Time, time, time

We're busy right now: Classical Conversations goes for the rest of this month before winter break. Happy thoughts that we get enough extra students in January to start a new class, which I can then teach (and get paid for, woo-hoo!)

Although I didn't work last week or this week, classes should resume the week after that and go right up until the week before Christmas. Hopefully, I'll get enough students signed up for the MS Word class, too.

Both girls have dance and Scouts. Although Lauren's Brownie troop only has two more meetings before Christmas, I'm the co-leader for her troop, and we're not only doing her investiture ceremony, we're also having a Tea Party, and a Hat & Glove drive (to donate to Oakland Co. foster care). Sarah's working on her own stuff for scouts, but we're still in Candy & Nut sales, and as soon as that is done, cookie sales are upon us!

On the plus side, Jeff is taking off all of Thanksgiving week (gone are the days when he had paid vacation for the week between Christmas & New Year's, but it was nice while it lasted), so I know the house will be spotless when we have everyone over.

One good time management tool that we're using right now is weekly checklists for the kids. For the most part, they detail school work (which pages to do in their math books, diagramming sentences for Sarah, Tin Whistle practice, etc.) but they also have things like Dance/Stretch. Sarah's dance class this year is considerably more challenging, and the extra practice even this early has been helping. By letting them see what all they have to do, and setting daily goals (we use a highlighter to select the boxes they intend to check off each day), we're getting better about getting stuff done.