Goodbye to the Cheat

Today for "Riverfest" the 3 youngest and I went down to the river for the river clean up. We were shown pictures of the various weeds and thistles to pull and given a yellow plastic bag.

We were given this area of cheatgrass (weed) and thistles to clear out.

The kids were real troopers.

2 hours later we finished with almost a bag full of weeds and a small dent in the battle against the cheat grass.

See how nice and clean it is now? No more cheat :D

Our famous boy!

Ethan is on TV! Check it out!

Mission Accomplished

Many years ago my friend Kate introduced me to FlyLady. I LOVE FlyLady and the things she teaches about maintaining your home 15 minutes at a time. I have been on and off the band wagon multiple times, but much of her advice has stuck with me and I know things go smoother when I follow her advice.

A few months ago I signed up for her yahoo group emails, and they never came, so I kindof forgot about it, then a couple weeks ago the emails started arriving again. FlyLady now has a email reminder called "The Riley Challenge" What it is, is a challenge for your kids to do each day. Each day is different, they are not hard, and none take more than 15 minutes. I can NOT believe what a help this has been. Each day I write what I call the "MISSION" for the day on a white board and when the kids come home the first thing they look at is what their mission is for the day. As per FlyLady theory the job is just something quick, but all those something quicks add up (especially times 4 kids!!)

So far the kids have

1- cleaned out from under/behind their bed for 15 min. (that's where those socks were!)

2- tossed their too small shoes in a bucket for me to toss or determine their stay value (now I don't trip over a gazillion shoes trying to get into the house)

3- got rid of all the too small clothes in their closet or clothes they don't like any more (it is amazing how much easier it is to maintain their clean closets now)

4- got rid of 10 papers in their room and/or excess papers in their backpacks (do papers multiply at your place like they do at mine?)

5- they had to find 11 things of theirs that were broken or they didn't play with any more (de-cluttering, yeah!)

6- run around the house and find all the things that are yours in other rooms of the house and put them where they belong (yeah for me not having to pick up 4 kids' stuff, when they can and should do it themselves)

Why haven't I been doing this before?? Please learn from my mistakes. 15 minutes x 4 kids = one hour of my time that I'm not doing THEIR stuff.

I love it. Check out flylady's system here

Find some of Riley's Challenges here, and see if you can't work them into your family's allowance structure, or just a chore that needs to be done.

Have you heard of FlyLady or ever tried her system out?

Ugliest T-shirt Prize

On Saturday I ran a 5K with 3 of my friends, Emily, Brittany and Ryan. Both Ryan and Emily won 3rd place for their age group, and I ran with Brittany who ran her best 5K time ever! Yeah for them! It was called the Salmon Run and officially wins, hands down the ugliest Tshirt I have ever seen for a race!What do you think?