Showing posts with label Cleaning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cleaning. Show all posts
13 July 2008
A Fun Concert and Other Goings On
I’m going to write this week’s blog post, since Michael is on call at the hospital overnight today. We had a pretty good week this week. The boys really enjoyed their swim lessons, and we had fun swimming together after their lesson on Tuesday. Michael went and renewed his driver’s license this week, which was a pain – it took him several hours. But since he had a Utah driver’s license he was able to get a library card, so on Thursday night for Eli’s night out they rode bikes (Eli rode in the bike trailer) to the library and got a library card and checked out a few books and a couple kids movies, and then rode all over town before coming home. On Friday morning I used one of the library movies to bribe the boys into helping me clean up the dining room and kitchen upstairs for a couple hours – they really are good little workers. We got all the counters cleared off, organized things, took out the trash, and put away all the stuff that had started to accumulate upstairs. And on Friday evening Grandma Faun watched the boys so that Michael and I could go on a fun date. We stopped for Mexican food and then headed out to the Sandy Amphitheater for a concert by Michael’s favorite pianist, Jon Schmidt. This is the third time I have seen him perform, and it is always an enjoyable experience because he plays a variety of music – fast, slow, spiritual, patriotic, and funny – and he makes all sorts of funny comments and little performances between the songs, so it doesn’t get boring just sitting for a while. There was also a kid from Wisconsin who opened for him. His name was Jon Troast, and he played the guitar. We liked his songs a lot, and ended up getting his CDs (which we don’t often do). Now all I need to do is replace my computer speakers that got the wires broken somehow in our move, so that we can actually listen to the new music. It was a fun night. On Saturday I googled free things to do in Salt Lake, and we ended up going to a place called Wheeler Farm. There were all sorts of farm animals for the kids to see, they fed some ducks and geese, they were excited to climb up on some old farm tractors to take pictures, and we took a short wagon ride. Michael remembered going there in elementary school, and afterwards he commented that his childhood memories of the farm were much more exciting than our trip yesterday. But the kids had a lot of fun. When we got home they were very excited to tell Grandma Faun all about the wagon ride and all the animals. After naps and dinner, we headed over to the church for an activity with a handful of families. They had sports and snacks for the kids. It was fun to talk with some of the younger families a little more. One thing that was not so fun, though, was waking up to Eli throwing up in the night last night. After cleaning him all up and putting him back to bed, it seriously took me another hour to fall back to sleep – how annoying to just lay there in bed and not be able to rest. So, Michael left early this morning for the hospital, and I stayed home from church with the boys. Luckily it seems that Eli was not really sick, but just ate too much cookies and candy at the activity last night, since he hasn’t been sick at all today – I would always prefer that, because if he were sick it would be very likely that the rest of the boys would get sick too, and all of the kids throwing up is just about my least favorite thing in the world to deal with, so it’s good that he seems to be doing well. Michael called from the hospital this morning and said that his team had 15 patients, which is a lot for one team, and that none of the patients were scheduled to be discharged today, and I haven’t heard from him since then, so hopefully he hasn’t had a terribly busy day, and hopefully he’ll be able to get some sleep tonight. This surgery month has really not been as bad as we expected, although overnight call is rarely fun. We are looking forward to his next rotation, which will be an elective, so he can have four weeks without working overnight or on the weekends. That will be a nice break for him to catch up on some sleep. (But, it will also mean that he will be closer to his next rotation after that, internal medicine, which we’ve heard is one of the busiest rotations with frequent overnight call).
06 March 2008
A Little Overwhelmed
Lately I have been thinking a lot about the sheer quantity of things that we are “supposed to do.” Of course, living and teaching our families about the gospel is the most important thing, and should come first. Aside from attending church each Sunday and other church meetings and responsibilities, we need to do things like personal scripture study, family scripture study, personal and family prayers, and other gospel activities in our everyday life. I am not questioning the importance of these things.
And then everyone knows that you should spend time doing things to let your family know you love and appreciate them. We have always set aside Monday evening as family night at our house, and recently we started setting aside one night each week for one of us to have an individual night out with one of our children. We should also be having regular date nights as a couple. And taking time to really listen to the children and have good conversations is really important too.
And then there are all the less-fun, but necessary everyday things that cannot be left for later – preparing and feeding the kids three meals a day, changing diapers and dealing with potty training, and getting the children to take naps and go to bed at night.
And we need to educate our children too. We need to read them good books, eventually teach them to write and read, and do fun art projects so that they will have a chance to be creative. And, our children will eventually need to go to school, too. School, and all the activities that go with it, take up a big chunk of time.
And we need to teach our children now so that they can become good adults someday – they need a good example in these things, so not only do we need to spend time teaching them and letting them help with things like cleaning up around the house, having good manners, physical fitness, being organized, healthy eating habits, being polite to others, money management and having good personal hygiene, but we need to do all of these things too so that our children will have positive examples to learn from. (Oh yeah, I guess bathing the kids and having them brush their teeth aught to be on the above list of “less-fun, but necessary everyday things.”) And we need to do things to keep our own minds sharp, like continually learning about new subjects and reading novels.
Plus we should have a nice place to live. I don’t mean an expensive, spotless, fancy place to live, but a good, clean home where the children can feel safe. It takes a lot of time just picking up after four kids, let alone doing any ‘deep cleaning.’ But I have tried just putting off all of the housework – leaving it for later so I can get other things done, and this just makes me feel like everything around me is dirty and disorderly. So lately I have been really good about getting everything cleaned and picked up soon after a mess is made so there won’t be a big job to do later. This makes it feel better at home, but takes up time here and there all day long. Plus we should take the time to have good music, good books, family photos, and pictures of the temple and other beautiful things displayed in our home.
And then there are things that have to be taken care of – paying rent and utilities, replacing little household things that get broken, getting clothes for the kids that are the right size and are warm/cool enough for the current season (and, if you are on a low income, it is also necessary to take the time to find the best deals possible for purchases that need to be made), checking the mail and responding to important messages, dealing with insurance, car maintenance, and other little things.
And family history. I was a genealogy major in college and love researching about my ancestors. But even though we have been blessed to live in an age when many records are made available to us at home through the internet, this research takes time. And once you get through the internet records and get to a point when you need to do some deeper research, this takes even more time (and sometimes money). And even if you are not working on researching your ancestors and extended family, you should at the very least be documenting your own life and the lives of your immediate family members. Keeping a regular journal (how I justify spending time writing our blog posts), saving and organizing family photographs, keeping a family scrapbook, and eventually finding time for bigger things like writing my life history, interviewing older family members, or collecting family stories.
And we should save some money for an emergency fund (not even taking into account the investing and retirement savings that we should be doing once we have a regular income). Our church recommends building a supply of food storage and emergency supplies, just in case we hit hard times at some point down the road (and every time I watch the news and see people somewhere in the world who have been hit by fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., I know what good advice this is and I think of how I need to add to our little store of food until we have enough to provide for our family in case of an emergency or even just hard times with something like a lost job in the family).
And we are viewed as stupid if we don’t regularly make back-ups of computer files – how would it be to loose all of those precious family photos, videos, journal entries, etc.? So, we need to take the time to back everything up (I went to make backups on CDs of just the most important files on our computer the other day – photos, video, family history documents, etc., not even things that could be replaced, such as music files, and I had just over 60 CDs-worth of files to backup, I still need to finish that job).
And we have fun spending time with friends (especially while we live far from family now, and our friends are our family). We should try to fellowship new people who move in and meet our neighbors. And we should keep in touch with family and old friends.
And if we would like out children to have opportunities to develop their talents, we need to start early. It seems that children who learn to play a musical instrument in their early years are more likely to continue and to play well when they are older. And art, sports, writing, crafts, outdoors activities, etc. – all of these are good things to spend time doing with your family.
And people, especially children, need frequent visits to the doctor (even when they are healthy). Plus, you should make ourselves aware of the warning signs and symptoms of health problems. And, if a child does become sick and contagious, life gets put on hold and you have even less time to get everything done.
And, of course, someone needs to provide for the family, and a good, stable job takes education, which takes time and money, and then after the education it will take time to pay off the debt from school, and then the good, stable job will continue to take time for a long, long time.
I’m sure there are a million other things that could be added to this list that I’m not thinking of right now. And I have really tried to include here just things that we should be doing, not making a list of all the extra things that people could possibly add to their daily schedule. I have to admit that I have been feeling a little overwhelmed lately at the sheer quantity of things that we “should” be doing, and the fact that there is no way to fit everything into the hours of each day that we need to if we want to accomplish just these things, excluding any other fun activities, hobbies, or time to just relax. I mentioned this topic to Michael and his answer was “prioritize,” which I understand and agree with. But if we prioritize and accomplish the necessities of life (food, changing diapers, sleep), and then prioritize and accomplish the most important things (the gospel, teaching our children, and making sure they know that you love them and you love your spouse), then you are still left with a lot of things undone that are expected of you – I don’t really feel like I can just prioritize and exclude things like reading to my kids, taking family photos, doing family history, paying bills, or taking the kids to school when they are old enough.
Often in the morning I will make a list of things to do that day. Today this was my list:
To Do Today:
• Type and print food storage list [I got some new things for our food storage last night and wanted to add them to the inventory list so we can keep track of all the expiration dates and not waste food]
• Put new food storage items away
• Breakfast, feed Isaac [yes, I do need to put these things on the list so that I have something to cross off after spending my morning doing these things]
• Clean boys’ room
• Let the boys watch ‘Super Y’ [they get to watch their favorite PBS show as their reward for helping pick up the house and clean their room]
• Clean bathroom
• Print hand-outs for enrichment activity [I was asked to host an activity for the women’s group at our church, and that will be at our house tonight]
• Empty the trash cans and diaper pail
• Get myself dressed, do my hair, and put on make-up
So, I’ve crossed everything off this list so far except taking out the trash. How many really important things were included on that list?
So, I guess I will continue to prioritize the most important things (and the necessary things), and just do a little bit of each of the other things that we “should” be doing, but never feel like I am completely accomplishing any of those other tasks. I guess. All we can do is what we can do.
And then everyone knows that you should spend time doing things to let your family know you love and appreciate them. We have always set aside Monday evening as family night at our house, and recently we started setting aside one night each week for one of us to have an individual night out with one of our children. We should also be having regular date nights as a couple. And taking time to really listen to the children and have good conversations is really important too.
And then there are all the less-fun, but necessary everyday things that cannot be left for later – preparing and feeding the kids three meals a day, changing diapers and dealing with potty training, and getting the children to take naps and go to bed at night.
And we need to educate our children too. We need to read them good books, eventually teach them to write and read, and do fun art projects so that they will have a chance to be creative. And, our children will eventually need to go to school, too. School, and all the activities that go with it, take up a big chunk of time.
And we need to teach our children now so that they can become good adults someday – they need a good example in these things, so not only do we need to spend time teaching them and letting them help with things like cleaning up around the house, having good manners, physical fitness, being organized, healthy eating habits, being polite to others, money management and having good personal hygiene, but we need to do all of these things too so that our children will have positive examples to learn from. (Oh yeah, I guess bathing the kids and having them brush their teeth aught to be on the above list of “less-fun, but necessary everyday things.”) And we need to do things to keep our own minds sharp, like continually learning about new subjects and reading novels.
Plus we should have a nice place to live. I don’t mean an expensive, spotless, fancy place to live, but a good, clean home where the children can feel safe. It takes a lot of time just picking up after four kids, let alone doing any ‘deep cleaning.’ But I have tried just putting off all of the housework – leaving it for later so I can get other things done, and this just makes me feel like everything around me is dirty and disorderly. So lately I have been really good about getting everything cleaned and picked up soon after a mess is made so there won’t be a big job to do later. This makes it feel better at home, but takes up time here and there all day long. Plus we should take the time to have good music, good books, family photos, and pictures of the temple and other beautiful things displayed in our home.
And then there are things that have to be taken care of – paying rent and utilities, replacing little household things that get broken, getting clothes for the kids that are the right size and are warm/cool enough for the current season (and, if you are on a low income, it is also necessary to take the time to find the best deals possible for purchases that need to be made), checking the mail and responding to important messages, dealing with insurance, car maintenance, and other little things.
And family history. I was a genealogy major in college and love researching about my ancestors. But even though we have been blessed to live in an age when many records are made available to us at home through the internet, this research takes time. And once you get through the internet records and get to a point when you need to do some deeper research, this takes even more time (and sometimes money). And even if you are not working on researching your ancestors and extended family, you should at the very least be documenting your own life and the lives of your immediate family members. Keeping a regular journal (how I justify spending time writing our blog posts), saving and organizing family photographs, keeping a family scrapbook, and eventually finding time for bigger things like writing my life history, interviewing older family members, or collecting family stories.
And we should save some money for an emergency fund (not even taking into account the investing and retirement savings that we should be doing once we have a regular income). Our church recommends building a supply of food storage and emergency supplies, just in case we hit hard times at some point down the road (and every time I watch the news and see people somewhere in the world who have been hit by fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., I know what good advice this is and I think of how I need to add to our little store of food until we have enough to provide for our family in case of an emergency or even just hard times with something like a lost job in the family).
And we are viewed as stupid if we don’t regularly make back-ups of computer files – how would it be to loose all of those precious family photos, videos, journal entries, etc.? So, we need to take the time to back everything up (I went to make backups on CDs of just the most important files on our computer the other day – photos, video, family history documents, etc., not even things that could be replaced, such as music files, and I had just over 60 CDs-worth of files to backup, I still need to finish that job).
And we have fun spending time with friends (especially while we live far from family now, and our friends are our family). We should try to fellowship new people who move in and meet our neighbors. And we should keep in touch with family and old friends.
And if we would like out children to have opportunities to develop their talents, we need to start early. It seems that children who learn to play a musical instrument in their early years are more likely to continue and to play well when they are older. And art, sports, writing, crafts, outdoors activities, etc. – all of these are good things to spend time doing with your family.
And people, especially children, need frequent visits to the doctor (even when they are healthy). Plus, you should make ourselves aware of the warning signs and symptoms of health problems. And, if a child does become sick and contagious, life gets put on hold and you have even less time to get everything done.
And, of course, someone needs to provide for the family, and a good, stable job takes education, which takes time and money, and then after the education it will take time to pay off the debt from school, and then the good, stable job will continue to take time for a long, long time.
I’m sure there are a million other things that could be added to this list that I’m not thinking of right now. And I have really tried to include here just things that we should be doing, not making a list of all the extra things that people could possibly add to their daily schedule. I have to admit that I have been feeling a little overwhelmed lately at the sheer quantity of things that we “should” be doing, and the fact that there is no way to fit everything into the hours of each day that we need to if we want to accomplish just these things, excluding any other fun activities, hobbies, or time to just relax. I mentioned this topic to Michael and his answer was “prioritize,” which I understand and agree with. But if we prioritize and accomplish the necessities of life (food, changing diapers, sleep), and then prioritize and accomplish the most important things (the gospel, teaching our children, and making sure they know that you love them and you love your spouse), then you are still left with a lot of things undone that are expected of you – I don’t really feel like I can just prioritize and exclude things like reading to my kids, taking family photos, doing family history, paying bills, or taking the kids to school when they are old enough.
Often in the morning I will make a list of things to do that day. Today this was my list:
To Do Today:
• Type and print food storage list [I got some new things for our food storage last night and wanted to add them to the inventory list so we can keep track of all the expiration dates and not waste food]
• Put new food storage items away
• Breakfast, feed Isaac [yes, I do need to put these things on the list so that I have something to cross off after spending my morning doing these things]
• Clean boys’ room
• Let the boys watch ‘Super Y’ [they get to watch their favorite PBS show as their reward for helping pick up the house and clean their room]
• Clean bathroom
• Print hand-outs for enrichment activity [I was asked to host an activity for the women’s group at our church, and that will be at our house tonight]
• Empty the trash cans and diaper pail
• Get myself dressed, do my hair, and put on make-up
So, I’ve crossed everything off this list so far except taking out the trash. How many really important things were included on that list?
So, I guess I will continue to prioritize the most important things (and the necessary things), and just do a little bit of each of the other things that we “should” be doing, but never feel like I am completely accomplishing any of those other tasks. I guess. All we can do is what we can do.
02 October 2007
It Feels Good To Get Organized
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25 September 2007
Out of the Mouths of Babes
So, this morning I felt like I was doing really well. Kolby doesn’t have preschool classes on Tuesdays or Thursdays, so after breakfast and scripture reading I spent the morning cleaning up the house. I let the boys watch cartoons on PBS while I cleaned, and I was able to get a lot done. I had to change a few messy diapers, but I also got the dishes done, the kitchen cleaned up, all the piles of “stuff” put away from around the living room, the trash taken out, the bathroom picked up, the clean sheets put back on the toddler bed, and the boys dressed for the day. After they finished watching their show, I asked them to help me clean their room. I have it organized so that all the different sets of toys have their own storage bins that they go into on shelves in the closet, and the boys know that if they pick up everything in their room, they get to choose one or two new sets of toys to get out to play with. They did a good job of picking up all their toys and Camden is even starting to learn how to put some of the toys away in the bins. After we got everything cleaned up, I complimented the boys on how well they had cleaned up their room and how it didn’t take them very long at all. And Kolby responded very innocently, “Yeah, and you didn’t even have to yell or scream at us this time to get us to clean up.” Ouch! Well, I guess that’s one more thing I need to work on.
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