A New Strategy

I am the worst about following a calendar.  I do a good job of recording at times, but I never seem to check my calendar on a daily basis, so what's the use, right?

My sweet husband got me an ipod touch for my birthday (or some holiday) a few years ago.  My idea was to be able to check my email on the go (although you must have a wifi connection).  I also had been wanting a digital planner, so this seemed to put everything in one along with all my music.  Since I am on t-mobile and not willing to pay the data plan for an iphone it was perfect.  However, as neat as the calendar features were I still did not check it.

In More Hours in My Day, the author of course encourages you to keep a planner and check it daily.  She also recommends that you keep lists of your tasks and chores.  I won't go into detail about all of the lists that she suggests you keep.  If you are interested get the book!  However, she keeps hers in a file box on index cards.  There are also other things that she keeps index card files for, and with my small house I just don't want to clutter it more with more paper, boxes, and files of things, so I decided the best thing was to go back to my ipod.

I didn't get a lot of sleep last night trying to update and backup my ipod, but I now have this great planner/calendar/todo list always with me in my purse.  I just love technology!  I have all of my daily and weekly tasks clearly labeled and ready to be checked off.  I am such a list person and LOVE to check off my list.  I even write out very specific lists so that I can check more things off.  I know I'm a dork! Hopefully this will keep me motivated as well as on task, because when it comes to cleaning I have a bit of ADD.

More Helpful Hints from Emilie Barnes

Look at this I have posted five, count them five blog updates in the past 24 hours!  That is definitely a record for me.  :)  Anyway, I am still reading More Hours in My Day and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  I can totally tell that my mom read this as a young mother.  There are so many things that she suggests that I think to myself "Well of course you would do it that way!"  And then remember the reason I think that is because I was raised that way.

For example, she suggests that you color code everything.  Each family member has a color and their possessions are labeled according to that color.   My mother took this one to the extreme!!  We each had our own color, that just so happened to be our favorite color.  Looking back, I wonder if those were really our favorites or if Mom just convinced us that they were, hmmm?

Anyway, my color was pink.  My clothes hangers were pink, my clean clothes basket was pink, my dry-erase marker for the family calendar was pink, even my Easter basket most years was filled with pink items.  She even labeled our toys, if not with a pink marker at least with our initial.  I remember her commenting once that she didn't know how people named their kids names with the same first letter, "How would they keep all of their toys strait?"

It's funny how I took that forgranted.  When I got married I remember thinking my husband's side of the closet looked like a warzone!  He had all sorts of wire hangers, coat hangers, and all different colors of plastic hangers.  I couldn't even imagine such.  I won't even mention how he just put the clean clothes in the front of the rack without taking the time to arrange them neatly by color and/or category.  Needless to say, I made a Wal-mart trip just to pick up black plastic hangers.  It was immediately better!  He now at least puts his clothes according to sleeve length and has a whole lower rack for pants.  We are still working on color order, but he still doesn't see the point in that.  As long as he takes them from the laundry room to the closet I won't complain!

She has so many more tips that I am ready to implement and/or perfect.  Hopefully before long my home will be easily organized and stress free.

More Hours in My Day

That is the title of one of the books I was talking about on a previous post.  I just started it today, and I am already so excited just from reading the first chapter, and it is only a few pages.  I wanted to share my favorite thing with you.

One of the things that Barnes encourages you to do is to get the whole family involved with organizing and cleaning.  She says "Don't do what another member of the family can do."  She approaches the idea as we are the managers of the home.  That doesn't mean that we need to have the burden of doing everything around the house.  We should be the orchestrators and organizers of the house work.

I know that while I have small children that means much of what I gets done will be done by me.  However, I think that having that mentality will help me not to feel extremely guilty when I ask my husband if he would put away the dishes for me (which he always does with a happy heart).  Or it will encourage me to help Sterling, even now, learn to pick up his toys before bedtime instead of just doing it myself because it is faster.

That's all for now.  I have to get back to my book.

Getting Organized

This month I have felt perpetually on-the-go.  I have attended showers, parties, visited grandparents-mine and Sterling's, and cared for a very sick baby (who is much better now).  We've celebrated Easter and it will soon be Mother's Day and I wonder where the time has gone this month.  Don't get me wrong, I have so enjoyed it, but I will be looking forward to some rest in a few weeks (we still have some more going to go).

In the midst of all the hurrying, I have felt a bit scrambled at home.  I'll admit, the laundry has been slow to get done and we have done a lot of fyod (fix your own dinner).  Never being at home wears me out, and the housework piles up so quickly.

I hope soon to get back into a good, steady routine.  That is where I am comfortable, when I know what to expect out of my days.  I know that nothing will be perfectly predictable, especially as long as I have a baby in the house.  But after all of the chaos I am inspired to not only get back on schedule, but to get organized.  Not just to have "things" organized, but to have an organized life. 

My mother has been telling me about an author, whose books she used as a young mother.  Since she can no longer put her finger on her copy, she ordered the two of us a couple of Emilie Barnes' books.  She has written, I think, over 70 books, most of them about organization.  Not just about organizing your closets, but organizing everything, housework, kids, bills, projects, paperwork, vacation, I don't even know what all else, but I am so ready for our books to come in and to get started! 

If you are interested in ordering one of her books I found some that looked really good on www.cbd.com, and some of them are really cheap!

Doctor's Visit

Sterling had his six month appointment today. He weighed in at 20lbs 12oz and 27 1/4 inches. That is the 89th and 82nd percentiles respectively. He is a BIG boy! He did so well with his shots too and didn't even cry with the first one. (Although he screamed when the doctor was talking with me, which is completely out of character for him.) He is doing really well with solids, obviously he LOVES to eat. He is eating cereal and a fruit or a veggie once a day, and we are about to have solids for lunch too. If we are eating anything around him, he watches us intently with his mouth open. He has also started sitting and can sit steadily for a few minutes. He's just growing so fast.

Sterling and Tripp at the lake. Tripp was making Sterling laugh so hard! They were so cute together.

We Finally Closed!

We have finally closed on our house. It has been a LONG ordeal and one thing after another, but finally on Thursday we were able to close! Actually, we had to sign the paperwork twice, once on Wednesday and again Thursday. But it is now a done deal. We have workers coming in on Tuesday to do the floors and then we get to move in!

Here are some more pictures:


Smiling at KiKi



The Vaughn's

The Whole Winter Clan (and we all match)

The Siblings



KiKi and Colonel



This was Alex's outfit that Nanie made











This is one of my favorites!





Nanie and Pop

All Smiles

Ch Ch Ch Changes!

These pictures were taken today (except the first one was from last week). He was in a really "smiley" mood, and so we tried to capture it on camera. However, once I got the camera out he wasn't so cooperative. But I got the end of a few.

I can't believe that Sterling has been in our lives for a whole month; then again, sometimes it feels like he has always been here. I definitely wonder what we did before we had him. Now our days are filled between feedings and dirty diapers with just staring at our pretty little boy! Everyday we are so amazed at what a precious gift being a parent is. He is doing really well. Last night he even slept about seven hours! Of course that was with me reaching down to put his paci back in his mouth, but I am counting it. I think he has really grown in the past few days

As if a baby weren't changing our lives dramatically enough, we are moving! We are so excited to be moving to Rainbow City, AL. Alex will start March 1 at Rainbow Presbyterian Church as the new youth minister. We are so excited as the Lord continues to direct us and provide for our every need! Last weekend we took the final step in our interview process and were able to meet many of the youth as well as attend church. We really love the people there and are really excited to begin our ministry in Rainbow City. (The grandparents are excited that we will now only be about an hour away!) We are going Monday to look at houses in the area, so please be praying that we find something and are able to close quickly so that we have a place to live!