One of my blog readers left a comment asking me to elaborate more on our new schedule.  I wanted to add more last night, but it was simply too late at night for me to form a post that made sense!

Our schedule is very different (as I mentioned before), because my husband and I both work from home, and we homeschool, we live without running water off-grid, but here goes.

In the morning we wake up, I dress the girls, feed the baby (this happens throughout the day of course), brush hair etc. while Larry makes breakfast.  Then we eat together as a family.  Then we do devotional Bible reading out of the NIrV and memory work out of the KJV while the girls listen, color, answer questions etc.  Then we have chore time.  Everyone in the family works on chores.  The girls have some simple chores – mostly picking up.  Our oldest also helps with the dishes.  This is when we focus on domestics.  We do baths, intensive cleaning, dishes (once a day in the morning), cooking ahead, vacuuming, washing floors etc.  Not all on the same day of course, but we always do dishes and cooking.  The girls are excused when they are done, Larry and I keep doing domestics until lunch time – putting away laundry, filing, clearing hot spots, you name it.  We have a chalkboard we both write the tasks on that need to be tackled, but we don’t have a formal chore rotation in place.

After lunch we clear up the table, then we go into our work blocks.   We do two days of school, a day of work, two days of school, a day of work, then take Shabbat off (Saturday).  That is what *I* do in the afternoon block.  On school days we do skills first, then content.  We are currently doing Latin, math, spelling, English, copywork for skills, then we rotate science and history for content subjects for my oldest daughter.  My second daughter is doing All About Reading, and sits in on read alouds, my third daughter likes read alouds too.  We don’t get to do those if our skill work isn’t completed in a timely fashion – and of course, our content subjects are the most fun .

In our work time Larry works on the house, builds furniture, tends to the cattle, chops wood, works on the business, or on my work days he takes the children for walks, does crafts with them, reads them stories etc.  We have a tea break at around 3:45 then keep working until around 6 p.m. now that it is summer.

Then we eat supper, clear the table, and Larry milks the cow (he also does this in the morning before most of us wake up) and take scare of the milk.  Sometime in the afternoon or evening the girls also get to watch a DVD or VHS of their choosing – they have a rotational choosing schedule.  In the evening we sometimes watch a family movie, or just relax, get ready for bed, read our slate of bedtime stories, and it is off to bed!

We have never been so productive!  We’ve done away with multi-tasking and are focusing more on working as a team, I’m so pleased with the results.  Of course, this won’t work for everyone.  The most important thing with scheduling is to understand your family dynamics, eventually you will find something that works for you (Lord willing)!

If you are anything like our family, you’ve tried – ahem – a few different schedules in the past.  For the past couple of weeks we’ve been playing with and perfecting a new type of schedule and so far it is working better for us than any we’ve previously used.  We both work from home, and homeschool, so our schedule has been almost TOO flexible in the past.  Now that we are setting aside larger chunks of time for specific topical tasks things have really been getting done around here!  It’s exciting to see, and it hasn’t felt like a huge burden.  It is actually a relief to have time set aside to really tackle tasks with family members supporting us in them.

So, if you haven’t found a schedule that works for you yet – keep trying!  It is possible to find a good fit, you just need to keep finessing!

Well, my poor little princess is having even more spring allergies.  It’s not only the cow, it’s….spring!  I suspect it is the molds that are being uncovered after the long, wet winter.  Her typical eating spot is beside our door, and whenever it opens she starts sharp inhalations and has a hard time getting her breath.  Windy days are the worst.  I’m so thankful for the breathing oil we have to rub on her chest, it is a life-saver and helps us to get her breathing difficulties under control at difficult times of year.  It has never been as bad as it is this year for her.  I feel for my little munchkin.

If you feel led, we appreciate prayers for her to get through this high-allergy season comfortably .

For the past few days our little allergy queen has been manifesting far more hives than she usually does.  It has been happening several times a day and we’ve been trying to narrow down the cause.

I think we have it.

A few days ago her cow Alpha (our milk cow) gave birth to a little bull calf, now named Buster (our traditional name for critters destined for beef.)  Our daughter has been out there several times a day visiting with him, and whenever she comes back to the house she has a fresh crop of itchy hives.  It is nowhere as near as severe as her allergy to bunnies (that is horrific!) but it’s still something we’ll need to keep an eye on.

Poor darling.

After spending the past week out of diapers, baby Anne is finally recovering from her diaper rash!  Hurray!  It was SO persistent, I thought it might never go away and I’d have to sit her on a towel forever!  Diaper rash is the enemy and I’ll go to great lengths to defeat it, I’m just glad I won’t be forced into elimination communication against my will!  No offense to those of you who use EC, it just isn’t for us .

We are home from the wedding…but we forgot to bring our camera to the big event .  We are SO bad about taking pictures!  Now we need to unpack, run to town to get mail/do errands etc. and try to get back into the swing of things!  It always takes us a couple of days to transition to being home again.  We absolutely LOVE going to see our extended family (on both sides), but it does take a lot of time and mental space for the switches back and forth between home and being on the road .  This seems to be increasing with each child we have!  I keep thinking we should try to stay home so we can get into our groove deeper and for longer, but we just can’t resist family events it seems!

Larry’s sister is getting married tomorrow, so we are off to her wedding today!  It’s 3 hours away so we’re driving down and spending a couple of days with Larry’s mom (she’s only 30 minutes or so away from the hotel the wedding is taking place at.)

So, if things are a bit quiet around here, you’ll know why!  I will be taking my laptop, but I don’t know how many opportunities I’ll have to be online .

We made a trip to the city this week, and it was wonderful!  Larry, Sarah, and I even went shopping without any coats on!  That was a first for this year – Spring is finally on the way!  We haven’t had any -30 temperatures for around a week now, and the children can play outside once more!  Hallelu-Yah!

Based upon recent hormonally inspired posts, some of my bloggy friends have wondered if I’m pregnant again (so soon.)  Hmm, not that I know of .  I may have ovulated, I may be trying to menstruate, or I may have implantation bleeding (whew, that WOULD be a surprise, our other children seem spaced by God at around 2 – 2.5 years apart!)  I’m not really sure what’s happening, but I AM hormonal.

For those asking about amino acids.  If your body doesn’t have enough amino acids coming in, it will have a hard time producing serotonin – a happy hormone that keeps mood levels balanced and helps you to sleep, both a good thing.  Not enough amino acids = not enough serotonin.  I just take a general amino acid blend when I feel hormonally whacky, and it does seem to help!

You can either interpret this as a scream, or an exclamation of sudden understanding.  Yes, something hormonal IS going on.  I’m not quite sure what though.  I don’t want to head into the ‘TMI’ territory, but I will say that I am having additional hormonal symptoms (pimples, cranky – as I mentioned before, and now…)

Baby is only 2.5 months so this is sort of unusual, we’ll have to see what happens!