Mixed Blessings

September was a miserable month for four out of five members of the Peters Family Band. Cole picked up some sort of virus and lovingly passed it on to his father and brothers, and all in all, it took us two weeks to get rid of the thing.

I, on the other hand, had quite a productive month.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want my children to get really sick. But am I the only mom who does a little happy dance when my kids get a little bit sick? Like not so sick that I'm cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night, but sick enough that they have to spend the whole day on the couch and can't muster up the energy to pick on their brothers? I'm just saying, it can be kind of peaceful.

Since we were homebound for two weeks, I was able to scratch a bunch of items off of my Things That Need Done list. I got next year's school supplies (which I had bought from the Target clearance sales) organized and stored. I got our 72-hour kits organized and put away (minus a few more items that I need to buy). I made several samples of the paper beads for the class I'm teaching to the Relief Society in October.

I made napkins out of an old sheet:

I made new charts to make our morning, afternoon, and evening routines easier:

I made these tags, which will hopefully resolve the incessant bickering over who does what chore when. The smaller tags are for family home evening.

The tags hang on an old coat rack/picture frame combo that I've had forever and LOVE but which had gotten pretty banged up after four moves. I sanded and repainted it and these marker boards (which I've also had forever), but I still need to print out some pictures to put in the frames.

I'm planning on writing our lunch and dinner menus on the marker boards to replace my old chic system of writing them on a scrap envelope:

Phew! I feel like I've accomplished so much!