Is it all about the food??

As many of you know, Christian, Courtney, and I have been on strict diets for awhile. Courtney's and Christian's started in May and mine started a couple of months ago.

These diets have included no dairy, no eggs, no peanuts, no gluten, no yeast, no soy, and no citrus for the kids. I am off everything else except the citrus, but add black pepper and garlic.

Why have we done this?  For our health. But trust me, it hasn't been easy.

Last May, I decided that we should try to eat "healthier." I decided to start buying only 100% juice and switch out bread to "whole grain" breads without any high fructose corn syrup. I also wanted to not eat so much boxed food and try to eat the fruits and veggies more.

In a way, my plan backfired.  We were eating whole grain bread, but soon Courtney started to not feel well.  By the end of the week, she was sick as a dog!  I skipped my pediatrician (I will not get into that now!) and went to a new doctor that I had been seeing, she is a chiropractic physician and she seemed to be helping me with my issues, so I took Courtney in to see her.  She thought she had a food intolerance, which I would've never guessed, so we did an allergy test and all these things came up! I could hardly believe it!  Christian was also having some bowel trouble, so we put him on the same diet.

So began my life of not eating anything I used to eat and figuring out how to feed my children a whole new diet!

But I will say, it has helped tremendously!!  Courtney eats so much better now and she is not as picky. She does not curl up in a ball on the recliner after every meal. We always used to laugh at her too, whenever she would jump up and down, you could hear everything in her stomach jiggling. It would do this night and day. Guess what? It doesn't jiggle anymore! I asked the doctor yesterday what that was all about and she said that the jiggling was the inflammation in her stomach and now that it's not inflamed, it doesn't jiggle anymore!
Really, was she that affected by what she ate?? We are starting to get her back on foods now, but it is just amazing.

Why did I go on the diet? Many of you know that I have been dealing with anxiety for the last couple of years.  It was getting worse (along with a bunch of other symptoms) and I was going from doctor to doctor trying to get answers.  All they ever wanted me to do was go on anti-depressants.  None of them ever wanted to get to the source of my problem.

Then I found this chiropractic physician last March.  I called her up as a sort of "Let's see what she has to say."  I needed a different perspective and I really wanted to figure out what was going on.

The first thing she did was did an adrenal test and we found out that I had stage 3 adrenal fatigue. This means that my adrenal gland was burned out.  I was under so much stress that my adrenal gland gave up making cortisol.  This explained many of my symptoms!  So now what? We tried treating my adrenals, but as I was taking the supplements, I was getting worse!

I called the doctor back up and she looked over my test results again.  She determined that something inside my body was causing my adrenals stress.  She suggested to take a food allergy test.  This is about July or August now.  Her theory was that if I was eating something that my body didn't like, it was going to fight it.  This would therefore cause stress on my body and cause all my symptoms. I went ahead and did the test and  many things came up for me just like Courtney!

I have been off all this food for two months and it is like night and day difference to how I feel! I went back and saw my doctor yesterday and told her that I sleep so much better at night, my blood sugar is more stable and I am not taking naps in the afternoon anymore, plus I have more energy and my moods seem to be more stable.  I was amazed that I have improved so much in such a short amount of time!

I still deal with anxiety, but I know how to deal with it.  I also noticed that if I eat something I am not supposed to (like yesterday I had French Dressing which contains garlic), it will cause all my symptoms to come back again.  If I eat exactly what I should be and not drift away from the diet, I feel great!

So in the end, food can be our enemy or our friend. In my family, changing our diets has made a huge improvement.  Now that I have more energy, I am finding new meals to make and cooking is fun again.  We eat lots of fruits and vegetables and very little processed food. We can only eat out at buffet with a salad bar or we need to know exactly what is in our food. We ate at Qdoba the other day and I had some symptoms afterwards, maybe I should've asked for an ingredient list. :)

Anyway, life is good again. My adrenals are returning, anxiety is going down, I have well children, and it all boils down to what we are feeding our bodies.  Amazing!

Done with school!

For once,we finished up school in four days.

I kind of had an inspiration. The girls have a Halloween party tomorrow morning and I didn't want to do any school on Friday afternoon.

I don't think I have ever achieved this before, at least not this year.  It is a great feeling to not have to have school until Monday!

More grasshopper babies?

Courtney got up this morning to check on her grasshoppers and she saw more eggs in the terrarium!  I had taken the eggs from a couple of weeks and put them in a safe place, but now there are more!

How many times do grasshoppers lay eggs??

No Jury Duty!

About three weeks ago, I got a summons in the mail that I was being called for jury duty for the district court here in Omaha.  As much as I want to be on a jury, I didn't quite know how this was going to work.  As a stay-at-home mom, I could probably make it work to serve on a jury, but now that I homeschool, how would that work? If I got called in, my children could not go to school.  I was also going to be on call for a month, which added to the problem.

I filled out the forms and filled out the "Petition to get out of jury duty."  I wrote that I am a homeschool teacher and my children would not be able to go to school, I also added that I cannot hire a substitute.  In Nebraska, there is a state truancy law that says if your children miss more than 14 days of school, your name gets turned into the county attorney for review. I did not want this to happen! (remember, I could be on a jury for a month.)

I called in today to check my status and it said, "Your request to get out of jury duty has been granted!"

I was pretty happy!!

So to all you homeschool moms, if you get called into district court, you just might get out of it!

Oh Courtney!

Courtney never ceases to amaze me. Here's two of her latest stories:

1.  She has two pet grasshoppers that she just loves!  She checks on right before she goes to bed and right away in the morning, during the day she is always checking on them and seeing how they are doing. She talks to them and feeds them all the time. Today she said that one had his hand over his heart and she was reciting "The Plege of Allegiance" for him.

But yesterday morning, she made me laugh more than usual in regards to her pet grasshoppers.  She was eating some Berry Captain Crunch for breakfast and she knew that grasshoppers eat green things, so she was picking out the green berries to feed her grasshoppers.  She had a pile of them on the table. I don't think she ever fed them to them, but I think she was serious about it! I just laughed!

2. Today I went to go get the dirty laundry out of the girls' laundry basket and realized that only Megan had put her dirty clothes in there. Can you guess where Courtney's dirty clothes were? On her floor? No. Under her bed? No. Back in her drawer? (this has happened!)No. Stuffed in her closet? No. They are IN her bed. Along with her many blankets, penguins, pillow pets, barbie clothes, and many books. I only know this because I went to dig the library books out of her bed this morning and I saw one of her good Sunday dresses in a ball beside her pillow. I then proceeded to see outfits that I know she wore a couple of days ago in her bed too.

Do I make her be responsible and take her own dirty clothes out of her bed? (of course!) Or do I do it for her? (no way!)

I think I will not say anything and when she runs out of clothes, maybe she will learn that dirty clothes go in the laundry basket and not in her bed!!!

(Her dirty clothes are in her bed because she always changes while standing on her bed because then she can see herself in the mirror.)

Matt and I think she will definitely need some organization skills in the future!

This week...

1.  Christian took a 2 1/2 hour nap yesterday and as not happy about it! But after sleeping for 2 1/2 hours, he was in a much better mood! This is the boy who hasn't taken a nap in his bed in the afternoon for a couple of weeks. Honestly, it's so much easier to let him stay up and play with Courtney in the afternoon.

2.  I made banana bread for the first time yesterday with oatmeal flour. It got approval from my family!! It was really good.

3.  Today Megan starts a mini- dance camp with a different dance teacher who is working with her dance teacher. It is for the next three Tuesdays from 3-4 in the afternoon, I hope we can be done with school by 3 pm!

On top of dance class now, we still have piano lessons and gymnastics tonight.  I don't have one student coming tonight, so instead of piano lessons, we are going to go get family pictures done, thanks to a groupon I bought. :)  It expires on Halloween, so we need to get it done.  But before we have family pictures, I need to get Christian's hair cut an pick out clothes. Yikes!

4.  One of our friends has invited us to her homeschool coop's Halloween party on Friday. Do you know what that means? I need to get three kids fitted into Halloween costumes by then! Usually I tell them to just go to their closets about an hour before we go trick or treating and find something. I'm not sure I can do that this time. I need to sit down with them, look through their closets, and then maybe make a trip to Goodwill to see if I can find something cheap.   One of our friends said that Christian could borrow some train engineer overalls, so I think he is done. As you can tell, I don't try really hard on costumes. :) 

Ride the Tractor?

Today we are heading out to grandma's house for the annual harvest party.

As we were eating lunch today, I said to Christian,"You better eat your lunch if you want to go ride the tractor at grandma's house."

Here's how the rest of the conversation went:

Megan: You want to ride the tractor with Uncle Andrew, don't you?
Christian: No, with Uncle Shawn.
Me: Uncle Shawn is watching race cars today.
Christian: Race cars?
Me: Do you want to go watch race cars sometime?
Christian: Yah...(with a big grin!)
Me: If you want to ride in a tractor today, it will have to be with Uncle Andrew.
Christian: No, Uncle Shawn.
Me: No, Uncle Uncle Andrew
Christian: No, Uncle Shawn.
Me: What about Uncle Shane? You want to ride the tractor with him?
Christian: No, I ride combine with Uncle Shawn!

Cookies

You know what we were doing an hour before bedtime last night? Making cookies!

Megan started it. :)  She asked if she could make cookies earlier in the day and we didn't have time because we were leaving, so I said she could do it later.  Later ended up being after supper!

And since Megan made herself and  her dad some cookies (with wheat flour, margarine, real eggs, and semi-sweet chocolate chips) I made myself, Christian, and Courtney some cookies (with oat flour, dairy-free butter, egg replacement, and very expensive dairy-free chocolate chips from Whole Foods) .

Fair is fair, right?

Plus I don't feel bad eating my cookie dough, I don't use real eggs, so I don't have to worry about getting sick!!

For Future Reference...

We don't cook with wheat flour much because Christian, Courtney and I are gluten-free. I found this chart on somebody else's facebook page and thought it would look very useful!

Lately, I have been grinding up oatmeal into oatmeal flour and using that, but this mix of different flours and starches works too.

Another quote...

I had to go get some groceries tonight and as I was checking out, the cashier (who was very SLOW!!!) noticed that I was buying quite a few canned goods.  He said to me, "What are you going to do with all these canned goods? Having a canned good yard sale???"  He was totally serious.

 I responded, "No, we are going to eat them." I thought his jaw was going to drop.  (BTW- Vegetables were 37 cents, wouldn't you stock up too?)

Then he said, "How often do you go grocery shopping?" Even though I go every 1-2 weeks, I told him that I go every two weeks.  He replied with, "Oh, ok."

So we eat a lot in our house and I am not ashamed of it!  We also don't eat much processed foods or dairy, so we don't get filled up on those as fast and instead we eat a lot of fruit and vegtables. 

PS You should never stand in the check out lane longer than you are in the store!!!

Who knew??

I admit, I have never made tacos here at the Ruwe house. Never ever.

I LOVE tacos, but Matt has always told me he doesn't like the meat sauce, so I've never made them. :(

Well, lately, he has told me that it is really not so bad, so I thought I would give it a try. I am always looking for new recipes that we can use for our dairy-free, peanut-free- gluten-free,egg-free, and citrus-free diets around here.

Tacos were perfect!! I just couldn't believe it though. The kids ate and ate and ate like they were the best things in the world! I made twelve tacos and they were all gone. (Christian was napping though, so he didn't get any!) The meat sauce was gone, half the salsa was gone, and the tomatoes were almost gone.

Who knew tacos would be such a big hit?? I would've made them years ago!!

You know...

you have been studying about history too much when:

A. You find your daughter outside grinding up corn with a rock and then together, we proceed to make corn tortillas.

B. You overhear your two daughters playing Little People and their conversation is,  "Everyone has scarlet fever, we need to get them to the doctor's office! "

Chaos!!

That is what is was here about 15 minutes ago!

We have a neighbor whose dog is in our yard once in awhile. His name is Hank, he's a beagle, and we know exactly what to do when he is in our yard. We put him on Dell's leash and take him home!

Today, Hank was in our yard again. Dell noticed this and went crazy! I saw Hank back there so I went to go get the leash. In the meantime, Megan and Courtney are yelling at Dell to "Be Quiet!!"  This is to no avail.  I am instructing Dell to go to the basement so she won't go running out when I go get Hank, but while I am reaching for Dell, I knock over the grasshopper terranium. Yes, it dumped out onto the floor, grasshoppers and all. Actually only the mama grasshopper came out plus most of it's contents. The other grasshopper held onto the lid and stayed put! Thank goodness!

So once Courtney sees the grasshopper on the kitchen floor, she decides to scream at the top of her lungs! So this in turn scares Christian, so then he begins to scream! All the while, I finally get Dell downstairs.

So now I still have to find Dell's leash and get Hank, but first I need to trap the grasshopper under a cup so he won't get away. I got that done  and I got Hank taken home, and then I came back and had to clean up the mess on the floor. 

This is somewhat good because we saw the mama grasshopper eating the grasshopper eggs about an hour ago. I was trying to think of a plan to get those eggs out of the terrarium and this was perfect. (Courtney was pretty upset when she saw this!) The eggs were now all on the floor! I carefully picked those up and put those in another plastic cup and carefully reached into the terranium and picked the few that were in there out without letting mister grasshopper out. Again, mission accomplished!

Now Hank is home, mess on floor is cleaned up, grasshoppers and grasshopper eggs are saved.

I think chaos is over...for the time being anyway!

Grasshopper babies?

As many of you know, Courtney has had a pet grasshopper for over two months. A couple of weeks ago, I caught another one for her on the front sidewalk, now she has two.  We went to Petco one night and got her their own terranium and now she drags that around everywhere and she loves those grasshoppers!  (I think the penguin phase may be going to the side and the grasshoppers are taking over!).  Courtney will talk to them, read them books, and they even join us for science experiments!

A couple of days ago, we noticed something in her terrarium. It was this pink thing that was about an inch long and looked like foam.  It also had little things in it that looked like little pieces of rice.  We weren't quite sure what they are. It didn't look like poop and we knew it had to come from the grasshoppers.  We also knew that one grasshopper was a male and the other was a female.  We figured that the female had laid eggs, but we weren't quite sure.  We tried to look grasshopper eggs up on the Internet, but didn't really find anything.

Yesterday we went to the zoo and I told Matt that the people who work in the Butterfly Pavillion are really knowledgable about bugs and that we should ask them, so we did.  The person there said they are grasshopper eggs and they will probably hatch in 3-5 months.  He also said that the mama grasshopper will probably die. Most grasshoppers freeze to death before winter- it is just how it is.

We were also worried about what we were going to feed these little insects all winter.  Matt and I were kind of stumped because Courtney just feeds them grass.  What do we feed them when the grass dies???  We asked the guy yesterday at the zoo and he said that we could feed them lettuce all winter. That solved that problem.

Anybody want some pet grasshoppers in about 6 months??

I have a problem!

I have a problem. I check out way toooo many books at the library and I don't know how to stop!

We go about every week to check out books, but every time we go, we seem to check out more books than the week before. I always take the stroller in and by the time we go to check them out, the back is full and Christian's seat is full. He is usually out of the stroller anyway.

Let me clarify that these are not just my books.

Megan likes to read the Boxcar Children books, so she will check a bunch out. She also likes to check out other chapter books.  Lately, we have gotten the books with the title that starts, "You wouldn't want to be..."  We have checked out, "You wouldn't want to be an Aztec Sacrifice" and "You wouldn't want to be a Mayan Soothsayer." She really likes reading these, so tonight she went online and found many more of them! She got a lesson in looking books up on the computer and then she got a lesson on how to find them on the bookshelves. I think she had six of these "You wouldn't want to be..." books by the time we left.  Amelia Bedelia books are always a few favorites of hers too and I saw a few in her stack tonight.

Courtney likes the Rainbow Fairy books, so she always has a stack of those PLUS picture books. (And no, she cannot read the Rainbow Fairy books by herself, but she likes to read them anyway. She makes up stories as she goes.)  She also had to get a few books on penguins and various other ones she found around the library.

Of course Christian cannot leave the library without a book or two about trucks, tractors, or cars.

Ok, now I have to admit, I am probably the worst of them all. Here is what I came out with, but as my defense, I don't get any books for myself, I get books for school! We use a lot of living books (Charlotte Mason method) here at our house, so I always like to get books to go along with what we are studying.

Here is what I looked for tonight.
1. History we are studying the Mayans (I already have books on them), but we are also studying Jamestown and the beginning of the United States. I got a few books on Jamestown, the Puritans, the Pilgrims, and of course, "You wouldn't want to sail on the Mayflower."

2.  Science.  I love teaching science and I love finding books to go along with what we are learning. I could find everything on the computer, but I really like books. Next week we are learning about coasts, caves, caverns, things from the earth that are useful such as coal, oil, power, and our world and how it is in danger, such as rainforest damage, pollution, animals going extinct, and fishing dangers. Can you imagine how many different books I brought home??

3. Courtney is also learning how to read and is doing a GREAT job, I am so proud of her!! She is beginning to read real books all by herself. She sounds out the words and tries really hard. Because of this, I get a stack of books for her too! I find her easy books to read (Level 1 readers or books that don't have a lot of words on the pages).  She also likes the Sound Box books.  These books have one book for each letter of the alphabet, so I looked at what we were studying next week and got the books to go with our lessons. I noticed that we are going to have a review lesson next week, so I picked up some books that emphasize short vowels.

I think that is it.  And yes, there is a 40 books limit on each library card (we have one for each kid) and the librarian overrode that rule for me.  He really shouldn't do that!!  He also said he doesn't do that for everybody, but since we are there every week and bring our books back, he said it isn't a problem!! (It is a problem though when you bring the books home and put them on the living room floor, but there are so many books, it's out of control!!!)

Grocery Night

About every other week after Megan's dance class, I head over to wal.mart to get groceries. 

Tonight was that night.  As I was filling up the cart and I thought A. I can get less groceries and come here more or B. I can continue to fill the cart until I absolutely cannot put anything else in there! I chose B! Megan and I call it, "Bury the baby" as in burying Christian with groceries. He sits in the front seat, but he usually has items on each side of him and behind him.  If we had to get him out, we wouldn't be able to! If we did get him out, all my stacks of groceries would surely fall over!

I got home tonight with all my groceries and thought, "I could just put away the cold stuff and leave the rest on the floor (in sacks) until tomorrow."

Then reality set in. When am I going to have time to put groceries away tomorrow?? I won't feel like doing it then either, so I just put them away! I was very proud of myself because I am the queen of procrastination.  I usually wait until everything is a complete mess before I clean it, I really like the see the difference! (I don't know why I think like this!)

Now all the groceries are put away and hopefully these will last us about two weeks again!

Dumb Birds!!

Within the last two weeks, we have had three birds fly into our windows and commit suicide. :(  Two have slammed themselves into our back windows in our kitchen and one slammed himself into our front door.

What is going on with this?? We have lived in this house for over four years now and I don't remember this ever happening before and now it happens three times in less than a month!

I read online that birds can see the trees reflecting in the glass and they think they can keep flying.

Let me tell you what happens here at our house.  A bird flies at the window at full speed, we hear a huge "THUNK", the dog goes crazy wild, and then lastly I see a dead bird on the patio. It's not too much fun!
And then I let it sit there until Matt comes home to dispose of the body. Today, Megan wanted me to shut the shades in the kitchen so she didn't have to look at the bird on the patio all day.

Not too smart, birds!!

Remember my plan?

My new plan for Courtney was for her to read to me everyday and for me to read to her.

Well, Megan has taken over the "read to her" part of the day.  I found them both last night sitting on Megan's bed and Megan was reading her a chapter book. This morning, they were snuggled in Courtney's bed doing the same thing.

After we got done with school today, they were back in their room reading a book together.

I love it!! Not only is it sweet that they are getting a long so well, but they are BOTH improving their reading skills!!  How long will this last??

I quit!

I have never quit a curriculum before but I am now.

Sonlight Language Arts and Readers for First Grade you are just not working for us and because we homeschool and have the freedom to do what we want, I am going to put you back on the shelf and make life soooo much easier for myself and Courtney. Adios!

My problem with Sonlight is that they had a book that we read, but everyday, they would put in about 10 new words that Courtney didn't know.  I was going through every Sunday night and preparing all these new words for the week. I had about 30-40 new words per week!  I would then teach them all to her Monday and review them all week long, I thought then she would know them and know the meanings when we got to them in her stories.  This was working, but taking too much time and it wasn't fun.  I could teach her the words as we go, but I thought that would break the story up too much.  What would you think yip, yap, nab, gab, quip, dibs would mean if you got to them??

Like you can see, these weren't words you used every day either.  She could easily read the words, but I think it was too much. Too many odd meanings, too many words, too many rules to remember on how to spell them (such as "hill" having two l's, sometimes she gets her b's and d's backwards). I was getting frustrated because she wasn't learning all of this. The stories were also very odd and sometimes I had to think about what they were trying to say, Courtney wasn't understanding them at all.

Plan B:  We are going to continue to work hard on Phonics (which I was doing in addition to reading!) and work on those words more.  Then for reading, we are just going to take books off our own bookshelf and read them! I am going to read to her some (which I didn't have time for earlier, but she was always begging me to do) and then we are just going to find the Level 1 readers and the simple Dora books and start reading  those.  We are even going to visit the library about once a week and get new books.  If we see words we don't know, we will talk about them and probably practice writing them.  She knows enough phonics that she can sound out MANY words, so I think this will work great.

I think this is a much better plan that Courtney and I will enjoy more.  As I was told by a fellow homeschooling mom, kindergarten is about reading and making sure they understand what they read, not about having spelling lists and making sure they know every word in the story.  That is exactly what I needed to hear! We start our new plan today!

Is it naptime or not??

I think Christian is transitioning out of naps.  He is following his sisters for sure.

Megan stopped napping when she was around 2 years 3 months old.

Courtney stopped napping around 2 years 3 months old.

Guess how old Christian is? Yep, 2 years 3 months old!
Guess who doesn't want to take a nap anymore?? Christian!!!

I have found out that if I put him down and he is not really tired, he will play in his bed for an hour and won't go to sleep. 

Lately, I've just let him stay up. It's almost easier than wasting my time putting him to bed to only get him up an hour later plus have to pay attention to what he is doing for that hour! (This is while I am teaching the girls.) It is easier to just let him stay up and play all afternoon and not deal with it.  If he gets cranky, I will put him down though! 

The nice side of not napping is that he goes to bed around 8 pm!!

Lunch Prayer

We usually have somebody pray at our meals, but lately, Christian has been mumbling his own prayers during that time.

Today I paid attention to what he was saying.

"Dear Jesus, thank you Uncle Shawn. thank you Shane ride tractor. Amen."

I think he's thankful that his two uncles took him for a tractor and combine ride one day!! Obviously he is still talking about it! 

Gone!

I made 15 oatmeal muffins and a 9 x 13 pan of rice krispy bars yesterday and they are GONE!!
(we had some friends over yesterday morning, so they helped with the rice krispy bars, but still!)

I guess I will be making some more today!

Need a Break!

We are going to take a break from school today. I need it. I call it a mental health day.

School is taking way too long and Courtney's reading curriculum is overwhelming me. I had some good conversations with some fellow homeschooling moms yesterday and I definitely need to scale back. She is only in kindergarten! So now I need to think through what I want to change.

Everything else is going great! I am not completely happy with our Bible program, but I can make it work. Math is great for both girls, science is way too much fun, phonics is coming right along (Courtney can read books by herself now!!), and all of Megan's history, reading, read-alouds are great too. We're studying American history, so we are learning about the Aztecs right now- it is definitely not for the faint of heart- did you know they had human sacrifices?? I really have to be careful what I teach Megan.

Anyway, today we are going to the zoo.  We have been studying animal habitats in science and have made some really neat posters to go along with our lessons.  We have learned about grasslands, deserts, oceans, and rain forests. We are going to go to the zoo and apply our learning! Even though there is school we could be doing, I think we need a break. :)  I think we are going to do nothing this morning and head out about noon. Megan has dance at 4:15, so we need to be to class by then. Hopefully the clouds will go away and it will be a beautiful day out!

Check, Check, and Check

Much accomplished this weekend. This is what happens when you stay home and clean up after a tornado hits.

1. Girls' bedroom cleaned- check!
2. Playroom cleaned- check!
3. Hallway cleaned- check!
4. Christian's room cleaned- check!

You couldn't see an inch of floor on any of these rooms. It was probably the worse I had ever seen it. I should have really taken before and after pictures. While we were cleaning, Megan actually tripped over something in the hallway and hurt her elbow.  She actually got mad at the mess and made her more determined to clean it up.

Most of the mess is actually Courtney's. I don't say this to be mean, but it is! I have seen her make it! Matt and I decided yesterday that she will definitely need some organizational skills taught her in the future.  We also decided that the playroom will be closed indefinitely until these two girls (mostly Courtney) can prove to us that they can keep their bedroom clean first.  I went in there this morning and there are already things on the floor. :(  Matt and I have been slacking on the chore chart, so I think that would help motivate them too.

The problem is that Courtney just puts things wherever she likes.  I tell her to put barbie clothes away in the barbie box and she will put them in the toy box! Things are just mixed up and scattered everywhere.  Yesterday I was cleaning out the toy box and found her wallet. I put it on the floor and told her to come put it away. You know what she did? She threw it right back in the toy box!!!  I kind of snapped at her for that one. :(  When I ask her to get a backpack ready to take somewhere, like dance class where we have to wait for Megan, she will take various stuff and fill backpacks. Various items like glue, paint, polly pockets, pencils, colors, coloring books, some of her books and some of Christians.  So guess what we had to do yesterday? Dump out these backpacks and buckets and put everything back where it goes! It is just so sporadic  it drives me nuts! (Can you tell I am type A??)   When we cleaned the hallways, there were just miscellaneous items in a pile.  Where does this stuff come from??  I also had three laundry baskets full of stuff that I had acquired from downstairs that all belonged in their bedrooms somewhere! We dumped those out on the playroom floor and put all that away too. It's amazing that you seem to find the items you were missing! Like library books and my thermometer (could have used that this week with Christian!).

I love it when she says, "But mom, I don't want to clean!" My quote back, "Then don't make the mess!!"