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I’ve been working for years to have a “good” wakeup routine. When it comes to the morning I’m very minimalist, slarging out at the last possible moment and slinging my way into life, usually dressed for the day by the end of the commute (if not the beginning).

Kids can’t do it that way. They need stability, routine, and mine need time to wake up and process the day. Luckily they can dress themselves, mostly, so we do a little planning out and finally got our morning routine more routined.

1. Pick out your clothes the night before, be ready for them. For the eldest it’s just making sure he has something, for the youngest, each piece is chose and put in a small basket with handles.

2. Set wakeup music. I’m very lazy efficient, so I burned a CD of kids music interspersed with the kids’ own voices and my voice reminding them it’s wakeup time. It’s set to go off about 30 min before breakfast every morning, to give them time to slarge down the stairs. I’m also lazy efficient enough to have bought a CD/alarm at Target that can be set only to ring M-F. Go me!

3. Have the ones who pick lunch figure out if they need a packed lunch the night before, so they can pack it themselves the night before. Now to get them to take it every day and bring the containers back …

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And I know I drive the hub nuts when I hit sport-option and click click click six jillion incrementally differing pictures of the kids. But it’s just pixels! And hard drive space. And sometimes you can make a cute animated gif!

Be that as it may, we don’t have plastered formal looks in our photos from the days of wet-plate photography, and usually a lot of blurry kids moving to and fro. But if you take enough pictures, eventually everyone is smiling and you can fix it in post-production (digitally melding all the smiling faces into one shot).

The trick is getting enough pictures. I do it with the handwashing song, converted into the cheesey song. Continue Reading »

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Works for me Wednesday, from wearethatfamily.com.

I’ve had to make too many calls lately for the various buggy germs and more flying around our insides and outsides. More than not, I’ve phoned up for a non-emergency appointment and been told by the specialist’s office staff that the nearest opening for a new patient is between three and six weeks away.

Yeek.

Then something happened – I called up and asked for an after school appointment, as soon as possible for a particular doctor. Those are the most coveted, of course – no one misses school and you miss as little work as possible. He didn’t have anything, but as he shuffled his calendar, he noticed a cancellation for the next day. And if I took it, not only would I get the appointment over with, he’d knock a third off of the cash part of his usual fee. I took it. Continue Reading »

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So we have two calendars for summer camp, his and hers. Each with different requirements (clothing, extras, food).

How do you guys handle it? White board calendar? tack up the paper calendars from the school? “Color” in the days each needs their special items?

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You think with my mega food prep post last month (I know, it’s been a crazy month) I would have covered beans. Small error on my part, sorry.

I’ve been using dried and frozen and freeze dried vegetables for years – there was a metals allergy in my family so I never was much for canned veggies. And maybe it’s my inability to plan meals correctly, but the “standard sized can” of veggies isn’t quite enough for two meals, and too much for one. Continue Reading »

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I told myself I wouldn’t pressure myself to WMFW on vacation, but sometimes inspiration smacks you upside the head.

Instead of making sixteen billion different custom sandwiches for the kids every lunch day we have sandwiches, we made three or four and cut them up. The kids served themselves, family style, and all we had to do was shout “This plate is peanut butter, this plate is jelly” half a dozen times.

One time we got smart – jelly on white, peanut butter on wheat. Two days later even smarter – different shapes! Pictured are cheese (triangle), jelly (square) and peanut butter (rectangle). We’re still repeating ourselves, but not quite as much …

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To find more school tips, hit this weeks WFMW!

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Ah, shoes and socks and bits and bobs, it’s time to get ready for school again. Yesterday I pulled out the school clothes tub to sort through what we’ve got an what we need. Pulled three shirts I’m going to try and de-stain, added three I picked up from an outlet store last week. Pants and shorts we’re good on, but I’ll need to take my eldest shoe shopping.

The day before school starts, we’ll pick up his classroom assignment, teacher assignment, and supply sheet. The supplies usually range from typical, such as paper, pencils, and crayons, to class-wide, such as construction paper, hand sanitizer, and modeling clay.

Some of these things can be acquired sustainability – sure I can go buy a pack of Play-Doh, but I’ve been saving it up from kid meals and party bags. Even getting it out for the kids to play with from time to time, I have a fat ton of that stuff in the house. Paper? Notebooks? Pencils? Recycle-content goods! Even plastic bags have gotten into the act, made with less plastic (and at a higher price, go green gouging!).

And what am I sending the supplies in this year? A reusable bag. Continue Reading »

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Sorry, boring and quick this week, but one I figured out by accident – folding the napkins in the dryer.

I usually just toss our cloth napkins in with any old load of laundry. This leads to a pile of randomness going from the panlaundrium to the sofa, and napkins getting lost along the way.

What I figured out yesterday, however, is that I can tilt the dryer tumbler to have a flat surface – and put folded napkins atop that surface. They are up and out of the way while I hang (sometimes) the other clothes up or roll the clothes (more likely) into a waiting panlaundrium basket.

Then, before I re-load the dryer, I tuck the folded napkins into my pocket, or make a trip to the little baskets I keep around for holding the napkins until meal time.

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Apple. Tree. You know the old saw.

I meant to blog about garden plot markers months ago. A number of websites suggest old vertical blind slats be used to tell our turnips from our carrots in the early planting stages, save used popsicle sticks, and suggested uses for other reusable items. I made a mental note to try and talk my SIL out of her old blinds to follow that advice, until the new coffee machines showed up at the office.

One of the first things I did was to take it apart and see how it worked.
After some trial and error, I finally figured out how to stock it, and worked to free the plastic sliders the coffee packs ship on. Three or four of the sliders sat my desk for a week or so until I finally took them home to sit on my desk there. Then one morning, as I racked off six more flavors of coffee, it struck me – white, plastic – I can use them in the garden. Continue Reading »

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I was going to talk about file sharing and information sharing on the net, but I’ve just heard that Vimeo is going to start deleting source content of “free” users August 1. Download it if you don’t have it, folks!

They state they won’t delete the files they convert to Vimeo content for free users, but they can’t hold the “big” original files any more. It makes sense, but … that’s really short notice.

So, download it to have it, choose to upgrade your account, or just panic. And stop counting on “free” services as your only back up, if you have. :-) Good luck!

[TL;DR version - big files go in, little files are made. Big files will start to go away - back them up now and/or upgrade your account.]

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