Money Saving Mom®

Welcome to my weekly post I share a peek into our lives, talk about things I’m loving, share links to interesting articles or helpful ideas I’ve collected throughout the past week, and just talk about whatever is on my heart! ?

I flew back from India on Monday evening/Tuesday (I’ll be sharing a few posts in a few weeks about my time there — once I finish sharing the posts from our South Africa trip!). Many of you asked me questions about the airplane bathrooms since I said that I wash my face/brush my teeth/take my contacts out, etc. on flights.

I try to choose a time when the lights are out and most people are sleeping so that I’m not “hogging” the bathroom when others might be waiting. And then I bring my bathroom bag in and my nose bottle and water bottle and do my nightly bathroom routine (wash face/take contacts out/brush teeth/do the sinus rinse) before getting ready to sleep and then my morning routine (wash face/put contacts in/brush teeth) when I wake up.

I then moisturize my face and put on my makeup when I’m back in my seat and we’re about an hour from landing. This helps me feel a little fresher when getting off a long 15+ hour flight! 🙂

After 25+ hours on flights and in airports, it was SO good to be home!

And we jumped right back into life because the kids had already started school when I got back!

Every year, we pray and talk and research and decide what schooling option is best for each individual child based upon their needs and where they are at both emotionally, spiritually, and academically.

Last year, we started the year with one being homeschooled and two in the same Classical school. For a variety of reasons, we ended the year with one in a new-to-us Classical school, another in another new-to-us Christian school, and one in the original Classical school.

Was it unconventional? Yes. But it ended up being exactly what each child needed and they were so happy we chose to go the routes we did.

This year, Kaitlynn and Silas are at the little Classical school that we fell so much in love with last year when Kaitlynn switched to it mid-year. Kathrynne is going to the same Christian school that she switched to mid-year last year. It has been such a good fit for her!

We’re excited to see what this year holds for each child and are so grateful for the teachers who come are walking alongside us in this journey and pouring into and investing in our kids.

Note: Kathrynne started this week with back-to-school camp, so she got to dress super casual, including sporting Jesse’s college sweatshirt! ?

How I Stay More Organized as a Business Owner

One of the best ways I keep my life and blogging/business work organized is by writing a time-blocked to do list every night before bed.

Yes, this takes some thought and effort, but it means that I am 150% more productive, focused, and calm the next day.

I look at my Google calendar (aka my “brain”) to see what appointments and events and meetings are scheduled for the next day + what projects and tasks I’ve assigned to that day to complete or work on.

Then, I sit down and hand write out my schedule for the day. I always leave buffer time in the afternoons and evenings to just hang out and be with my kids/husband. But now that the kids are back in school, our morning routine and my work time (from 8 am to 4 pm every day) is pretty regimented.

Having a time blocked to do list not only means that our mornings run much more smoothly, but it also means that I know exactly what I need to focus on in what order when I open up my computer for the day.

If you don’t have a plan, there’s a good chance you’ll spend most of the day going around in circles just putting out “fires”. And at the end of the day, you’ll probably not have a lot to show for it.

Whether you have 30 mins a day to devote to blogging or it’s your full-time gig, I encourage you to consider writing out a simple plan for how you’ll spend your blogging time. Put the most important priorities first on the list and the lesser pressing priorities at the bottom. That way, if you only get through half your list, you’ve at least spent your time tackling the projects that mattered most… and you didn’t just waste it scrolling through endless posts on social media!

From My Heart…

Earlier this week, one of the kids was struggling with their homework. I was working alongside them and they kept expressing their frustration, “I can’t do this! This is too hard! I’m going to fail all my projects!”

This is our perfectionist child and we’ve had to learn over the years that statements like, “Do your best! That’s all that matters!” don’t do anything but serve to further frustrate them.

In the past, I’ve even snapped at this child and said things like, “would you just stop being so frustrated?!? This is not that big of a deal.”

But in their world, it IS a big deal and they want to know that Mom cares and hears them and is there for them.

So instead of saying any of those things, I came up with a plan… because I’ve learned that a simple plan speaks this child’s language. I said, “This is a LOT that you’ve been assigned, but we have all evening to work on it. So let’s do this: We’re going to set a timer: 20 minutes to work on homework. 10 minutes to do something fun.” And back and forth between work and fun we went.

This made all the difference! This child went from feeling stressed to feeling motivated. We broke the projects down into small pieces and just focused on that one piece at a time. And then we took a break to have some fun. Then, we were back at it.

Within 2 hours, the projects were done and my child felt happy and satisfied. And I was so grateful… grateful that I didn’t just try to slap a platitude onto their frustration like I used to or, worse yet, shut them down by expressing frustration over their frustration.

This last year of changing how I parent and slowing down and really learning to listen to what my kids are actually communicating and then taking time to speak words of life to them has completely changed our home.

Often, our kids don’t need us to preach sermons at them; they need us to get down in the trenches with them, look into their eyes, let them know that they aren’t alone, that their frustration is heard, and then help them devise a plan of action to walk through the tough assignment.

2018 Goals Update

Personal Goals

1. Read 100 non-self-help books that will build me up/encourage me/inspire me/recharge me. (Fiction/story-driven/biographies/inspirational living books/devotionals.) See the list of 44 books I plan to read this year.

**Progress: 48 books read so far this year

2. Read through the entire Bible.

**Progress: I’m using the Robert Murray M’Cheyne plan and am all caught up— yay!

3. Write one handwritten note to someone every week.

**Progress: 33 notes written so far this year

4. Run 500 miles.

**Progress: 300 miles run so far

Marriage Goal

5. Go on an overnight trip with Jesse without the kids.Jesse and I went to NYC together in January.

Family Goals

6. Read 10 books aloud with the kids.

**Progress: I’ve finished two books so far and we’re working on a third right now.

7. Take the kids to South Africa. We took this trip in July. What a memorable experience!

8. Go on a family road trip.

**Progress: We’ve been researching some options for this and are hoping to make this happen over Fall Break. Stay tuned!

Financial Goals

9. Save up to pay cash to finish off an office for me and workout room for Jesse and me in the basement in our new house.

**Progress: The workout room is DONE and the office is getting close to being done!

10. Replenish our Emergency Fund (we dipped into it to replace my car when it got totaled because of the carpet beetle infestation.)

Business Goals

11. Increase our gross income from the business by 8%.

12. Launch 5 new courses.

**Progress: We launched 4 Weeks to a More Productive Life launched in January, Content Creation 101 in February, 4-Week Blog Coaching Program in March, Email List Setup 101 in March, Make Over Your Mornings LIVE in April, the Facebook Live Masterclass in May, and we launched Build Your List 101 in June!

Welcome to my weekly post I share a peek into our lives, talk about things I’m loving, share links to interesting articles or helpful ideas I’ve collected throughout the past week, and just talk about whatever is on my heart! ?

This post contains affiliate links and we may be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.

As I mentioned, we spent almost all of last week near Mountain Home, Arkansas at Bull Shoals Lake. It’s a family tradition for us all to get together at least once a year at this lake.

The tradition started before Jesse and I were married over 15 years ago and has continued — and now there are 27 of us total (though my brother couldn’t make it this year because he was serving as a counselor at The Wild Camp.)

Here’s a little peek into our time together…

We played lots of games — including some fun rounds of Spot It.

My dad rented two boats for the week, so we spent a LOT of time on the water.

Some of the days were a little cloudy, but mostly, the weather was beautiful — not too hot and not too cold!

I fell in love with knee-boarding on this vacation and had so much fun attempting different things (I still haven’t mastered backwards knee-boarding, but I’m determined I’m going to get it!)

Most all of us went bowling one evening. They rented out the lanes for just $16 each for an hour, so we got three lanes and a BUNCH of us bowled for every minute of that hour and had a blast — and it only cost about $51 total!!

Close to 7 pm, they turned on the strobe lights for Cosmic Bowling!

Kathrynne planned games for the younger kids every afternoon and they earned tickets which they got to cash in for prizes at the end of the week (see below).

This roll the marble game was a hit! You had to sit or stand behind the line and roll a marble and you got points based upon where the marble landed.

Most of my nieces and nephews were better than me at this game! 🙂

We also played a rousing game of Whoonu — and my 5-year-old niece beat me fair and square!!

Have you ever played this game? It was a lot harder than I expected it to be!

My sister’s daughter, Cadence, planned snacks for the younger kids on two of the afternoons (and my brother’s daughter planned snacks on the other two days).

One of the snacks was these cute apples that all of the kids got to make!

The kids really enjoyed making these!

The best part? They got to eat them after they made them!

There was a lot of double-slaloming that went on during the week. Here, two of my brothers are showing off their skills!

It was so peaceful and beautiful!

We had multiple swimming breaks in the lake.

Another shot of how beautiful this lake is!

The boys climbed up on the rocks one day and would have stayed up there for a long time if I hadn’t told them they had to come down (because I was a little afraid they were going to slip and fall!)

Kathrynne did so well at skiing this year — and even got up on one ski the second time she tried (I didn’t get a picture because I was screaming so loudly about how well she was doing!!)

And then Silas wanted to try skiing on the big skis. He’s gotten up on the kid skis before, but never on these larger skis.

The boy got up on his second try and stayed up for over 2 minutes!!

I was SO proud of him and I think he just might be able to slalom soon, too!

At the end of the week, the kids took all of their tickets and they got to cash them in for prizes that Kathrynne had in her “store” (all of these came from Dollar Tree).

The kids came in one at a time and got to redeem tickets for one item — from youngest child to oldest child.

And then, once the first round of ticket redemptions was finished, they got to do another round and choose another item.

We drove back home on Saturday — and made a stop at this place we found in Jonesboro last year. I love little coffee shops, even if I don’t drink coffee any more! (I got their cinnamon tea and had them make it like a London Fog.)

From My Heart…

This made me laugh and say ouch, because yup, there’s way more truth to it than I’d probably like to admit.

One of the reasons I chose the word SLOW for this year was because I knew I needed to work on being slower to respond. And it’s been so good to make it my goal to actually take time to think before I say something instead of just blurting out the first thing that comes to mind.

It’s still a challenge and I still have had to apologize and stick my foot in my mouth, but I’m thrilled to tell you that by making this one word my mantra, it’s actually been making a big difference.

I’m talking less and listening more — and I’m taking more time to weigh my words before talking. And it’s really making a difference. I’m even not always having to get in the last word in a conversation or discussion… which is no small miracle!