Where, oh where, has my motivation gone?

I have hit a slump.  It happens every couple months.  What slump, exactly, have I hit?  The "I have no motivation to keep the house clean, but I am bugged by the dirty house" slump.  The problem is three-fold:
 1) Inevitably I get in a "media" funk and stop being as productive as I should be.  The little things go first, like making my bed every morning, and getting a load of laundry done every day.  Then the bigger things slip:  not unloading the dishwasher in the morning and letting the dishes pile up, letting the kids slide on doing their chores fully, ect.  Before you know it, the house that was neat and tidy becomes disorderly and chaotic. 

2) The children stop doing their chores.  This starts with me letting them slide on doing their chores fully.  If I am not doing my chores, out of laziness, who am I to enforce them doing theirs?  Then we enter the "I won't get my chores done and I'll just take the priviledge losses that go with that" phase.  You see, my kids are not allowed to use media or play with friends until all school and chores are completed.  That's all fine and good, except on the days that they simply don't care.  This causes a new problem.  I refuse to do their chores for them but I get bothered by the kids not doing their chores.   Then I NAG, AND NAG, AND NAG, because I want them to get their chores done.   

3) So, now we have a messy home that has gotten so out of control that mom gets overwhelmed at the prospect of getting everything back into order.  I enter shut down mode.  Shut down mode is where I am so overwhelmed by everything that has to be done that I do nothing at all.  I call it the "Mary Poppins issue."  I want to be able to just snap my fingers and have everything put itself back in order, but life doesn't work that way.  So, I do nothing, and the house gets worse and worse, and I get ANGRIER and ANGRIER until I snap. 

THEN the house gets cleaned with a vengeance, but no one is happy about the process because mom is a tyrant.  Life resumes as normal with everyone doing their work and mom checking chores to make sure they are done properly.  The house is tidy and runs well for a while.......until the next slump.  I KNOW that the solution to this whole issue is to just avoid the beginning steps in the first place.  It's a lot easier said than done.  So, if anyone has ideas to help "cure" my family of this reoccurring plague, please share your ideas!!!

VERY Opinionated Post

DISCLAIMER:  DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU CANNOT TAKE IT FOR WHAT IT IS: SIMPLY MY OPINION.
When I tell people that I homeschool I get many reactions.  Most of them are negative reactions, but I knew that would happen when I signed on with homeschooling.  However, there are some responses that REALLY bug the crap out of me.  Some of these include: 

"If things got bad enough I'd homeschool":  Just HOW BAD do things have to get?!??! Enough said.  If that's NOT enough for you, check out this post by another mom, that nailed my thoughts exactly on Why things are already bad enough.

"I don't know how you do it.  I'd never have the patience.":  I am not a saint.  Some days I have more patience than others.  I do this because the LORD CALLED ME TO DO IT.  If HE wants me to do it, then who am I to argue?

"It's ok to homeschool if you......(keep your kids on track, do it like the schools do, ect).":  Frankly I have some friends who subscribe to an unschooling philosphy of school and their kids are just as smart, or smarter than other kids their ages.  What really matters is the mother being ENGAGED in the education of her children.  Not the way in which she goes about educating them.

And my ultimate pet peeve............
"My children would never learn from me":  Do you want to know what that comment tells me?  It tells me that your children are holy terrors that run your home.  Do you not teach your children to be respectful?  Do you not teach your children to clean up after themselves?  Do you not teach your child to follow the rules?  Teaching your children academics is no different than teaching them discipline and courtesy.  Is it hard?  YES.  Do we have good days and bad days?  YES.  It's all about the expectations.  If you want to leave the education of your children in the hands of others, fine, but DO NOT tell me that you do it because your children CANNOT OR WILL NOT LEARN FROM YOU. 

And that is the end of my post.  Remember that this is simply MY opinion and it in no way reflects upon you or your decision of how to educate your children. I simply hope that the decision you made was based upon revelation for your family and not simply the traditions of society. 

I suppose I should post SOMETHING

Not a lot has been going on around here.  Life has been usual.  Maybe ya'll would like to see what my daily schedule looks like....or at least the GOAL of said daily schedule.  If you don't care, then don't read it, at least it's SOMETHING to post.  lol.
The goal for a typical day in the Stephen household is this:
7am  Mom wakes, shower, feed Breanne breakfast, tidy up my room, and then take a few minutes computer time if there is time.
8am  Kids wake (we are working on the goal of them waking, making beds, and dressing before coming upstairs....it's a long slow road), Make and eat breakfast, Kitchen chores.
9am Morning Devotional,
9:30am Bree goes down for her morning nap.  One on one rotations:  Audrey goes first with mom and gets 75 minutes to do Reading, Math, and English.  The other two kids play.  Then she does her individual school which consists of Typing, piano practice, Faith in God and handwriting depending on if it got done during English or not. 
While Audrey starts on her individual school I work one on one with Trent, which usually only takes about 15 minutes.
Then it's on to one on one school with Marissa.  She gets 45 minutes to do Reading and Math with mom.
Sometime around 11am is when Baby wakes up, so when Audrey is done with all of her school she gets out Bree and plays with her while I work with Marissa.
11:30  Lunch, clean up, and play time.
12:30 Bree school (I just put a bunch of activities to do with Bree in a jar and the kids each pick one to do with her) followed by Science or History.
1:30ish  Chore time.  Each kid has 4 chores (an upstairs, a downstairs, and two kitchen).  Mom does Laundry, helps Trent, makes bread, plans school, makes menus and grocery lists, ect. 
2pm or whenever chores are done is free time.  Bree is usually down for a nap around now.  The kids can use media coupons here to watch tv, play computer games or wii, or watch a movie.  They can play with toys, board games or outside.  Mom gets to blog, read other blogs, facebook, read, or whatever I so desire. 
4pm  Mom is usually getting dinner ready, feeding Bree her dinner, and making sure the house is ready for daddy to come home.
5pm  Dinner then kitchen chores
6pm  Family time
8pm Bedtime for kids

Well, there you have it, the typical day over here.  I should note that during bedtime we read aloud chapter books to the kids.  This is a great bonding time for us, it helps the kids settle down, and it's recreating one of my fondest childhood memories of my brother reading chapter books to me at my bedtime. 

Amen!

If I ever question what I am doing in homeschooling my children, all I need do is read THIS to remind myself why I chose this course.

A GREAT find!!!

I am SO excited!  I just found an AWESOME English/Grammar curriculum.  You know what?  It was FREE, and it's LDS based!!!  Now, tell me that's not the find of the century! 
While browsing on one of my favorite homeschool sites (here) I noticed in her "Year 3," (or basically 3rd grade) she had her own english curriculum.  I have NOT enjoyed our current curriculum as it is SO BORING!  I contaced the owner and was directed to her yahoo group where I could download ALL 4 levels of her curriculum for free!!!! 
This curriculum is the best.  It covers:
Copy work/Handwriting in almost every lesson
Memorization of poems, scriptures, and quotes
Gramma lessons
Note Taking
and Public speaking.
I started it with Audrey last week and I loved the very first lesson.  The quote from the first lesson is
"I am; I can; I ought; I will."  Charlotte Mason.  This has become my new phrase for Audrey. 
I'm happy with this curriculum so far, although Audrey is not too happy with how much more intense it is than our previous curriculum. 

One of the perks of homeschooling

First off, let me say this:  I tried and tried to figure out how to rotate the pictures on blogger but failed miserably.  Therefore I am sorry for the sideways photos. 

Now, to the point of this post:  Observe the footwear worn in these pictures.

Back to School

Today started us back to school after a month long break in December.  It was a good day, but did not go completely as planned. 
1) We started our new calendar notebooks (from here).  I am very excited about them since we are SO bad at doing calendar activities!  I added a telling time page, a money page, and a name tracing page since we're really bad about getting those in too.  They went over really well and the kids were excited for them.  I forgot to get my play money last week though, so we didn't do the money page and it took us longer than expected due to it being the first day using them and having to fill out the calendar for January. 
2)  The neighborhood kids don't go back to school until tomorrow so I let Audrey off the hook a little bit.  She had to do Math, Reading, Handwriting, and Spelling but I didn't make her do Piano, Typing, or Faith in God. 
3) Trent was VERY excited to get back to doing school.  It was fun to watch how happy he was to do his school again. 
4) Taking a month break from addition helped Marissa a lot.  She did much better today on her activity than she had done on ANY assignment from November!  Just a little time works wonders.
5) I am VERY glad I didn't start up my music students today and decided to wait until NEXT week.  It's been a good but hectic day as the kids and I get back into the swing of routine. 

It's going to be a good last half of the year.