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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

Welcome to September, Internets! How are you? Did August treat you well? I myself can’t answer that question because I’m still not sure where August went. I’m certain it was just July last week.

So, how has everyone been feeling lately? Me…I’ve been a little stressed. Not tremendously so, just a little frayed around the edges. Hubby was tremendously stressed, but things are improving now. We’ve been working hard on stress reduction here at Earnest Parenting.

For starters, I’ve been picking away at my latest guilt list. We took some time to visit family over the long weekend just passed, and today for our first day of school the boys and I took a walk. It was great, and we plan to do some sort of exercise in the mornings as often as possible. Tomorrow we’re hoping to ride our bikes, and I picked up a whole bunch of Tae Bo exercise videos for $5 at a garage sale. The boys weren’t impressed by that but I think it’ll be a hoot.

Oooh! Our first day of school went rather well, all told. The boys and I weren’t able to tackle all of the subjects on the list but we decided to just take it one day at a time. Each year we have to work out a new rhythm. With the younger boys in first grade, their responsibilities increase quite a bit from kindergarten so we’re tiptoeing our way through all the new stuff.

Our incredibly full schedule has driven home for me the importance of keeping things as organized as possible, especially with food.

I’ve been writing over at GNMParents (now ForeverParenting.com) about some stress reducers in the kitchen. Specifically, we’ve talked about cutting food costs, food choices, and bulk cooking.

Sooooo, tomorrow we have our second day of school and I’ll be squeezing in some menu planning where I can. It’ll probably take a week or two to get the school plan set to where everyone’s happy. Today was very relaxed and I’m hopeful that we can continue on that path. Once food and schedules are under control (HA! I can’t believe I even typed that) then we’ll add in something else truly exciting…like house cleaning.

I crack me up.

Earnest Parenting: help for parents who want lower stress.

Image courtesy of jwalsh via Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.