Weekends

I came across an interesting new book about what successful people do in the morning - What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: A Short Guide to Making Over Your Mornings--and Life by Laura Vanderkam (Author). I think the short answer is the foundation for the day is set in the morning. Many working mothers talk about getting dinner started in the morning, exercise is done in the morning, starting laundry, etc. I have always been a morning person so getting stuff done in the morning is pretty intuitive to me. The items I accomplish on the weekends are more of a work in progress right now and I am eager to hear others philosophy on the weekends. I am able to send my oldest child out during the week to grocery shop so that is one less chore for me on the weekends. Because we are in the process of transitioning to traditional foods, which can take more forethought and preparation, I tend to do some of that prep work on weekends. Saturday morning I woke up at 2 am and decided to get up and do some baking! I am now grinding my own wheat and so I had to do that before I could do any baking. Our house is pretty big and we have lots of room divider doors so for the most part, I can do something really noisy such as grinding wheat, roasting coffee beans in the early morning hours without waking anyone up. I have been working with sourdough and I find that is a new skill for me. I am used to instantaneously making baked goods but sourdough, old fashioned sourdough is about patience and timing. So feeding the starter and building up the starter is a weekend and even a pre-weekend task. I like to do some fun things on the weekend and my daughter and I were able to go apple picking. We picked 45 pounds of apples and I now have to figure out what I am going to do with all of those. We have finally gotten settled in to our lives here in Kentucky that we can do more things out of the ordinary on the weekends. The state fair just started and I really want to get to that next weekend - I have always loved looking at all the farm animals, but now that we are raising our own, it has taken on a whole new level. We went canoeing a couple of weekends ago, and hope to do some more canoeing around the state, especially before it gets too cool to do that. Church is usually a part of our weekends. Now that we have gotten quite a bit more active at our church, going is sort of like getting to visit with family, and we enjoy it so much. My husband took part in a charity golf tournament on Saturday with some men from church. This weekend was the quick off of Sunday school and confirmation, so there was quite a bit of excitement in the air. This week starts our homeschooling year again so I must finish this post and prepare my daughter's assignments for the week. Our oldest child is going to community college so I don't have to do as much school planning for him. We have a woman come in who is getting a Ph.D. in special education, and she works with the boys on life skills (both boys are autistic - highly functioning, but still challenged in various degrees). My middle child is almost 16, and struggling with what he wants to do with his life and motivation to do school work. He thinks he would like to work with computers so we have told him math is essential and he agrees with us for the most part. He wants to find, surprise, a computer math program, so I need to do some more research there. Exercise is also squeezed into my weekends but that will be the topic of another post. Let's just say it is a priority and also a work in progress. What about you? What do you do on the weekends to lay the foundation for your week? Share your best ideas! Peace, CEM