First Failure.

Okay, I had my first failure with my "motivating mama" list today. I decided earlier in the week to try and add in part of my medical transcription work, giving me a deadline on that so that I wouldn't be working on that all day. The plan was to get minor housework, exercise and a major chunk of my workday out of the way before 11:00 a.m. The point is that I'm hoping to free up my afternoons to concentrate on homeschooling so we can get back to doing the fun stuff we were doing earlier this year. The exercise takes about 15 minutes. The housework etc. takes about 45 minutes (I cut this part down so I could get more transcription work in). So, if I got up at 7:00, I could get 3 hours of my workday out of the way before 11:00 a.m. That was the plan anyway. I forgot to set the alarm clock and the dog didn't go off at his usual 7:00 ish so I woke up gently, very well rested at 8:00. Whoops. Still, I tried very hard, hurried through my exercise routine, gave the housework a quick once-over and started typing. I'm paid by the line of typed text so I decided to set my goal in lines as well. I missed my goal by 5 measly lines. I was true to my agreement with the kids. If it is on my list and I don't get it done, they don't have to do any schoolwork. They still have to do the "life" parts of their lists including brushing their teeth, chores and exercise, but no school subjects. They are thoroughly enjoying my failure today, but I think they feel a little bit sorry for me too. That's okay. When I started doing this thing I knew there would be days when I didn't make it. Think how good I'm going to feel tomorrow when I get it all done. I'll let you all know how it goes.

(Can you tell I am enjoying playing with font sizes and colors on the new blogger?)

Tagged! I actually got tagged!

It was a month ago, but I just noticed it today, so bear with me. Of course my family says "only 6?"

THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the '6 weird things about you.' People who get tagged need to write a blog post of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says 'you are tagged' in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

Here they are, in no particular order.

1. I thought the word misled was pronounced my-selled until 8th grade.
2. When I'm playing UpWords, I can't stand it if one letter is upside down, even if it doesn't make a difference in the way it reads, like N. My family laughs at me for this.
3. I once wrote myself a note that said "Feed laundry". This was sometime during the year after my oldest son was born when I was working a full time job frequently on 2 hours of sleep a night.
4. I almost never make up my bed.
5. My blogger profile lists my age as 250 years. I have no idea why it says that, but some days I do feel that old. (I am slightly younger than that).
6. My feet are almost always hot, not cold. I frequently sleep with them sticking out of the blankets at night.

Okay, I could go on all day, but that's 6.

If you read my blog, and you have a blog, and you haven't done this before, consider yourself tagged.

Whoops.

I decided to make a change in my morning list and add work into it. I decided that I would try and get half my day's work done in the morning before 10:00 and take out some of the housekeeping chores. The plan was to add that housekeeping to Mondays when I'm off work. However, I got a dictation by the world's worst doctor (in the dictation category) and didn't get done until 10:30. The kids and I worked out a deal, though, since I was trying a new thing and didn't do so good, I'd give them a break and let them take 1 thing off their lists and they were nice about it and didn't mention that I'm supposed to get done by 10:00 a.m. It's a good plan, it just needs some tweaking. I need to figure out what my morning routine needs to include and what it doesn't and get it all done by 10:00. That way the kids won't be too late in starting their routines because they wait to see if I make it every day, LoL.

I thought I'd share some quotes from Hank the Cowdog today so you might figure out why once we started reading Hank at night, we've abandoned the reading of serious literature. We're almost done with all of the Hank the Cowdog books, so we'll have to go back to real books soon. Anyways, here's a quote or two from old Hank.

"Drover, at last I got this thing worked out. Listen closely so that I don't have to repeat myself."
"What?"
"I said, repeat this closely, so that I don't have to listen to myself".

and another one:
"What about all those penquins and mounties?"
"They were fignewtons of your imagination."

These 2 were from Hank The Cowdog #34, Slim's Goodbye by John R. Erickson.

No school today.

DH and I went to a meeting about foster care. We are looking into the possibility. It seems like all of our paperwork from our attempted China adoption will still work for this program. That's good. It's was very rewarding to just pull out a paper every time they asked for one and not have to write it down and remember to go get it done. So anyway, the kids got lucky and got a day off of school today. They got to go to grandmas house.

T.G.I.F.

Thank goodness it's Friday. I'm ready for this week to be over. I gave myself a pretty difficult morning routine this week and I also haven't felt very good this week, so it has not been easy getting my routine done, plus work and starting back to school this week. I almost didn't make it yesterday. Fortunately for me, youngest son came in at 10 minutes before 10 o'clock and asked it my routine was done and I jumped up and finished it! Thanks for the warning, kiddo!

Day 3 after the break.

I'm really surprised at how well this week has gone so far. Usually when we come back from a break, getting started on school is like pulling teeth but this time, the kids have been doing their work pretty well. Youngest son is getting progressively more and more behind in math as the week goes on, ( I think he's still on Tuesday's page!) but the other 2 are working well and getting things done in advance so they won't have much of a workload on Friday at all. That's the good thing about printing out a whole week's list of things to do. They can pace themselves anyway they want, within reason. Obviously, doing all the week's exercise on Monday probably would make them sore and stiff and wouldn't be a good idea, but my daughter did do the whole week's math on Monday. If it helps her feel better about the week, I'm all for it.

Getting Started.

We've had different responses to the first day of school. I got up and did my routine this morning (yay me!). I have added to it so it took a while. My youngest popped out of bed around 5:00 this morning and immediately started doing school. I heard him doing laundry and that's how I knew he was up. I'm not sure why he was so enthusiastic this morning! Oldest son got up as usual, on his own and started reading. The girl, however, is not as easy. I guess that old thing about beauty sleep is true. She's beautiful and she seems to need more sleep than the average person. She's not up yet, at 10:07 as I am writing this. I stop every few words and nag her, but so far, no luck. She's crabby in the morning too, so I nag from a distance!

Anyway, so far so good this morning. Youngest is done with everything he can do on his own for school, oldest has gotten started and middle child is still in bed. My routine is done and I am getting started on work.
We'll see how the rest of it goes today.

Happy Near Year?

I was going to get started back to school today. I told everyone at all of the family parties this weekend that we were starting back today. However, we aren't. I was up until 3:00 because I couldn't go back to sleep after being woken up and I slept until nearly 10:00 and I'm not going to do school today. In order for them to have to do school, I have to have gotten up early and done my list. I didn't, so they don't have to. We are going to get the Christmas tree down, find new homes for the new toys and get ready to start tomorrow. I'm going to spend some time looking at the notebooking pages I downloaded from History Scribe and play the Sims 2, which I got for Christmas. It's the last lazy day for a long while. I hope.