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Busy in the Burbs

Busy in the Burbs

Category Archives: Accomplishments

The Month in Review: Weeks 28-30

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Family, Home

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Again this is not quite a month, but hopefully next week I’ll give an update on the Summer Goals as a whole.

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I’ve mentioned many times that our summer has been dominated by baseball thus far.  That isn’t strictly true, but it feels that way because it is usually during dinner and because one might plan for an evening game only to have it rained out and rescheduled so you have to think about it again.

  • It’s been 20 days since my last update.  16 of those have included baseball in some form – game, practice, lesson, or camp!
  • Swimming lessons have continued multiple days a week for the middle four kids.  They wrap up this week.
  • We attended the summer company party.
    IMG_8711
  • One child went to kid’s night at the pool.  I couldn’t interest the other two who were eligible.
  • I’ve continued pulling unwanted plants on the perimeter of our yard.
  • I’ve made some progress towards the toss & tag goals.  More on that next week.
  • We’ve watched a few movies and just generally tried to be unstructured and spontaneous.
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The Month in Review: Weeks 25-27, 2018

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Family, Home

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Admittedly, this is not an entire month.  But, “weeks in review” didn’t sound quite right so here we are.

The chaos of the end of the school year has let go for the somewhat more relaxing pace of summer.  We still have things to do, but not as many (especially on the weekends), and not as early in the morning which just makes things seem more relaxed.

The last Review post went up on the last day of school.  Since then we’ve:

  • had 7 baseball practices plus 7 baseball games, all for kid A.
  • had four swimming lessons for each of four kids.
  • hosted one BBQ and attended two others.  This feels very summer-like.
  • attended one birthday party.
  • grilled ribs and baked beans.  Finished with s’mores.  Again, very summery.
  • spent four days with relatives.

I’ve been working on my project to take some of the plants attempting to encroach on our yard.  More about that on Thursday.

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The Month in Review: Weeks 20-24, 2018

21 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Family

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It’s almost officially summer.

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This should have posted on Tuesday so clearly I am not yet back on track from the spring.  Summer, with everyone home, won’t help so be prepared for things to be a little less organized until they’re back to school in September.

I never did get a post up this season about our typical week, but I’m not sure there was such a thing.  The kids were in school until about 3:00 everyday.  Then our oldest had middle school baseball (practice or game) most days until about 5:00.  The real kicker is the evening timeslot.

Between 5:30 and 8:00 pm in a typical week we had all of the following on weekdays:

  • Four soccer practices.  Two each for kids A & C.
  • Three baseball games.  One for kid D and two for kid A.
  • Three baseball practices for kid A.

Plus a few one time random items that fell in that same weekday timeslot:

  • Soccer ratings for kids A & C.
  • A makeup soccer game for kid A.  These  are usually on Saturdays.
  • A chorus concert for kid A.  A twice annual event for every grade at school.
  • A school committee meeting for me.  I never go to these, but this was one where they were soliciting feedback on a new proposal of great significance to us.  Of course it fell in May!
  • I spoke at the Kindergarten panel for incoming students.  Again, a one-off that happened to fall in May.

It was quite the juggling act to determine which thing kid A was going to.  And, we had to sort drivers because we almost always had two – three on Mondays – different fields to get to.

Then last week when the playoffs hit it bumped to five baseball games in one week!

So, now we take a deep breathe.  Soccer, and most baseball, is done until next fall/spring.  One baseball team will continue, though in a much less time consuming fashion.  Other kids are participating in swimming lessons, tech camp, and track camp over the summer.  I’m sure we’ll go someplace.

But other things did manage to happen in the past month:

  • We finished up gymnastics class, bike club, and math mornings.
  • Our youngest boy went to Kindergarten screening and graduated from preschool.
  • The kids attended four birthday parties – oddly including each boy exactly once!
  • We had three dentist appointments.

I did get some things done around the house also.  I’ll write about those in another post.  And, talk about what I hope to get done over the summer.

 

The Week in Review – Week 19, 2018

16 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Family

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It was the usually busy week last week:

  • 9 baseball games
  • 2 baseball practices
  • 3 soccer games
  • 2 soccer practices
  • 1 soccer ratings (for next Fall)
  • 1 gymnastics class
  • 2 bike clubs
  • 2 math mornings
  • 1 playdate

That’s just the kids.  And even this was light as the first grader’s Saturday afternoon was rained out.

We also had two adult medical appointments.

But, we roll on having officially passed the midway point of the baseball/soccer season!

Decluttering by the Day: April 2018, Days 25-30

10 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Home

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Tags

30daychallenge, 30daygetchucked, Declutter, minimalist challenge

Success!

Sadly, there’s enough that I’m going for 465 more things this month and already have it in my head for the fall.  I know, not everyone would count every school worksheet, but some folks count pairs of shoes as 2 so I feel like there’s an element of what works for you involved.

Day 25:

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Return: The black bag has nine items that will be returned.

Donate: The three shirts in the bottom row are too short.  The shirt in the middle left never really fit right.  There are two items under it plus one pack of hair clips.

Fabric Recycling: The blue shirt on the right has stains that won’t come out and doesn’t fit right anymore.  All the items in the top row have holes.

Trash: We don’t need the package of replacement toothbrush heads.  We have another set and, frankly, don’t replace the heads nearly often enough to need all of these.

Day 26:

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Recycling:  This whole stack is going in the recycling.

Day 27:

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Recycling: I know it doesn’t look like much, but there are twenty-seven items here and most are papers being recycled.

Trash: The two binders have seen better days and will hit the trash.

Day 28:

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Recycle: I’m continuing to power through the school papers.  Everything here will be recycled.  Enjoy the artwork!

Day 29:

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Recycle: Everything here will end up in the recycling.

Day 30:

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Recycle: Enjoy the artwork!  Everything here will be recycled.

 

By the end of this post I will have finished the 2015-2016 school year papers, and started 2016-2017.  Given that, I decided to power on to get through that next school year.  I’ll save the current school year for the fall.  Plus, in both cases you’ll see that I have plenty of other things/rooms I didn’t get to in this first attempt.  And, I think taken in full there was a nice range of items parted with.

Links to the beginning of the challenge:
Days 1-6
Days 7-12
Days 13-18
Days 19-24

The Week in Review – Week 18, 2018

08 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Family

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This was the first week of the spring where we had no sports rain-outs!  That gave us a fairly typical spring week of:

  • 8 baseball games
  • 4 baseball practices
  • 4 soccer practices
  • 2 soccer games
  • 1 gymnastics class
  • 2 at bike club
  • 2 at Before School Sports
  • 2 at Math Morning

My oldest was a tour guide for the 5th graders visiting Middle School.

I didn’t have any specific appointments, but I:

  • read and recycled a few back issues of a magazine.
  • mailed my last return from last week’s clean out.
  • continued work on this month’s clean out.
  • dropped off a pair of shoes to be repaired.
  • tried using the Instant Pot to hard boil eggs.  That worked really well.
  • Built one of two bags of the backlogged LEGO set.  As a result we have half a fire truck.

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Decluttering by the Day: April 2018, Days 19-24

03 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Home

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

30daychallenge, 30daygetchucked, Declutter, minimalist challenge

This was vacation week so I mostly tackled the school paper pile from the 2016-2017 school year.  Fortunately or unfortunately, I get so much paper home from preschool and elementary school that most of it goes in a box that I hopefully process when I have time the following September.  Obviously I’ve taken a few Septembers off because I was behind.

Day 19:

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Recycle: There’s actually not that much paper here – the two yellow notebooks at the bottom and the pinwheels (minus the push pins) are it.

Trash:  Because so much of this is laminated, many papers fell here.  I also wasn’t sure about recycling the yarn with the fabric so I tossed it.  The bag got recycled, but inside was another bag of moldy preschool play dough.  I better have found all of that now!  The folders and binders had all seen better days having spent an entire school year traveling back and forth.

Day 20:

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We finally had a warm day and the kids were outside, so I was able to sneak back to the broken toy stash.

Recycle:  All hte paper stuff including unneeded old toy instructions and Happy Meal inserts.

Trash: There’s a shell, some ribbon, the Happy Meal frames, a sticky hand that is no longer sticky, some broken sports eggs, a broken RC car, two broken Tivo remotes, and a dagger toy that got stepped on and crushed so it no longer retracts (which is the actually fun aspect).

Day 21:

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The boys did some more cleaning out and I continued going through the old school stuff.

Recycle:  The boys came up with a bag of scrap paper, a torn gift bag, and two LEGO boxes to get rid of.  Then there’s a whole pile of school papers.

Trash: Some laminated papers (including the Fraction Kit), an old balloon, two hamburger erasers, and some ribbon.

Day 22:

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Recycle:  Again, lots of school papers.

Trash:  There are a few more interesting items here: two “reuseable” (but they’re super flimsy) bags signed with a bunch of kids names, one yarn head sculpture, many laminated papers, another Fraction Kit, and four Elementary School Field Day “medals.”

Day 23:

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Sold: I had another burst of success, selling the bassinet, associated bedding, and baby carrier.

Recycle:  All the papers here went in the recycling.

Trash:  Two folders that have seen better days, a foam star from 5th grade graduation, a piece of yarn “cloth,” and a box of random pencils/crayons.  None of the pencils are in great shape and I don’t keep non-washable crayons in the house.

Day 24:

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There were some nice examples here covering a year of preschool art.

Recycle:  Most of the papers around the perimeter will be be recycled.

Trash: A lot of these have random stuff glued to them that cannot be recycled.  The penguin is mislabeled 2014; these are all actually from the same school year.

Links to the beginning of the challenge:
Days 1-6
Days 7-12
Days 13-18

Accomplishments – April 2018

01 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Family

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After some more cold rain over the weekend, today is sunny and the next few days will be truly warm.  We did lose a few more soccer/baseball practices/games, but hopefully the weather will continue to improve.  I discovered this lovely yarn head while cleaning out.

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Over the past week I:

  • Got all our kitchen knives sharpened.  It was overdue and they work so much better now.
  • Put away another batch of winter clothes.  There’s one batch left.
  • Bought a bike helmet for one twin whose was too small.
  • Paid a field trip fee.
  • Scheduled a long overdue doctor appointment.
  • Got my garage door fixed.  We had a power outage that seemed to have fried the control board.
  • Finally got the new computer to talk to the printer
    • Getting the printer on the wireless network wasn’t too difficult. (Hadn’t set that up before because the previous computer would not talk wirelessly.)  But, the getting the driver set up was trickier because it is getting to be an old printer.  But, it works fine.

And the kids (as appropriate):

  • Went to Before School Sports.
  • Played three baseball games.
  • Went to three baseball practices.
  • Went to gymnastics class.
  • Went to bike club.
  • Went to the Little League Opening Day parade.
  • Played in one soccer game.
  • Went to one soccer practice.

Even though I didn’t quite get everything done, I did well in April.

  • Assemble one LEGO set that needs adult assistance. Sadly, still no.
  • Sort through my clothes and keep/donate/recycle.  The quantity is not terrible, but there are a few too many I have not worn in a very long time.  Made it through 75% of this.  Will finish off in May.
  • Inspired by others who have embarked on spring cleaning, I will try the method whereby you throw out the number of items as the day of the month, with a few caviats:
    • They have to have been our house for at least a month; same day junk mail doesn’t count.
    • Throwing out = trash/recycle/donate/sell as long as the task fully done by the end of the month.  I think obviously trash will be the easiest here, since no second step is required.
    • If I make it this will be 465 items, so any size counts.
  • Get all the kids to their respective activities.  This is no small feat in the spring and will get even worse in May when baseball is in full swing.  So, definitely not the easiest, but the highest priority.

May will largely be a repeat of April:

  • Assemble one LEGO set that needs adult assistance.
    • I have other things to assemble now too.
  • Finish sorting through my clothes and keep/donate/recycle.
  • Because I have momentum at the moment, and more things that still need cleaning out, I’m going for 465 items again.  Yes, one school paper does count.  And, yes, same rules otherwise.  Because I’m mid school papers and there are a lot of them, I’m going to count down from 30 this time.  (Yes, I know May has 31 days, but we’re going to stick with 465 things again.)
  • Get all the kids to their respective activities.  This is even trickier in May with baseball is in full swing.  So, definitely still not the easiest, but the highest priority.

Decluttering by the Day: April 2018, Days 13-18

26 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Home

≈ Comments Off on Decluttering by the Day: April 2018, Days 13-18

Tags

30daychallenge, 30daygetchucked, Declutter, minimalist challenge

The process continues.  The volume is down this batch, but the clutter clean-out continues!

Day 13:

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Recycle: As I was going through my dresser for the clothing review, I found 11 pages of notes (from multiple years) re the kids Christmas presents.

Fabric Recycling: During the same activity I found two headbands that were over the hill.

Day 14:

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Trash:  I went back to the stash closet for ten random party items, including one bag of moldy homemade playdough that had been sent home from preschool.  Yuck!

Recycling: I also found one old goody bag and three sets of toy instructions.

This closet still has a long way to go, but the kids are home for April vacation so I’ll need to switch gears for a week or so.

Day 15:

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Donate:  The three shirts on the left are in great shape, they just don’t fit me correctly anymore.

Fabric Recycling: The red shirt has stains; if you look closely you can see them in the picture.  The swimsuit’s elastic is shot.  The sock lost its mate to a hole.

Trash: I finally got around to entering a big batch of Pampers’ points so nine bags can go.

Day 16:

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Recycle: The kids are not going to care if I part with their school worksheets.  So, 16 of them went in the recycling.

Day 17:

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Recycle: Seventeen more papers joined the pile.

Day 18:

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Recycle: The kids cleaned their rooms today.  I didn’t expect them to want to part with much, but they did add a bunch of scrap paper, as well as the box and tube on the right to the collection.

Fabric Recycling: I’ve had the replacement pillowcase for a while as this one had split open.

Trash:  There is a plastic circle the boys found, an old gift card, and a pack of fabric swatches that we never did end up buying furniture with.

Links to the beginning of the challenge:
Days 1-6
Days 7-12

The Week in Review – Week 16, 2018

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by Nora in Accomplishments, Family, Home

≈ Comments Off on The Week in Review – Week 16, 2018

Soccer season is in full swing and baseball is just getting started.  As I’ve gone to these various fields, I feel a bit like an urban explorer finding long lost equipment.

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It was vacation week so things were a bit more relaxed.  But we had two sick kiddos so we didn’t do much extra either.

So, in total, the kids had:

  • Two baseball practices
  • Three baseball games
  • Four soccer practices
  • Four soccer games
  • One birthday party
  • Haircuts for all the boys
  • Math morning for the 4th graders

I continue to make good progress towards my goals of decluttering 465 items and evaluating my clothing.  As of now I’m on track towards the 465 and halfway through the clothing (though for various reasons the second half should be faster).

As part of the 465 I sold a few more things.  The process has also made a real dent in my piles of previous years school papers.

I also finished the signup process for baseball camp this summer.  That pretty much takes care of our July & early August schedules.

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About Me

Welcome! I’m Nora. We have 5 boys and 1 girl. I write about the practical stuff that we call life – managing school, sports, and all things suburban. I get everyone where they need to be, with their stuff, when they need to be there and write about how that all gets done.

Recent Posts

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