Tag Archives: chores

Fall Is On the Way

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This weekend I’ve been a little under the weather.

But we got some farm stuff done.

And some house stuff.

And I got some blog stuff done.

And we had our first soccer games.

And my dryer’s on the fritz again.

And the Packer’s lost their first game. At home. Which is not just bad, but sort of sacrilegious–in a not-at-all actually religious way. But definitely in a football way.

And that’s just a lot to fit into two days, I think.

So I’m sort of ready to just move on.

The Cowboy scored two goals on Saturday, but both of the boys sort of punked out by the fourth quarter of their game. Speedracer was definitely tired of running. Actually by the end of the 3rd quarter, he just sort of stopped about mid-field and waited for the ball to come back. We’re going to have to work on his endurance.

Ruby played hard, but the game field is a lot bigger than their practice field and most of their practices have been rained out, so she wasn’t quite ready for it yet. She’s enjoying middle defense, but the action can get pretty far away if her team’s actually playing well.

The Cowboy’s also been Mr. Fix-It’s right-hand man around here lately. He’s helped move brush, cut grass, and mobilize the chicken house for those pesky chickens. Mr. Fix-It has a particular way of wedging him on the fender between the hand bar and the roll-over bar where he can’t fall.

Which is good, because the weather is starting to cool down, just ever so slightly, and fall is on the way. Which means busy season is about to take off around here before winter. We’re mounting the chicken house on a trailer, we’ve got hay to buy and store, we’ve got fields to mow, and new water hoses to run, and feed troughs to scrub before they get used every day…And oh my poor, poor flower beds to rescue!

How’s your fall shaping up?

 

 

Bucket List for “Me Time”

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I seem to have a much better attitude about our crew being gone this week than I have for past Mimi visits. But I still find it strange and unsettling not to have the kiddos around at all. I miss them. Our house, our life, is so empty without them.

It makes my heart go out to all the families that I know are longing and praying for the pitter-patter of little feet in their home–even if I know it’s more like the thundering of migrating wildebeests than the pitter-patter anything!

And it makes my heart go out to people that don’t want children.

They can be a fiery trial, no doubt about it. But it’s a refining fire.The spiritual steadfastness and eternal joy produced by motherhood–it simply cannot be duplicated by adopting a pet or doing charity work or adding another hobby to your life. There is a life-long consistency to the demands of motherhood that no other commitment I’ve ever made can compare to.

It’s soul-shaping.

And this time, while my kiddos are away on vacation, I think I’ve been able to breath deeply and reflect on it, enjoy it, value it…

And reaffirm the truth that I would never go back.

I would never go back to seeing the world without the weight of my children’s future shaping my view.

I would never go back to seeing my time without the filter of my children’s needs to set my priorities.

I would never go back to seeing my home without the growth of my children’s hearts to guide my decorating.

And yet, here we are with a week to ourselves. (Well, part of week. We still have to work. This isn’t our vacation, it’s theirs.)

But here’s our chance to do all the things we enjoyed before we had kids to keep us busy. Our chance to just do adult things and have adult conversations and not worry about little ears or bedtimes or snack times or taking extra underwear everywhere with us.

Here’s our/my bucket list for the week:

1. Go antiquing without worrying about little fingers. (DONE!)

2. Go out to dinner without anyone ordering chicken nuggets. (DONE! Not only did no one having chicken nuggets, but we both had soup, salad, grilled fish, and broccoli–it was the most “adult” meal we’ve had in, well, forever!)

3. Put the Hemi in the garage for a front-end alignment and inspection. (In progress as we speak! Doing the one-vehicle shuffle just works so much better when it’s just the two of us!)

4. Put the GMC in the garage for a front-end alignment and inspection.

5. Clean the house (Mostly DONE.)

6. Make some more paper-covered journals to use up some scraps. (In progress.)

7. Make lunchbox notes for the upcoming school year and use up some more scraps. (In progress.)

8. Clean up my papercrafting and get onto some sewing projects.

9. Go to Target to return some things and pick up some things and not even look at the toy aisle! And savor a triple grande cinnamon dolce latte while I’m at it!

10. Weed the flower beds.

Turns out my week without the kids is pretty much the same as my weeks with the kids–except more quiet.

I had thought that I would just get more done of everything on the list than I would if I was also supervising my 3 littles at the same time. But honestly, they’re such big helpers that I find I’ve got tons of extra work to do! I had to harvest the garden, feed and water all the animals, gather and wash the eggs, get the mail, walk the dog, and straighten the whole downstairs myself yesterday evening. It took almost two hours rather than our normal one!

When you have unexpected time to yourself, what do you like to do with it?

Outdoor Fun {Family Connections Summer 2012}

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Once again I’m joining Aurie, Lisa, Amy, and Connie to share ideas for fun, family activities for the summer. We hope you’ll stop by every Wednesday to share in our theme or link up your own posts about great summertime fun for the whole family!

This week we’re all sharing ideas for Outdoor Fun. Hot, sweaty, fogging up the lens of my camera, outdoor summer fun. {smile}

As I mentioned before, it’s been really hot around here. I thought it was so hot that it was evaporating the water from our bird baths, but it turns out there was a different culprit there…

It turns out “Fee-Wicks” the Great has been lapping from our bird bath under the butterfly bush on a regular basis!

But does that stop us from getting outside?

Oh no, not this crew!

It also doesn’t stop us from wearing boots–with our shorts!

We spent a recent weekend digging potatoes like Almanzo Wilder. Well, maybe not exactly the same.

What simple outdoor activities do we enjoy as a family?

We enjoy blowing bubbles and eating popsicles on the porch.

We enjoy walking the dog, seeing turkeys, and hunting for bird feathers that don’t belong to chickens.

Our garden seems much small when you put a hoe in everyone’s hand. {smile}

We enjoy reading books on the porch with a glass of ice tea, and playing cars in the dirt.

We enjoy weeding the flower beds…umm…well, we enjoy hunting up fresh buds and examining new blooms while we weed the flower beds anyway!

We enjoy horseback riding. Well, I don’t know if Hokie necessarily enjoys being riding when it’s 100 degrees out, but he doesn’t mind the wash down afterwards with cool well water from the hose.

I don’t know what’s up with the Cowboy’s sock there, but I love this picture!

And you know what else? Our kids love to help us with work outside. They’re not crazy about having to do their own chores–but they really enjoy helping us with ours. Working as a family. Being together. Especially when the work has serious rewards for completion!

Like your very own fried potatoes and onions and steamed green beans for dinner.

Those are happy faces! They had to stop just to come show me this big one.

And it never hurts to offer a little time to run in the sprinkler afterwards!

When our kiddos put in a full afternoon outside and are headed straight for the shower, I love to offer to spray them with the hose for 5 or 10 minutes first. The laundry already has to be done and they earned it and it ends the whole afternoon on a good note!

Ok, I just love this one too. This is Speedracer’s “can I have fruit snacks?” face.

What summer fun have you been up to lately? Link up a new or old post about your great summer family activities. Please keep it family friendly and link to you post, not your homepage.


And be sure to come back next week and join us. The theme will be Around Town Fun and I’ll be sharing about some of our Summer Plan field trips!

Our Kids Top 10 Summer Chores

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Our kids are at home for summer daycare and I’ve been giving them a short list of chores to get done each day before I get home from work. I tend to get a lot of astonished looks when chatting about chores with other parents (at least, other parents who don’t read here regularly) followed immediately by, “How old are your kids again?” Come on, folks, getting yourself dressed and brushing your own teeth are not chores–especially if you’re getting paid an “allowance” for it!

{Can I be honest for a minute? I don’t really like the term “chores” in relation to what our crew contributes around here. We use it because it’s short and sort of historic and fits with the atmosphere we cultivate through books and movies in our home. But I would use “responsibilities” or “jobs” just as happily. The jobs we assign aren’t just kids-only busy work. They are running-a-household responsibilities.}

My Ladybug scrubbing and filing the chicken waterer.

Today I’m linking up with Many Little Blessings with a Top 10 list of what our crew, at 4, 5, and 7 years old, accomplishes pretty much daily with minimal supervision.

1. Empty the dishwasher. This is Ladybug’s job every day. (I do the loading, that’s a whole separate skill set!)

2. Dry and put away the pots, pans, and lids. This is Speedracer’s newest job and he’s done quite well with it. The cabinet is down low and the pots and pans are less fragile than the other dishes.

3. Laundry. All 3 can do this, but it tends to fall to the boys more. They can all sort clothes, fill the washer, move loads to the dryer, start the dryer, and move the dry clothes to the couch. Only the Ladybug is allowed to add soap and change the washer settings unsupervised, right now though. And the Cowboy is the only one that is any good at folding! {grin}

And here she is filling a cow watering trough.

4. Feed and water dog and cat. Feeding the cat is the first official chore everyone starts out with.

5. Fill water troughs. All 3 of them can do this alone from start to finish for all the fields by the house.

6. Feed chickens, gather and wash the eggs. They’ve all been doing this one practically from the time they could walk. The Ladybug is the only egg washer right now though. It’s a quality control issue.

7. Little trash cans. This is now Speedracer’s job. I give him a big trash bag, he empties the bathroom and bedroom cans into it, then puts clean bags in those cans.

I discovered that she even knows how to switch hoses at the spigot now to reach different fields!

8. Kitchen trash. The Ladybug and Cowboy cover this one with me. It includes spraying the empty can with Lysol, putting in a fresh bag, and carrying the full one outside.

9. Sweep the floor. The Ladybug does this one, but it’s one that needs more supervision. And patience.It’s a big job and it needs to be done every day. If she does it, I do not ever re-do a spot in front of her. I might point a spot out to her, but I’m not going to discourage her by acting like she didn’t do a good job. .

10. Scrub sinks and toilets. I spray cleaner in the toilet and all 3 know how to scrub with the toilet brush and wipe down. Before they are old enough to use Clorox wipes, I just handed them a baby wipe–which is also how they learned to help wipe the baseboard, coffee tables, and hardwood floors. Baby wipes clean anything!

Here's my Cowboy out helping work sheep last weekend.

I think the key to getting your kids to do real work is to come along them and show them that it’s not busy work. It’s not “kids” work. It’s simply work that has to be done and we all share in doing it because we all share in living here.

That and encouragement. Correct if necessary (gently, please!), but don’t discourage! Doing their chores every day is very important to Mr. Fix-It. So I try to catch him at the door, or on the phone before he gets home, and give him some quick pointers on what the kids accomplished that day. That way he can praise them for it–and keep from hurting anyone’s feelings by accident! No one likes to spend 20 minutes sweeping the floor and have someone point out the one crumb they missed!

Be sure to stop by tomorrow for our {Family Connections} link up and find some new ideas for having fun after your work is done!

 

 

Family Time and Homesteading

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The longer we parent, the more convinced I am that chore-time is essential to our family dynamic and each of our personal growth–or it can be. If you choose to be intentional about it. If you choose what is best instead of what is good. Homesteading just seems to bring God right into our…well…yard.

We have a few kid-sized garden tools that make it really fun and easy for them to help.

We all do chores here at The Lowe Farm. All. Day. Long. Especially in the spring and fall. And laundry and dishes have never been my favorite part of the day! But I’m learning to love chore-time because chore-time is family-time. Chore-time is learning time. Chore-time is character-shaping time. Chore-time is come-alongside-me-and-talk-about-life-purpose time. Chore-time is see-what-I-don’t-understand time. Chore-time is teach-me-to-understand-Biblical-truth time. Chore-time is show-me-how-to-shine-my-light time.

Our gardening skills and adventures are constantly evolving.

When they are finally tucked into bed, sometimes I mentally review how they’ve spent their day and part of me thinks–Wow, they didn’t watch any TV today, they didn’t do any art projects today, they didn’t play any sports today, they didn’t go to any clubs today, they didn’t have any computer time today, they didn’t play dress up today, they didn’t build legos today, they didn’t play on a swing set fort today…and they had a good day and went to bed tired and happy!

And sometimes I review the day and think–Wow, they didn’t have a good day, we must have made them worked too hard.

You know what the difference is, usually?

Me! {Well, me and Mr. Fix-It.}

I always recommend just starting with 2-4 things until you get the hang of it. It can get overwhelming fast!

The difference is, did we make it special family-time? Did we make it “team-building” time? Did we make it about serving the Lord and shining our light? Did we make it about stewardship and gratefulness? Did we use our moments together to talk about deep truths, amazing science, or creative expression? Did we laugh and praise and enjoy each other?

Or did we make it all about work, work, work, and use our words to grumble, complain, demand, and correct?

And only grow things you eat the first few years. Or ever. (Why grow things you don’t eat?)

We try hard to be intentional about our time together, and lately we’ve been talking about wasting food around here a lot lately.

We’ve been talking about stewardship and how stewardship is about being grateful. We talk about how waste is not stewardship and is basically being un-grateful for the abundance we’ve been blessed with. And we’ve been talking about how a grateful heart shines the light of God.

And we’ve been talking about how Speedracer needs to eat his broccoli.

And relax! Be forgiving! What’s worse–kids that always hate gardening–or a few trambled plants?

And the Cowboy said “The chickens will eat it. It’s not wasted.”

And then Speedracer followed up with “I’m sharing with the chickens. God wants us to share too.”

And the Ladybug said, “The chickens have chicken food.”

And the Cowboy said, “They eat garden food too.”

And the Ladybug said, “Broccoli is people food.”

And Speedracer said “My teacher told me that God wants us to share with everyone.”

And the Cowboy said, “Daddy put broccoli in the chicken bowl, I saw him!”

And the Ladybug said, “That was left overs. That was–”

And I said, “Who wants fruit snacks?!”

Do you have gardening or homestead plans for the weekend?