Day 8

9:00 My alarm wakes me up, but only just before the 3yr. old enters my room. She tucks her baby doll under my arm and watches me as I stretch and try to wake up. Eventually I get up and follow her out to the kitchen. The 5, 7, and 13yr. olds are up. I get them breakfast and help my husband with the last of his preparations for work. He leaves and I start my own breakfast. My stomach is growling like crazy. That salad from last night was not enough.

10:00 I've eaten and read one chapter of a new book. It was difficult, with the 3 and 5yr. olds flanking me on either side with a barrage of "Look at this," and "See Mama," and "Where do you want to go on my maze?" and finally, "It's the Death Star Portal," but I finished it.

10:30 The 7yr. old and I go upstairs to read a story from his reader. I wake the baby up so she'll hopefully go to bed at a decent time tonight. Then I snag the 10yr. old to read a chapter in "Charlotte's Web." I keep falling asleep though so when he's finished, I lay down on the upstairs couch. It feels so good. I'm just going to lay here for 5 minutes.

11:30 My 15yr. old wakes me up, saying "Why are you sleeping?" My neck is sore from using the arm rest as a pillow. I've been asleep for about 20 minutes. Luckily the baby has been totally content pulling Lincoln logs from the bin that was sitting next to the couch. I call the 11 and 13yr. olds upstairs to read and ask the 13yr. old to also watch the baby while I shower.

12:00pm Lunch. The shower warmed me up enough to stop being so sleepy.

1:00 I round the older boys into the dining room for a "Charlott'e Web" lesson. Asparagus is one of their vocabulary words so I show them a bundle of asparagus. None of them will try it. I take a couple bites of a stalk and decide I don't feel like such a vegetably vegetable right then and hand it to the baby. She starts in on the spear end and decides she's not too fond of it either. I'll have to bake them later with lots of butter and salt.

2:00 The 7yr. old comes crying to me in the dining room right after the older boys have evacuated. I don't remember what it was about. I take the opportunity to sit him down and do a page of math. He asks, "Is this so I can get a turn?" He means on the computer or Xbox. I say, "sure," even though that wasn't my intention. "You can have it tonight when we go to scouts." The 5yr. old here's the word "turn" and comes running to do a few pages of handwriting and math.

3:00 I remember we have to leave early today for some errands before swim lessons so I wake the older boys from their TV trance (they put on "Puss in Boots," while I wasn't looking) and tell them to get ready to go. I get the baby down for a nap so my 15yr. old can focus whole-heartedly on her seminary while we're gone.

4:00 We head out the door. This is our last day of swim lessons for the year. We'll start up again in January next year. It will be nice to have our Monday and Wednesday  afternoons back (the only days we're actually home to homeschool).

6:00 We're home just long enough to drop off the 7, 5, and 3 yr. olds and grab a quick dinner. Our friends needed help getting two of their boys to scouts tonight so they've been dropped off as well. The older one is 16 and enjoys talking to my 15yr. old a lot. She turns into a much more friendly big sister and actually watches her younger siblings jump on the trampoline without making any of them cry or scream.

6:30 We leave for scouts and Young Women's. I leave the baby home with Grandpa. I've been taking her to scouts with me all along but her bedtime gets messed up each time so I'm hoping her bedtime will be better if I do this.

9:00 We get home and get almost everyone up to bed. The 3yr. old is wearing underwear again. Just two more days and we can start potty training in earnest (we'll be on Spring Break from our Parent Partnership). I let her go to bed with it. We'll see how she does.

10:00 Everyone's in bed except the two oldest and baby. The 13yr. old is still working on that case. He's varnishing it tonight. Maybe that means he's done! I think the baby is going to go to sleep but she perks up after a little snack. I put a couple of potatoes in the oven for our dinner and decide it's time to work on my blog.

11:00 My husband and the 13yr. old are doing push-ups together while the baby makes comments. The 15yr. old goes to bed.

1:00am The baby has finally, finally fallen asleep. She threw a fit just before because I wouldn't give my water cup. I gave her a sippy cup but that wasn't what she wanted. She's funny.

Day 7

9:00am  I finally wake up. I tried setting my alarm to get up earlier but I just kept hitting snooze. I was dreaming that the play my oldest two are in was already upon us and my 13yr. old, who is playing Egeus in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," knew none of his lines and my 15yr. old, who is designing the backdrops, had not even begun painting them. Wew, glad that was just a dream. I roll out of bed, determined to get the 13yr. old to work on his lines, soon. My husband is already up and almost out the door. Only the 5yr. old and 7yr. old are up so far. The 3yr. old slept in, surprisingly. But she's awake when I go upstairs to shower (my master bath is still unfinished after 8 years so I get to shower in the kid's bathroom). She waits patiently in the bathroom and then asks about the steam on the mirror while I'm dressing. We have a nice science lesson on the water cycle.

10:00 Everyone except the baby has been woken up by me. We rush to find shoes, (we don't bother with socks for the younger three), gather lunch food, and get the guitar, ukulele, piano book, the script for the play, and some activities for the younger kids to do while they wait for sibling's classes at our Parent Partnership.

10:30 We head out for our Parent Partnership. It's a beautiful day outside so the little ones and I spend it at the playground and we hardly touch all the baggage we brought. We end up sticking around an extra half hour after classes to chat with other families.

5:30pm Home. The 3yr. old is asleep so I leave her in the van unstrapped. The baby has been sleeping since we left the school and is now awake but a bit cranky. I nurse her while the boys get themselves snacks. I hear the 3yr. old in the garage crying and send the 10 yr. old to get her. She's sitting in the van demanding that I help her out. Luckily, the baby is finished and I'm able to go out and bring her in myself.

6:00 The 11yr. old is cooking the tacos tonight, with lots of help from me. Everyone is starving and I get them snacks but finally have to say "no more, we're about to have dinner."

7:00 We finally have dinner. My husband comes home just in time. We eat but of course there are a few who don't get with the program (the same ones who ate snacks right before dinner) and decide late that they are still hungry so it takes a whole hour.

8:00 I take the 3yr. old up for bed while the munching stragglers finish their meals. Everyone else follows me upstairs and makes enough noise to make putting the 3yr. old to bed impossible. After half an hour of reading stories, she informs me she's still hungry. I go downstairs to get her a slice of cheese and a cup of water. I give it to her and tell her to stay in her room. We read scriptures with everyone else, and the 3yr. old joins us when she's done with her cheese. So much for bedtime.

9:00 I've put the 3yr. old back in bed and start bedtime with the 3 younger boys. My husband takes his dad to the grocery store. The boys ask for a story so I get a library book I've been meaning to read to them, "Cock-a-doodle Dudley" by Bill Peet. It's kind of long. My husband calls me from the store to see what we need. Even though we just went there on Saturday night, we still need more supplies.

10:00 Everyone but the oldest two and baby are in bed. I send the 13yr. old upstairs to read that WWII novel. I can't wait till he's done with that. The 15yr. old works on catching up on her seminary. I give the baby an assortment of food from dinner to make sure she's well fed and will hopefully sleep well tonight.

11:00 My husband is back with lots of clearance Easter candy. I immediately start in on the peanut M&M's which are terrible for me. My taco salad must not have been enough for me either. I bribe the 13yr. old, who is done reading, with more candy to empty the dishwasher that was supposed to be emptied by one of his brothers. Then he and his sister go to bed. The baby is still up, happy as can be. Daddy entertains us with old videos of New Kids on the Block. I'm so glad I thought they were stupid back then. They dance like girls! We move on to Boston's "More than a Feeling", Toto's "Rains down in Africa" (because we started singing all the songs about rain to the kids after scripture study tonight) and finally Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'".

12:00am The baby's still up. We watch TV and I put gobs of books on hold at the library for upcoming classes I'm teaching at our Co-op. She finally falls asleep around 12:50. Hope it lasts.

Day 6

8:00am My 3yr. old crawls into my bed and goes back to sleep. I don't mind because she's back in diapers for the moment. I didn't encourage her over the weekend because we had church, traveling, Easter, and traveling back yesterday.

9:00 Ooops. We slept in. My husband hurries to the shower. The 7yr. old woke us up, asking for breakfast. I roll out of bed, rouse the 3yr. old (she's still wearing her Easter dress too), and get them both breakfast. A few other children show up, the 5, 10, and 13yr. olds. The same ones as usual are still in bed.

10:00 Daddy has left for work. I start thinking about breakfast for myself. Our geography buddies call and cancel, but I still have my mom time, just on the phone. After that I help the 7yr. old with his math and Explode the Code. The 13yr. old is working on his Rasperry pi case again. I talk him into reading his WWII novel for a while.

11:00 The 7yr. old gets a half hour on the computer so now the 5yr. old is anxious to do his work. We get math and a full letter's worth of pages done in his All Aboard book. Then he gets a turn and I wake up the baby, the 15yr. old, and the 11yr. old. I read the rest of the Mercury lesson in Apologia to the boys.

12:00pm Lunch. I send the 11yr. old upstairs to read "Sea of Monsters" and try to start the 10yr. old on his math but he doesn't like the smell of my salad dressing so he gets to play with the baby while I eat.Then we do his math until he inexplicably begins crying. He leaned down to kiss the baby and his face started hurting. I help him limp through his last three problems and since he's still in pain, I give him motrin. He lays down on the couch while I work on math and grammar with the 11yr. old.

1:00 Even though it's supposed to be done by the older kids, I load the dishwasher. We forgot the milk cup I had just filled on the counter yesterday when we went to my parent's house.  It was almost solid by the time we got home so I dumped it out into the sink last night, but it's making the kitchen have a sour milk smell so I've got to get these dishes out so I can wash it down. The 3yr. old is having issues so we put on "Super Why" for her.

2:00 The 11yr. old and 10yr. old are having a nerf-gun war upstairs while I help the 3yr. old do mazes and make snowflakes with the 7 and 5yr. old. The 15yr. old does her math. I'm not sure what the 13yr. old is doing. He keeps going out to the garage with wires and a file and at one point I did see him burning something with a lighter at my kitchen counter.

3:00 The baby gets fussy and decides she needs to nurse. I try to read while I feed her. She falls asleep and I  deal with the 3yr. old who has put on underwear, then an old (but still in pristine shape) ballet costume of her big sis's, and her purple princess dress (which we call her ballet dress because she wore it to the Nutcracker this Christmas). She tells me she has to go potty, but she's already gone. I get all that upstairs in the dirty laundry, while taking a phone call from a solicitor, and discover a suspicious puddle upstairs. I clean that up and tell the solicitor "No Thanks."

4:00 I wake up the all-male crowd that has become zombies in front of the TV (watching "Princess Sofia", mind you) and tell them they'd better get ready for swim lessons.

5:00 We have swim lessons but my 3yr. old decides she's done 15 minutes into it. Afterwards, in the locker room, she refuses to let me put a diaper on her (it's all I have, I didn't bring any underwear, or "un-wear-dah" as she puts it) so I have to force it on her. Then she won't put her shoes on.

6:00 We finally make it to the van (where I pass a mini-van whose inside windows, all of them except the windshield, are completely covered with stickers and the sticky outside edges of the sticker sheets, and I think, at least I don't have that problem, this week) and she throws a fit about being buckled in. I'm starting to worry that when she turns 4, she's going to be worse, not better, as I hoped.

7:00 My 13yr. old has asked for chicken nuggets for dinner but he and three more of us are Gluten-free so I have to make half of them from scratch. It takes me a while, the whole time the 5yr. old is trying to get me to stop and make him soup or salad. The tator-tots and french fries I threw in the oven finally come out and he's satisfied for a while.

8:00 The chicken nuggets are done. My husband finally came home (it's discount day at the Goodwill and he can't not go). Those of us who are Gluten-free scarf them down and we start Family Home Evening. This time, the little kids aren't the problem, the older kids think they're all comedians. It's hard to have a spiritual lesson when you're yelling at the kids to stop being obnoxious.

9:00 They've all finished their ice cream. The 11yr. old is still working on his. It had to be replaced after the 7yr old started doing raspberries and didn't think about where his spittle spray landed. The 3yr. old began drinking hers and spilled it down her front. The baby who's been happy until now unloading the DVD shelf, is fussing and looks like her mouth is full, but we didn't give her any ice cream. I swipe her mouth and pull out a slobbery lump of play-do, dropped when the 5yr. old was using it earlier to make molds from his chocolate Easter bunny's packaging tray.  Thank goodness for bedtime.

10:00 My husband clears the floor for his nightly Room-ba routine (he got it for $30 at the Goodwill a few weeks ago). The baby usually likes to chase it around as it vacuums but instead she scoots to me where I've joined my 15yr. old at the computer. I got an email from her seminary teacher saying she was substantially behind in her lessons and that she would have the next two weeks to make up. The baby is acting tired so I nurse her to sleep while I go through the lessons with my oldest. This happened last year too. Next year, with no baby to keep us up, she and the 13yr. old (who will be a high-schooler by then) will go to early-morning seminary. She claims she'll do better with an in-person class. We'll see.

11:00 The 15yr. old has gone to bed, the 13yr. old is reading another chapter in his WWII book and I am working on this blog. Maybe I'll get to go to bed by midnight tonight!

Day 5

8:00am My 3yr. old comes to my room. I hurry and get her on the toilet. She did pretty well but her underwear is a tiny bit damp. She decides she wants to wear a diaper. I put one on her because she's in charge of this. I get her a bowl of cereal and put on "Barbie Spy Squad," then crash on the couch.

9:00 I wake up surrounded by several more kids and my husband on his way out the door for work.
I get everyone who is awake breakfast and get myself breakfast.

10:00 My 10yr. old wakes up the baby and we read a chapter of "Charolotte's Web" while I nurse her. Then I read with my 7yr. old while the baby plays. The 5yr. old and 3yr. old make forts around us.

11:00 I wake up the last two sleepers, the 11yr. old and the 15yr. old. They get breakfast while I do math with the 10yr. old and 7yr. old. My 13yr. old has resumed his Raspberry pi case project. I interrupt him and send him to read the second chapter of "Charlotte's Web." My 11yr. old practices piano.

12:00pm People start getting lunch (those who had breakfast more two hours earlier). I help my 10yr. old do some grammar. The 7yr. old never finished his math. I got out our Math-U-See cubes to help him with two-digit subtraction but he wanted to build with them instead. The 5yr. old joined him and they are still working on their table-top forts. Now the 11yr. old has joined them. I remember why I never get those things out and why we stopped using Math-U-See as a curriculum in the first place.

1:00 I bully the 15yr. old into working on her geometry some more. I get out the geometry text book I checked out for her as a reference book but she refuses to look in it. I get some laundry started in the washer. I can just barely open the washer door but if I don't fold the clean laundry (which covers the laundry room floor) I won't be able to open it for the next wash so I'd better make time for that sometime today.

1:30 The 11yr. old reluctantly works on his math, ratios, and finishes all but the last problem before he claims he is done. I help him make himself lunch, then make myself lunch because I am starting to get cranky. I see that he hasn't finished but I want to have our "Charlotte's Web" lesson before it gets too much later. The 15yr. old has finished her math and is claiming she can't do her seminary (an online religious course she is supposed to be doing and hasn't done for at least a week). I look at the course web-page and figure out she needs to do the lessons consecutively to gain access to them. She's not happy I'm making her do this.

2:30 I research pork and protein to help with the discussion I am planning to have with the boys and check my email. The 15 yr. old has done 3 lessons in seminary.

3:00 The three older boys and I sit down to work on "Charlotte's Web" vocabulary from Novel Thinking and then discuss the first two chapters. The baby falls asleep.

4:00 I help the 11yr. old finish his math, then the 7yr. old finish his, without the use of the Math-U-See cubes. The 7yr. old reminds me I owe him some prizes for reading so we get the prize box. He picks out two plastic frogs that he gets to color with permanent markers. The 5yr. old sees that and wants one too. I let him pick one and then we sit down to do some of his work (that he hasn't touched in weeks). He does a few pages from Sing, Spell, Read and Write's All Aboard book, Handwriting without Tears, and his Singapore math Kindergarten Activity Book A.

5:00 I get out the permanent markers and lay newspaper on the table for the 7 and 5yr. olds to color their frogs. I check phone messages from yesterday (I have to page the phone because it's buried under some papers on the side table) and check my email. The baby wakes up. She's not happy with me but I peel and cut potatoes for dinner. The 11yr. old finishes his grammar and handwriting and gets on the computer to work on Scratch.

6:00 The potatoes are frying and I've rolled out butcher paper in the hallway while the 5yr. old and 7yr. old take turns playing Minecraft. The 10yr. old and I draw a semi-proportionate diagram of the solar system. The baby keeps scooting over the inner planets, krinkling our paper. The 13yr. old is checking out his new Raspberry pi that came by Fed Ex this morning. The 15yr. old comes down with a collection of origami cranes she just folded.

7:00 We've got the planets all drawn and colored, except Pluto. We ran out of room. The 15yr. old and I spend almost an hour taping the long roll of paper up in the hallway, cutting holes for doors and light switches. I decide we should have moved it down so we re-position it and now we have room for Pluto!

8:00 My husband comes home from work. The potatoes are half eaten and have been heated up again so he and I eat some. I make alternative dinners for all those who don't like fried potatoes.

8:30 The 15, 11, and 10yr. old go upstairs to watch the second half of "Lord of the Rings". The 13yr. old didn't like the idea of watching it in parts so he's going to watch it all tomorrow morning. The 5yr. old makes more planet drawings. There is now Bobland Planet just past Pluto. The baby and 3yr. old sprinkle the floor with markers.

9:00 We clean up the markers and shoo the little kids upstairs to get ready for bed. I help the 7yr. old brush his teeth, forget to help the 5yr. old, and leave my husband to finish bedtime while I work on the 3yr. old. She's wearing underwear again. She wears it more at night than during the day. We count all the days on her calendar then read "Happy Easter, Biscuit," her current favorite, which consists of me reading only as fast as she points to the words. This is all her idea. She's finally in bed.

9:30 I console the 7yr. old who is quite distraught that he doesn't get to watch "Lord of the Rings". I try to explain to him that he'll get to do many other fun things that his older siblings didn't get to do because we had little kids when they were teenagers and that he'll eventually get to watch the movie too. He isn't convinces and I leave to his moaning loudly.

10:00 I try to convince the 13yr. old to go read his WWII novel now so he isn't up so late.

10:30 "Lord of the Rings" is over and the three watching it come down for second dinner. I would think they were Hobbits but they're much more noticeable.

11:00 They have all gone to bed. The 13yr. old is reading now, upstairs. My husband and I start to watch "Spiderman," (2002 version) because I promised my 7yr. old we'd preview it and decide if it was OK for him to watch.

1:30 "Spiderman" is finally over. We've decided it's actually pretty tame with only one intense fight scene at the end. Bedtime. Yeah!

Day 4

5:30am The baby wakes up. I go upstairs to nurse her and fall asleep sitting up.

7:30 I wake up. It's daylight but I don't have to be up for another hour and everyone else is still asleep so I go back to bed.

9:00 Aaaah! I've slept in. Now we have only a half hour to get ready for our Parent Partnership. I hurry to wake everyone else up. The 3yr. old is not in her bed, and it's dry! I throw on clothes, find the 5yr. old clothes, and grab some granola bars and oranges for lunch. The 3yr. old shows up from Grandpa's house. She is still dry and has already gone potty. Great!

9:40 We're running late. Everyone else is in the van except the baby who is still asleep and my 10yr. old who is frantically trying to finish a sketch for his clay class. I get the baby up, give her a bottle and some raisin bread and strap into the van. The 10yr. old has to finish his drawing of his Pinewood Derby car in the van.

10:08 We arrive at the Parent Partnership. Wew! Just a little late. Now I put on make up, eat breakfast, and change the baby's diaper (I put her to bed fully clothed, same with the 3yr. old, the night before). We're here for the rest of the school day while my kids take classes varying from Woodshop to Robotics to Volleyball to a Harry Potter class. We start off rocky when my 3yr. old has her first poop and didn't realize that too should go in the toilet. She spends the rest of the day in a diaper. It's kind of cold but we spend most of our free time at the playground. I do manage to get my 7yr. old to do a page of math and read half a reader story while we sit in my 5yr. old's Kindergym class (he threw a whopper of a fit during class back in January so I get to attend all his classes with that teacher for the rest of the year. Lucky me). And my 13yr. old's new coat from Christmas, which has been missing for three weeks, finally shows up in the lost and found. And added bonus, my 11yr. old's backpack, which he left in his minecraft class last week, is retrieved as well. It wasn't too bad of a day.

4:30 We get home from Parent Partnership. It's been a long day. Everyone is hungry so instead of getting dinner ready, I make them or help them make snacks. I get myself a snack too and read for a few minutes.

5:00 The 11yr. old, having finally gotten his piano book back (it was in his backpack), has been asking for help on his new pieces. I help him.

5:30 I start dinner. Then I nurse the baby and read the beginning of Lesson 3 in Apologia Astronomy. The baby falls asleep.

6:00 With the chicken in the oven, I sit the 7yr. old down to finish his reader story. I have the 11yr. old and 10 yr. old each peal two huge potatoes for mashed potatoes. Then I read the first chapter of "Charlotte's Web" with my 10yr. old.

7:00 Dinner's almost ready. My husband is home but he immediately starts fiddling in the garage, along with my 13yr. old who is still working on his Raspberry pi case. The 15yr. old is working on geometry online. She copped an attitude about it but I reminded her that she can't go anywhere unless she's closer to being caught up (she's almost two months behind schedule). She worked on it for a little while. I guess she doesn't really want to go anywhere this month. The baby wakes up.

7:30 We have dinner and while they eat we have Family Home Evening (it's a family night that we usually have on Monday's but with the derby preparations, we moved it to Thursday). I show them pictures and tell them the story of Easter and the days and events leading up to Christ's resurrection. We end with root beer floats (because I don't like the idea of having a bottle of root beer in my refrigerator that might leak). I am told by my 13yr. old that we should have more Family Home Evenings like that one, that are a story, and not a lesson.

9:00 Time for bed. But the 13yr. old still won't go to bed. Everyone else goes semi-willingly but he just can't stop working on that case.

11:00 The 13yr. old finally goes upstairs to read his WWII novel. My 15yr. old is reading in her bed.

12:00 The baby finally goes to sleep. Her late nap combined with last night's outing have messed up her bedtime.

1:00 I'm finally ready for bed myself.

Day 3

7:30am The 3yr. old wakes me but I get her a bag of carrots and she's happy.

9:00 More kids need my attention so I get up and get everyone breakfast. The 3yr. old and 5 yr. old head over to Grandpa's house.

9:30 My husband leaves for work. With the help of my 7yr. old, we spray paint his car.

10:00 I wake the baby up, nurse her, take a shower and get dressed.

11:00 My 15yr. old and I head over to our first WWII interview appointment, leaving Grandpa in charge. Our appointment is with a man from our church who's wife I was good friends with before she died. It's nice to visit him and look at old pictures of her. He was a kid in Montana during the war. My older two boys are supposed to read a chapter of "Charlotte's Web" while we're gone. One of them did it.

12:00pm We get home and I feed everyone lunch.

12:30 I read a chapter of Apologia Astronomy to the older 4 boys. We discuss the sun and light.

1:30 I nurse the baby again and get ready to leave with my two oldest to do two more interviews.

2:00 We interview a couple who lived in the UK during the war. He lived in Wales and she lived through London being bombed. They both have a unique perspective to share.

4:00 We get home and have to rush to get everyone back in the van with their swim gear and scout uniforms. We live too far away from the pool and the church and don't have time to drive home between the lessons and the pinewood derby so we will have to eat dinner in the van. I grab some granola bars, a few oranges and apples, and a sleeve ritz crackers.

5:00 Swimming lessons. My 3yr. old leaves her class 5 minutes early. Then when we're walking to the locker room, she gets back in the pool where I can't get to her. I have to send my 5yr. old in to get her because all her older brothers have already gone to the locker room. It takes us about 10 minutes of coaxing, and failing, until I finally get the 5yr. old to pick her up and get her out of the water.

6:00 We drive to a grocery store to buy pop for my 11yr. old's scout meeting. They're having a party.

6:30 We get to the church. My 15yr. old is supposed to go to a Young Women's meeting about summer camp but she's bored and decides to go to a different meeting with one of her friends. My 13yr. old goes to an Eagle Court of Honor. My 11yr. old informs me that the party was cancelled so they too could attend the Court of Honor. The rest of us get ready for a long night at the Pinewood Derby.

8:30 The Pinewood Derby is finally over. My 10yr. old got first place. The 7yr. old and 5yr. old finally get to race their cars after the official race is over. We help clean up, meanwhile the baby starts playing with the pop bottles that didn't get used earlier and one of them springs a leak. We get to clean that up too.

9:30 We are home and everyone is told to go to bed. My 3yr. old throws a fit so I put her to bed first. She has been wearing underwear all afternoon and night and now demands to wear it while she sleeps. I get ready for a wet mess, you know, like take the books and stuffed animals out of her bed, and cross my fingers.

10:00 The rest of the kids are in bed, except my oldest two and the baby (she got a short nap in the van). I nurse the baby again but realize she needs a diaper change. By the time I'm done with that, she's wide awake. I try to get her to settle down with a cup of milk, a slice of bread, and some music. She likes it but she's not going to sleep.

11:30 My husband bakes us some potatoes for dinner. My 15yr. old has gone to bed, but the 13yr. old and baby are still up. He's still working on that Raspberry pi case. The baby finds a dried up chicken nugget that fell under the ottoman. We play puppy tug-of-war with it until I win, then I make her some fresh chicken nuggets.

12:30 The 13yr. old finally goes to bed. Husband, baby and I watch some tv while we finish off Grandpa's birthday cake.

1:30 The baby finally goes down. That nap really screwed up her bedtime. Now it's time for bed for me.

Day 2

9:00am My 7yr. old comes in and wakes me up. My husband is already in the shower. Then we hear the baby (she's 18 months old, but we still call her the baby) waking up over the monitor. Soon we hear my 3yr. old with her giggling. Next thing I know, my 10 yr. old has brought the baby to me.

9:30 I feed the younger three breakfast and nurse the baby while my husband puts last night's car building stuff away and gathers his things for work. He leaves. This is a leisure day for us. Usually we have to go to classes at our Parent Partnership on Tuesdays but today's classes were cancelled for a talent show.

10:00 We call the older kids down and start the "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" movie since we just finished reading the book last week. We've had vocabulary lessons (out of the Critical Thinking Novel Thinking book) and discussions about each chapter as we went along. Sometimes we even had a special treat to go along with it. It was a fun book to read together, especially through the holidays. I take a shower, get dressed, make my bed (I heard somewhere you'll be more productive if you make your bed), and eat breakfast.

11:45 The movie is over. I let them watch "Frosty the Snowman," requested by the 3yr. old while I make some phone calls, setting up interviews for my two oldest to do with people who lived during WWII.

12:00pm Lunch-most of them make it themselves. Nobody likes to eat the same thing.

12:30 My 10yr. old and I start putting coats of paint on his Pinewood Derby car. Then I sit he and my 7yr. old down to work on math (Singapore Primary Mathematics). After that they both do a few pages of Explode the Code.

1:00 My 11yr. old, who has read a chapter in his reading book and gotten himself second-lunch, sits down with me to do his math. I interrupt my 13yr. old from his current project, building a case for his raspberry pi from left over floor planks, and tell him to read a chapter of his assigned book for his WWII class at our Friday Co-op. I check on my 15yr. old. She is working on a part of her Hero portfolio, also for the WWII class.

1:30 I go outside to check on the little kids who have been playing out there and decide to weed the flower bed. I get all the dandelions, grass, and maple tree saplings out and sprinkle Preen and Slug Bait on the whole thing. My 3yr. old has been helping me by picking the dandelions. She has quite a bouquet by the time I'm done so we take them over to Grandpa's house (it's attached to the other side of our garage) as a birthday present.

2:00 I help my 11yr. old find a new piano piece to practice from our books because he has left his backpack at our Parent Partnership, along with his piano book, so until we find it or they have class again, he has no other books. The baby plays with the chess pieces that are loose in the piano room.

3:00 The baby is getting fussy so I sit down with her and nurse her while I read the first lesson in Apolgia's Young Explorer Astronomy book. I've wanted to start this for a while but I've been too sick to do a lot of reading aloud. The baby falls asleep.

4:00 I send the younger kids outside again and try to get started on a cake for my father-in-law's birthday. He's turning 79 today and I always make him a German chocolate cake, which takes a lot of time to make. Half of us are Gluten-free so I have to make it from scratch, but it's worth it.

5:30 With a few interruptions to apply ointment and band-aids to blackberry scratches, explain to my 5 yr. old that if he doesn't want to get hurt, he shouldn't play in sticker bushes with only his underwear on, and try to get my 3yr. old to use the toilet (she keeps appearing with her Hello Kitty underwear on, but has yet to actually use the toilet), I finish getting the cake in the oven. The baby woke up somewhere in there too so she is scooting around getting into things now.

6:00 The cake is done and I've had enough of the 5yr. old screaming about his scratches so I put on "Paw Patrol" and make dinner. It's Taco Tuesday!

7:00 Dinner's ready and the pecan coconut frosting is cooling. My husband is home and already focused on the Pinewood Derby car. In the meantime, our little 3yr. old has finally used the toilet! Yeah! Soon, we'll have only one child in diapers.

8:00 Grandpa comes over for cake and ice cream and to open his presents. Luckily I still had a 7 and 9 candle but the 7 has lost it's wick. We chalk it up to aging.

9:00 The kids go to bed. 3yr. old is wearing a diaper again. She had a little accident and decided she was fine with a diaper for now. She follows the words in "Are You My Mother," with her finger as I read. Then we do the same with one of her "Hello Kitty" readers and she's down for bed. The others just need a little help with teeth and prayers and then they're gone too.

10:00 My 15yr. old has gone to her room to read, having spent almost the entire day in front of the computer (she was working on assignments most of the time, the rest was spent drawing digitally). I feed the baby some yogurt and baby food and then she nurses and goes to sleep. The 13yr. old, a.k.a. the tinkerer, is still up working on his case.

11:00 I think he's finally done and headed to bed. My husband is still hard at work on that car. I don't think he ever ate dinner. He's also finishing up another car for our 7yr. old who has become obsessed with painting his own car for the sibling race. The 5yr. old already finished his a couple of months ago. He found an unused block from a kit, colored it with markers, scavenged old axles and wheels from the parts box and put it all together, all by himself. He's also the one who almost burned my kitchen down two years ago.

2:30 We finally finished that blasted car. Now I'm off to bed.

Day 1

I got the idea of posting my days from my favorite homeschooling magazine, Practical Homeschooling. In it they always have a family or two tell about a typical day of homeschooling at their house. I eagerly await that article each month, hoping to find some kind of common ground between me and other homeschoolers. But I think they might be putting their best foot forward, and anyway, it's just one day. I thought a better representation of a typical homeschool household would need to be covered over a longer period of time since every day is new and different. Some are good, some are bad, and some are a little of both.

So here goes:

8:30am Awakened by my 3-yr. old, staring me down with her big blue eyes. She wants to play on the kindle fire but since we're too busy to fix our wi-fi, I haven't been able to update any of the apps and they're all expired. So I tell her no.

9:00 Open my eyes again. She is now standing by my closet (where the kindle is kept) looking out the window. I get up and groggily slip on slippers and head out to the kitchen. I've been sick and I had to take Benedryl twice last night to keep from coughing so I'm still a bit sedated.

9:30 I really can't remember. I must have gotten breakfast for some of the kids. My husband leaves for work.

10:00 Get myself breakfast and read.

10:30 Sit my three oldest boys down at the dining room table to work on their Which Way USA Oklahoma books before their friend comes over to finish it with them. They work on the parts that require the map together once a week on Mondays and we do the other puzzles on our own.

11:00 Leave them with word searches to finish and take the phone into my bedroom to call the bank about a refinance option. Then take the sheets off my bed to wash and go get dressed.

11:30 Wake up the baby and my 15-yr. old, the only two still in bed. I tell the 15-yr. old to empty the dishwasher (last night's chore that didn't get done) before she starts her school work and sit down to feed the baby. One of the younger kids has put on Curious George by now. I try reading.

12:00pm Read emails about some problems at our Parent Partnership and then have a quick meeting with the kids discussing some changes that we will be making while we're there for the rest of the school year.

12:30  Make kids lunch and tell them to get dressed before their friend arrives.

1:00 Friend and his mom come. She and I talk about the Parent Partnership and how we intend to deal with the problems.

1:30 Boys and friend sit down with his mom to finish up Oklahoma book while I take the younger four kids upstairs to play in our bonus room. We vacuum up some popcorn left from a WWII movie night on Friday for my oldest two and their friends and then get out the shape blocks. I haven't gotten these out in years so my youngest ones are excited.

2:30 Play a game of "Count Your Chickens" with my 7-yr. old then work on Mathlink cubes with my 5-yr. old and 3-yr. old while the baby plays with the shape blocks.

3:00 Boys are done with Which Way USA. Everyone plays while us mom's discuss and catch up. 15-yr. old takes a break from her work and goes outside. She catches a frog and brings it in to show us.

4:00 Friends go home. We get ready for swim lessons.

5:00 Swim lessons for 6 of the kids. Baby stays home with 15yr-old.

6:00 We head over to another family's house to return a coat someone left at our house on movie night. That mom asks me to deliver something to another family on my way home. I do. Because I chat with everyone a little and we all live at least 15 minutes away from each other, it takes almost an hour.

7:00 We get home and I start dinner.

7:30 We eat dinner and watch Lego Droid Tales. Everyone sits in the family room/kitchen to eat even though the dining room is perfectly usable.

8:00 My husband finally comes home. He's been out looking for parts for the Pinewood Derby car.

9:00 I shuffle the kids, minus the three older boys who are helping with the car, to bed.

10:00 Everyone's in bed except the baby and the three older boys.

11:00 The baby goes to bed and I try to finish this blog.

12:00am I make myself some sweet potato fries. The boys are still up.

12:30 The baby wakes up and I hold her for a few minutes then put her back in bed. She screams but soon falls back asleep.

1:00 They finally paint the first coat of primer on the car and the boys go to bed. I'm almost done with this blog post.

1:20 I quit working on the blog and go eat my fries. Then I'll go to bed.

As you can tell, we're night people. But one of my goals is to get us up earlier and get everyone, especially the baby, in bed earlier. My other goal is for this daily blog to be a lot shorter, meaning, I don't do as much during the day. It's just ridiculous. And this was actually a relatively laid back day.

Why in the world am I doing this? Isn't my life hectic enough?

So this is my first post. I created a blog years ago but didn't link it to my email address (I made a new address just for it, thinking anonymity was the way to go) but then life got too hectic (hence the alliterative title) and I didn't post anything for a long time and then I forgot my password and eventually the name of the blog. So I'm starting fresh.

I decided to start blogging again because I think my stories might help someone else who feels like they are struggling. As I go about my week, feeling like my homeschooling, housework, and pretty much everything, are lacking, that nagging voice in me keeps saying, "What are you doing wrong?" But then I go to a friend's house for the first time, who I've always looked up to, and see that their house is just as messy, if not messier, than mine, and I realize, my crazy life is much like many other peoples. So this blog is for all you homeschooling mom's out there who think you're the only one who are losing the game of Tetris the dishes are playing in your sink, who's mountain of laundry is rivaling the most difficult day-hikes in your local guide book, and who's children can polish off an entire season of Ninjago in one afternoon.

Before I start telling you about my homeschooling experiences, I should probably fill you in on what kind of person I am. To start off with, I'm wordy (if you couldn't tell already), I'm a type A personality humbled into a type B, and my default answer when my brain is too frazzled to think clearly is "yes, I can do that." I'm also a mom of eight beautiful, intelligent, and talented children who sometimes think they rule the world and the not-always-doting wife of an absent minded professor who's hard at work right now on a Pinewood Derby car. I love homeschooling even when my kids don't, I am secretly an organized person (you wouldn't guess it looking at my life) and I'm LDS (Mormon) which means I operate on 6 or less hours of sleep without the use of any stimulants. This also means I might use LDS jargon here and there, since my faith is an integral part of my daily life as well as my parenting, but I'll try to define it as I go.

Homeschooling has been one of the best decisions I ever made. Having a large number of ADHDish kids, a very dyslexic second child, and another who borders on Aspergers, I'm extremely grateful the Lord planted the seed of Homeschooling in my heart long before my first child was born. He definitely knew what he was doing putting us on this path. It took seven tries to see a child who remotely resembles those children that so many of the curriculum/homeschooling books seem to be geared toward. You know, the ones who actually hold their questions regarding the universe for after you've gone through the lesson, the ones who are willing to start their letters at the top, and the ones who don't insist on answering every question with an opposite-to-the-correct-one answer.

Homeschooling has allowed my children to develop at their own pace, avoid becoming self-conscious about their weaknesses and quirks, and helped me to understand them far better than I ever would have if they spent the bulk of their day in someone's classroom. I'm also a curriculum addict. I love seeing different methods of teaching. I feel it helps me make a better informed decision as to what I should use for my children. Unfortunately, I usually don't have enough time in a day to try everything out, or even try a little of it out, and my kids get weary of my ambitions. So I tend to be a bit scattered in my methods and the best way to describe our home-school is "eclectic."

I wish I would have started this blog ages ago because then I could talk about some of the new changes we've made at our house and you could see how they've worked out as I did. But, I'm sure there will be more new things soon.  One change I'm just starting is to try to make my life less hectic. So if you struggle with the same problem, maybe my journey will help you along yours.