Saturday/Creative Day: Kaizen blitz of the kid’s bedroom, cleaned out mold, built a bed frame, tried to fix the chargers/wires/plugs, curtains adjusted, closet doors removed, toys wipes, decluttered and organized. Was excited to keep reading the 123 Magic discipline book, have a lot to train the kids on with toys and items moving around the house and a new year is a good time to get school time more organized. We worked hard all day, a new bench got a cushion sewed, so many boxes of toys got sorted into dinos/dragons, vehicles, monster trucks, tracks, books got frozen to kill mold, books got sorted through, balls got put away, just a ton of small tasks that usually never happen finally happening in a weird and intense parade of cleaning and organization. My sister took the trash out, last year we had the same holiday build up of trash, I also weeded ginger and worked on paths and decluttered.

CLOTHES: I don’t have too much, but I have enough too, some marital arts stuff and normal people stuff, but a lot less than most ladies I think. I think my hair and earrings are the way I like to express my style and I really don’t feel the need to try hard or spend a lot of time looking for clothes anymore. I want functional stuff my kids can mess up without me getting angry about.

BOOKS: We have very few books, about two milk crates, but we have to clean them all so we go through them fairly often and cycle what we don’t need. It’s not bad.

PAPERS: It’s not a huge volume and but it’s still some junk that hasn’t been sorted, I should take a look soon. Digitally it’s bad that my email was over full and Google Drive so I have to fix where I store my exercise videos and fix my gym website after that…

TIME: We used to do Song-Bus/Song Time/School Roll/Calendar/Writing/Letter of the Day/Feelings Pond and I want to go back to that it was fun, with story time somewhere… maybe at 12:45? Or 1PM…

MEMENTOS: I’m getting better at throwing out kid art work and keeping some… it used to be really hard and pile up. There isn’t that much right now.

MISC: This is where I need to get better, my stuff is too ungrouped, as I get better at putting things away, I find a lot of things have not been assigned places to be and learning how to do that is for some reason hard for me, so I’m working on it, but it’s going slower than I would wish.

Sunday/Faith Day: Last year I was so worried about finishing paperwork ASAP, now I’m just okay with finishing it WP… when possible. I’m fixing up a lot of things around the house like the fish filter, but the pump was broken again, tried to fix it, but couldn’t more of a replacement item… I fertilized the lawn with fish emulsions, I’m more excited by the filter cleaning as a gardener than I would be if I wasn’t… I looked around today at the things that need to get fixed instead of hiding from them, even though it’s a bunch of things, it’s not everything. I need to redo plumbing, but the electrical is good, so that’s something.

Monday/Unity Day: Last week I was at a bad place, sick, worn out, trying to get rid of mold, this week the mold is gone, I’m stronger than I was and I feel more hopeful and peaceful about the future again. Last year I was trying to fix the schedule and a year later, I am trying again, this is different because my son isn’t in preschool so it’s easier doing two kids school instead of preschool and school, it’s similar but different. I was so surprised and happy we fixed the play house roof with some extra posts and trimmed the green roof. I made a bench out of a log so the kids can sit behind the playhouse.

Tuesday/Self-Determination: Last week I was very sick and kind of fed up with the kids. This week the kids are a lot better, the discipline system we switched to worked well for them. We have been watering the strawberry bed with the new Albion strawberries, which is good. I cleared a lot of ground for the new gazebo and put up a green privacy fence of climbing vines. The ground won’t be level before I install the gazebo but at least it is easier to walk around and pretty clear.

Wednesday/Collective Work Day: Last week we did 4 martial arts classes at the beach it was really fun. This week I forgot my car seats in my sister’s car and we didn’t go to the beach. It was sad because I packed everything and the kids were excited to go.

Thursday/Cooperative Economics Day: Last week super tired, this week pretty tired but cleaned up making the beds, put away clean laundry, oiled the floors a little bit. Made a cool broth from a friend’s recipe I was so excited by that, because I’m hoping I’ll get well, I turned in our D2 form, but I have this month to fill out our 990 form before getting back to the 501. We installed my daughter’s nice ornamental pot fish pond in the front with a solar pump that just stirs the water a tiny bit and added some pretty aquatic plants I don’t know the name of and mosquito fish from our other (dilapidated ponds), even though it’s a tiny pond it was kind of fun doing the whole set up in one day, it used to be our whole dirt garden with carrots, tomatoes and sweet potato’s now it is my daughter’s little fish pond. We saw a beautiful white pidgeon, it had a blue ankle band so it was someone’s pet, it was so lovely, it stopped on our patio for awhile.

Friday/Creativity Day: Last week started reading a new parenting book “123 Magic” this week it feels so much easier using the routine. I turned the soil for the watermelon bed, two seeds are sprouting right now so I’ll wait a bit for them to grow, but that’s exciting to me to have the bed ready early instead of too late. We planed a ton and ordered a ton of garden stuff the past two weeks. My daughter got over being fussy about spelling today, which was great, using Brainscape flash cards (free) helped a lot, it makes it seem like it’s no big deal if you don’t remember something, you just press red and then it gives you the answer and another try. My daughter wanted a circle of moss so we harvested some moss and set it on treys, not sure if it will take or not, but trying it out. Also started clearing the next section next to the front section to put weed cloth down, but didn’t get too far yet. I added just a few new Mexican Sunflowers to the front hedge heading down from the East to the North corner, I have enough cuttings and soil to continue to my own bedroom windows soon, that’s exciting for me. I don’t hate my neighbors plants, they are in good taste, but I’ll be happy to see my own. The new basil and new watermelon seeds are sprouting well, for awhile nothing was sprouting. I’m excited about the basil.

Last Year to This Year

Last Year: Our dog was dying, my kids were doing well in school, I was struggling with clutter and to clean the house.

This Year: The kids are behaving better than they had been, my daughter started Ocarina of Time on Nintendo and it’s been fun spending an hour together watching her, it’s a beautiful and inspiring game to me, it’s cool because she knows how to play the songs on ocarina that came from the game. She also is listening to the Sword of Truth series which I read as a kid so that is fun too. I’m glad my husband and dad were away so I could nail down the kid’s discipline without people adding their unwanted opinion at the same time, I’ll deal with those unwanted opinions later.

Live – Lift – Love

Live – I had fun clearing a bit of garden for the gazebo, extending the sun flower hedge and putting in the log bench and little pot pond. I feel so alive in the garden, seeing basil sprout from gooey seeds to little green sprouts and having watermelon sprout too, it doesn’t get old for me, I just want to do better with the next step too.

Lift – I was lifted by a friend’s offer for dinner and soup recipe that helped me get well.

Love – I love the 1-2-3 Magic Discipline system, it’s awesome, I wish I had found it 7 years ago, it’s perfect for me and my kids and I went through a lot of other stuff that wasn’t. It reduced our power struggles and the kids fighting so much that I have a lot more time and patience to clean, garden, and enjoy the kids more.

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