The summer days of chore charts are gone, and we are back to a short morning school routine. The goal is to get the kids out the door on time, with as little yelling as possible, and with the house still intact. (Am I asking too much?)

I am in the midst of an expensive experiment (two actually) but this post is just about one of them. Elle cried about her shoes on a daily basis last year. Either her shoes were too big, too wide, slipped off, gave her blisters, or hurt her feet. She had plenty of cute shoes that she never wore. At first I thought she was picky, then I thought she was a whiner, and now I think she just might have special feet that need special shoes.

One of the joys of motherhood: H.O.M.E.W.O.R.K. I used the letters of the dreaded word and came up with a few (okay, eight) tips to help you get through the daily grind:

A couple of weeks ago Crew had an exceptionally great chore morning. He was up and going right and away and bounced from one task to the next. He was all done by 10 am. He even took pride in the aesthetics of his chore chart check off. Anyway I wanted to “lock in” this successful morning inside him:

Now that school is back in full swing, life can get pretty busy. I think it is important to communicate with our kids when it comes to schedules and activities. They like to know what is going on too. Here are a few tips that have worked for our family to keep everyone in the loop:

I had a hard time getting out of bed this morning. We had a late night, Locke was up a few times in the night, I wasn’t feeling well and my allergies were kicking my butt. Once I managed to roll out of bed, I declared it a cereal morning. My kids whined and complained, “It’s a holiday. We should have a nice breakfast.”