Tech Experiment: Day 8

Day 8:

What I learned:  I have recently started to try out a website called Instacart for ordering my groceries online.  It's a great app, and so far it's been helpful to cut down on my grocery shopping time each week.  But after I make a grocery order, when the person is shopping for the items they will sometimes send me a text to let me know if an item that I ordered is not available at the store, and asking if I'd like to choose another similar item, or if I'd prefer to remove the item from my list.  So I do need to be available to respond to those texts so that I make sure we get the groceries we need.  (And, I admit, I also ended up checking several other messages while I was monitoring the grocery messages too).  So my plan in the future is to try to time any Instacart orders/deliveries so I won't need to respond to those messages after the kids get home, when possible. 

I've also decided that this experiment is going pretty well overall, and I think I may want to continue it.  So I'd really like to be able to set an auto-reply for when I receive a text message between 3:00 and 8:30pm on weekdays, to let people know that I'm not available, but they can give me a phone call if they need a response right away.  I've searched online, and found out how to create a text message auto reply for when someone calls me on the phone, but I haven't found anything for creating auto replies for when someone sends me a text.  So if anyone out there knows if this is possible/how to do this, I'd really appreciate it.  Thanks!

What we did:  I called and talked to my sister for a while.  Then Elijah, who was really proud of himself for getting a 96% on his practice math test, went through the entire test and erased all of his answers and wrote "Mommy Bradshaw" as the name at the top of the page and handed me the test to take.  So I took the test.  (I have to admit, I did skip several questions because I wasn't familiar with the wording so I didn't understand what it was asking me to do.  But at least I got all of the questions that I did answer correct.  Phew).  😉  Then I made dinner, delivered the boys to their piano studio, comforted Courtland when he was feeling upset because he was going to be home alone for about an hour that evening while all the boys & Michael were going to be at their different scout activities and I was going to the annual Christmas book group dinner that my mom hosts at her house.  (Poor kid, he's almost 9 years old and has only ever been alone a few times in his life, he's so used to having at least one sibling with him at all times).  I asked if he was just feeling upset about being alone, or afraid, and he said he wasn't sure.  (I know my mom said that each of my siblings and me all went through a phase when we were nervous about being home alone or being the babysitter when it was dark out, but this is the first time any of our kids have expressed any concerns like that).  Anyway, we had a little snuggle and a good chat, and I helped him find the missing home phone receiver, which helped a lot.  {I asked him this morning how it went, and he said it was fine.  He ended up staying and playing later after his scouts got done, so he didn't end up being alone for very long before Dad and brothers got back}.  Then I quickly got ready and left to help my mom out a bit before her dinner started.