Age Appropriate Chores

Below is a  link to a Focus on the Family article on finding Age-Appropriate Chores for your children.  Thought that some of you would find it as helpful as I found it. 

http://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/parenting_challenges/motivating_kids_to_clean_up/age_appropriate_chores.aspx

Des Moines Frugal Family Examiner

This is a link to the site of another homeschooling mom!  Looks like it has some great stuff on it!


http://www.examiner.com/frugal-family-in-des-moines/julia-mcguire

Time Management

I'm having one of those mornings.  One of those days when you look at your to do list and realize you have about 300 things to do and only a short amount of time to do it all in.  I'd love to get on a firm schedule...scheduling everything....cleaning time, reading time, school time, etc., etc., etc.  But then, you wonder.  How much should we be scheduling and how much time should we leave for spontaneous activities?  (Can I count the dishes as a spontaneous activity?)

I mean how many books can there be about time management?  If you type "time management" into Amazon.com's search engine, you will get 17,540 results.  How much time would those take to go through? I've listed the top rated ones at the bottom of this page.  I don't have the time to order one today...maybe tomorrow or Wednesday.

So, pray for me today as I try to fit homeschooling, my school, cleaning, work, etc., etc., etc. into my 24 hour day.  I would move some to tomorrow, but tomorrow is scheduled worse than today.  But, as I always tell people, I seem to work better when I have a thousand things to do rather than just one or two.  Let's see if I can make that work today. 

Photo Books - Buy One get one free

Hello all,

This just in from a friend.  The following link will take you to a company that throughout the month of September is offering Photo Books at Buy One get One Free.  I've never personally used this company, but the link came from a personal friend that works for the company so I'm sure it's on the up and up :-)

http://www.flashbackpics.com/

Kids Eat Free

OK, most of you mommies out there probably already knew this website existed, but I just found it and I'm excited!  At the bottom of this post is a link to the "Des Moines Families" website.  They have a list up of local restaurants and when they have free or reduced meals for kids!  I knew about some of these before I saw this site, but it's amazing how many restaurants are doing this!  Most of them are buy an adult meal and get a kid meal for free, meaning that I would only have to pay for one kid's meal!  Awesome!

I just joined and it looks like there is a TON of useful information on this site!  Looking forward to exploring it more!


Visit Des Moines Families

Meal Planning - Take 3

Ok, all.  I bought groceries yesterday.  I normally get two weeks of groceries at a time.  I spent $270 at the grocery store and $150 at Costco.  The $270 is a little higher than my typical grocery trip, but the $150 was a little lower, so I evened out to about my normal budget.

We've only tried one recipe this week however.  It was a grilled pork tenderloin and it was absolutely delicious.  Even the kids ate it!  I'm looking forward to making something else tonight and seeing if I get the same result.

I did pull this week's menu off the site and am wondering if we should've bought the low fat menu rather than the "normal" one.  Our family is used to a low fat diet so some of the recipes seem a little much for us.  I might give it another week and if it looks like that again, I'm going to switch.