Making it All Fit

Marta asked: "Other than divine intervention, how do you manage to do all the stuff you do?"

You hit the nail on the head mentioning divine intervention -- first and foremost, God's help is the only thing that keeps me moving throughout the day. To answer the rest of your question, let me give you an idea of how a typical day for me goes.

I get up and toss a bottle to the baby, and then I check my e-mail and read Six LDS Writers and a Frog and LDS Publisher. Then I can start my day.

Breakfast, kids dressed, usually throw in a load of laundry, and then I sit down and write a couple of blogs for Families.com. I get those posted, and right around that time, my husband walks in. He works the night shift for Ancestry, so his schedule is a little funky.

When he gets home I take my shower, and then if I have any errands to run, I either go do them, or put Hubby down for a rest. While he's resting, I'll write some more blogs, or edit, or something like that, popping on and off e-mail. Meanwhile the children are either reading, picking up their rooms, or watching an educational television show (all perfectly obedient about it, too, with no fighting whatsoever. Snort.)

Hubby goes to bed, if he hasn't already, lunch takes place, along with another load of laundry thrown in, and then the children read some more. Then baby has his nap, and we head into the sit-down school, as I call it, with pens in hand and school books. In between explaining things to the kids, I'll switch out the laundry or the dishes, but most of that time is spent right with the kids. My oldest is getting to where she can do more on her own, with guidance, but the two middle children still need a lot of direction.

Then dinner time rolls around and we put up the books, get the baby up, and make dinner. After dinner I throw in one of the movies that I'm going to review for Families.com, and then we get ready for bed.

After the kids are in bed (which they do promptly, and never once hop out to get one more drink of water or to tell me about the strange noises they heard) I do one or more of the following: I sit down to write, I sit down to blog, I mop the kitchen floor, I make Scentiments products for orders, I read a book to review, or I watch a movie to review. Usually I write until midnight and then throw in a movie. I wake my husband up at 12:45 so he can go to work, and then I'm up until around 2 or 3.

Anything else I need to do gets worked in as I can.

Yes, this is all pretty crazy -- I'll admit that right off the bat. I would love to go to bed at regular hours, but I've found that in order to do everything I want and need to do, I have to let some things go, and sleep, unfortunately, is one of those things. However, my kids are old enough that they can entertain themselves for a little while in the mornings, so they aren't yanking me out of bed at the crack of dawn. I usually get up when the baby starts squawking (politely) for his bottle, and that varies from day to day.

We do school year round, and take days off intermittently. The school district asks us to do 180 days a year, but they don't care which 180 days, so I'll do school, say, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday because we had the dentist on Tuesday. I really like being able to be flexible and pick and choose which days off to take, rather than having a mandatory three months. They'd get bored anyway, with three whole months off in a row.

So that's how I do it. I'm always looking for ways to improve on the system and to streamline my efforts, and I'll let you know if I ever get it worked out. I do give credit back to divine intervention for everything -- an appropriate way to end the blog, as it began. He is the beginning and the end.