I put out a monthly newsletter for women. The main emphasis is Bible study. If you'd like to view a sample of the newsletter, please send an email to the email address below and put "free newsletter sample" in the subject line. If you'd like to subscribe to the newsletter, send an email to the email address below and put "subscribe to newsletter" in subject line.
"Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored." Titus 2:3-5 (NASB)
~ 2009 Theme Verse ~
"Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass" I Thessalonians 5:24 (NASB)
"If you would like to join me in having a theme verse for 2009, click below.
•Praying God's Word Day By DayBy Beth Moore
•The Bible
•For the Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and SchoolBy Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
•Munich SignatureBy Bodie ThoeneFrom The Zion Covenant Series
If you've read any of my posts this week, you'll know that this routine thing has been a struggle. Not so much with me as with my darling little Sugarplum. It's felt like I am continuing to go back and forth, up and down, much like I am on a roller coaster. I have joined in on the challenge at Biblical Womanhood to redeem our time and try to put more order and structure in our days.
I was tremendously blessed to receive an email yesterday from a lady who offered suggestions as to how to get my little one on a schedule. It was such a timely email. I was about to do a post telling you how I was feeling like trying to have any kind of schedule during the day time seemed like futility. It would seem like something was going well and working. Then all of sudden that would change. Well, thanks to this lady's email, I am feeling encouraged and ready to keep trying to get Sugarplum on some sort of schedule. That translates into us being able to have more of a routine as well. Some things we have been able to try to maintain pretty well such as our evening routine. I thought we might have to throw the evening routine out the window but alas we were able to continue trying to keep that up. The rest of the day though, I have to admit, was back and forth. Most days I was still able to keep my goal of doing my prayer and Bible study time after Sugarplum laid back down for a nap early in the morning. And some days we were successful in getting breakfast and chores done and school started as per the routine I was trying to institute. However, there were some days when it was all kind of thrown out the window.
So thanks to Erica, I have been encouraged and have a renewed determination to keep at it. I am spending today monitoring how things are going with Sugarplum: sleeping cues, seeing if she may be getting overstimulated, seeing if she is staying awake too long thus not being able to sleep very well, etc. So far it's going pretty well. I hope that by the end of the day I will have an idea on how to begin working on getting her on a schedule.
Personally for me this week, my one main goal is much like Crystal's. I want to be in bed to sleep by 10:00pm. My original goal was to be in bed to sleep by 10:30pm at the latest. However, my plan to adapt this week is as follows:
Time
Routine
7:00pm
Start a load of laundry, get pajamas on, family devotion time (when hubby is home)
7:45pm
Work on doing any straightening up around the house that's needed, take shower if I didn't get one that morning
8:00pm
Drink herbal tea, computer time
9:00pm
Get in bed with my book to read for a little bit to wind down
9:30pm
I’ll try to have lights out and go to sleep. When I turn the lights out for bed, I usually spend a little time talking to God and then go to sleep.
This schedule will hopefully allow me to get adequate sleep given that Sugarplum sleeps until at least 5:30am which has been the average wake time for her here recently.
If you'd like to join in with Crystal and work on order and structure in your day, or would like to see how others are ordering their days, visit Biblical Womanhood.
Intentional eating? What in the world is that? As I have been revamping our diet and making bigger transitions to healthier eating, I have realized that to do so means you have to have intentional eating. Intentional eating means I can't just go about my week without planning out our meals AND snacks - everything from breakfast to snacks to dinner. I have to be intentional about choosing our menu, doing the planning, and executing the plan. To try to have a whole foods diet on a frugal budget, one must do some work watching sales, researching good recipes, and so forth. I am finding that if I don't think the night before about what we're having the next day, then I might forget to do something that's needed ahead of time like soaking the beans that I'll need for our dinner the next day. If I forget to do that, then I have to choose a different meal that next day which could translate into having to eat something a little less on the whole foods side and possibly not as nutritious. This has happened to me already more than once. I had planned on making a very healthy minestrone soup for dinner tonight. I went to make it today and realized that I hadn't soaked and cooked the beans that I needed to put in this soup. It worked out okay as I had another meal I could make. But that hasn't always been the case. We ended up with a very healthy meal tonight. However, it really helped me realize even more the need for looking at my meal plan for the day on the night before.
For those that don't know it, I have a cooking blog. I began it several months back to share different recipes. However, since that time, I have made our dietary changes. Therefore, I have revamped my cooking blog a little to reflect our new way of eating. I will be posting healthy recipes along with information on healthy eating. Last night, I just posted our menu plan for this week. In the next couple of days, I hope to post my recipe for what I am calling a tuna burger. These turned out absolutely delicious and are packed with nutrition! Both my husband and older daughter liked them. And my daughter is not a big fan of tuna either! Here's the link:
On a different note, I was able to get the house more in order today! Yay! I think I feel back on track and ready to go for the rest of the week. Even though Sugarplum seems to be setting a new routine for herself, I am still trying to maintain some routine for us. We didn't follow much of a routine today because hubby was home all day and I also needed to spend some time doing some things around the house to get it back in order. My older daughter still did all of her school work that she does on her own and my son still did all of his regular work. So over all, it was a very productive day.
I am actually getting ready to get in my recliner, finish writing out the rest of our snacks and meals for the week, and watch a show with my older daughter that we've both been waiting to see. I have all of our dinner meals planned out, I am just writing out a detailed eating plan for each day this week including a plan for our little Sugarplum.
It looks like I need to make an adjustment. I think I might have to just throw some of the evening routine out the window for now. We'll see. With Sugarplum not napping in the afternoon, I have decided to just lay her down when she gets tired. So that could be 4:00pm it could 6:00pm. This could mean she might sleep through her regular bedtime and wake up later (like midnight, etc.). It may not. But I'm going to have to be really flexible on the whole routine in the evening hours until I see some sort of pattern again. It seems we may be off on another routine rollercoaster ride. Today, she woke up between 2am and 3am. She laid back down around 4 something I think. Then got back up around 5:30am or so. She laid back down around 7:45am. Got back up at around 8:15am. Laid back down around 10:15am. Then got back up around 11:30am. Then she didn't lay down again until around 4:00pm. But even then she only slept about 30 minutes or so. I put her to bed around 7:00pm. Whew!
I am determined to try to hang on to my morning routine as much as I can. I have pretty much been up since between 2 and 3am this morning. My daughter and myself got things accomplished this morning. Shoot - I even got the shower cleaned at 6:30am this morning!!!
Crystal at Biblical Womanhood is hosting a meme of sorts to help us get more structure and order in our lives in order to be effective managers of our homes. In her post HERE, Crystal says: "come up with your proposed morning routine. Post it on your blog and leave your link in the comments section below. And then commit to consistently following it each week day, by the grace of God."
Last week, I posted about the morning and evening routine I was beginning to implement. You can read about that HERE. It is very basic and I am not putting rigid time frames right now because that does not work for us right now in some ways because my 11 month old is typically getting up anywhere between 3:00-5:30am. So my day begins when she wakes up and that sets the stage for my time frames in the early morning hours. Having said that, here's the general morning routine I am working on right now:
Upon waking (3:00-5:30am) - Sugarplum's morning feeding
Floor time with Sugarplum (read books, play) and do my muscle-toning exercises
Lay Sugarplum back down after about an hour and then have prayer and in-depth Bible study time for me
At this point, we begin more of a time schedule (well sort of anyway)
8:00am - Breakfast and older daughter's morning routine
10:00am - Sugarplum goes down for her mid-morning nap and my older daughter and I do school work
12:00pm - lunch and older daughter's afternoon routine
I have begun my older daughter on a routine as well. We're really focusing right now on getting a morning and evening routine into habit for her. But we still work on the overall routine. Here's my older daughter's morning routine:
8:00am - wake up if she hasn't already gotten up (sometimes she's up earlier) and read her devotional
Breakfast
After breakfast, she cleans her room (straighten bed, etc.)
Next, she does the morning dishes
Finally, she begins her school work that she does on her own.
At 10:00am we work on the school work that I do with her.
12:00pm - lunch
So as you can see, we have some general time frames but not much. Right now, in this season of life, I have found that pegging us down to rigid time frames not only creates frustration but just plain out won't work. Sugarplum has a general schedule but it can still fluctuate regularly. Just like now - the last few days she has not taken an afternoon nap AT ALL. We'll lay her down but she just won't nap. So it's hard to even plan our afternoons sometimes right now because we don't know if she'll take a nap or not. Thankfully, our school work is usually completely finished by lunch. Usually whatever school work is not finished is stuff that my older daughter does on her own.
Here's our evening routine:
Around 5:00pm - dinner
6:00pm - Sugarplum usually goes to bed at this point. She just seems to want to go to sleep for the night by this time. Sometimes we have to try to keep her awake until 6:00pm!
7:00pm - Family devotions
8:00pm - quiet time (I usually use this time to wind down or finish up any leftover chores that need to be done.)
9:00pm - bed time for older daughter and many times myself as well. If I don't go on to bed, I like to get in my recliner or bed and read a little before going to bed. The books for me to read at this time are my free reading books I guess you could say: Christian fiction for right now. No home management books. No how-to type books, etc. Right now, I am reading the Zion Covenant Series (Christian historical fiction).
Older daughter's evening routine:
5:00-7:00pm - After dinner, she cleans up her room, gets her pajamas on, and then does dinner dishes. This is also the time she gets her shower.
After those chores are finished, it's free time/family time
7:00pm - Family devotions
8:00pm - Quiet time: This is my daughter's free reading time (silent reading). She gets to chose what she wants to read.
8:45pm - brush teeth and prayer time with Daddy
9:00pm - Bed
Usually at some point between dinner and bed, we'll have a little snack. We are doing okay with this new routine. Like I said already my main focus right now is getting that morning and evening routine into habit. Even though we may work on a routine throughout the day, I'm making these two routines a priority for habit building first. Then once that is going strong, I'll add in something else.
The ultimate goal of Christian home education is to train children to impact the world for God. We want our children to not only hear and learn God's Word, but also be doers of God's Word. Therefore, we strive to teach them:
SERVICE - How to serve God and others
ACHIEVEMENT - To do the best they can in all they do from academic subjects to chores to serving others and more
LOVE - To love God and one another
TRUTH - To live their lives based on the absolute Truth of God
The name of this blog is the acronym for these four areas that we strive to teach our children:
S.A.L.T. - Service, Achievement, Love, Truth
