Library Time is Fun Time
June 17, 2008
Monday is actually one of my favorite days of the week this summer all because of the Summer Reading Program at my library. They received a grant that has allowed them to bring in some truly awesome performers every Monday.
We went yesterday to see Ken Lonnquist; this guy is awesome! His songs were funny, he involved the audience in his gig, and everyone had a great time. He was even nice enough to let me post a picture of him here. The theme for the library’s summer reading program is Catch the Reading Bug. Ken had some great songs for this theme; of course you know that he had to sing that one about “nobody loves, everybody hates, I think I’ll eat a can of worms” ewwww gross! He sang one about forbidden love…between a spider and a fly that is! LOL Every song he sang was a lot of fun.
As a single mom you know I keep my eye out for inexpensive things to do with the kids and being able to attend these free weekly performances is absolutely wonderful. It encourages the kids to read, gives us something to do for at least an hour every Monday night, and we always enjoy sitting down with our books from the library every night taking turns reading together.
Music is truly soothing to the soul and after the long day I had yesterday Ken’s music was fun, refreshing, and gave us a good ‘ole dose of laughter. Being able to see him for free was an awesome treat but I can guarantee you that I’d even buy tickets to his performances and I’m definitely going to pick up a CD or two from his website. If you visit his website (http://www.kenland.com/) you can even hear some samples of his songs and they’re available on iTunes too!
Recovering from Weekend Fun
June 16, 2008
“ooo, ouch, ugh, grrr”…. Oh! uh, hello…it’s morning already, huh? Ya, that bright light hitting my eyes surely must be the sun.
When I gave you all that wonderful advice and ideas for filling out your Family Fun activity planner did I mention anything in there about making sure you don’t overdo the fun for your poor body? Oh, I didn’t? (alrighty now! you can quit throwing those stinky ice packs at me! knock it off you there in the back; I saw that!) Gimme a break okay? I kind of went overboard with the fun this weekend too.
Who knew that having fun could be so exhausting? Well let’s see what I did this weekend…
Acted as slave driver to get the kids to hurry up and make the house nice and clean before grandma and grandpa showed up at the wee early hour of 10:30 am. (have you noticed that I hate mornings?)
Drove 20 miles north to go out to lunch with my mom, step-dad, and all the kids to celebrate Father’s Day and my step-dad and my daughter’s birthday. Stopped at the store after lunch to pick up some birthday cards for another birthday party that afternoon. Of course after driving 20 miles north of home you have to drive that same 20 miles south to go back home.
Once back home I returned all the calls that came while I was gone — I never get many calls when I’m home but it seems like everyone I know has some sort of 6th sense that tells them I have left the house! I also signed the cards and put together the bag needed for swimming and fun at the birthday party (forgot the suntan lotion — I need to make a list!)
Drove 15 miles south to the birthday party and spent the next four hours holding babies, kissing booboos, munching, chatting with family and friends, and all the other fun stuff that goes along with it.
My “man child” son was home for a half-weekend visit and I had to take him to a respite foster home after the party so we had to drive another 10 miles south. Guess what? All this flooding caused a road to be closed–now make that 10 miles into 18!
So now we are a total of 33 miles south of home and guess what? Yep if you drive 33 miles south of home you have to drive 33 miles north to get back home. But wait! Once we were back into town we had to stop at the store again to pick up stuff for smores. We got a last minute invite to go to a friend’s house for a bonfire.
After the store we headed home to whip up a pie to bake at their house, grabbed everyone a change of clothes, and headed 10 miles west of home for the bonfire! Well it was fun — we roasted plain marshmallows, we roasted smores, and they had refreshments (Pepsi of all things!) for the kids.
Finally at 11 pm we were ready to… yep, drive the 10 miles east to get back home. We unloaded the Jeep and I had everyone either jump in the bathtub or take sponge baths to get the bug spray off. I was surprised that the kids fell asleep so easily after consuming caffeine that late but within minutes of crawling into bed they were sound asleep.
I thought I’d sit down and work on my administrative assistant website and get some much needed updates done; but guess what? I too was soon fast asleep at the computer.
Sunday dawned bright and early as usual but not one of us saw much of the morning as we were all just barely crawling out of bed at well past 10 am. I treated everyone to donuts and tall glasses of milk for breakfast. About noon their motors were revved up and they were outside playing with their friends. (very loudly I might add — I spent quite a bit of time outside playing referee!)
This morning I’m moving quite slowly — it seems I have aches and pains in places that I didn’t know could hurt; and what in the world did I do to my ankle? It hurts so much I can barely move it!
Well anyway, if you’re going to plan for a whole day of family fun, you might want to consider how much “fun” you can stand before your body starts to protest in a very loud and obnoxious manner!
Have a great Monday, everyone!
The Kids Make Their Summer Vacation Plans
June 13, 2008
It’s been raining for days and days here in Wisconsin. Just take a look at what happened in Wisconsin Dells which isn’t too far from me: FEMA Tours Damage At Lake Delton Thursday.
We’ve been having rain, rain, and more rain and more is on the way. We’ve been under flood watches for the past several days and the Wisconsin River is right in front of my house. (it doesn’t look too bad right now, though).
So this weekend I’m going to work with the kids to create a summer activity journal. I decided to make this as simple as possible and just purchased some spiral bound sketch pads for them. As we go on trips and do the various things listed in my summer activity planner the children can draw pictures or write journal entries about where we went and what we did. (Read about our Summer Activity Planner)
I also want them to make their own list of things they want to do or accomplish this summer. When they have their lists completed I will have them attach them to the front of their journal. Each week I’m going to set aside some time for them to look over their lists and make sure they are accomplishing the things they wanted to do. On the inside of the back cover of their journals I attached the list of activities that we are planning to do this summer. This will help them to see what is coming up and be able to look forward to these special days without bugging me about what we’re going to be doing.
After the past several days of nothing but rain the kids are already moaning about nothing to do on rainy days. So I’m going to have them create a rainy day activity jar. Deborah Taylor-Hough created an incredible 200+ Summertime Activities for Kids. I’ve printed this list out for my kids and we’re going to cut apart all the ones they want to do on rainy days and then we’ll put them in a jar. When the kids get bored they can simply pull an activity out of the jar and voila’ instant fun! (I hope!)
I homeschooled my kids for 7 years and even though I’m not able to homeschool now their education is still an important goal to me. So I do everything I can to encourage them to pursue anything educational. I’m also very aware of the declining writing skills of children in public schools and since I love to write it is very important to me that my kids have very good writing skills. So we are going to create a journal jar filled with writing prompts for them to write about or they can color a picture instead. I found a list of over 200 prompts at Teacher.net. I copied and pasted the prompts into a document to have the kids cut them out and put them into a jar. They’ve already been doing really good with their daily school lessons and so now since they are in that routine I want them to write a short bit every day as well.
For the most part that’s our rainy day weekend plans. We’re also going to be taking my step-dad out to Golden Corral on Saturday for Father’s Day and for his birthday as well. We also have a kids birthday party to go to in the afternoon. I hope everyone else has a great weekend too!
If you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out my weekly Suviving Summertime newsletter. You can be sure you’ll find some great ideas!
My Favorite Discipline Tips
June 11, 2008
As a single mom the biggest discipline issue I face is in being consistent. Not only do I have difficulty in making sure that I do the same thing and stick to what I’ve discussed with the children as far as rules and discipline but then I also have to deal with the problem that my ex-husband doesn’t exactly have the same rules and consequences that I have. At one time this was a major issue because the kids would always come home and complain to me that their daddy didn’t do it that way or that daddy let them do something that I didn’t and tons of other complaints.
A few years ago I saw a class called “Love and Logic” being offered through the local Family Resource Center. I think at the time it only cost me $10 for the book and the class was free. I gained a lot of useful ideas from the system of parenting and found that it worked great for my kids. The biggest bonus for me was that I didn’t have to worry about what the ex was doing or need his cooperation to make things consistent in my house. I’m also comfortable in knowing that I’ve found a positive way for me to discipline the kids.
One of the tips that I really liked that they used was what they called going brain-dead. Basically this just involves choosing a phrase that you’re going to use in order to remove the tendency to argue. They suggest something like “I love you too much to argue”. They way I use this for my kids is when they come home and tell me that daddy let’s them do something or daddy doesn’t do it that way I first re-iterate our rules and our way of doing things and then if they continue to argue with me about it I just tell them over and over and over again “I love you too much to argue”. Usually after 2 or 3 times they get the idea and quit…sometimes it takes quite a few more times as they like to see if they can wear me down!.
Another thing that I really like is the use of offering choices in non-critical issues – some of my favorites are:
Do you want to wear your coat or carry it?
(the point is one way or another the coat is going along)
Are you doing to do your homework before supper or after?
(plain and simply put — they are doing homework)
Are you going to brush your teeth or put your pajamas on first?
(no matter which they choose they are going to do both)
The Love and Logic website offers a lot of free articles that you can check out and gather some great information that I’ve found really helpful. Some of my favorite articles they have include “Making Your Kids Responsible for Their Actions”< “Turn your Words into Gold”, “what’s More Important: GPA or Character?”. There’s even more than what I’ve listed and I’m sure you’ll find some favorites too.
Work at Home Single Mom
June 9, 2008
One of the biggest worries I had when I began my journey as a single mom was that I would have no time to spend with my kids. I could not envision working a 9 to 5 (or worse yet a 2nd or 3rd shift) job and needing to put the children into daycare for several hours after school and for a major portion of their summer time days.
I learned about being a Virtual Assistant through an article that was written about Becki Noles of Virtual Accuracy. After reading this article I decided this was just what I wanted in order to be able to be a single mom and still have plenty of time to spend with my kids. A short while after starting my own Virtual Assistant business (Expert Business Results) I joined the Virtual Assistant Revolution . This online forum is a wonderful resource for Virtual Assistants to learn from each other and build their businesses.
My business is now three years old and I have been thoroughly enjoying the time I have been able to have with my kids.
I have to admit though that there are days when I wonder if I am doing the best thing for them since money is often a bit tight. A lot of families today are barely making it on two incomes and here I am working from home supporting a family of 5 on just my income. This past weekend my step-dad was telling me all about his son and daughter-in-law sending their daughter for horseback riding lessons and how she was going to be riding in the fair this year. I couldn’t even begin to think about something that extravagant for even one of my children. It actually made me cry to think that maybe I was being selfish in staying home and fulfilling my dream of being a stay-at-home, single mom and caring for my children. I finally reached the point where I had to find out about the children’s feelings and what they wanted. I was fully prepared to go out job hunting today if even one of them gave me the word.
I started by asking the children to write a list of things they would want to have if money was no object. They could have anything on that list that they absolutely ever thought about having. Surprisingly enough to me their lists were relatively short. My daughter wanted a better MP3 player that actually worked all the time
I told them that I was going to go out and start looking for a job and that they would be going to daycare while I went to work. I was amazed at how fast those lists disappeared and the whining began. Absolutely NOT was the unanimous response; to them the privilege of being able to stay home and be with me and their friends was worth more to them than any of the things they could possibly want. They started coming up with ideas of their own about how they could (1) get those things on their own and (2) if mommy really needed it how they could earn extra to help pay the bills.
I guess I’ve done pretty good so far with these kids — I remember being raised by my single dad and we didn’t get as many things as he would have liked to provide for us. But I know that I would have most likely sacrificed a whole lot if he could have spent less time at work and more time with us.
