7 Quick Takes about Juno, Writing Emails with a Crayon, and Keyboard Discoveries for the Seriously Oblivious

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday!

—1—

How do you know when you've gotten old? I think a good test is to imagine that you've just heard a weather forecast for snow in your area. Do you:

a) shout "Yay!" and hope that it snows a whole lot, or
b) mutter "aww, crap" under your breath and wonder if it's even worth your effort bringing the garden hoses inside since they're already frozen anyway.

If you chose B, you're an adult now, my friend, and there's no going back.

—2—

We were hammered with 34" of snow here in New England on Tuesday. What I loved about it was the excuse to do absolutely nothing. Like, really nothing. The governor himself said I can't leave the house.

He declared a state of emergency (which frankly, I feel I've been living in since 2004) and banned all non-essential road travel during the storm.

Since I could've been fined $500 for going anywhere, it just made good financial sense to stay in my pajamas all day watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with the kids.

—3—

Our school district likewise took full advantage of Winter Storm Juno, with two snow days and a two-hour delay on the third day. (Even I thought that was a little excessive, but I just kept to my pajamas and hoped nobody said anything.)

I may not get too excited about snow anymore, but I am much more excited about weather-related school cancellations than all 3 of my school-age children combined. No homework to supervise, no getting up at the crack of dawn, no morning schoolbus rush... what's not to like?

—4—

A few snapshots from the storm:

The kids were salivating all day to go outside. Like, literally drooling on the window.

The view from our front door (see the two rectangle door-marks in the snow?)

See you later, kids! Hope we've taught you everything you need to know about winter survival.

I'm not even going to tell you how long this took.

Snowbanks were piled higher than the stop signs the next day.

—5—

In non-snow news, I had a friend over for lunch earlier in the week and wanted to do something fancy. I blame Pinterest.

On the plus side, my dessert did turn out really pretty:

But I had to clean up this and this:

What happens when you try to multitask while taking roasted pecans out of the oven.

Kids playing in dishwater and rearranging the cupboards while I clean up the pecans.

All in all, it was a semi-successful attempt. I think I at least quenched the urge to be fancy again for another 6 months or so.

—6—

Growing up in the digital age, my 3-year-old is surrounded by tech words yet has no idea what they mean.

For example, one of her favorite things to do lately is write "emails" to Phillip and I:

What "emails" are to a 3-year-old.

She also approached me yesterday as I was emptying the dishwasher to ask if she could help "download it."

—7—

Lastly, I've had my fair share of technophobe moments, but I think this one was the worst.

I was linking to a post called The Last Time, and I also wanted to mention that it was at my blog Unremarkable Files. So I wanted to do one of those vertical lines that you see like this: "The Last Time | Unremarkable Files" but I didn't know how to do that. I thought maybe the vertical line was some HTML tag I'd never learned.

So I Googled it and started reading a Q&A forum where a guy asked the same question. Someone responded, "Why can't you just use the one on your keyboard?"

I looked down, and lo and behold, there it was. Right above the "enter" key.

Has been there all 32 years of my entire life, never noticed it before.

After making that discovery, I had to just sit quietly for a minute, examining the rest of the keyboard. Because who knows what other crazy things could be on there.

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The Open-Concept Nightmare

Someone recently asked me how our family of 7 fits into our house, and the first answer that came to my mind was, "Like a popped-open tube of Pillsbury biscuits."

It's not that our house is too small, although I do know plenty of people who have larger houses (and smaller families) than we do. The real problem is our house's open concept layout.

Ah, open concept floor plan, how you beguiled us when we were house hunting. We were dazzled by your two-story living room. We thought it would be great to have the kids so close, their bedrooms just inches away from this central space.

What fools we were.

Little did we know we'd be tiptoeing around our own house like burglars after 8 P.M. because the slightest noise echoes off the tall walls like a yodel in the Swiss Alps.

We didn't realize it'd be impossible to wake up early without 4 bleary-eyed children stumbling out of bed, since the microwave warming up our breakfast might as well be a foghorn in their bedroom.

I was unaware I'd be passing the nighttime hours frantically trying to quiet a fussing baby before he really gets going, because the only place in our house where a crying baby won't wake everyone is the garage.

It's a nightly game of Dominos around here, and I lie in the dark wondering who's going to wake up first and start the whole line toppling over.

After a particularly rough night followed by a 4 A.M. session searching Realtor.com for a house big enough for all 7 of us to get a full night's sleep, I found myself grabbing Phillip by the collar and demanding, "How did people in the 1950s do it?"

It wasn't at all unusual for families in the '50s to have 4 or 5 kids, yet the average single-family home built in 1950 was 1,000 square feet. Much smaller than ours. So what was the deal?

And then it dawned on me: they may have had less square footage, but they did have something we don't: walls. And doors. Blessed barriers to sound that allow sleeping children to just sleep, even when someone else in the house is doing something terribly loud like writing on a piece of paper.

Sometimes I do enjoy our open concept floor plan. For example, I'm extremely lazy, so I like that I can call the kids to dinner from the kitchen and they'll hear me anywhere.

Other times, though, I don't think about that much because I'm busy calculating how many rolls of 3" sound-deadening eggshell foam I'd need to cover every surface in the house. And maybe a little extra to wrap myself in.

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How To Get Your Kids to Clean Their Room

If there's one thing that you do a lot in a family with 6 kids, it's clean. I'm not talking about serious deep-cleaning. Unless somebody famous is coming to our house, that stuff pretty much never happens.

No, I'm talking about just picking stuff up. And getting your kids to pitch in, preferably without whining, taking all day, or arguing over who's cleaning up more.

Having a few clean-up games for kids in your pocket can help. Here are some of the ones we've tried in the past, some more successful than others.

The 60-Second Cleanup

When a room is, like, biohazard messy, we gather every member of the family and count off 60 seconds as we clean together at top speed.

Pros: Obviously we don't get it all done in one shot, but we make a dent and it makes the job less overwhelming. My kids also think they're getting away with something if they start cleaning before I say "ready, set, go."

Cons: It's hard to stop when the room's not even close to done. But if you keep going after you hit 60, the natives will revolt.

Divide and Conquer Cleanup

For tattle-free cleaning, assign each one a side of the room. They can come out as soon as their side is straightened up.

Pros: I started doing this when my daughters, who share a room, began to believe that "clean your room" meant "report to me constantly on whatever your sister is doing or not doing." Now, they don't care what the other does.

Cons: Sometimes it's really not fair if I know one has been responsible for making most of the mess. I'll either do a different type of cleanup, or I'll give the messier side of the room to the one who's been a piggy.

Flashlight Cleanup

The kids like it when I turn off the lights and use a flashlight to point at junk on the floor. They race to grab each item and put it away.

Pros: The kids actually beg me to do flashlight cleanups before bed sometimes. They think it's fun.

Cons: Collisions. Possible concussions. Takes forever. Can only be done at nighttime. Did I mention concussions? I think I discovered this cleanup on Pinterest, the source of all ideas that sound good but don't actually work in real life.

Fast and Slow Cleanup

Using any song of your choice, alternate between singing ridiculously slow and ridiculously fast. The kids copy you, cleaning up slow or fast depending on your singing.

Pros:  I don't know why this excites them, it just does. I mostly sing fast, but just a few seconds here and there of slow singing makes all the difference.

Cons: Listening to yourself sing "clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere" over and over may cause your brain to implode. I suggest picking another song. Any other song.

Beat the Buzzer Cleanup

Sometimes I take a buzzer from a board game and put it on the far side of the room. They clean as I sloooowly walk toward it with my finger extended. The kids try to get the room straightened up before I get to the buzzer and push it.

Pros: Watching how far I am from the button is a good visual to keep them on task. You could even have the kids hit the buzzer if they beat you — if there's anything I know about children, it's that they love making loud, annoying noises.

Cons: You have to be there the whole time the cleaning is going on, which is kind of irritating. Maybe you can read a book or something?

40-Count Cleanup

When I'm feeling particularly hands-off, I'll simply tell my kids to pick up and put away 40 things. We've tried different numbers in the past, but for whatever reason 40 seems to yield the best results.

Pros: They clean fast since they know it'll be over soon (sooner if they speed up.) They choose what they put away so there's usually less whining. Doesn't require me to be physically in the room, as long as the honor system holds.

Cons: Only works with kids who know their numbers. They'll also try to count each individual Lego as one of their 40 things. Seriously, you're going to need to lay down some comprehensive ground rules about what constitutes "one" thing.  


If all else fails, you can always walk in wearing a hazmat suit and start throwing things in garbage bags with a pair of salad tongs. That'll light a fire under your kids and get the room cleaned up in no time.

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Why Every Mother Dreads Valentine's Day

Speaking as a mother, I can tell you with certainty that Valentine's Day is the worst.

Not because I have a problem with love, but because I have 3 elementary schoolers. And elementary schools apparently hate parents.

Because just as we're congratulating ourselves for making it through the holidays without killing anyone, just as our kids are coming down from their sugar highs and we're easing back into the routine of normal life, we find a cheerful handout in a backpack about the upcoming class valentine swap.

And we die a little inside.

The handout includes the following information:

• T minus 3 weeks until the card swap, so get cracking.
• Your child must address a valentine to each of the 25 students in the class (so no one ends up crying.)
• This can be a bit overwhelming for your child, so try to write a few valentines every day until you're done.

One point of clarification: this is not an overwhelming task for my child. This is an overwhelming task for me. 

First of all, I'm going to need to buy these things weeks ahead of time in order for my kids to "write a few valentines every day." Obviously the teacher isn't aware of how we roll at our house.

Second of all, this requires me to go into an actual physical store. I dislike shopping and as a rule only go when we're running dangerously low on toilet paper. Even then it's on amazon.com.

But it needs to be done, so out I go into the frozen wilderness that is a New England winter to buy valentines. I can rule out a lot of the cards immediately: our school's no-candy policy means that valentines with suckers or little packets of Fun Dip are out.

(Even if it does effectively combat childhood obesity, this policy really defeats the whole point of trading valentines. To kids, Valentine's Day is like trick-or-treating in February, and our school decided to be the lame house on the block that hands out pencils.)

Lame or not, the real work comes after I become the proud owner of a box of overpriced perforated pictures of the Marvel Avengers saying clever things like, "Have a super day, Valentine!"

The kids' job is to sit at the table and write who the valentine is 'to' and 'from,' and my job is to supervise.

Which is great because I've been thinking lately that I don't do enough nagging to get them to complete tasks they find unpleasant.

If you've ever tried to cajole a kindergartner or 1st grader who doesn't like writing into addressing 25 valentines, you know exactly how this is going to go.

Between their gnat-like attention span and their fledgling hand-eye coordination, writing out a simple name like "Ava" takes at least 10 minutes.

There will be whining. There will be moping. There will be me simultaneously cleaning up a pants-wetting accident while demonstrating the difference between a 'b' and a 'd' while cooking dinner. I'm not looking forward to it.

Since there's no way my son can complete this Herculean task in a single sitting, we get to spread the joy out over multiple days. 

My two older kids are fairly self-motivated, but I still have to double-check that they got everyone on the class list, and that they alphabetized and secured the stack with a rubber band (yes, that was an actual requirement last year.)

That's 3 sets of valentines to supervise, which is more than enough to kill off my very last brain cell.

After all that work, I also know that on the morning of the big V-Day party at school, one of two things is going to happen. The kids will either:

1. Forget their valentines on the kitchen counter, or 
2. Remember 10 minutes before the bus comes that they were supposed to construct and decorate a mailbox for their incoming valentines. Looks like their "mailbox" is going to be a paper bag with their name written on it in Sharpie. Again.

What I really want to know is, why can't we just skip observing Valentine's Day in school and go straight to St. Patrick's Day? I can really get behind a holiday where my biggest (and only) responsibility is reminding the kids to wear something green.

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7 Quick Takes about Questionable Ways to Use Toilet Paper Rolls, Boston Cream Pie, and How to Ride an Elevator

I'ts 7 Quick Takes Friday!

—1—

Did everyone have a good Martin Luther King, Jr. Day?

My kids learned all about him last week in school, and my 6-year-old brought this home:

Scraping the bottom of the "MLK Day Crafts for the Classroom" barrel.

Yes, you're looking at a toilet paper tube likeness of Martin Luther King, Jr. complete with arms and feet. 

I wonder if this is what he envisioned when he said, "I have a dream?"

—2—

As background information, you need to know 3 things about our family:

1. Phillip is an amazing baker. Ah-mazing.
2. When he makes dessert we all have a slice after dinner, then he and I eat whatever is left after the kids go to bed. Every time. We just can't help it. The kids wake up in the morning like, "Where's the rest of the cake?"
3. For the purposes of this Quick Take, I'll be assigning our family a fake address. I'm not saying you're a crazy stalker, but well, you know. You might be.

Anyway, Phillip made a Boston cream pie for dessert. About half was left over, which the kids figured they'd never see again. When he pulled out the other half out after dinner the next night and started slicing, they went ballistic. 

The 3-year-old started giggling maniacally, my son looked stunned, and my daughter boomed in a rather imposing voice for an 8-year-old, "Attention, everyone! There has been a miracle at 265 Benson Drive: My parents did not eat all the Boston cream pie while we were sleeping!" 

You know, it sort of was a miracle.

Sounds fair to me.

—3—

Whenever I do a Quick Take about food, I usually realize while typing that I didn't take a single picture before devouring the last crumb.

If you get a picture at all, blog readers, it's of the little leftover piece I was able to salvage at the very end as an afterthought. 

So I'm sorry, the Boston cream pie was delicious but I have nothing to show you. You'll just have to imagine it.

—4—

While I was getting some procrastinating done this week, I stumbled upon this entertaining and informative series of videos by Mental Floss on YouTube:





If you can do me a quick favor, listen at 10:35 and let me know in the comments if you also initially thought they thanked you for watching menopause.

—5—

When I started seeing "life hacks" like the ones in #4 floating around on Pinterest, I have to say I was floored. The Internet held the key to all of my first-world problems!

Until one fateful day, armed with my knowledge of all the secret life hacks Pinterest has to offer, I actually tried one in the real world:

LIES! Not only did it not work, I had to stand there while the elevator stopped at every floor because I'd pushed all the buttons myself. 

That pin, now that I think about it, is actually an ingenious way to trick people into pranking themselves. Well played, Pinterest. 

—6—

Do you ever have moments where you give up trying to socialize your kids?

I overheard my 6-year-old say that the Red Sox were playing the Patriots in the Superbowl. Obviously we're not a sports-watching family (more due to a lack of TV than a lack of interest — for Phillip, anyway). But I'd still like our kids to know broadly which category of sport the Superbowl is.

This was just after he came home complaining that someone in his class at school made fun of him for having off-brand crayons. Crayons!

So that's it, I give up. I wash my hands of this whole trying-to-help-small-humans-integrate-into-society thing, because it's obviously not working. We're moving to an isolated cabin in the North Carolina woods and discontinuing all contact with the outside world. Sort of like Jodie Foster in Nell. 

—7—

Lastly, I don't usually do book reviews here at Unremarkable Files, but I thought this little gem off my 3-year-old's shelf deserved one. 

As she's asked me to read it over and over this week, I've come to realize that this might be the most thoughtful and insightful children's book I've ever read.

Comes with stickers, people!
It's obvious just from the cover that this is going to be life-changing.

I was hooked from the opening line: "Once there was a pretty princess named Alexa."* And on that note the book just continues to deliver, page after page.

I felt Alexa's elation as she found herself in a magical land where "there were brightly colored trees, floating islands, mermaids, fairies, and adorable baby unicorns everywhere!" The suspense I felt as she battled to save the Queen Unicorn with her magic bordered on the unbearable. 

Luckily, everything turned out alright in the end. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried like a baby when I read the closing sentence: "She had learned that real magic and happiness come from within." 

5 stars, absolutely. If you haven't read this book yet, put it on your bucket list. You'll never be the same.


*I swear these are all real, unedited quotes straight from the book.

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42 Signs You Have a Large Family

There's nothing like large family life. Everything is bigger and more when you've got a gaggle of kids living under one roof: the messes, the love, the noise, the stares from strangers.

How many kids does it take to make a "big" family? Depends who you ask (the answer is usually one or two more than they have,) but you know you have a big family when...

1. You read the fine print on "kids eat free" offers.

2. You know instinctively that you're going to have to pay extra to put all your kids on a family membership to the science museum.

3. No matter who you meet, you have kids the same age.

4. You see a family and think, "Wow, that's a big family!" but upon counting, you realize they actually have one less kid than you do.

5. If everyone wants to play a board game together, you have to play in teams.

6. Someone is always having a birthday.

7. No matter how many times you tell people, they can never remember the names of all of your children. Even your friends aren't sure how many kids you have.

8. Every day is a playdate. Your kids are never bored for long.

9. There is always somebody walking in front of you. Really slowly.

10. Your mud room looks like the outerwear section of a department store. A really messy, chaotic department store.

11. Your kids don't know what it's like to own new clothes.

12. Economy-sized everything.

13. You're literally unable to cook for any group smaller than an army platoon.

14. Not only have you tripled a recipe before, you do it routinely.

15. Everyone else's kids want to hang out at your house, because it's full of toys and playmates appropriate for all ages.

16. You can play a game of baseball, soccer, or football whenever you want, and you don't even need to invite over any of the neighbors.

17. Every day, you do two loads of dishes and laundry.

18. A meal at McDonald's costs $50. And it's the fanciest restaurant your kids have ever been to.

19. If you do go out to eat at a real restaurant, they seat you in the special occasion room.

20. You've never left the house without hearing "You've got your hands full" twelve times, even when only half your kids are with you.

21. You don't think it's odd to go to the grocery store and buy 7 gallons of milk at one time.

22. You don't bat an eye when the grocery bagger uses two carts.

23. There's no room for your kids to bring a friend along, even though you have a full-sized van.

24. From the stares in the parking lot, it's abundantly clear that your vehicle looks like a clown car when your entire family piles out.

25. A travel-sized toothpaste wouldn't last your family more than a day or two on vacation.

26. In your extended family, there's a list of everyone's birthdays that gets circulated at family reunions.

27. You have to rent a place for family get-togethers because no one's house is big enough.

28. More than one turkey at Thanksgiving.

29. It's hard to name your babies because no matter what name you like, someone in your extended family has already taken it.

30. You have nieces and nephews that are older than you.

31. At Christmas your kids draw names to see who they're giving a gift to.

32. Nobody has their own room.

33. When you go somewhere with another family, people assume it's a school field trip or a boy scout troop.

34. Getting ready to go literally anywhere is like that scene from Home Alone.

35. One box of granola bars or one bag of chips is never enough.

36. A box of cereal lasts a day if you're lucky. (You don't have cold breakfast cereal much.)

37. Your oldest child is sometimes mistaken for your youngest child's parent.

38. By the time you help the last kid on with their snow gear, someone else is cold and ready to come inside.

39. Someone is always sitting on your lap. When one child gets down, another one wants up.

40. Getting a family picture where everyone looks good isn't even a possibility. You're happy with a photo where only one person is crying, making a weird face, or picking their nose.

41. First-time visitors to your house gawk at the size of your dining table. (And you still have to put out folding chairs when you have dinner guests.)

42. And for sure you have a big family if you've ever arrived somewhere and realized that at least one person isn't wearing shoes.

If you can relate to these, you have a certifiably large family. Congratulations!

Now gather the troops and head out for a celebratory meal at McDonald's. (Take the copious stares from strangers as a compliment; they're just wondering how you can fit so much awesome into one van.)

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The Last Time

I think this parenting poem went viral on Facebook over the summer, so all of you readers who aren't complete troglodytes please forgive me if you've seen it before.

I'm just now beginning to explore Facebook through the blog's page, and apparently I have a lot of catching up to do.

Generally, I'm not a huge poetry fan because the potential to get cheesy increases by about 500% when switching to prose form. There's a little cheesiness here, but skim it and bear with me.

(I promise we'll have a fantastic little discussion at the end. It'll be like a book club, but one where everyone actually read the book because it's only 26 lines long.)

The Last Time
From the moment you hold your baby in your arms, you will never be the same.
You might long for the person you were before,
when you had freedom and time and nothing in particular to worry about.
You will know tiredness like you never knew it before
and days will run into days that are exactly the same:
Full of feedings and burping, nappy changes and crying,
whining and fighting, naps or lack of naps
It might seem like a never-ending cycle. 

But don’t forget…
There is a last time for everything.
They will fall asleep on you after a long day, and it will be the last time you ever hold your sleeping child.
One day you will carry them on your hip then set them down and never pick them up that way again.
You will scrub their hair in the bath at night and from that day on they will want to bathe alone.
They will hold your hand to cross the road then never reach for it again.
They will creep into your room at midnight for cuddles
and it will be the last night you ever wake to this.
One afternoon you will sing “The Wheels on the Bus” and do all the actions then never sing them that song again.
They will kiss you goodbye at the school gate then the next day they will ask to walk to the gate alone.
You will read a final bedtime story and wipe your last dirty face.
They will run to you with arms raised for the very last time. 

The thing is, you won’t even know it’s the last time
until there are no more times… and even then, it will take you a while to realize. 

So while you are living in these times, remember there are only so many of them and when they are gone, you will yearn for just one more day of them.
For one last time.

You can take a moment to dry your eyes and collect yourselves if you need to. I'll wait. 

The first time I read this poem, it sort of broke my mommy heart. It's depressing to think of the adorable, squishable baby and toddler years going away, especially if I'm not even going to realize until it's too late.

This is as good a place as any for a food analogy.

But even though it sounds sad in theory, it actually isn't all that bad. As much as I sincerely do love the baby years, I think watching their personalities emerge as your kids get older is even cooler.

My oldest daughter is now 10, meaning that she outgrew "The Wheels on the Bus" a long time ago and I don't remember the last time I carried her to bed in a dead sleep. 

Those days are long gone.

Still, I just don't feel that aching feeling when I think about her "lasts" because they're replaced with so many "firsts:"

• The first car ride playing music that didn't have goofy sound effects and wasn't about talking animals or recycling.
• The first joke she told that made sense and was actually funny. (Although I was partial to "Why did the skeleton cross the road?" "Because he didn't have any bones!")
• The first normal adult conversation we had together. By that I mean a 15+ minute talk consisting of all real words that are found in the dictionary.
• The first book or movie we both sincerely enjoyed, and I didn't even have to fake it.
• The first breakfast where she made waffles for everyone and cleaned up after herself.
• The first time she asked for help with her math homework and I had no clue what the answer was. (Okay, that was a little embarrassing because it happened in like, 3rd grade.)

When she can finally babysit for us, I think my joy will be complete.

I understand that "The Last Time" is about mindful parenting and being in the moment and all that zen stuff, which I am completely in favor of doing.

I just don't spend too much time dwelling on what my daughter has outgrown. Mostly because I'm enjoying each new stage, but probably also because I'm busy organizing pet crayfish funerals and cleaning entire tubes of toothpaste off the bathroom mirror.

It could be that my daughter isn't quite old enough for this poem to really stab me in the heart like it's meant to.

It could also be that because I have younger children, I still spend plenty of time wiping noses and cleaning spaghetti off the floor. Maybe what's really going to sting is my last time doing those things, not theirs.

Maybe I'm just a young and naive mom, and I'll eat every single one of my words in the future. But right now, I'm not too worried about all the "lasts" because the "firsts" are even better.

And if not, there's always grandkids.

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7 Quick Takes about Getting Kids to Eat Fancy French Food, Raisin Trees, and Living in "The House"

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday!

—1—

Phillip baked us a wonderful quiche for dinner on Saturday, which really confused the kids because we are a pie-making and pie-eating family. Quiche looks like pie, but it doesn't quite look like pie. They were suspicious.

So I told the kids it was quiche, which is French for "weirdo pie," and they cleaned their plates. Funny how a little presentation goes a long way with kids.

—2—

For the new year, each kid at church was given a little booklet of scripture verses to memorize throughout 2015. The booklets came with a blank cover to design however you wanted. My 10-year-old's cover was obviously inspired by Amazon.com:

Two thumbs way up.

—3—

Grocery shopping with my younger daughter is more challenging now that she's 3. Suddenly she's started asking for every item in the store (and by "ask" I mean she manhandles the box until it's destroyed and we end up having to buy it, anyway.)

Today was particularly bad because we went through the cereal aisle, or as I call it, the crack-cocaine aisle. I call it that because my daughter starts acting like a junkie as soon as we set foot in it. Her pupils dilate and she starts running all over, grabbing every colorful box of sugar cereal in her reach yelling, "Can we get these?? WHY NOT!?!"

I lucked out in the fall months because any time she asked for anything I could just wave dismissively and say, "Oh, Santa will bring us lots of candy at Christmas." I knew that would end eventually, but I wasn't really prepared.

—4—

We've had a package of raisins in the cupboard for as long as I can remember (not the same one, gross) because my kids love raisins. But this week Phillip brought this to my attention:

So... they just picked the raisins off the raisin tree and put them in the canister, I guess.

—5—

Do you ever have one of those moments where all of a sudden you just realize midway through the winter, "Wait, we haven't gotten sick yet!" 

No? 

Well, this is a first for us. Just a few days ago I had the epiphany that all 7 people in our household have been healthy as a horse since autumn, not even one little head cold. 

I realize that I'm putting the kiss of death on this by typing these words. I'll be writing next week's Quick Takes from my deathbed, I'm sure.

—6—

I wasn't really paying attention to the radio in the car until the kids started laughing because the singer said "Hey it's your birthday, Mother made a cake." 

I turned the volume up and ended up loving the song. It's called "The House" by Air Traffic Controller, and I think I could listen to it all day. 

Not only is it fun to listen to, but it's also about the best part of having a big family. It's a non-stop party!

—7—

We fixed our iPad! Or more accurately, Phillip, who is amazing and can figure out how to fix anything (my kids are convinced he has magic powers,) fixed our iPad. I'm actually starting to wonder about the magic powers thing, too.

I don't even know what this is a picture of, but it looks complicated.

The process included baking it in the oven to get the glue to loosen, scraping the cracked screen off with a razor blade, and replacing the camera and the Wi-Fi antenna with parts bought on eBay. And it works!

(While I was writing this post, Phillip looked over my shoulder and said, "Don't say that, I haven't glued the new screen back on yet." But I'm reasonably sure it's not going to burst into flames at this point, so I'm sharing the good news. I don't care if it's premature.)

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Top 10 Life Hacks Keeping Me Out of the Mental Institution

Let me first say that I wondered if I should even be writing this post.

Every morning this week has consisted of kids careening wildly downstairs while yelling frantically, "I can't find my homework/shoes/jacket/backpack/brain!" (Okay, they never said brain.) 

We all run around the house until we find the missing item in the car/bathroom/backyard/under the bed and they barely make it on the bus. Or they miss it altogether, which is always an option.

We aren't exactly a model of efficiency over here.

That said, over the years I've put myself through a lot of trial and error to find ways of doing things that make my life more manageable. Here are the top 10.

1. Pack school lunch the night before. Better yet, have your kids do it.

When my kids first started school, I'd pack their lunches for them in the morning. Not only was it stressful, the kids were coming home with half their lunch untouched. Even though grapes and PB&Js were their favorites yesterday, they suddenly decided today that they hate them.

Thus began the Evans Household Rule that you packed your own lunch the night before. The following 5 categories need to be in your lunchbox:

• a drink
• a sandwich
• a fruit/vegetable snack
• a dairy snack 
• a dry snack

On Saturdays, we portion out the fruit/vegetable, dairy, and dry snacks for the whole week. I went online and bought a bunch of these for drinks, these for pudding/Jello, and these for veggie dip. And a whole lotta Ziploc bags.

Fruit/veggie snacks go in the white bin in the fridge, dairy snacks go in the blue bin in the fridge, and dry snacks go in the red bin in the pantry.

At night, the kids just need to make a sandwich, pour a drink, and grab a snack from each of the colored bins. Presumably they won't grab something they hate, so lunches actually get eaten this way. Win-win.

2. Treat your basement like a grocery store.

If past experience has taught me anything, it's that I will run out of flour, sugar, or salt in the middle of making some important batch of something for a school function starting in exactly one hour. Not a crisis since if I have a spare in the basement.

At least one extra of every shelf-stable item I regularly use is in our basement. That includes flour, pasta, peanut butter, chicken broth, garbage bags, and even toilet paper.

Not only does this help when I run out of something mid-recipe, I'm also all set for a zombie apocalypse. The whole zombie thing seems to be waning in popular culture, but I say bring it on. I'm ready.

One important thing about this system: you've got to replace your spares if you want it to work. Whenever I take something out of the basement, I write it on a running shopping list I keep in a kitchen drawer to buy next time I'm at the store.

3. About that shopping list. Make one. And a weekly dinner menu, too.

I don't like shopping, so I only want to go once a week and no more. Each week I write a weekly dinner menu, use it to make a shopping list, and post it on the fridge.

What I like about the system is that it ensures I won't have to make any filler trips to the grocery store, and also that I'll only need to spend 15 minutes a week thinking about what to make for dinner.

By 5 PM my brain is usually one step away from liquefying and oozing out of my ear, so minimizing all evening decision-making is important to me.

3. Keep your to-do list posted on a whiteboard on the wall.

In a book I read called Getting Things Done by David Allen, the author proposed a way to organize and manage your to-do list that completely changed my life.

Dry erase perfection.

I could do a 45-minute infomercial on the whole book for you right now, but I'll try to hold it in and just tell you that buying a cheap-o whiteboard at Staples, sticking it to my wall, and doing every blessed thing David Allen told me to is the only reason I haven't developed an ulcer.

My whiteboard to-do list never gets lost, it's always visible, and it's easy to add and delete stuff since it's dry erase. The other wildly successful part of this system is that I have my list divided up into 6 categories: Calls, Emails, At Computer, At Home, Errands, and Items for Phillip.

It makes a huge difference, trust me.

4. If it's supposed to go somewhere else, keep it in the car.

Before I finally figured out this totally common sense idea, I used to pile things by the door that were supposed to go somewhere: overdue library books, outgrown clothes to donate, retail items I needed to return, something someone lent me a few months back. (Never let me borrow anything from you; you'll never see it again.)

Then I'd forget about them until I drove past the library or the thrift store or the mall or my friend's house and I'd do a face palm and go, "I can't believe I forgot it again!" (Yes, I talk to myself in the car. And everywhere else.)

Now when something needs to go somewhere within the next couple of weeks, I keep it in the car. My passenger seat is usually covered with a random assortment of stuff, but I can't tell you the number of times I've been glad I had something with me when I had the chance to drop it off.

5. A word about socks.

Few things make me laugh harder than those cute little missing sock boards on Pinterest with about 4 clothespins on them.

Those things were obviously not made by a person who's ever been in charge of an actual household's laundry. First of all, the socks in this house are permanently black on the bottom from kids running outside with no shoes on. I don't want to display our socks. They're not cute, even when they're clean.

Second, if I was going to actually use one of these boards I'd need a 4' by 8' sheet of plywood with about a thousand clips on it. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

When I come across an unmatched sock, I throw it in a basket on top of the dryer. When one of my kids is being particularly naughty, they earn match duty.


6. Stop sorting laundry. Do it by rooms, and have your kids pitch in.

Everything in our house gets washed in cold water and I don't sort colors. Each bedroom has a hamper, and whenever it's full it gets emptied into the washing machine.

Kids don't get a free pass here on laundry. When they're 1 or 2, I wash it all and they help me fold. At 5 or 6, I'll wash it and put it in their room, and they're in charge of folding and putting it away themselves (but I usually stick around to keep them focused.) At 8 they're given their own laundry bag and taught to operate the washing machine, and I only help if I'm feeling particularly generous that day.

Also, and I know this is very unconventional for a family of 7, we don't own any laundry baskets. Not a single one. I've consciously avoided buying any because I know if I have a place to put laundry "for later," I'll let it pile up and then heaven help us all.

When I do a load of laundry, I fold it immediately (or take it up to the kids' rooms so they can fold it immediately,) sometimes working on it in 2-minute chunks because my laundry is right off my kitchen.

I realize this doesn't really work if your laundry room is squirreled away in the dark recesses of your basement. Sorry.

7. Behold the power of the 60-second cleanup.

My kids can take hours to clean a room top to bottom. I've seen it, and it's not pretty. They drag themselves around like the living dead putting things away as slowly as humanly possible, I think just to bug me.

When rooms are really messy, we clean them in 60-second bursts throughout the day. For whatever reason, counting lends a sense of urgency to any situation. So I say "Ready, set, go!" and count to 60 while we clean like crazy.

The hilarious part about this is that the kids think they're being mischievous when they start whirlwind cleaning before I say "go." If I pretend to be upset that they're jumping the gun, they only laugh and clean faster.

Really, it's more like a 2-minute cleanup since I count slowly, but it's shocking what 5 or 6 people cleaning at top speed can do in 2 minutes.

8. Give the kids a list. Use pictures if they can't read yet.

Every day, your kids have stuff to do. Almost every day, it's the same stuff: do your homework, do your chore, practice your instrument, put your backpack away. And every day, you have to remind them 182 times to do each of those things — or do you?

When I finally realized I was saying the same things over and over, I just wrote them down. I slid each child's "list" in a page protector, taped it to the wall, and put a dry erase marker next to it for making check marks.

I don't have to nag the kids (much) anymore, and when I do I just ask "Did you do your list?" In our house a finished list is a prerequisite to any screen time, so they're pretty self-motivated.

9. Two words: Amazon Prime.

I can't stand shopping. I stay out of physical stores as much as possible. Whenever I have to go to a real store it takes forever, it's (usually) more expensive, the selection is worse, and half the time they don't have what I need in stock, anyway.

I debated about getting an Amazon Prime membership for a while because it costs $99 a year, but it's so worth it. With free two-day shipping, it actually takes less time to order it online than it would to schedule a time to schlep us all out the door to the store and find whatever it is we need to buy.

10. Buy kids' clothes in advance, whenever you see a good deal.

End-of-season clearance, thrift stores, garage sales, and consignment shops are good places to find cheap kids' clothes. I buy in all sorts of sizes and just store them in diaper boxes in the attic until they fit.

I used to feel silly coming home with boy's clothes in size 6 when my son was only 18 months old, but I figured since I was planning on him living that long, I might as well plan on dressing him that long, too.

Since I only buy when it's dirt-cheap, I accumulate an entire season of kids' clothes for what I'd spend on two new outfits at Gymboree. The kids like going shopping in the attic better, anyway.

Keep in mind, I don't do these things all the time. Not even close. I fall off the wagon from time to time, but I always return to these 10 methods because they make my life a little less insane.

Now if you'll excuse me, the kids just missed the schoolbus and I'm their ride.

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