March 17-30

So, I'm not sure what happened to blogging in these weeks. Sometimes you just lose motivation and get a little busy, and sometimes it just all seems rather silly.

Anyway, a few events from the past few weeks that we would like to remember:

St. Patrick's day parade and Children's museum trip: This was a very full Sunday (that also included a trip to FUS in the morning I think), but a really fun one.

Mosque Trip: We took a trip to the local mosque with some of our new friends from Libya. It was a nice experience and everyone was really kind to us, but it also served to remind us how not-Middle Eastern/North African we are. No photos because it was dark outside and we weren't supposed to take any inside, we think.

Cait's lecture: I think she should write up a big post about this herself, but Cait gave a lecture at the LDS Ward's Relief Society birthday celebration about the state of women internationally and early Mormon feminist activism. I wasn't invited, but I'm sure it was great.

Split Sunday: Cait had helped buy the food (she didn't pay for it, but was on the shopping trip) for the linger longer in our LDS ward and so she wanted to go to that and I had volunteered to be a greeter at FUS, which was my first attempt at being a part of the active volunteer community there, so we split up churches on Sunday. We had plans to go to a cool maple syrup family exhibit thing, but a big snow storm hit, so we called it off.

The next week was Spring Break and the highlight of that was our Chicago trip, which was great.

And then we had an Easter Egg hunt at the LDS church on Saturday, which was also a lot of fun.

More photos:

Ready for summer

What mom, I'm just watching some Baby Signing Time over here, give me a break

Here's a video of the slide we bought with Lulah's birthday money. It's now outside in the sandbox.

Homemaking apps

I mentioned a while back that getting my homemaking on was one of my New Year’s resolutions. For the past little while, I was trying more of a Zen Habits inspired approach to housework, where the main point was to stay aware and not get to structured, but it wasn’t going well. I haven’t learned to focus enough on homework and need to work through some bad habits of distraction (Facebook, blogging, reading, whatever) to get to a place where I feel that I can use an unstructured approach to housework.

I got a new iPhone for Christmas (link) and I figured that I could combine my love of useful apps with homemaking and hopefully make some improvements. While I still try to focus on being in the moment and being flexible to the demands and desires of the day, I have found the added structure really useful, and I think I have improved a lot in my homemaking recently and I think Cait would agree. I still have a long ways to go to be the kind of homemaker I would like to be, but I’m sure there are plenty of readers of our blog that are in the same position (I know there are some who are great homemakers already), so I thought I would share what has worked for me.

This is not an advertisement for these apps (although, if you do get them, use the buttons in each description and I get some money, I think), I'm just sharing what has helped me.

Homeroutines ($4.99)

This one is my primary housework app. It is a little pricey (I got it on sale) but still, I would pay $5.00 for how much it has helped me. In concept, it is pretty simple. I break down tasks into morning, afternoon, evening and night and then daily and weekly tasks.

And then there is a monthly rotating deep cleaning schedule, where you focus on a different area of your home every week. I have a hard time keeping up with this schedule, but I am certainly doing more deep cleaning than I used to.

I have probably 100 tasks total that I aim at getting done every day, but I don't ever really get close. But  getting everything done is not really the point. I've found this app especially useful in just keeping me motivated and focused, not having to wonder to much about what to do next in the seemingly endless list of household chores. It is rather sad, however, to see the app so full of stars at night and then be empty in the morning.

Astrid (Free)

This is a really great app that everyone should have. It is seriously one of the best free apps I've found, and I can't believe I haven't had it for longer. It is basically just a really well organized to-do list, with the ability to organize things into lists. The kicker is the voice control (for those of us without Siri, at least), which works really well. Pick this one up if not any of the others.

Mealboard: $1.99

This is the one app I want to be using more. I don't use it as much because I am not as good at planning or cooking meals as I am at some other aspects of homemaking, but I want to get better. You can either use this as a simple meal planner, or you can get advanced and use it as a recipe book and even as an automatically updating grocery list. I think this has the potential to make me into a much better organized cook.

iPad link:


iPhone link:

ChicagoLand

For Spring Break this week, we went on a spontaneous road trip to Chicago, to review a hotel and some activities for Trekaroo. It was a whirlwind of a few days but we had a wonderful time and the kids were great. 

On the way, we stopped in at our favorite place in the world: Ikea. However, I was more than a bit annoyed that Atticus is a quarter inch too short to go to Smaland (they made him take his shoes off to measure) and they didn't have free diapers in the bathrooms like our Ikea in Utah.

After we arrived in Chicago, we quickly checked into our hotel

... and headed down to Navy Pier to the Chicago Children's Museum. We only gave ourselves an hour and a half to play there, but we could have stayed there all day! We should have gone there on Thursday, rather than the afternoon on Wednesday. Hindsight.

After a quick dinner of hot dogs, cheese fries, and gyros at Navy Pier, we enjoyed a strawberry milkshake on the way back to the hotel...

He was more excited about the cheese tray than this photo represents.

He didn't miss a beat from his swimming abilities of last summer.

The next day was busy. We ate a delicious brunch at the hotel, went to the American Girl Place and Lego store, and then to the John Hancock Observatory.

She loved the view.

Skating in the Sky at the JHO

We then walked around forever. We were searching for some green space to let the kids run around, but the "park" we found on the map was actually a dog run. We ended up walking all the way over to Millenium Park, but there wasn't a playground there in the whole giant park (and not very much green space). Where do all the kids in Chicago play??

Can you spot us?

GRASS!