Why is it that my 5 year old complains he is freezing when he gets out of the shower when it’s 100 degrees outside but then proclaims it isn’t too cold for shorts when it is 34?

Feeling especially bad for my older guys who have open air hallways at their school and the high temperature only reached 50 today. And on top of that their official school uniform outerwear is a flimsy windbreaker?

Kudos to my 7 year old daughter who brought in another bag of her used toys to the toy drive today. She wants to help poor children to have a better holiday. So sweet or maybe she is thinking that Santa will replenish it all with newer toys. Who knows but the thoughts in her mind are there and I am not complaining.

All done with Christmas shopping for the most part. Now if everything ships like it is supposed to then we will all be happy campers on Christmas morning. AND I am paying cash for everything so no unhappy credit card bills in January!

I get this comment a lot and every time I do I feel terribly uncomfortable.  While I have to admit that my life is very hectic and my schedule has precious little “white space” and many times I have to make an appointment just to talk to my husband in between that white space, I don’t think my life is any more complicated than other moms in this world.

My life is way easier than a military wife who has to run the household and raise the kids while her husband is off serving months at a time.  It’s way easier than the single mom who is working two or three jobs just to make ends meet.  What about the mom who is raising a handicap child or a child with special needs.  And then there are foster moms and the like. 

I count my blessings that I don’t have these challenges.  For that I am so grateful.  It makes me respect those moms who do have very challenging roles.  Those moms are the real “super moms”.  They have earned the title.

Cuz that’s what I have been doing this past week.  Living without a cell phone.  And I have to admit that it has complicated my life by at least 1000%!!  With 4 kids spread out in different schools and working full time, it was next to impossible to function without being able to contact my kids to know where they were going to be in order to pick them up and it was downright upsetting when I was running late to do the afternoon pickup and could not reach my husband to help me out. 

My cell phone broke on Saturday and as fast as it broke I was online ordering a new one.  It will arrive here tomorrow and I will be back to feeling happy that I have a connection to my inner world again.  So many times I was one of those people who would say “what did we ever do before cell phones” but the fact of the matter is that cell phones are here and I stopped questioning why or how or should I and gave into the fact that having one would and could make my life so much easier to navigate.

I went a step further and decided to get myself a blackberry because that will be my next addiction…having my email and other information right at my fingertips.  And then one day I will ask myself “what did I ever do before I had my blackberry?”

My oldest boys have Homecoming Week at their school this week so that means spirit week and then my oldest is going to the Homecoming Dance with his girlfriend.  It’s his senior year so I am trying to absorb all of these memories as they go on by.  (pictures to follow).

Now it’s time to start thinking about the Thanksgiving holiday and then Christmas preparations.  One thing I have learned is that these holidays really creep up on you so now is the time to start preparing.  For me that means getting out the checklists and planner and start organizing it all so I can be ahead when the new year comes.  Lord knows it will be a very active Spring with one kid graduating high school, another one graduating preschool, and another making her First Holy Communion.  I might need a year long vacation when it’s all done.

I had a mentor at the time who told me one thing I will never forget. She told me that since my car was my office I had to take some personal pride in it and make sure that it was presentable to customers.  Wanting to do a good job I complied and I have always treated my car in that manner even when I eventually moved onto another job and no longer worked out of my car.

One of the reasons why I am organized is because, for me, it gives me a great sense of pride to look at my belongings whether it is my home, my office, or my car and see that they are being well cared for, clean, and tidy.  It sends a statement not only to myself but to others who live with me or who come to visit.  My personal pride is what drives me not the need to be some sort of perfect, super, eighth wonder of the world. I don’t organize and keep tidy because I want to impress others and I don’t judge others to live to my personal standards.  I just like the way my house looks when it is clean. 

The best aspect about being organized is that I have a better chance of not losing things when I know where they are or when they are in their designated places.  If putting stuff in their place helps save me 1 minute or 1 second of my time in the future then it is worth the time I take to create the designated space to begin with.  It’s definitely easier to throw my mail in a big pile and then deal with it later but then I might miss a bill I need to pay or a paper I need to address.  I don’t like that feeling of thinking I am missing a deadline or forgetting a child’s event because I procrastinated and didn’t take care of it or put in on my calendar.

I can’t speak for everyone who is super organized.  I can only speak for myself.  For example,  I don’t spend lots of time doing laundry.  The reason why is because every time I do laundry I think of a way to shave off time and then I try to make the process more efficient.  Because if I am inefficient I waste time and I have precious little time to waste on laborious tasks. I would rather spend my leisure time with my kids or laying by the pool not searching for my keys or the unpaid bills or doing piles of laundry.

Yes some of my thinking came from the way I was raised. I tended to be a kid who tried to find a solution t0 every problem.  I even went on to get an engineering degree where I learned how to be a professional problem solver and thinker.  All of the jobs that I have ever had have been centered around making something more efficient whether it was a process or a project or something like that.

I guess you would say I was meant to be organized.  And I can tell you for a fact that my husband likes that I am.

That said, my schedule is always crazy.  With two high school boys and two younger ones there is always something going on.  It’s not as bad as some people I know because I try to stick to my rule of only one activity per person at any given time and now that my teens can drive and have friends who can drive it’s not as hard to make sure they are getting to their games and practices. Thank Goodness.

I also like to make sure that at the end of the day my family has a nice home cooked meal that we can sit down to.  Most of the times I reach that goal.  Sometimes I don’t.  Any suggestions on that?  I am still perfecting the home cooking thing and searching for ideas that work for me. 

Now I am off to make my schedule for the rest of the week.  Happy Week to everyone.

One of the reasons I have been gone for a while is that fact that my oldest son is in his senior year of high school.  I guess I realized somewhere in the back of my head that this would be the year that activities would really ramp up like applying to college, graduation requirements, etc. but I never really knew it would be to the level that it is.  After all when I went to college the application process was fairly easy.  There was no internet so everything was done by paper and through the mail. 

In fact the college application process can get very confusing. Thank goodness the Catholic school that my kids go to have a really wonderful college placement office that is willing to help you every step of the way.  Last Spring I attended their Spring Workshop for Junior students so I could find out all that we would need to do in the senior year. Even with that workshop I still had lots of questions and since the process really doesn’t get into full swing until the senior year starts I figured I would make an appointment with the college placement counselor in September.

I met with her and she helped to answer any left over questions I had. Good thing I am organized because I don’t know how you do it if you are not.  I wrote everything down and organized the tasks that need to get done in a calendar form.  There are SATs and ACTs still left to take, online applications to submit, essays to write, etc etc.  I have all of my checklists done so I don’t forget anything.

But this is just the beginning.  Senior year is where it all seems to happen not just in school but in extracurricular.  Graduation planning, homecoming dance, sports schedules, etc.  What would I do if I didn’t have organizing tools in my belt?  Thank goodness that I do.

Here goes:

1. Get a kitchen garbage bag.

2.  Carry bag from room to room and go through as many drawers as possible.  If you see something you will NEVER use again toss it in the bag. 

3.  Move from room to room QUICKLY!  Don’t stop as you walk around.  Instead go fast.  You don’t need to pick everything up but maybe the stuff you can quickly grab. 

4.  The objective is to get rid of a few layers of clutter in each room in 5 minutes or less.

When you are done call your local charity and give your bag of stuff away.