Random Thoughts

I was going through my church bag and trying to clean it out. There were papers from back when I was in the primary presidency in there, which was almost 9 months ago! As I was pulling and sorting things it made me grateful for several things. 1) I am so thankful for all the teachers my boys have had over the years they are all wonderful and think up so many great ideas of things to do in class, weather it's a craft, a drawing, a handout. We are lucky to have them. 2) I don't know when my church bag will be this empty again. With Levi and Max we have not had to carry too much because we ditched the toys, snacks and other such church distractions long ago. Now for them I only carry some blank pieces of paper and colored pencils (which I just spent far too long sharpening). Soon it will be filled up again with snacks and toys for Mr. Davie. I'm sure all 3 (yes, I'm also referring to Jason) other boys will be trying to steal his snacks the first chance they get.

I always feel like I'm pretty much behind on everything. Seriously. Blogging? At LEAST a week or more. Printing off those blog books? Years. Laundry is usually a week behind schedule minimum. And while I get the household laundry taken care of, I have been living out of my own laundry basket for almost a month. My jewelry stuff, I have orders to take care of from a week ago (though I like to tell people to give me 1-2 weeks, so not too bad). My house is a complete disaster and while I am definitely not any sort of neat freak it can stress me out. I feel like I'm working so hard at everything non-stop, from keeping the house in order, family fed, homework/reading taken care of, bills and money stuff put in order, business things done to everything else and in between. But then many times at the end of the day like I didn't really accomplish that much, that my list of things to do is still so freaking long. Eh. Motherhood.

At the same time there are things I think I'm doing pretty dang well in my opinion:

I am doing really good at making sure a good 'family meal' gets made almost every night (ok, at least more nights than not) and we all sit down together a majority of the time. I never had this as a kid and am trying my best to do sit down meals with everyone.

We have been doing FHE consistently pretty much ever since Davis was born with each person taking a turn to be in charge of it and it is working pretty well I think. Both boys know when it is and really look forward to it.

Reading with the boys. I have been doing my best to make sure I get some good time reading with them because they love it, it calms them down before bedtime and it helps them become good readers.

Doing random acts of kindness to people. While I am a terrible visiting teacher (meaning go, sit down, chat, share a message), I think I am doing pretty good at making sure my ladies are thought about and served along with numerous other people in my ward. I try to do little thoughtful things for others whenever I can.

I think I'm doing a good job business wise. I try especially hard to remember why I do what I do and stay focused on my goals. So far, month for month, in the past 5 I have made more money than I did last year but I have had to work less (less all nighters, less overall stress). So I'm working smarter, not harder. Also I have a huge goal to try and get our van paid off within the next 15 months or so. I really think I can do it! Then we will be 100% debt free, with our new van paid for, collage loans paid off, baby and hospital paid off (I got that big bill taken care of a couple months ago, thank you holiday shoppers!) With everything taken care of we can hopefully begin to add a lot each month to our fund for whenever we end up buying a house so we'll have a nice down down payment.