Tag Archives: motherhood

Welcome to the jungle…it’s school vacation week!

21 Feb

“You drive us wild, you drive me crazy.”

Peanuts 550 piece puzzle

The Gang's All Here! It's February Vacation Week! Jigsaw puzzles like this one might be one thing you can use to keep older kids busy during school vacation week.

Welcome to school vacation week!!

As I type this those words are echoing in the background because the kids and their dad are playing Guitar Hero on Wii. It just so happens that those exact words are playing at this very moment.

Coincidence, totally.

Additionally, Alex has found another guitar downstairs and is playing a completely different tune on that one while Guns N Roses plays on the TV for the others.

School vacation week has the potential to make any parent crazy. The kids are home full days for a full week and depending where you are in the country, you may be confined to the indoors due to the weather. Knock on wood, it’s been a beautiful winter here. I can’t remember a February this warm in a long time. We have been outside without jackets several times this week and each time, I’m amazed that it’s February and we’re getting to play outside, and not in the snow!

I don’t plan a ton for February vacation and my friends laugh at the reason, but it’s true: we have never had a February vacation where no one has thrown up. The stomach bug usually hits our house this week every year so we end up having to cancel whatever plans we’ve made. Each year, including this one, I’m cautiously optimistic, but even so, I bought two bottles of Gatorade last week just in case. It’s a regular full time work week for Don, which also surprises everyone, since schools are closed, but yes, he has to work and yes he’s got a ton to do.

Overall, I look forward to school vacation week. It gives us a break from all the running and scheduling that we have to do during a regular week when you’ve got two people working and three kids with three different schedules. It’s a lot to manage and I love the break. I love having everyone here. However, if we’re not careful, it can get ugly pretty quickly. We’re not in any way immune to the bickering and arguing that can erupt if they’re left to their own devices for very long.

The secret to a successful school vacation week is having 1) plenty of snacks on hand to prevent low blood sugar meltdowns and 2) plenty of things to do (free or almost free) even if you don’t end up doing them all. Activities can range from crafts and activities to outings or a good combination of both.

Two of my kids have birthday parties this week and I’m hoping to schedule them all for a playdate one day also. I have to work a day, and we’ll have a cousin sleeping over here a night as well. Other than that, there’s lots of free “stuff” to do locally because everyone knows the kids are out of school. For example, if you live in Rhode Island and have younger kids, check out the Learn All About It website to see what kinds of activities they have going on this week. If you see one you’d like, be sure to sign up by calling the store.

I’ve got more projects around the house planned in my head than we’ll ever do, but at least I’ve got plenty of options. My goal is not to have everyone sitting around bored all week or sitting in front of the TV all week either. There’s plenty of other things we can do instead. The week will end up flying by, I’m sure.

Below is a recipe I’ve shared in the past, but never on my own blog. I’m sharing it because I’m sure it’ll make an appearance on my table this week for a snack.

Sour cream dip for fruit.

This is a great snack for kids and adults alike!

YUMMY FRUIT DIP

The girls found this recipe in one of their kids’ cookbooks: “Silly Snacks: Family Fun in the Kitchen.” It was so fast and it’s SO good!

Mix together:

8 Ounces Sour Cream

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp. Vanilla extract

Fruit of your choice.  In the past we have used red grapes, nectarines, plums, apples, strawberries, peaches and bananas. We also have skewers, which makes it even more fun to eat.

Mix and dip!

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Vanilla Rich Chocolate Chip Cookies

17 Feb

This chocolate chip cookie recipe is definitely a keeper!

A few months ago I came across an advertisement by McCormick for their pure vanilla. It came with a recipe for Vanilla Rich Chocolate Chip Cookies. As I looked at the recipe I noted that it called for 4 tsp. of vanilla, much more than usual for vanilla, and I promptly tore it right out of the magazine for future use.

It’s funny, with all the recipes I have and all the cookbooks I have, I’ve never found a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that is “my” specific, always-go-to-recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. This recipe might just be it. I tried it out recently because I wanted to make cookies for a friend’s 40th birthday. She’s someone who is always “there” and never asks for anything in return. I decided that I’d make her a plate of 40 chocolate chip cookies and this is the recipe I used. Even though I made 40 for her, I still had another two dozen or so left for us. This recipe made a ton.

The cookies are delicious. I like hard, crunchy chocolate chip cookies and of course I like vanilla, butter and brown sugar. This recipe had it all! I will say though, as much vanilla was in them, it wasn’t an overpowering taste and it didn’t seem like it had as much vanilla as I knew it did! Try them and see how you like them!

INGREDIENTS

3 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. salt

1 1/3 cups butter, softened

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

2 eggs

4 tsp. McCormick Pure Vanilla Extract

1 pkg. semisweet chocolate chips

(This recipe also calls for 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, which we don’t use.)
DIRECTIONS

Mix flour, baking soda and salt in medium bowl.

Beat butter and sugars in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. (I used my Kitchen Aide Mixer.)

Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well.

Gradually beat in flour mixture on low speed until well mixed.

Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts.

Drop by rounded tablespoons about 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake in preheated 375 degree oven 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. (Mine took more like 11-12 minutes but I always set for ten minutes and then increased by one minute intervals.)

Remove to wire racks; cool completely.

Makes 5 dozen.

Cool on baking sheets one minute.

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After school snack: Homemade Granola Bars x2

16 Feb

This was the first time that I thought to use a pizza stone for them, and I wish I'd done it sooner. Made it much easier to cut them.

A few years back I came across a recipe in the newspaper for “Becky’s Homemade Granola Bars.” Through the years I’ve made them a variety of ways. My kids always love them for an after school snack, and the last time I made them Elizabeth came home and saw them and said, “Oh Mommy I was thinking about these ALL day at school, and I didn’t even know you were going to make them today!” Score one for Mom…

This recipe is one you can make a variety of ways, using whatever you have in the house really. I’ve done craisins, raisins, chocolate, and even snuck in carrots once or twice with the raisins. I actually loved those, nice and sweet.

Here's what happens when I don't take the photo quick enough...an empty plate!!

One time when I made them,  I didn’t have half the stuff on the list so I made up my own, using her original as a basis for it. They came out great, best I’d ever made. I don’t always do them the same way, either. I almost always double her original recipe to make lots.

So below are the two recipes, mine first, and then Becky’s below that. Two for the price of one.

Jen’s Chocolate Craisin Granola Bars
INGREDIENTS
2 cups Oatmeal (Quick Oats)
1/3 cup Wheat Flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 package Craisins
2/3 cup chocolate chip (I use semi sweet)

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 stick butter
1/4 cup honey

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Mix first five ingredients in a large bowl together.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, mix butter, honey and brown sugar, stir.

Pour hot ingredients from saucepan over the dry ingredients in large bowl. (This will melt the chocolate chips.) Stir until completely mixed.

Pour out onto a cookie sheet and flatten out until even all the way across the pan in both directions. There may not be enough mixture to spread right to the edge of the pan but it’ll get pretty close.

Bake 20-22 minutes, check at 20 minutes. You’ll kind of be able to see the edges crisp up. With them being chocolate colored, it’s hard, but you can still tell. Cool completely in pan and cut or break into bars.

Next….

A nice big bowl is needed to mix all the ingredients together.

Becky’s Granola Bark (my notes in parenthesis.)
INGREDIENTS
1 cup oats
1 cup sliced almonds (I’ve used pureed almonds, 1/3 cup.)
1/2 cup coconut flakes (I never used them I don’t like coconut)
1/4 cup wheat germ
2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons honey

other mix-ins could could include pumpkin puree, carrot puree, raisins. (As I mentioned above, I particularly like the raisin and carrot combo, makes it sweet.)

DIRECTIONS

Heat oven to 325 degrees.

In a bowl mix together dry ingredients. Set aside.

In small saucepan combine butter, honey and brown sugar.

Pour over oat mixture and stir to combine.

Spread on cookie sheet and bake 20 minutes.

Let cool completely in pan and cut or break into pieces.

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Valentine’s Day: Oh the pressure!

15 Feb

Gifts lined up and ready to go for our Valentine's morning

Valentine’s Day can be a lot of pressure, especially for someone who is crafty, loves to cook, bake and eat, and then write about what she crafted, cooked, baked and ate. Like Christmas, people wait (or at least they tell me they’re waiting) to see what I’ve produced for cards, for cookies, for meals. It’s a lot of pressure and I set the bar high for myself.

Valentine’s Day also comes right on the heels of Christmas. It’s not supposed to be a huge gift-giving event, but there’s pressure to make it that way. I do try very hard to make our gifts small token gifts, a treat they want. I try not to do any candy since we get a truckload, or rather, a school busload of it at 3:30 on Valentine’s Day afternoon. Being on a budget, I struggle with what to give, what to buy, what not to buy. What I want to buy is often not what is in the budget. I’d love to say, “Instead of giving gifts this year, we’re going overnight to an indoor water park for the weekend!!” But, giving token gifts is cheaper. The indoor water park is not in the budget. Maybe next year. Since having kids, Don and I haven’t exchanged gifts on holidays. We focus only on the kids, and we figure we’re showing our love for each other in little ways all year long instead. We know our time will come around again when we’ve got an empty nest and we’ll wonder then where this time went.

No matter what, they always love their gifts.

I try to make my budget as equal as I can per child without spending too much more on one than another, but so they each have the same amount of items to open in the morning. And no matter what, they always love their gifts, hopefully because I spent so much time thinking about them and choosing them.

I actually don’t make their Valentine’s Cards anymore. We’re huge Snoopy fans, we had a Snoopy nursery, Snoopy birth announcements and parties when they were babies, so I have tried the past few years to get them each a Snoopy card for Valentine’s Day, to provide balance between giving them handmade items and giving them the “popular” items they also love.

This year we celebrated Valentine’s Day as a family at 7:00 am since Don had a 7:30 am meeting. He also had an after school meeting and a night time meeting, so we thought we wouldn’t be seeing him at all. But, later that day, we were thrilled to find out his after school meeting was rescheduled and it meant he’d get to come home for dinner after all, and then go back for the night time meeting. So we were blessed. His 14 hour day was now only 12 hours and we’d get to spend dinner time together after all.

Each year I try to think of the perfect meals and snacks to make the day special. I love hearts so I have always had tons of heart shaped items from dishes to platters to bakeware.

For breakfast, I toyed with the idea of cinnamon buns with pink icing, pink pancakes or pink waffles. I looked on Pinterest and pinned a ton of things that looked great but just weren’t it. I just wasn’t feeling it, no matter what I saw.

In the end, I chose to get up early and make muffins, something I used to do for them all the time when they were younger and less of them were in school. It’s a nice treat on a school day to have a hot muffin right out of the oven. I even thought of making them last night but I don’t like them when they’re cold. A little pink food coloring in them and we were good to go. I even put pink food coloring in their milk and gave them red apples for their fresh fruit.

By 7:15 am Don was gone, the gifts were opened, and by 7:25 am one kid had already lost her bedtime by getting in trouble. I won’t say who or why, to protect her privacy. But that’s the way things go sometimes, Valentine’s Day or not.

After School Snack: Valentine's Monkey Munch!

By 8:40 am they were on the bus, I’d taken Motrin for my headache and I had the rest of the day to type my stories for this week’s papers, and to plan out my after school Valentine’s Day snack and our Valentine’s Day dinner, both of which are new recipes I’ve been wanting to try out. (Remember my Monkey Munch recipe? The snack was a  Valentine’s version of that!)

Despite all of the pressure, I try to remind myself that it’s the little things that matter and the little things they’ll remember. I remind myself that the more I make the holiday out to be, the more of a precedent I’m setting for myself for the future.

Hopefully when they think back on their Valentine’s Days growing up, they’ll think that they were absolutely perfect.

Pink muffins and pink milk for my little Valentines.

Everyone got a treat they'd really been wanting.

Valentine's earrings on, off to school!

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New England Newspaper & Press Association Awards

12 Feb

Tonight was the night I'd been looking forward to for a month now, and I was so happy it didn't snow!

Last night was the 2012 NENPA Awards Banquet. Awards were given out to nominees from Maine to Connecticut in a wide variety of categories. The awards are based on your work from the 2011 calendar year. The event is held at the historic Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts each year and if I had to guess, there were over 600 nominees at the dinner ceremony. It’s quite an honor to even be nominated, an honor to know that you rank up there as a writer or photographer with the top journalists in all of New England. In 2010 I attended and placed second for Education Reporting for my 2009 work. I was thrilled!

Our company, Beacon Communications, has several different newspapers: The Cranston Herald and The Johnston Sun Rise, both of whom I write for, and The Warwick Beacon. This year there were six of us nominated for awards, four of us attended, and my husband Don. Our company allows each of us to submit our best work in three categories if we’d like to be considered for an award by NENPA. This year I had submitted one in Education Reporting, one in Religious Reporting, and one Educational Series. You submit in August and you hear back from NENPA in January, with the award ceremony in February.

When I heard from my editor that I’d won again this year, it was in the Religious Reporting category. She mentioned that there were still several categories whose judges had not reported back. Education was one of those categories. By the time February came, I hadn’t heard anything else about winning in another category so I assumed I was only nominated in that one.

We arrived at the Park Plaza hotel with plenty of time to spare so we walked into the room where they post all of the nominated work, separated by category and class. (Class is determined by your newspaper’s circulation.) As we walked up and down the aisles looking for the Religious Reporting category, we walked past the Education Reporting category and I sadly said to Don, “Awww…there’s Education.” That’s what I had won for in 2009 and I was bummed out that my piece I’d submitted hadn’t won again. Suddenly though, I did a double-take because hanging on the board in front of me, covered by another entry, was my Education submission, nominated for an award. I was so shocked and I was thrilled!! Now I knew that not only would I be recognized in one category, but two, and that my area of expertise, Education, had in fact, been nominated for an award.

There, sticking out from behind two other entries, was a Cranston Herald nominee, MY nominated work! I was so surprised!

Dessert was delicious!!

Dinner consisted of salad, chicken, veggies and some sort of green rice.  Dessert was delicious and well-worth the wait. It was a chocolate mousse served inside a hard chocolate shell, shaped like a pyramid. There was whipped cream and half a strawberry on the plate, along with some sauce drizzled on the plate as well.

After dessert and coffee, they began announcing the nominees in each class for each category, in alphabetical order. It’s grueling to sit through and wait for your category to be called, then your class in that category and then your name to see where you placed.

During the weeks leading up to the event, I had hoped and prayed for first or second place and the other day when I was at the hairdresser for an appointment, I said to one of the stylists, “I only want first or second place. I’ll be so disappointed if I only get third.”

She asked me how many people I had been up against, to even be nominated at all, and I said I wasn’t sure, maybe hundreds since the competition encompassed all of New England. She was shocked to hear that, and she said, “You should be thrilled no matter WHAT place you get! Think of your daughters and the lessons you want to be teaching them. You don’t want them to think it’s about the winning or what place you get,” and at that point I thanked her for bringing me back to reality. She said to me, “I’m going to pray that you get third place and that you’re able to be happy with that.” I hugged her as I left, and I thought about what she said from then on.

I placed third in both categories, actually tying with another journalist for third place in the Education Reporting category.

I also found out later, that there were 3000 entries into this year’s competition. Although not all 3000 were in my two categories, it does show just how tough the competition was overall.

I’m thrilled that I have been recognized yet again for my contribution to journalism here in New England, and in my city and state. I’m thrilled to have a job I love, and that I can be proud of the work that I do. I am glad my daughters can be proud of me and I need to be better at accepting less than first place! I don’t want them to ever think that third isn’t “good enough,” because it certainly is. To be in a room filled with almost 1000 New England journalists, knowing that you’re one of them and you all make up the cream of the crop, is quite a feeling, and I can’t wait to do it again!

I can now say I am a FOUR TIME award-winning journalist!!

Here are a few more photos from last night’s event.

Beacon Communications was well-represented at the NENPA Awards!

Education, I couldn't believe it!

It's great to have Don there with me when I get these awards. He often makes it possible for me to do the jobs I do, by taking care of the kids when I'm out on nights and weekends, so having him share in the limelight is nice!

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Arizona Chicken Casserole

8 Feb
Arizona Chicken Casserole

This is one of my other favorite chicken dinners!

This recipe is from 2002. I know that because my parents got the recipe while on vacation in Arizona when my daughter Elizabeth was just 12 weeks old. I remember that trip distinctly because Elizabeth ended up being in the hospital for four days while they were on that trip, and every time I make this meal, that’s what I remember! I’m sure having been on the actual trip, my parents probably have better memories than that, whenever they have this meal!

This meal has very easy prep, but a long baking time, so take that into account when you’re planning. You have to start much earlier then you plan to actually eat.

It can be served over rice or as you see it here, egg noodles, or whatever your prefer. My kids all like some part of this meal, whether it’s the chicken, the noodles, the artichoke hearts, the mushrooms or all of the above. That makes it a good one for our family.

The only unique ingredients in the recipe are the sherry and the artichoke hearts. The sherry I almost always have on hand (Holland House Cooking Sherry) and the artichoke hearts I usually don’t, so I have to plan ahead and be sure to pick them up if I know I’m going to be making this.

Nothing in this recipe is expensive so it keeps to our budget-friendly meal planning.

INGREDIENTS

One pan, one dish, I love it!

3 lbs Chicken Breasts (I use boneless, skinless chicken tenders, 3 per person.)
salt, pepper, paprika (we don’t use the paprkia.)
6 T. butter or margarine
1 cup whole mushrooms (we slice them in half)
1 can (15 oz) artichoke hearts
3 T. flour
2 cups chicken boullion
1/3 cup sherry

Sauce for Arizona Chicken casserole

You make the sauce in the same pan you cooked the chicken in. Makes for easy clean up.

DIRECTIONS

Sprinkle chicken with desired amount of salt, pepper and pakrika.

Place 4 tablespoons of butter or margarine in large skillet. Brown chicken.

When all chicken is browned, place in 9×13 baking dish.

Add mushrooms. Drain artichoke heats and add to chicken and mushrooms in casserole.
Add remaining 2 tablespoons of butter to skillet and melt over medium heat.
Stir in flour until all flour is absorbed.

Gradually add boullion and continue stirring until thickened. Stir in sherry.

Pour sauce over chkcken, cover and bake at 375 for 45 minutes.
Remove cover and bake additional 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Finished and ready to serve!

Finished and ready to serve!

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New after school snack recipe: Peanut Butter Yogurt Dip

7 Feb

I’m a couponer now, I told you last week. In my new life as a couponer, I have discovered something in the coupon fliers: Recipes! Last week I found one that looked like it would be a great after school snack that all my of kids and I would like. It only had two ingredients (even better!) and both were things I almost always have on hand. I decided to try it this past week and my kids inhaled it.

The thing I like about dips with veggies and/or fruit is that I find that my kids will consume much more fruit or veggies with a dip than they would if they came home and I directed them to the fridge for a piece of fruit. So, I like to find new and different dips for them and I love to surprise them with something new when they come home. They show up ravenous, so I like to have their snack on the table when they get in, before anyone has a low-blood sugar meltdown. Sometimes I’ve only just gotten in myself, so my after school snacks need to be quick and easy, just like all my other recipes and meals.

So, here’s our newest addition to the recipe files. I’ve already made it twice in one week, it was so good. Please note that if you have a peanut allergy in your house, this would not be a good one for your family, my apologies.

You only need two ingredients for this recipe! Love it!

PEANUT BUTTER YOGURT DIP

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

1 cup non-fat vanilla yogurt

Dipping suggestions: bananas, apples, graham crackers

Mix the yogurt and peanut butter together until completely mixed. Try to refrain from licking the spoon over and over before the kids come home. 🙂

When I first made this I only had single-serve yogurt cups, 4oz each but they worked out great, I just used two. When I made a stop at the store later on in the week I picked up a bigger container and more peanut butter. The second time I made it, it was a weekend, and Alex mixed the whole thing herself, so even kids can make this dip pretty easily.

PB Yogurt Dip

My kids love to come home to a new after school snack.

That’s it! That’s all there is to it. The first batch I made had a little left over, the second time I made it, the entire thing went. Give it a try and see what you think!

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Recipes and Resolutions: Easy Chicken and Wine

31 Jan
Easy Chicken and Wine

The "Easy Chicken and Wine" recipe really IS easy!

Since today is the last day of January, this is technically the last recipe in my January theme, Recipes and Resolutions. The message behind that theme for January was that you don’t need to give up on quality, even gourmet, meals just because you shop on a budget. However, I wanted to just state for the record that just because January is over and just because I won’t be calling the recipes “Recipes and Resolutions” recipes anymore, doesn’t mean we’re going off the deep end here with our budgets. Really anything I post is budget-friendly, or we wouldn’t be eating it. That’s a promise.

On to today’s recipe…Easy Chicken and Wine.

This is another one of my favorite meals from growing up. According to my mom, she’s been making this before it was published in their “Newcomers Cookbook” in 1979. The recipe was from her life-long friend Nancy Roy, whose mother, Helen Thurston, passed it along to her. You don’t need a ton of ingredients and you mix them up in one 2c. measuring cup and then pour them over the chicken before baking, so it’s super easy. All of my kids like it, so it’s a winner all around.  It does take a little while to bake, but while it does, I can do something useful; like helping kids with homework.

INGREDIENTS

4-6 breast quarters (I use split breasts which I got at Aldi’s. Each pkg. had 2 breasts in it for about $2.00. I cooked four breasts total and we had an entire one left over, which I will eat for lunch this week.) Also, as a note, I know that skin on chicken is not as healthy as skinless, and so often we do use skinless chicken. But, this recipe is just soooo good with the skin on, so it’s a treat for us. However, you can do as you please with yours. It’s yummy though, just saying.

1 cup burgandy wine (I use whatever red wine we have on hand or the Holland House red cooking wine)

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil

1/4 tsp. crushed oregano

2 tablespoons water

1 garlic clove sliced in quarters (tonight I used minced garlic)

1 tablespoon brown sugar

This recipe makes a neat "teachable moment" for science, seeing the oil go to the top, the wine settling to the bottom.

DIRECTIONS

Wash and drain chicken quarters.

Place in shallow baking dish.

Combine all other ingredients and pour over chicken.

Cover with foil.

Refrigerate if there is time to do ahead. If so, spoon sauce over chicken several times before baking.

If not, bake chicken covered for one hour at 375 degrees.

Uncover and cook 10-15 minutes longer and cook 10-15 minutes longer and baste with wine sauce for further browning. This is really yummy with baked potatoes (which I put in the oven for the same baking time as the chicken) or over rice. We put the sauce into a gravy separator and use it over the chicken at the table as well.

Easy Chicken and Wine, asparagus, baked potato

Another meal brought to you by an Aldi's grocery trip! We *love* their asparagus too.

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The Best Things in Life

29 Jan

Today we took our kids out to breakfast. We had a coupon AND a gift card, so we were good to go. We were so careful with our selections that we will be able to go out again with what’s left on the gift card on a night when they have “kids eat free.”

While we were there, we sat and planned out our meals for the next two weeks, since it’s a pay week,  making our grocery list, and then headed for the store. At Price Rite we spent exactly $200 on the two weeks’ of groceries and we got 85 items; ingredients to make two lasagnas, a roasted chicken, BBQ ribs and more, more, more.

But, despite all that we did and all that we got, the best thing of all was free….the cardboard box from Price Rite. It wasn’t even from today’s trip, it was from a different trip, but they spent the whole morning playing with it.

Here’s a sneak peek at this week’s menu:

SUNDAY: BBQ ribs and chicken with homemade corn bread

MONDAY: Poached salmon over rice with steamed broccoli hollandaise

 

TUESDAY: Sausage and Peppers

WEDNESDAY: Cranberry Chicken

THURSDAY: Spaghetti with Tuna sauce

FRIDAY: Daddy Does Dinner…surprise!

SATURDAY: Make two, freeze one Lasagna

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Seeing the forest through the trees

23 Jan

Sometimes clarity is hard to find when you're in the middle of a situation.

Two weeks ago I had an absolute meltdown while on Facebook. It was a weekday morning and I had one kid home sick (I know, shocker)  and I’d spent the entire morning rushing the others through their morning routines. No one seemed to have themselves together that morning and there were missing hats, gloves, water bottles, and despite all of the hunting and gathering, still a homework folder was left on the table as the bus pulled away, again. My normally low blood pressure was probably through the roof as I sat down on the couch and updated my status as to the fact that I was about to lose my mind. Again.

After I ranted and raved a bit, I felt much better. My heart stopped racing. I sipped my coffee.

And then…the responses started to come in. Other mothers, friends of mine, commenting that it’s the same for them, that they knew how I felt, they could feel my pain. I instantly felt even better.

Through all of those responses though, several stood out. One friend stated that she now avoided those types of morning problems by doing all of the hunting and gathering the night before and laying it all out, ready to go. Another friend stated that she’d had a laminated check list for her oldest daughter a few years back, and that had worked well. My sister in law in Virginia agreed, stating that she’d used a similar one in the past, hooked to her daughter’s back pack where she could see it.

I was stunned. Why hadn’t I thought of these things?? I am a former teacher! I am an organized person! I have a check list for setting the table, one for cleaning up the basement, in the past we’ve even had one for the steps to take for calming oneself down (I could’ve used that one.) You would think doing these things the night before and setting up a check list would have hit me on my own, that I wouldn’t have needed to be told to try these things. I was incredibly thankful for the suggestions and yet feeling somewhat sheepish that I was so behind the eight ball, so down on my game.

But then it hit me. Sometimes, when you’re in the middle of a situation, something that should be clear to you, just isn’t. And sometimes you need to be told something so basic, just because you can’t see it on your own. And sometimes it’s okay to ask for help. I didn’t even realize I was asking for help, I was just ranting, raving, venting. And I didn’t even realize I needed a solution, a different plan. But as soon as I heard it, it was as if a light went off over my head. Well of course….a check list….doing it all the night before. Of course.

So that afternoon I made up two check lists on two pretty pieces of card stock and put out star stickers so they could mark them off as they went along each NIGHT, packing up their things. When they got home I explained to them how things would hopefully work out the next morning. They were excited (and maybe even relieved that I wouldn’t be yelling so much in the morning).

When I signed onto Facebook again that night, I was so touched. There were words of encouragement from my friends, wishing me a better morning the next day. That morning (which went off pretty much without a hitch) I had yet more words of encouragement from my friends, telling me to update them and let them know how it went. Again, I was so touched. Any disappointment that I’d had in myself was now gone, replaced by a huge sense of thankfulness and relief to have such an amazing network of friends and family around me.

We all support each other. With the internet the way it is today, as far apart as we are, we’re all right there for each other when we need support. I can’t thank each and every one of you enough, if not for that day’s support, then for another day’s words of support, encouragement or celebration. It really does make a difference. Here’s to a good week for us all.

"Night before" check lists

After two weeks I replaced my hand-written check lists with a typed one that I can just print out every two weeks.

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