he screamed. It was hilarious, probably not for him though. He said, "turtle eat me" and we explained that"turtles" do not eat little boys. We walked about what tortoises eat. Kaydence asked if she could touch it. She spent a little while feeling it's shell and watching it move around. Eventually Nolan felt brave and went up to touch it. Even though we got to the beach around the same time as our first trip the tide was much higher and the waves were really strong. We played in the water for a long time, but we couldn't go out as far. And we couldn't see any big fish swimming. It still was beautiful though. Beautiful sunny skies and not too hot. I think we will re-visit learning about oceans at some point this summer.

Next week we start watching Ashley, and Kaydence decided she would rather learn about bodies than fairy tales.