How we spend our days..

For the sake of keeping a history, this is a run down of how we usually spend our days. Carter likes to know what is going on so we talk about each day of the week and this is how we label them: Monday-Family Home Evening, Tuesday-Relief Society (this means he will have friends over to play with while I have a meeting or he will play with Dad at night while I go on visits), Wednesday-Playgroup, Thursday-Preschool, Friday-Free Day, Saturday-Soccer, Sunday-Church.

We seem to have the opportunity to have friends over often. I always enjoy having kids come and play because I think it is easier to watch my own kids when they are playing with others. They don't need me to be a part of the play and I can just observe.

Our next door neighbor, Olivia, comes over several times a week and she is a joy to have. Olivia is six, so she is a good role model for Carter about how to be a good friend. She also is really loving towards Serena and Aleeya.

I enjoy having a clean house, so I have enlisted the help of the kids in this endeavor. Carter and Serena help with garbage, cleaning the floor, picking up toys and Serena likes to help set the table. Both of them also really like to help me cook. I want to give them this opportunity, but I do think my stress level is always higher when we are cooking, due to the fact that they both WILL NOT stay off the counter and they are a little to eager to measure and dump ingredients with or without direction.

We try to do homework everyday, which consists of doing a coloring page from letter or number books or doing an art project. Basically, "homework" is a fancy way of saying coloring or craft time.

Music is also a big part of our day, I like to have the radio on during the day and so the kids know a lot of country songs. Both of them really love to perform and sing and dance. Our friend, Jamie Smith, loaned us a karaoke machine and they love to sing into the microphone. I will play primary songs on the piano and they will sing. They also love to play quiz show where I ask a question and they answer into the microphone.

Now that it is nicer weather we can play outside to release energy, but during the winter we did a lot of dancing. I have the tape "See Me Run" from when I was a child and we listened to it and did the actions at least once a day for many weeks.

I dream of being able to say that we don't watch television. But for the sake of sanity we do have a quiet time everyday and the kids watch cartoons. Curious George and Backyardigans are favorites, but so is SpongeBob Square Pants(I wish they didn't like this one).

Overall, I think we have a pretty fun schedule and we stay busy!