Author: Deb

The Easy Win

Deb

So, here we are. 8 months into a world wide pandemic. Anyone else going crazy yet. I am balancing things this year that I never thought I would have to balance. I am stressed. I am struggling to find stress relief in a time when staying at home is the norm. I am looking for the easy win.

I was listening to a podcast the other day. (Beyond the To Do List with Eric Fischer) On the the host had a guest talking about time as money. It talked about how we could treat time like we treat money in our bank accounts. It wasn’t the topic that made me think, but something the guest said. She said that when we are stressed we can tend to say yes to things more easily because it feels like a win.

This made me think. I had been trying to find something to say yes to in my life because of the stress load I am carrying. I was looking for the easy win. When my state first locked down last spring, my life was pretty easy. I did my tasks for work. Helped my kids complete their school work. The house didn’t bother me as much because of the six people that were contained in it everyday. I was able to accomplish things and feel good about what I accomplished most days.

Fast forward to this fall when many of my responsibilities became heavier because of the times and the stress climbed. I feel like I work from dawn to dusk everyday to complete the tasks with little down time and still not everything gets done or there are always things that I could do better. I struggle to find time sometimes or even just find the activity that removes me from the stress and reenergizes me to keep moving the next day. I can’t seem to find relief from my workload either at home or at school.

Like most people I’ve struggled with mental health over the last few months and it looks to continue until things get back to any sense of normalcy. My body and mind crave a break from the craziness. They want to focus on something other than work, home, politics, or health. I spend time everyday thinking about how I need to move forward in this to keep my family safe but also keep my own sanity.

I don’t have any answers to how to destress in this crazy time. I’m just coming here to say something I don’t think enough people are saying which is: Life is hard right now It even downright sucks. The decisions we are making, the jobs we are doing aren’t what we planned for or expected to be doing in 2020. This doesn’t mean I want to wallow in this feeling of loss and deprivation, but it does mean I acknowledge that this is not what I planned or wanted.

I will not feel guilty for grieving for things in my life, even though there may be people who never had those things to grieve for. I will grieve the normalcy I miss. I will grieve the holidays I wanted to spend with family. I will grieve the moments my kids don’t get with extended family. At the same time, I will try my best to take care of myself and my family both physically and mentally. I will continue to turn to God both in prayer and in his Word for comfort and guidance in these crazy times. I will continue to treat those around me with kindness and understanding, knowing that everyone sees this situation differently. They see different solutions to the problems at hand. I will stop looking for the easy win, because there is no easy win. Life isn’t meant to be a cake walk.

Hopefully, I will come out on the other side of this trial stronger, but even if I don’t, I know that God is using me to shine as his light here on this earth for those who are lost in darkness and have a lot more to lose. I will learn to appreciate the time I have with my family and my students. I will learn that not everything needs to be done by me. I will learn that life isn’t about the next task to be completed. I will learn that God has given me so many blessings that I can’t help but thank him for the amazing life he has given me even though right now it may be hard. I will learn that there is no easy win, but that life is hard. I will learn there is joy to be found even in the moments where life seems unbelievably hard.

Road Trip: Travel Games

Deb

As you plan for a road trip, entertaining your kids can be a hassle. Our family at home tries to have our kids entertain themselves as much as possible. In the car this can be a little trickier because of the limited number of resources your children have at their disposal. A little pre-planning on your part can go a long way in helping your kids still be able to entertain themselves in the car. Here are some of my favorite no electronic in the car games you can play with your kids or even as an adult to help pass the travel time.

I Spy

My kids love to play this to the point that it almost becomes annoying. Remember the moose in Brother Bear? Anyway here’s how you play. Someone starts by saying “I spy…” and then describing the color or shape of an object. The other people try to guess what object the person is describing. The person who guesses it correctly gets to ask the next question.

Counting

My oldest two kids are old enough to count or recognize different objects. My daughter has done this in the past with airport signs. She’ll watch for the airplane on road signs and count how many she sees in a given town. This can be done with anything. Maybe your driving through a slow construction zone. You could count how many workers you see, you can count how many trucks or construction vehicles you see. Maybe over the course of the whole trip your going to count how many motorcycles you see. This can done as a family or competitively between family members to see who saw the most.

Reading the Map

Similar to the counting game this game can be played individually or as a family. With three days of driving our kids of course are going to ask, “Are we there yet?” If they are old enough to look at a map or read road signs this may help with some of those questions. Before you leave, show your child a map of the journey you are taking. Talk about the different roads you will go on, the different states you will be driving through, and even some of the cities you will be seeing, again this all depends on the age of the child.  Something I’m going to try to do this year is make a list of the major cities we are going through and have the number of miles to our destination after them. Then my oldest can follow along with the list of cities and know where we are in our journey instead of having to ask, “Are we there yet?” she will be able to see how far we still need to go.

Dimes

This was a suggestion from a friend and last year our oldest was still a little young, but this year it worked a lot better. Here’s how it works,  you get a roll of dimes from the bank and give it to the child. (We found a sandwich bag worked well.) You tell them that the five dollars is their money to spend at your destination, but they can also lose the money along the trip for specific reasons. Last year for us it was asking, “Are we there yet?” or having to be told repeatedly to stop some noise or activity. If your child commits one of these errors then they give you a dime. They get to spend whatever is left when you arrive at your destination.

License Plates

I’ve played this since I was young and still do now even though my kids aren’t quite old enough to participate yet. Again this game can be played as a family or competitively. It is pretty simple. You look for different license plates and you write them down as you see them with the goal being to see all fifty states or the most of anyone playing the game. You can put whatever rules you want on how you find the plates. Maybe you want to limit it to only when you are on the road, or you can’t use the plates off of semi-trailers. Modify it to fit your family. Bonus points to the person who sees all the Canadian Provinces, or cars from other countries.

Competitive Scavenger Hunts and List Making

These last two games are very similar. They both take a little bit of prep work before getting in the car. If this is a road trip you’ve been on a few times, pick out some of the unique things you know you will see along the trip. If it’s one you haven’t taken before pick generic things you know you will see along the way. To play a scavenger hunt make a specific list of things and numbers of things the passengers in your car needs to see before the end of the trip. Another way to play (I call it list making) is to write up descriptions for things to see along the trip. The people playing would then write down a location or name of an item that meets that description given in the list. Again the goal would be to finish the list first or before the end of the trip. Example List

Many of these games run along the same lines of looking for things while driving, but having a purpose for the watching you do while driving may turn the activity into enough of a game to make the time go faster. You don’t have to play a game the whole trip, but could set limits like between certain stops or just one of the days of travel. Have you played any of these games with your family. Do you have other games you play with family in the car on road trips? Leave your answers in the comments below.

 

Road Trip: Entertainment in the Car

Deb

Three kids in the back of your car. Going on hour 30 of 38 that you have been driving. How do you keep your sanity? In my family, I’m hoping they are all mid-nap, but rarely do all three of my kids sleep at the same time. We’ve found some ways to help keep the peace in the backseat while still maintaining our own sanity.

Toys

With the three days of travel, we end up stopping at fast food places along the way. Our kids, as most kids their age, are big fans of kid’s meals, and what comes with a kid’s meal but a toy.  Instead of taking these toys into our house after our trip, where they are discarded and soon lost, we put them in a bag that only comes out for long car rides. This solves two problems, one that I don’t want to buy new toys to entertain my kids on each long car ride and two the toys although old are still use so rarely that the kids are engaged with them longer than if I just brought toys they play with at home. Another positive to these toys is that rarely do they make noise and if they do they are usually very loud.

Screen Time

Electronics get suggested many times for car trips with kids. Even as adults something that holds your attention one day may be uninteresting and boring the next. To try to prevent this fatigue, we don’t allow our kids to have any electronics until at least the second day of travel. We have found that the toys and other things we bring do a good job of entertaining the kids for the first day and into the second. We try to limit their screen time at home in the week before we leave also. This gives them the idea that screen time is a treat and holds their attention longer when they actually get to use it.

Crayons, Coloring Books, Workbooks, etc.

My oldest is getting old enough where she can be entertained with reading in the car (though this may not last long, so far we have avoided motion sickness but signs are not good for her). She also likes to do simple worksheets from her summer education workbook. My middle child likes to color. One word of caution on coloring though is to make sure your child won’t color on your car interior, or you could have crayons or markers that only color on allowable surfaces.

Games

Many adults remember playing games with their families while riding in the car as young children. Some of our favorites with young children have been I Spy, counting games, and finding road signs. Some games I look forward to playing with my kids as they get older and more able to participate are the License Plate Game, Competitive Scavenger hunts, and Making list with certain criteria. If you want more information on any of these games see the post about Travel Games.

Packing the Car

It’s great to have all these activities for kids to do while driving in the car, but one last thing to think about while you plan your travels is how to pack your car. All of our kids are still required to ride in car seats and some of them in harnessed car seats. As most of you know this really limits their mobility especially if they drop something. We try to make everything accessible to them even with this limited mobility. Our oldest is a booster seat which makes it easier for her to move and get things that get dropped or hand things to her siblings but still there is only so much you can do from your seat in the car.

We try to keep two bags of stuff for our kids when travelling. One of the bags was mentioned before. It has the kid’s meal toys in it. The other bag has the drawing supplies and any books we bring on the trip. These two bags are usually placed on the seat between out two oldest children. They are easily able to reach the bags and have access to what they want as we go along. We try to refill the bags every time we stop, because toys still get dropped or end up out of reach. The same goes with the I-pad. We only allow them to use it after a stop so we can set up the movie or game for them to do. Our youngest is usually good with just one or two toys that she is able to keep in her car seat.

I hope this has given you some ideas of how to entertain your child in the car on those long summer road trips. Do you have any tried and true tips or tricks for traveling in the car with your little ones. Let us know in the comments below.

 

Road trip: Planning Stops and Meals

Deb

It is summer and that means travel season. For many families this can be a dreaded drive in the car with young children. For my family it means our annual three day drive to California to visit my husband’s family. Now three days stuck in your car is not pleasant for anyone even just by yourself, but put three kids in the back, 6 and under, and it becomes a little more chaotic. So how do we keep our sanity?

Set Rules for Stopping that Everyone can Abide by

Each year, before we set off on our road trip, my husband and I discuss what our stopping rules are. Last year when we traveled, we had a 2 month old (who was nursing), 2 year old, and 5 year old. Our rule when we traveled was that we only stop to feed the baby.  This meant that we had to monitor liquid intake on everyone so those emergency bathroom breaks weren’t necessary. It also meant that we needed car snacks to get us through hunger if it struck while the baby was napping or content in her car seat.

This year we have a 1 year old, 3 year old, and 6 year old. Our stopping rule for this year is for food (meals). We plan to stop only around meal times. This is so when we do stop we are able to stop for an extended period time to let everyone get out and stretch. Even with only stopping for food, we still still be stop every three to four hours.

We find that the three days seem to take even longer if we don’t have a plan to stop. We have even found ourselves stopping every hour and a half at times, which when you stop with three kids is at least a half an hour stop just getting everyone in and out of the car let alone using the restroom or stretching. If we limit ourselves to stopping for set reasons, we are able to have longer stops and still feel like we are getting to where we want to go in a decent amount of time.

Where to Stop

So you know when your stopping, but now you need to decide where to stop. We like to stop at places where our kids can run off energy and also accomplish the purpose of the stop (eating).  We will try to make our stops at places where our kids can freely run around. This may mean a Fast Food restaurant with a play place, a rest stop, or even trying to find a park not too far off the freeway.

How to Stop

We have a routine we follow whenever we stop. It’s many times a plan of divide and conquer. Usually who gets to go first is the adult that needs to use the bathroom the most. For example, I may be using the restroom first so I would take our 6 year old daughter with me. We would head into the restroom at whatever location we stopped at. My husband would be releasing our other two children from car seats. I would bring our daughter and myself back to the car, grab the 1 year old, while he and our son would go use the facilities. If this is at a restaurant, I would be figuring out what the kids and I would be eating. If this is at a rest stop, I would be getting out the food and supplies, we had brought along with us, and getting ready to eat.

When we stop for food, there are a few things we try to do in order to preserve our sanity and well-being. We tend to feel pretty crappy if all we do is eat fast food for three days. The first day or so we try to carry at least one meal a day with us. After that food is gone, we try to stop once a day at an actual sit down restaurant.  We do this so we are able to order vegetables or fruit. When we stop at places where the kids can play, we try to let them play the whole time we are stopped. They eat when we get back in the car so they get as much energy out as possible. If we have to stop someplace where there is no place for them to safely run and play, we try to go for a walk before getting back in the car. (We try not to have this happen.)

 

 

 

 

Road trips: Driving Overnight

Deb

Wisconsin to California. This is our yearly vacation plan. My in-laws live in  California and with that comes some interesting discussions in my family. We have flown, driven without stopping for the night, and taken three days with some rather small children to make this trip. This past summer was no different. Starting in January we began to make plans for our trip. My husband only gets two weeks of vacation, so getting to and from California as quickly and safely as possible is always the goal. Flying is really too expensive now with five of us, so driving is where we started planning. We realized that it would be faster to leave on a Sunday afternoon then to wait for Monday morning and so the plan was hatched to drive through the night on Sunday. We survived but we did learn some things along the way.

Stop to Sleep

Now this may not sound like the way to drive thru the night. We found as we traveled deeper into the night that it got harder and harder to stay awake, which I mean makes sense. As this happened more and more we decided to pull over for an hour or so to try to take a nap as best we could. We found a well lit parking lot and tried to get some sleep. This was the best thing we could have done. When we pulled out of the parking lot an hour and a half later, we felt rested and much more ready to tackle a few more miles on the road. If your planning a trip that has you driving through the night, give yourself a break. Allow yourself the freedom to take a catnap along the way.

Crunchy Snacks/Caffeinated Beverages

Once the sun goes down and your driving in the dark, having something for your mouth to do can help you stay awake. We had made our own trail mix and pretzel mix before we left. We enjoyed these snacks throughout the night. We also bought Monster energy drinks and had some caffeinated soda in our travel mugs from the last gas station. Plan snacks that maybe aren’t something you would get normally so it is a special treat.  It makes the trip have a little bit of fun, while having a duel purpose of helping you stay awake.

Pillows/Blankets

Not for the driver, but for the passengers. We had three young children in the back of our vehicle. we wanted them to sleep through the night as much as possible. Because of this yearly trip our kids get a child sized neck pillow on their first birthday. We also took along car sized blankets for them to cover up with. Not only do these work as comfort items and to help with keeping the kids warm. It helps to give a routine to set a sleep time. On the last stop before we wanted them actually go to sleep for awhile we actually sort of tuck them into their car seats for the night.

Be Ready for Anything

Be flexible. Realize that this may not work the way you wanted it to. During this 30 hour driving marathon we actually ended up getting a flat tire pretty much in the middle of no where. The kids ended up eating breakfast on the side of the road while my husband and I (mostly my husband) changed the tire so we could continue on our journey.

What are some ways you have made travelling with kids bearable? have you found any secrets that have made different parts of your trip more enjoyable or things you may never try again? Leave a comment below.

Why I Love Labor Day

Deb

Many people think of Labor Day as the end of summer, but for those of us who thrive on schedules and routine it marks the end of a time when routine and schedules are not as easy to follow. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy summer vacation. But I can handle only so much of it, before I am begging for school to start again. Even as a teacher I feel this way. I can’t wait for school to start. It brings back the routine I need to find some sanity in my life. With the start of school comes Labor Day weekend, which has it’s own benefits for helping ease the transition of back to school.

The Long Weekend

This year my daughter and I had school for three days before we hit the three day weekend. It got my family back into the routine and my students at school through those first few days of organization and procedure teaching. We were rewarded with a long weekend. Although my family is usually quite busy over the weekends, we had one extra day during which we were able to do a family activity together.

Chaos of Summer Ends

No longer am I running around trying to fit in visiting with family, doing fun things with my kids, and still trying to find time to work, but I can know have a schedule that simplifies my life. Yeah, my kids go to bed ridiculously early, but they have activities planned each day whether that be school or daycare. I know what needs to happen when in order for my day and theirs to be successful.

A Break from the Schedule

Getting back into the school routine is hard, even for people who thrive off of living on a schedule. For my family and I getting those few days to make the schedule work and then having days where we don’t need to live on such tight schedule really helps everyone reset and be ready to go back to the schedule on Tuesday. It gives us a chance to reevaluate and make changes to our schedule so hopefully everything can run more efficiently.

Relaxing, Family Time

My family doesn’t always get to relax around the holidays. Our holidays are rather busy with my husband working most of them. This is one holiday where he doesn’t work and we are able to enjoy time as a family. This year is was as simple as being able to go on a picnic. Yes, it was slightly chilly, but it was something that got us away from our house and let us focus on ourselves and our kids.

Do you enjoy the Labor Day weekend? Do you have any traditions that you do on Labor Day weekend? Is the end of summer awaited eagerly at your house? Let us know in the comments below.

Getting ready for the school year: Having a schedule

Deb

If you have school age children and you haven’t already gone back to school you soon will be. How do you make the transition? Do you go crazy the first day trying to get there on time? Do you live all summer on your school schedule? Here’s how my family does back to school.

AUGUST: Week 1

The first full week in August is routine time. We start by going to bed at school time. (My kids are still pretty young they went to bed pretty early all summer. You may want to take a few days to do this, slowly moving bedtime earlier.) This doesn’t mean they are getting up at school time yet but their bodies are adjusting to going to bed earlier and it may make it easier for them to get up earlier. Here are the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations for amount of sleep children should be getting.

AUGUST: Week 2

We start getting up at school time and following a loose morning routine. We start to enforce school wake up times. There are no time constraints yet so we iron out the wrinkles as we go and make adjustments. This isn’t so much about the time things get done by but the order in which things happen in the morning. The hope is my kids will go through the routine like it’s second nature by the time the school year actually starts.

AUGUST: Week 3

Now its crunch time. We get up at a consistent time. The kids follow the schedule. We try to be ready by the set leave time for school. This week is about making the final small changes so our mornings flow as smoothly as possible.

My daughter’s school starts at 8AM. We have about a fifteen to twenty minute drive to get there. I don’t work in the mornings so me getting to work isn’t part of this schedule equation. She also has two younger siblings that I need to load into the car before we can leave. I get up well before my kids so I can shower, read a devotion, and get some writing or work done before managed chaos descends on my house.

Sample Schedule

6:30 This is my kids wake up time. They are usually up before this.

Once my kids are up, my oldest knows to get dressed. We try to aid this process by laying her clothes out the night before. Her next step is to brush her hair so all I need to do is put it up in some way.

6:45 Breakfast

Starting about age two, we require our kids to be dressed before breakfast on school days. Her little brother is still working on this rule which makes for some interesting mornings.  Breakfast is an easy affair most days being cereal or oatmeal and some fruit.

7:00 Finishing touches

My daughter brushes her teeth. I make sure her hair is done. I make sure the younger two children are some semblance of dressed.

7:15 Load up

Getting three kids in the car in any sort of timely fashion, especially when they are all still in car seats takes some time. This can take my kids anywhere from 5-10 minutes depending on how cooperative they want to be that day, so I give myself some wiggle room here so my patience isn’t flying out the window as we get in the car.

As my kids get older and more of them are going to school this schedule will change and most likely become earlier. Getting my kids back into the routine before school actually starts makes that first week of school a little less stressful because they know what is happening in the morning and that it happens the same way every morning.

How do you and your family prepare for the school year? Have you found strategies that work for getting your kids to bed easily? How do your kids get up in the morning? Leave a comment below.