Ever been part of a book club that fizzled out after a few months? Or maybe you’ve wanted to start one but weren’t sure how to make it stick? This week’s episode is for you! I’m talking about what makes a book club truly work with Madeline Casey, who, along with Phoebe Cook, started the book club I’ve been part of for four years (and still love!). In this episode, we’ll talk about: Choosing books that people want to read Creating a format that keeps the discussion flowing Handling different beliefs and perspectives with grace Building an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing Managing the practical stuff (hosting, leading discussions, etc.) Plus, we’re sharing our favorite books over the last four years!  Looking to start a book club that becomes the highlight of your month? This episode walks you through exactly how to make that happen.  

This fall has been a very busy season for our family where we are stuck tackling things that are urgent. While it has been exhausting and at times felt like survival mode (some days have been 100% survival mode), I have learned some powerful lessons that are changing how I approach my days that I discuss in this week’s episode. I’ve found myself living on razor-thin margins lately - where there’s just enough capacity for the scheduled things, but anything else feels impossible. Throughout this season, I’ve been learning some important lessons about how to make things work better, even when we’re at capacity: How a simple whiteboard is changing our family communication and getting everyone moving in the same direction What happened when I started letting my family help instead of running faster and faster by myself Why acknowledging our limitations (and communicating them to our kids) actually makes everything easier The mindset shift that’s helping me recognize I’m more capable than I think How simplifying and creating systems is slowly giving us more breathing room All these lessons from our busy season are becoming part of something bigger - The Surviving to Thriving Toolkit. After years of hearing, “I found your podcast - where do I start?”, I realize that all roads point to this toolkit. It will walk you through each stage of the journey from surviving to thriving, with real, practical help for wherever you are right now. I’m also including a Family Systems Playbook with video walkthroughs of how we actually make things work in our home. Not because it’s the only way or even the best way, but because having a starting point can make such a difference when you’re trying to figure things out for your own family. Right now I’m working on Win Your Week Academy (the Thriving phase) and in January I’ll start building out the other modules. I’m hoping to release the full toolkit in early 2025. If you want to be the first to know when it’s ready, you can join the waitlist at: thrivinginmotherhoodpodcast.com/toolkit. I hope this episode helps you pause and think about where you are in your own life. Whether it’s hard, fast-paced, slow, or busy, there’s always something we can learn to move us forward. 

I’ve been getting questions after the focus on how to merge effective mom planning with planning with your spouse. Andrew and I sat down after we tucked the kids into bed this week and talked about what planning looks like for us in our marriage which I hope will inspire you. But first, let’s get some misconceptions out of the way: Misconception #1: We Plan the Same Way Nope! Andrew has his own style of planning that works for his work schedule and keeping his priorities in check. Misconception #2: We are good at weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual planning together. Also, no. We are pretty great at weekly planning (we rarely skip). We are good at doing annual reviews together. Anything beyond that is superb, but we really haven’t been consistent over the last 13 years of marriage. I hope that encourages you. You only need to be pretty good at one thing to have a huge impact in your marriage and family life. Misconception #3: We follow a clear checklist and it’s the same every time. Negative. We have fine-tuned what we cover and we adjust it based on how much time and energy we have and how unusual the week is. In this week’s podcast episode, we’re pulling back the curtain on our real-life planning process.  You’ll discover:  The story of how our weekly planning tradition began What actually makes it into our shared planning agenda Our individual prep work (and how much we actually share) A peek into our typical planning session Why these weekly check-ins matter (and what happens when we skip them) Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refresh your approach to planning with your spouse, I think you’ll find something helpful in this episode.

Have you ever felt the need to speed up your child’s life? Like it’s some kind of race to cram in everything they need before they turn 18? Today’s conversation with Leslie Martino challenged my thinking about this in the best possible way. Leslie has four kids (14, 12, and 10-year-old twins), and she shared something that hit home: older kids deserve a slow childhood too. We often talk about peaceful, slow living for little ones, but somewhere along the way, we forget that older kids are still kids. In this week’s episode, we talked about some practical aspects of slow living with older kids like: How to say no to the right things  Finding a community with like-minded families Managing the balance between activities and home life Creating intentional check-in times with each child If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the pace of life with older kids, or if you’re approaching the teenage years and wondering how to maintain close connections, this episode is for you. Leslie shares so much wisdom about creating a life that reflects your values, even (and especially) as your kids grow older. Tune in to hear our full conversation, including Leslie’s insights from her new book, The Joy of Slow: Restoring Balance and Wonder to Homeschool Learning. Whether you homeschool or not, her perspective on slowing down and staying connected with older kids is something every parent needs to hear.  

When Sierra first discovered the Thriving in Motherhood planner in 2021, she was deep in survival mode. With a three-year-old and an 18-month-old, she had been battling postpartum depression for over a year. “I need something,” she recalled thinking. “I can’t just be surviving anymore.” Like many mothers, Sierra initially hesitated about investing in a planner. But after discussing it with her husband, she took a leap - a decision that would transform not just her approach to motherhood, but her entire outlook on life. One of Sierra’s most profound realizations through using the planner was that “goals can be accomplished in small pieces.” This simple, but powerful insight helped her break free from overwhelm. Using the Thriving in Motherhood Planner’s structured approach, she began setting and achieving goals across different areas of her life, from reading classics with her children to pursuing her passion for drawing. What started as Sierra’s personal planning journey soon created beautiful ripple effects throughout her family life. As she invested time in her own growth and interests through the planner’s guidance, she noticed her children becoming curious and inspired by her examples. Through the planner’s guidance, Sierra found that taking time for personal growth doesn’t detract from motherhood - it enhances it. Sierra offers this wisdom for mothers feeling overwhelmed about starting their journey with the Thriving in Motherhood Planner: “Take it a little bit at a time.” She recommends: Don’t try to fill everything out at once Give yourself time to review your year and set intentions Focus on one domain at a time Remember it’s okay to put it aside during challenging seasons The journey from just surviving to really thriving doesn't happen overnight. But Sierra's story shows us something beautiful - when you have the right tool and give yourself grace to use it in your own way, you can build a life you're excited about.  It really can happen, one small step at a time. As Sierra discovered, you don't have to do everything at once. Start somewhere, focus on what matters most to you right now, and know it's perfectly okay to set it aside when life gets crazy. The planner will be there when you're ready to pick it back up again. If you’re ready to get started on your own journey, order your 2025 Thriving in Motherhood Planner HERE.

Today I’m going to walk you through the the Win Your Week planning system that’s built into the 2025 Thriving in Motherhood Planner. This system is designed to help you navigate the ups and downs of motherhood while still achieving your goals and creating a life you love. Why Focus on Winning Your Week? Let's face it: as moms, our days can be unpredictable. Some days are fantastic, others are challenging, and many are a mix of both. That's why I've found that focusing on "winning the week" is the sweet spot. It gives us enough time to balance productivity, self-care, and family time, even when individual days don't go as planned. So let’s break down how this whole system fits together so you can have a winning week: Vision for the Year: This is where we start. It doesn’t matter how fuzzy it is to begin - you just need to put some ideas on paper. I promise it will become more clear over time. Sandbox/Someday Maybe Section: This is a great spot for ideas you’re not ready to commit to. It’s a way to preserve those ideas without cluttering up your calendar or to-do list. Quarterly Vision: Your yearly vision breaks down into concrete projects, goals, and habits for each quarter. Monthly Planning: Here you have a spot to write down the goals, projects, and habits you want to work on for the next 30 days, based on your quarterly plan. Weekly Plan: This is where we’re really focusing. You’ll have a big three for the week, trying to take that vision and bring it into your week. You’ll also include next actions from your projects, tasks that just come up in life, appointments, and scheduled events. Recurring Tasks and Routines: These feed into your weekly plan too. They’re the things that keep your household running smoothly. Special Features to Note Think and Process Pages: These weekly blank pages are your catch-all for notes, ideas, and brainstorming sessions. They're perfect for corralling all the information that comes at us from different directions. Recurring Tasks and Routines: We've included dedicated spaces for weekly and monthly routines to help you manage household tasks more efficiently. Habit Tracking: There's space to track four weekly habits – enough to make progress without feeling overwhelmed. Looking Ahead Section: A place to jot down future plans and ideas, so you're always prepared for what's coming. Index: Like a bullet journal, this feature helps you quickly find important information you've written down throughout the year. Pre-Order Your 2025 Planner Mark your calendars! The 2025 Thriving in Motherhood Planner will be available for pre-order from October 21st to 26th. When you order during that time, it allows me to do one big bulk order, take it to a local printer, add coils, and then my kids package and ship it to you.  I hope this overview gives you a visual of how the Win Your Week planning system works. It’s designed to take you from where you are now, and help you close the gap to where you want to be with baby steps that filter powerfully through into something amazing!

I’m thrilled to share with you the 12 major updates we’ve made to the 2025 Thriving in Motherhood Planner. These changes are based on the latest productivity research, time management strategies, and systems design. I’ve been diving deep into these topics to bring you a planner that truly supports your journey in motherhood. Let’s explore what’s new! Getting Started Checklist Ever felt lost staring at a brand new planner? Not anymore. I’ve created a step-by-step guide that’s like having a friendly expert by your side. Whether you’re a planning pro or a first-timer, you’ll be up and running in no time. Enhanced Planning Sessions Checklist The planning sessions guide includes detailed checklists for quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily planning. Each session has it’s own acronym to help you remember it’s purpose. Separated Vision Workbook and 2025 Vision Page I’ve split these sections to give you more flexibility in your planning process. Why? Because sometimes you need to get messy with your dreams and sometimes you need a clean snapshot. The workbook is for brainstorming, while the vision page is for your refined goals. Leverage Task List This new two-page spread allows you to note repetitive tasks or pain points that you can improve or automate. It’s like a “to-improve list” that will help you free up mental and physical energy over time.  Energy Map A way to plan your tasks with your natural energy levels throughout the day, week, and month, maximizing your productivity and reducing frustration. No more beating yourself up for not being a morning person (or a night owl)! Personal Life Philosophy Page A dedicated space for you to collect inspiring quotes, scriptures, or ideas that resonate with who you want to be and how you want to live. This page is your personal collection of guiding lights, helping you stay true to your values and aspirations. Quarterly Vision Pages I’ve repositioned these pages to appear before each quarter, making it easier to plan and review your progress throughout the year. No more flipping back and forth! Updated Project, Goal, and Habit Planning Pages These pages now offer more white space for brainstorming and customization, allowing you to plan in a way that suits your style. Scribble, doodle, mind-map to your heart’s content. Monthly Routine Page Say goodbye to forgotten monthly tasks. This new page is designed to capture all those important monthly to-dos that often slip through the cracks.  Improved Monthly Planning Pages I’ve supercharged these monthly planning pages with new sections for habits and weekly routines. Now you can see your big-picture goals, daily habits, and weekly commitments all in one place. It’s like having a birds-eye view of your month. Weekly Reflection Questions Two thoughtful questions at the bottom of each weekly page to celebrate wins and tweak what’s not working. Because you’re awesome and you deserve to know it! Annual Calendars for 2025 and 2026 By popular request, I've included annual calendars for both the current and upcoming year, perfect for long-term planning Mark your calendars for October 21st (my birthday - what better way to celebrate?) through October 26th. That’s when you can get your very own planner coil-bound by me and my family. After that planners will be perfect bound (which works great as well!). Remember, this planner is designed to grow with you as you manage your home, pursue your dreams, and thrive in motherhood. Here’s to creating a life we’re excited to wake up to each day!  

We have had a wonderful summer and a lot going on as we get back into life at home, gardening, homeschooling, and friendships. There has also been a lot going on behind the scenes with the podcast, which is what I want to share with you in this week’s Thriving Thursday email so you can know what to expect. Usually by now I've gotten the next year's planner edited, ordered, shipped to my home, and I've taken photos and gotten ready to share it with all of you. This year I have the draft of the 2025 planner written, but it still needs to be created. What I've been focusing on the last few months is reading the productivity books that have come out in the last few years, taking a few productivity courses, and translating the principles that apply to us as moms into the planner and courses that go along with the planner. I am excited to share these little but effective tweaks with you soon! I also sent an email out earlier this year to everyone who has purchased the Made to Soar: Next 90 Days program looking for feedback about what was working and what wasn't working. Two really important points emerged from that feedback. First, 90 days is a really long time to focus on something and it led to feelings of discouragement when interruptions happened or it took longer to get through the course material. At the same time I've seen so much progress in the lives of the moms I've been working with for nearly 4 years in Soaring Mothers Society (which is the group coaching program that goes along with the Made to Soar DIY course). And the reality is that the baby steps add up to incredible change.  So the first big change I'm announcing in this email is that the Made to Soar: Next 90 Days program name is changing to Win Your Week Academy. With this focus on creating a winning week you will also experience winning months, quarters, and years. Everyone who has already purchased the Next 90 Days program will get access to this update. Second, many moms struggled with working on the program because they were in survival mode, re-entry, or buried in the work of normalizing. Which is absolutely right because that content is really focused on the later stages of normalizing, exploring, and thriving. And this is where I realized that I had a major gap I needed to fill and where the idea of the Surviving to Thriving Toolkit came about. This is something I've been making baby steps of progress on for months and I'm looking forward to announcing the beta launch of this program soon. The women in Mom Matters Too have also been so patient this year as we started that new program and moved around to 3 different tech platforms until we found our home. This was a huge undertaking but I am really thrilled with the results. So much so that I am going to be switching all of the products and courses over to this platform so everything will be in one place. This is a huge project but will smooth things out for everyone moving forward. With all of these large projects on the horizon, I have made the decision to take my first break ever since starting the podcast nearly seven years ago. This way my team and I can divert all of our energy and attention to getting the 2025 planner ready to go, creating the new Win Your Week Academy program, creating the Soaring Mothers Toolkit, and switching all other digital products to the new platform. I already have many more episode ideas and raw footage recorded for the podcast, so there is part of me that thinks I can just keep going with both. But honestly, it is a relief to decide to go all in on one thing and create a really strong foundation with things that will truly serve you and help you in ways that I can't do through the podcast. And once we have solid footing, it will be wonderful to put energy and attention back towards bringing you great conversations and insights on the Thriving in Motherhood Podcast again. During the break you can listen to any of the 330 previous episodes here: https://thrivinginmotherhoodpodcast.com/podcast/ I will continue sending emails on Thursday to give you behind the scenes progress updates and let you know when episodes will be released again as the time gets closer. I look forward to working with some of you in the Surviving to Thriving Toolkit beta program! You can get on the waitlist here to be the first to know when the doors are opening. 

I went out to harvest cucumbers and green beans with my kids early one morning. The plants looked amazing, with vines reaching everywhere. At first glance, it looked like we would come out with nothing to show for our months of effort water, picking off bugs, and weeding. But after we slowed down and searched for a while, we began to see lots of vegetables (we found 17 cucumbers and an entire colander of green beans!). Just like the vegetables hidden in the garden, sometimes we get so caught up in the daily grind that we miss all the amazing things we're accomplishing as moms. That's why a monthly review is SO important! It is when we slow down and look for all of the fruit that we get to celebrate and enjoy our daily efforts. You can do a monthly review on a piece of paper or journal, or use the Thriving in Motherhood Planner. There's a page each month for doing this monthly review so you never have to remember that it's time to sit down and reflect again. If you want a little more accountability and motherhood camaraderie we'd love to have you join us in our monthly Soaring Mothers Society Calls. These monthly calls are a fantastic way to connect with other moms, share your review progress, and get inspired. And here's my favorite part of the whole process (and a way to battle the mom guilt that so easily creeps in): After your monthly review, share it with your kids and husband at the dinner table! Share the things you are learning and discovering. Share your accomplishments. Reflect and remember the things you've done as a family and the places you've gone. Share what you've been reading. And then ask them about their progress too! Your kids want to celebrate with you, be proud of you, and enjoy seeing your success and growth as much as you enjoy seeing theirs. This is a powerful way to create a strong family culture of motivated, growing individuals who cheer each other on. Grab a piece of paper, join our Soaring Mother Society Calls, or use your planner – whatever works for you. Just take that time to reflect, celebrate, and share your joy with your family. I can't wait to hear about all the amazing things YOU'RE accomplishing! I'm cheering you on! Jessica

As mothers, we often find ourselves navigating the challenging journey from merely surviving our days to truly thriving. Over the years, I've had the privilege of working with many amazing moms, and I've noticed some common pitfalls that can make this journey feel even more daunting.  Today, I'd like to share some insights to help smooth your path. In our latest podcast episode, we dive into the five biggest mistakes moms make as they transition from survival mode to thriving.  Here are the five key mistakes to consider: Focusing on Circle of Concern vs. Circle of Influence: It’s crucial to distinguish between what you can control and what you can’t. By redirecting your focus to your circle of influence, you empower yourself to make meaningful changes. When I was pregnant with my third baby, I found myself overwhelmed by everything outside my control. A wise friend encouraged me to focus on my circle of influence rather than my circle of concern. It was a life-changing moment that taught me to concentrate on what I could truly impact. This shift in perspective enabled me to put my energy into actions that mattered, rather than getting bogged down by things I couldn't change. Phone Scrolling: While it's a common escape, it can hinder your ability to think clearly, connect meaningfully with your family, and solve your problems with God. Reducing phone time can significantly improve your ability to cope and connect. Getting Stuck in Phases: Whether it's survival mode, normalizing routines, or exploring new interests, it's important to recognize when it's time to move on and adapt to new phases in your motherhood journey. I go into great detail about what it looks like to get stuck in each phase. Focusing on Suffering: It's easy to dwell on the hardships of motherhood, but shifting your mindset to focus on what you’re learning and how you’re growing can make a significant difference. Seeing challenges as opportunities for growth fosters resilience. This can't be rushed - it takes time to grieve or work through the emotions and realities of things being hard or different than you anticipated. But I have also learned that it is a skill set and a habit of thinking that can grow stronger with practice. Limiting Strategies to Simplify Life: I spent years thinking there are only a couple of ways to make life easier, like sending kids to Grandma's or eating out. However, there are countless strategies to improve your day-to-day, even without these conveniences. This is why I'm creating a brand new program, The Surviving to Thriving Toolkit! If you want to be the first to know any details and get on the waitlist, you can head over to https://thrivinginmotherhoodpodcast.com/toolkit. Additionally, if you're seeking more support and community, consider joining Mom Matters Too {https://thrivinginmotherhoodpodcast.com/mom-matters-too} where we work on micro habits together. These calls are a fantastic opportunity to connect with other moms, share your progress, and gain inspiration. The price is going up at the end of July so now is the perfect time to join! Remember, every step forward, no matter how small, is a victory. Let's celebrate these wins together. I can't wait to hear about all the amazing things you are accomplishing!

Currently, we are in a season in our lives that could be temporary - or we could be here to stay for a long, long time. I'm very good at temporary. Moving has been my lot in life, growing up with my parents (I went to 10 schools by the time I graduated high school) and since getting married (we've lived in 6 homes). But living somewhere where staying is a possibility? Now that has been a hard thing for my mind to grasp.  In this week's episode, I'm sharing a thriving thought that has come out of this struggle for me and also how it applies to motherhood. We love where we live. We love the smaller home that is easy to clean, the updates and DIY projects we've done to customize the space, the huge garden we've put in the backyard, the rock climbing wall we just built, and the space our kids have to roam and play outside. But as we've made each of these changes and have more ideas for the future (front yard orchard and herb garden), I've often wondered if it is even a good idea to put our time, energy, and finances into something if we aren't staying here.  After much prayer and discussion with God for years I got the new understanding that I was seeking: Yes, embrace the current resources you have now to the fullest while you have them. Enjoy the spaces, the yard, the garden, the place to develop skills and do projects. Embrace the hours the children get to roam and create and build and picnic and imagine. Embrace all of it while you have it. And when things change, you don't need to replicate what you had here. You can embrace the new circumstances to the fullest and enjoy the differences. Then I realized that we weren't just talking about houses. We were also talking about my children and the seasons of motherhood. It is going so fast. My oldest is turning 11 and what felt like forever in those early years with 3 kids four and under is now moving at lightning speed. But I don't need to focus on the inevitable changes coming. Instead, embrace the season we are in now. Invest in it fully with my time, focus, and energy. And when this season changes with the children continuing to get older, embrace that one too. And this isn't meant to get us caught up in mom guilt and focus on the limitations we have or the things we can't do that would count as "embracing things to the fullest". If you are in a hard season right now, it can look like just being present and sitting down and watching the same movie with your kids instead of scrolling or consuming your own content. Just BEING together counts. In fact, each step along the five-step path from surviving to thriving will look different. This is why I'm creating the Surviving to Thriving Toolkit - to empower you to embrace where you are to the fullest with all the realities of motherhood and life coming at you. You can learn more at thrivinginmotherhoodpodcast.com/toolkit

It can be so hard to feel like we are just surviving our days and see a huge list of all that needs to happen, but in reality all we need to do is focus on managing today and making tomorrow a little bit better too. Each of the five phases along the path have a specific focus, systems, and skills so that you can dramatically shorten your to-do list and put your energy towards the specific problems you are facing right now.  In this weeks episode I'm sharing the big problems with you along each phase so you can more clearly identify where you are at along the path and what you can let go of in the season you are in. We work on solving each of these problems in the Surviving to Thriving Toolkit. You can learn more and join the waitlist to be the first to know about it here: https://thrivinginmotherhoodpodcast.com/toolkit

We have been working on a huge project to weed all of the garden pathways and lay down weed cloth to hopefully prevent future out of control weeks from taking over. One morning I got out there super early and saw all of the beautiful plants strong, but by 10am they were withering away in the hot sun.  I realized that we've had many hot, dry days and I hadn't done much watering. It was a crazy ten minutes as I had kids melting down and a garden that was on it's way to dead that we had to take care of right then. And it was this moment that I learned a powerful lesson that I'm sharing in this weeks episode. It hit me: just like those thirsty plants, we moms can feel drained if we don't take care of ourselves regularly. But here's the good news! Imagine if you had a drip irrigation system for your garden. No more daily watering, just consistent nourishment that lets your plants flourish. That's the power of micro-habits and systems for moms! Think of these habits as your drip line. Maybe it's a morning routine that sets your day up for success, or a dedicated time for quiet reflection. These small but consistent actions "water" your well-being, freeing up energy for the things you truly enjoy. Just like with that drip irrigation, once you have those systems in place, you can spend more time savoring the fruits of your labor! Imagine ENJOYING your harvest, planting a metaphorical fruit orchard of new goals, or spending more quality time with your family. Ready to ditch the inconsistency and effort of using a watering can and create sustaining micro habits?  Join me in the Mom Matters Too program this July! We'll dive deep into creating those powerful micro-habits and systems that will allow you to have the energy, clarity, and focus to work on the things that truly matter to you. (Plus, the price goes up in August, so don't miss out!) Head over to Mom Matters Too and get started on your journey to a more joyful, fulfilling motherhood!

If you are looking for a fun and new activity to do with your kids I recommend making a jar of sauerkraut this summer! It took me 2 years and five failed batches before I finally figured out all of the nuances of this process, but it was well worth the wait.  Today I'm sharing 6 mistakes to avoid and what to do instead so that your first batch can be successful and a fun check on your summer bucket list. 6 Mistakes to Avoid When Making Sauerkraut Not shredding finely enough: Use a cheese grater or food processor with grating attachment Using not enough or too much salt: Add 2T for every 3 cabbages (2/3 T for one cabbage) Filling the jars too much: Leave 2-3 inches at the top so there is room for the weight and brine Not using the outside cabbage leaf to contain everything: Use the outside 2 cabbage leaves to cover the shredded cabbage and make sure all of the pieces are submerged over the brine Not having adequate weight/pressure to hold things down: Rocks work but the whole process was cleaner, didn't smell or attract fruit flies when I got this weight and self burping lids/ Not waiting long enough: It takes a full two weeks even here in the south where it is hot for the sauerkraut to finish. It will switch from a light green to a light yellow/brown color throughout the entire jar. Tips for Making Sauerkraut with Kids Decide whether this is a good time to work with just one child or do everyone together. Let everyone know what the whole process is ahead of time. Prep everyone to take turns and let them know what their turn is going to be. Know it doesn't have to be perfect and it can be messy. Do it at a time when you aren't stressed or starving because it's not fun to cook with other people then. Turn it into a science experiment and have them track the color until it is done and see how long it takes.

If you've ever thought about gardening with kids my conversation with Tiana Woodbury is for you! She has gardened with her three young children for many years in many different types of gardens (container, community, and her own backyard) and is full of real, practical tips.  One of Tiana's superpowers is making the ordinary magical and she brings that to her gardening endeavors as well, but in very simple and doable ways. I certainly had lots of take-aways and things that I want to do a little differently and I'm sure you will too.

Earlier this year I shared what I did to make my smartphone less “smart” (Digital Minimalism in 2024). Since then, our family has faced some unexpected challenges that pushed us into survival mode, and naturally, our screen time increased, including mine.  This experience made me realize the unique challenges we face at different stages of our journey from merely surviving to truly thriving, especially regarding phone usage. In this week’s episode, I delve into these challenges and how becoming aware can lead to positive changes. Challenges with Phone Usage on the 5-Step Path from Surviving to Thriving Survival Mode: Increased screen time, watching more movies with the kids, zoning out with shows or scrolling. Re-entry: This is when we feel the most overwhelmed and tired, so we use phones as an easy escape. But this only prolongs the process of re-entry. Normalizing: Rewarding ourselves with screen time after a good day, leading to late nights and inconsistent routines. Exploring: Spending excessive time on phones researching or learning, starting with good intentions, but often getting trapped in endless scrolling. Each stage presents its own set of challenges, slowing down our progress. Changes I’ve Made To My (Android) Phone: Niagara Launcher (free version) No Chrome/Internet Essential apps only: phone, texting, calendar, Google Maps, Notion (for work), church directory, scriptures, LibriVox, Libby, Marco Polo, Kajabi (for courses I've bought) Put my phone away instead of carrying it with me Impact: Increased productivity (even with insomnia) Solving problems caused by a lack of connection by being present with my kids Tackling household issues together with my kids because my phone is put away

We woke up on Saturday morning and my son was staring out the back window when he realized he couldn't see the zipper on the trampoline across the yard. Upon closer inspection, he realized that one of the huge limbs on our peach tree had broken and had fallen on top of the olive tree next to it and on the ground.  We didn't have any big storms or high winds and the kids were asking if I knew what happened. Looking at the branches with peaches full of fruit it didn't take too long to realize that the weight of the peaches - still not ripe - was too much and broke the thick limb. This image immediately brought to my mind all of the projects, habits, and goals that I am working on right now in our home, family, garden, yard, homeschool, and business. After months of just being in survival mode, it feels so good to be making progress and gaining momentum in many areas of our lives. It is exciting to be crossing things off the list, solving some big pain points, and investing in relationships and projects that will last. But as we are charging ahead at top speed, this peach tree gave me pause about all of the "fruit" I'm trying to grow right now in my life. There was a crucial step that we missed in caring for this peach tree - pruning. If we had pruned some of the fruit off of the tree, the weight wouldn't have been too much and the tree would be fine. Instead of choosing to remove some of the fruit, we lost all of it (this would have been really sad, except this peach tree actually has a fungal infection so the peaches rot before they ripen and we were planning on taking it down this year anyway). It was a great reminder that If I don't do some pruning in my own life, it can be a fast track to burnout. Then all progress comes to a halt and we lose all of the fruit instead of just choosing a few things to let go of or simplify. What does this look like practically? How do we do some pruning in our own lives - especially when there are plenty of things we don't want to walk away from? The secret is a quarterly review. I first learned about this concept years ago from Greg McKeown's book, Essentialism, where he recommends a quarterly offsite review. This means you leave and go somewhere away from your home and work to think about your life. As a mom with a baby and toddler, this sounded like a fairyland ideal. However, that didn't stop me from doing an onsite review right in the walls of my own home. This entire process is in the Thriving in Motherhood Planner every quarter so you don't even have to remember how many months have gone by - when you see it, it's time to sit down and go through the process. You can do this in one sitting or over a week or two as you evaluate your life and figure out what matters most going forward. I walk through the entire process step by step in episode 102. You can also learn about quarterly reviews fit in with the entire planning system process with the Plan a Week You Can Win training  If we don't life can start to be like a snowball that you keep rolling around and acquiring more snow - getting bigger and bigger until you can't move it at all. Or like the peach tree whose limb snaps.

What do you do with all the stuff your kids create? This is something I have struggled with for years with my four very creative children. In this week’s episode, I’m sharing what has been working for us, our current problems and what we are doing about it, and a brand new framework my children and I came up with that is changing how we think about the things they (and I) make. Here are some of the things that have been working for us for a while: Paper management: Each child has a small drawer where we can dump anything they made that is flat. Once the bin is full we go through it and take pictures of things they don’t want to forget and put things they really care about into their paper box (file folder with files from 0-18 years). Everything else gets thrown away. 3-Dimensional projects: Each child has a Maker Box where they can put the things they’ve made that they don’t want to get rid of because they still want to play with it or it’s particularly cool. They are keeping the majority of the projects in their bedrooms while I focus on decluttering the rest of the house and creating spaces that are super easy to reset and modeling getting rid of things. The kids desire to have their rooms match the rest of the house. While these things have been working there are still some problems. The Maker Boxes do not contain the amount of stuff that they create and a one-in, one-out rule is pretty painful when they are things they love to play with.  It’s also painful to have messy bedrooms that are hard to navigate and find things in. While discussing these problems over breakfast, the kids and I created The Creation Cycle: You have an idea. You gather supplies. You make it. You take a picture of it (optional but sometimes they like to do this with their important creations) You put the supplies away. You enjoy it – either playing with it or displaying it. You find a home for it and put it away or throw it away. As we discussed what this looks like in our home, the kids identified that we have two main points where we are having problems with the cycle. There is nearly zero friction between having an idea and getting supplies to start making something. While in some ways this is fantastic, it also means there are usually LOTS of things in the first few steps of the creating cycle and rarely are those things making it all around the loop. Our biggest drop-off spot is after step 3, which is why bedroom surfaces have piles and piles of things on them. Right now, having a language to identify where the problems are happening and where every item in the room is in the Creation Cycle has been life-changing!  It changes the questions we are asking and empowers the kids to make decisions about what we do with things next. And we’re getting very close to having even the bedroom easy to reset (one down, one to go). As you think about creativity in your home, I’d love to know if this cycle fits into what is happening with your family as well. What’s working well? Where are the breakdowns happening?

We have four very creative kids who spend HOURS each day creating things (the most recent was an elaborate tin can phone system complete with bells and wall mounts for the cans to go between the top and bottom bunk).  In this week's episode, I'm sharing the things we've done that have made the biggest impact on raising creative children.   8 Tips For Raising Creative Kids Encourage their interests.  For example, from the time our son was 18 months old, he used our couches to build vehicles. To support this, we built wooden boxes he could combine with stools, chairs, and a nugget couch. This has sparked endless imaginative constructions.  Expose your kids to new experiences Anytime our kids get in a funk and don’t know what to do, we try to take them somewhere and let them experience something new. These experiences provide fresh inspiration to fuel their creative ideas. Have supplies on hand We like to have scissors, glue, cardboard, and paint on hand at our house. Think about the things your kids like to create and make those supplies accessible, easy to use, and easy to put away. Teach kids basic skills We’ve taught our kids how to knit, crochet, carve, use the sewing machine, hand sew, and weave. Giving them these basic skills has allowed them to create even more things. While we don’t force these skills on them, we support their interests by teaching them what they need to bring their ideas to life. Get books from the library on a variety of topics Borrow books from the library on various subjects. Exposing your kids to a wide range of topics is crucial for sparking their creativity and broadening their horizons. Help your kids create the things they want If our kids say they want something we help them make it. We’ve made shoe and coat racks, bows and arrows, chisels, hammers, swords, and shields. When they were little we were much more involved. As they’ve gotten older and more experienced, we’ve allowed them more independence as they create and build. Allow them to listen to audiobooks while they create Audiobooks are a fantastic way to keep kids engaged while they create We’ve found a good audiobook can extend their creative projects. Model creativity Creativity starts with us as parents. By modeling creativity, involving our kids in our projects, and providing inspiration, we set the stage for them to be more creative. We actively support their ideas and encourage them to explore and experiment. One of the most impactful things you can do as a parent is to develop a high tolerance for stepping back and letting your kids create. This might mean occasional disruptions, like missing kitchen chairs or dealing with creative messes. We’re currently teaching our kids to clean up after their projects, balancing creativity with responsibility. The more we embrace their creativity, the more it flourishes. Every mess, project, and mistake all add up to a fulfilling and creative life.

Whether you are exhausted, depressed, sick, burned out, or just want a break, in today's episode I'll be sharing my #1 tip that I've used for the last 10.5 years of motherhood to get me through the day when I need some space we still have the day to spend together. The solution has two parts: Go outside and do something creative. When my kids were little and we lived in an apartment, this looked like bringing things I could do with my hands to the playground: whittle spoons or animals out of sticks or scrap wood, crochet blankets, make shoes out of leather, or peel apples to make applesauce.  As my kids got older and we now live in a home, this often looks like doing house projects. Recently we've done major updates in our garden, built a retaining wall, made a bed frame, cut out wood animals for the kids to carve with friends, and we are currently building a rock climbing wall in the garage.  Always I've played instruments, often outside, for a low-energy creative option. A ukulele, guitar, or fiddle is a convenient option to grab and go to the great outdoors.  No matter what season of motherhood I'm in, the result has been the same.  Everyone was happier once we stepped outside. Fighting decreases. The kids get engaged in good play. I get some space and a break from having people touch me. And creativity brings some joy and satisfaction into my day, no matter how tired or crummy I feel. The thing I wasn't expecting was just how creative my kids would become from watching me over the years. There is never a dull moment at our house. Someone is always making something, or playing an instrument, and they are usually outside.  

It is so easy to fall into the "all I do is.." trap.  You fill in the blank - change diapers, drive kids to school and activities, feed people, nurse the baby, chase after the toddler. No matter the season of motherhood you are in, there are things that we do over and over again. And when we start to think that it is all we do, we can start to feel miserable and resentful of the people we love the most.  The antidote is simple but incredibly powerful: do a monthly review.  Even after 7 years of this 10-minute exercise, I am still surprised at how it changes my perspective and how I feel about my life.  In this week's episode, I'm sharing my findings from my most recent review in April and show you how you can do it yourself too. 5 Questions To Ask In a Monthly Review: What have I discovered or learned this month? What have I accomplished? Where have we gone? What significant things happened in our family? What books have I read or listened to (or podcasts or shows if that is the season you are in)? When you ask these questions you can see how rich your life actually is. And you can begin to build momentum and keep the progress going.  When you see you read a book - you are a reader! What else can you read? When you see you've made progress on projects or goals you can feel motivated to take the next baby steps. When you discover or learn something you realize just how interesting this life is and wonder what else there is to learn. When you see all the places you've gone it is easier to get out of the house again. And when you record the significant things in your family you realize why your house is in the state it's in...or maybe more accurately, how great you are really doing as you invest in these people and relationships. And if you discover that you don't have much to write about, you will have a clearer picture of WHY which brings much more compassion, grace, and understanding as well as gives you clues on how to move forward. You can do this in the Thriving in Motherhood Planner on the monthly review page so you don't even have to remember that a month has gone by - you just do it when the page shows up - or in a notebook or journal you already use.  If you want to do it with someone to celebrate your progress and plan what you are going to focus on for the next 30 days with some accountability, come join us in Soaring Mother's Society where we share our monthly reviews in small groups.

With summer quickly approaching, I needed to refocus on what we are going to make our learning priorities for the next few months. We go year-round in our homeschooling so that we can have the ultimate flexibility to take breaks or just enjoy the nice days outside. And, hot weather here in the South has us indoors more than in the winter months. In this week’s episode, I’m sharing the question I asked to give me the clarity I needed to decide what we are going to focus on in our schooling and home so that we can have confidence in how we are using our time and energy. The question I asked myself is: “What do each of my kids need to be prepared for next fall?” With this question, I was able to narrow down the few things that matter a lot and let go of the rest. For us, we are making a family project of working through Story of the World 4 this summer so we can enjoy modern history when we start Alveary in the fall. We are also focusing on some specific skills tailored to what each child needs, instead of keeping up with all of the subjects and curriculum. Everyone is continuing with math and a few of my kids are starting All About Spelling. We started a writing club by buying our own notebooks and writing on our own time, sharing what we write when we are ready. We are also working on organizing bedrooms and our school space in May to have our environments set up to make it easy to do what we want to do. I’m prepping the Alveary curriculum in June while getting ready for our annual cross-country road trip.  Resources We Are Using This Summer: Story of the World 4 Alveary (use code JJACKSON for a $25 discount) All About Spelling

For the last 30 days, I've been using the Thriving in Motherhood Journal. Before this personal challenge, I would use it about once a week when things were hard and noticed a nice lift to my week. But as this year has continued to surprise us I started to flounder and wanted to see what impact the journal would have in my life.  In this week's episode, I'll share some of the logistics and tips for using the journal, the impact it had on my life, and my invitation for you to give it a try for yourself.  You may be wondering what it actually took for me to stick to my 30-day challenge. Here are some things that I found helpful: Have a pen ready Have multiple windows of when you will use the journal and put it in the next likely spot (next to your bed, office, kitchen, etc.) Be flexible with morning or night (or both). Pick it back up when you miss a day. Don’t pressure yourself to answer every question. Pick the relevant ones for that day and leave the rest. Don’t worry about keeping the daily and weekly pages perfectly ordered. When I started this challenge, I was floundering. We’ve had a hard year on lots of levels - health, jobs, lots of things going on, kids struggling with different things (including surgery), and the unexpected keeps popping up. I have felt exhausted. Here are some of the positive impacts I noticed during my 30-day challenge: Using the journal has empowered me through this season. I’ve been surprised at how much joy I have felt in the last 30 days. I’ve been able to parent better, more consistently, and more confidently instead of pulling into myself and surviving through the hard days.  I’ve processed some hard emotions/situations so I could truly find peace and let go. I did a lot more service outside of my home in 30 days than I did all year. Small ways, like helping return a grocery cart and carry food out to the car, and bigger things too.  I captured many magic moments during the last 30 days and now my days are full of them. My health wasn’t great during this window but when I did my monthly review I discovered a miraculous amount of things got accomplished. I attribute this to the power of having the vision in my Thriving in Motherhood Planner and asking the daily questions in the journal about the next three steps for my priorities that week. I got rid of mom guilt which normally rears its ugly head during hard survival times with the question, “What would help me feel successful today?” This question allowed me to pivot to what mattered most each day. I have struggled with anxiety about facing the next day in the past and fret at night about what is to come, especially when I’m sleep-deprived. But this journaling process helped me live more in the moment each day and ending the day with magic moments, gratitude, big wins, and God’s involvement in my life made a big difference. This process led me to naturally have a better routine before bed and get rid of tech when I was journaling. I’d like to extend an invitation to you to pull out your Thriving in Motherhood Journal (or get yours today) and commit to 30 days of journaling. Watch and see the difference it makes in your life. If you've already been using the journal, I would really appreciate it if you left a review on Amazon to help other moms find it and see if it would be a good fit for them. And as a special bonus, if you leave a review on Amazon, you’ll be entered to win a 2024 coil-bound Thriving in Motherhood Planner!  There are some amazing bonuses you can claim when you purchase the journal to help you get the most out of it so don’t wait to get yours!

I got a fantastic question from a mother who is using the 2024 Thriving in Motherhood Planner this year: "I get confused sometimes about the distinction between things like goals  (quarterly vs. yearly) vs. projects vs. habits vs. Big 3 vs. focus vs. tracking.  Should these things all be related or not necessarily?  For example, on page 31, I'm not sure what goals vs projects are.  Do I choose a big goal and then break that down into projects, or are goals and projects different? Should my daily, weekly, and quarterly goals all go back to my 10-12 goals for the year?  I guess I'm just not clear on how these things are different or if they should all be connected!"  In this week's episode are going to do a deep dive on the difference between Projects, Goals, and Habits and how you can practically organize your ideas to make things happen with the Thriving in Motherhood Planner. First, use this how it works best for you!  There are no grades or right or wrong answers. But, if you’re curious, here’s how I use my Thriving in Motherhood Planner in these different areas. Projects: Projects are things with multiple steps that need or want to happen. For example, on my list are creating a family meal binder, updating our family yearbooks, planting raspberries, planting a medicinal and culinary herb garden, and cleaning out garden pathways.   Goals: Goals are a little more personal and stretching—definitely outside of my comfort zone. This year, I put three goals down: write a book, do community service as a family, and do a cooking camp with the kids. These are also multistep goals, but they are also about shaping who we are as people and doing things that are intentionally hard.  Habits: Habits are also about becoming—but on a daily level. For me, I wrote about prepping for the next day and knowing what's going to happen so we get a head start, tracking finances, daily exercise, and reading with a commonplace notebook. Could some of these be mixed in different places - absolutely.   Another way to think about it is that Goals are things I want to HAVE, projects are things I want to DO, and Habits are things I want to BECOME. Also, I don't fill out page 33 (Goals, Habits, Projects page) for the whole year all at once.  I do it quarter by quarter. Sometimes, it is in planning, and sometimes it is in review to just see an overview of what happened. Will goals or habits have projects involved? Very possibly! Do I use the goal planning pages for a project? Sometimes! Do I not use a goal planning page for a goal? Yes! I like to have my daily, weekly, and quarterly goals funnel down from my vision. Some years, my vision is clearly defined on page 33, and sometimes, it is NOT. But I am picking what I focus on each quarter based on my vision and my month based on the quarter. My big three for the week have at least one thing from my vision on it most weeks (and sometimes it's taken up with homeschooling, celebrating a birthday, or getting the car fixed). Focus is usually more about who I want to be, a scripture that I want to remember, a thriving thought that is helping me navigate day-to-day life or something that is challenging me and I want to navigate it better. It is nice to have it as a reminder on my weekly page spread. Tracking is for the daily habits I want to keep a record of accomplishing. In some seasons, it is really motivating to check them off, and other times, I think just doing the things is enough and could care less if there is a check in the checkbox. If you have any more questions about how I use the Thriving in Motherhood Planner or whether it’s right for you, email me at [email protected], and I’ll get back to you!

Cleaning my home with my children has always been my number one priority. When they were babies this looked like using cleaning supplies that would be safe while they were in a baby carrier on me. As they were toddlers, it meant they could clean with me, and I wasn't worried about what they were touching. As they get older it means having materials I'm confident they can use safely by themselves.  But knowing that this is what I wanted and executing it were two different things. In this week's episode, I'm sharing all the things I've tried and what worked, what didn't work, and what we are doing now that has been the right fit for us. I tried many things over the years. The first was to walk through the cleaning aisle at the store to find the products we needed. But due to overwhelm (the number of options, not knowing which products were actually safe, and calculating the expense of it all), I always walked out of there with nothing. This also meant that for years, the actual cleaning in our home was minimal because I was so worried about picking the wrong thing. My friend Hannah (we were neighbors in grad student housing - true friendship is formed in not ideal living conditions) created a course called Simple Green Cleaning (not available right now) that taught me how to clean the majority of my house with a few basic ingredients like baking soda, vinegar, and dish soap. I thoroughly enjoyed feeling confident cleaning my house and mixing up what I needed when I needed it. But when I started teaching my kids how to do it, they were so inspired by the process that they created their own cleaning supplies by mixing soaps, shampoo, conditioner, and lotions, and it made a pretty big mess. This didn't quite work with my purpose of cleaning with my kids. A few years ago, we decided to try Force of Nature, which is completely safe for skin, disinfects, and can be used on all surfaces. It has been a game-changer. We have ONE cleaning product we use on EVERYTHING. It makes it simple to teach our children how to use it (plus they LOVE the process of making it and never complain when I ask them to clean) and I never have to worry about what they are breathing in or is touching their skin.  While I haven't done a petri dish test to confirm how well it disinfects surfaces, but it cleans well enough to remove all smells and clean surfaces, so that is good for me! When it comes to my main priority of cleaning with my kids, this one checks all of the boxes. If you want to try Force of Nature yourself, you can get a discount with this link: Force of Nature Get 40% off bundles in April with code: PLANET40 Get 60% off Cleaning and Laundry Duo Bundles with PLANET60

When I had three kids, four and under, I learned about Charlotte Mason and her principle of spreading a wide feast of ideas. Practically, this looks like 20 different subjects in a Charlotte Mason classroom that get covered during the week.  Before we were in the formal school years, I got into the habit of discovering where all the different sections of books were at the library so I could just walk the shelves and grab some that covered a wide range of ideas without any preplanning. For years, we have had this system in place that has provided an educational cushion through all the ups and downs in our lives and given our kids a lot of learning in a very natural way. For years, we have had this system in place that has provided an educational cushion through all the ups and downs in our lives and given our kids a lot of learning in a very natural way. I also supplement by putting books on hold at the library that deep-dive into what my kids want to learn more about so that I’m not hunting for specific books once we get there. In this week’s episode, I’m sharing practical tips for not losing the library books and keeping free books free, bringing some great books into your home, and some of our recent favorites. How we avoid fines and the library to keep our books free: We moved all our personal books upstairs to a home library and have a separate bookshelf downstairs for the library books to create separation. We have ONE library card, so we don’t lose track of the books we have checked out, what’s on hold, and what we have to return. We try to get to the library on the same day every week so that we don’t have many different due dates to keep track of. I try and go to our library account after we get home from the library to renew any books that we might have missed returning. We have a library book bag that holds between 20-30 books, which creates some margin. Recent Library Book Favorites That Were So Good We Would By Them Professor Wooford McPaw’s History of Astronomy Papa is A Poet A Story about Robert Frost The Planet Hunter: The Story Behind What Happened to Pluto Nothing Stopped Sophie: The Story of Unshakable Mathematician Sophie Germain Hawk Rising Send a Girl!: The True Story of How Women Joined the FDNY Find Me! Adventures in the Forest The Apartment: A Century of Russian History Under Your Feet... Soil, Sand and Everything Underground Charles Dickens (Little People, Big Dreams) A Walk in London Cooking Class Global Feast!: 44 Recipes That Celebrate the World’s Cultures  

Synthia Simenson is a mother of five (almost six) children ages 10 and under. She went through the struggles that I think we can all relate to when we first become moms—overwhelm, unsure of where to focus her time and energy, and not even sure what she wanted life to look like. I hope you are as inspired by her journey as I am, from those survival years to making intentional changes that created space for her to dream.  Things like minimum baselines for taking care of herself and her home, weekly out-of-the-house dates with her husband (a minimum of 3 hours!), and creating a schedule so she wasn't reinventing the wheel every single day (notice the 3 pillars of thriving there?!).  She also began asking this life-changing question: "What is something you want more of?" As she and her husband discussed this on their weekly dates, their answer was travel. They both love being in new places, connecting with people, and spending time together as a family while having new experiences and discovering things. Leaning into that dream has turned into years of trips all around the world. Synthia's Hacks For Traveling Internationally With Kids Plan trips that you are excited about because it is overwhelming and stressful, and you need something to really motivate you to do it because there are so many benefits Each kid has a day bag and night bag (toothbrush, pajamas, night diaper, etc.) Pack a swim bag with everything needed for swimming or a beach day Church bag with everything for church - bows, snacks, activities, etc. Make a customized packing list on the computer, print it out, and modify it according to the trip. Then, hand the list to the older children and have them pack by a deadline. This keeps you organized and lets the kids step up. Bring everything into a dining room or guest bedroom so it is consolidated into one space If going on a two-week international trip, start packing two weeks before because there are going to be that many details and things that go into it. Have a babysitter come over to help with packing Everyone gets their own snack bag that lasts for the entire trip. They get to pack 10 healthy snacks and some candies. She never regrets packing lots of food options to help with hungry moments. Have a restaurant bag with diapers, wipes, and black t-shirts for  little kids instead of bibs to cover their clothes, and use it all week to keep them clean Listen to podcasts or YouTube videos about the place you are going to (start 6 months before) to get lots of ideas about what you can do without sitting in front of the computer all the time (though there is plenty of that, too). When I plan trips with kids, I skip over any blog that talks about travel without kids. I only read from sources that include "...with kids." Have a toiletries bag that is 90% ready to go for travel with duplicates of everything Have bags with long handles that go over the headrest in the car to help keep the kids' things organized so things are up off of the ground Always have 10 empty grocery sacks with you - there is always a kid who throws up, or has an accident, or there is garbage - and it helps you feel really prepared Traveling with your family might not be your dream, but I hope that this week's episode inspires you to ask the question, "What is something I want more of?" and see where it leads. 

Have you done those exercises where you write out your priorities or values? It is easy for me to put on paper what I care about, but where are my time and energy really going?  In this season of survival mode for our family, we have really stripped away a lot of what we usually do, and it is easy for me to say that we aren't very consistent in things that I wish we were better at. But as I sat pondering this one morning during my scripture study, I realized that I actually AM consistent at some things, even in survival mode, and those things are my true priorities. I wrote three different lists to help me get a more realistic picture of what I care about with not just my words but my actions, and then I evaluated and made changes from there.  In this week's episode, I walk you through the entire process, using my answers as an example to get you started. Once again, I just used a Think and Process page in my Thriving in Motherhood Planner for this exercise. 3 Questions to Determine Your True Priorities: What am I consistent at? What am I almost consistent at but drop the ball quickly when things are hard? What is done occasionally that you wish was more consistent? Once you've written your lists, ask these follow-up questions to help you evaluate and make changes: Is there anything obvious you would like to change? Is there an easy swap from something that is more consistent that doesn't matter as much to something that is less consistent and matters more? What needs more accountability? What could you create a system around so that it doesn't require as much from you? I realized that a lot of the things that I drop in a hard season, I am pretty good at picking up again once I have available energy. But there are some things that are done more occasionally that I realized I need to create systems around to give my kids more responsibility to be consistent in certain areas. After going through this process, it clarified to me where I need to devote more time, energy, and resources to make the biggest impact on consistently living out our priorities.

When you’ve lost momentum in every area of your life, and it feels overwhelming because there is so much to do, what do you do? Often, the answer is to do a brain dump—write everything you can possibly think of on a piece of paper to clear your head.  The problem is, what do you do after that? How do you actually gain the clarity you need to move forward?  This last week, I sat down and prayerfully asked that question, and a new process unfolded that made it very clear where to put my time and energy to start making progress on the things that really mattered most to me, even though we were still sliding between survival mode and re-entry. I thought about making it fancy, but in the end, I just used a Think and Process page in the Thriving in Motherhood planner to complete this entire process. Steps For Clarity When There is Too Much to Do: Brain Dump Cross anything off the list that isn’t actually really important right now What on your list has a next action step that is 5 minutes or less? What on your list is urgent? What progress have you made on each item (one box for started, two boxes for progress has been made, and three boxes for nearly done)? Transfer the 5-minute or less next action steps, urgent items, and nearly done items from your list onto your weekly plan.  For me, there were two next action steps, two urgent items, and two things I was nearly done with. This allowed me to get some quick wins and start to build momentum and bring excitement and joy back into everyday life.  Watch this week's episode of the podcast for an in-depth walkthrough of this process and what made my list. 

Last week, we spent a week in Memphis, Tennessee, as a family while Andrew attended a conference. It was a great trip with lots of amazing moments and some really hard ones, too. In this week’s episode, I’m sharing the reflection process that I did after this trip so that we can take in all the data, evaluate the wins, what we loved, and what we would do to make things a little bit better next time.   Some of the specific tips might be applicable to your family and travel situation, and some of them won’t, but either way, I hope that you will use this process after you have an adventure—big or small—with your family.   It takes a lot of effort to pull off family adventures, and reflection is the essential step that allows us to do it again as we figure out what worked and what didn’t.   Here are some things we reflected on that went well, didn’t go well, and what we would do differently next time:   Mindset: This is a grand experiment, and I’m just here to collect data about what is going well and what’s not going well so we can make changes. If I go in with expectations other than these, my hopes will usually be dashed. Food: We stuck to our usual road trip staples on the way out (bagel sandwiches, fruits, veggies, something special - goldfish and veggie straws - and stopped for dinner at Chipotle). The rest of the trip was a little bit rocky. Hotel breakfast takes an hour, which means it is both an activity and a lot to manage, but that is just the new expectation. We packed lunches (sandwiches, fruits, and veggies) and grabbed dinner at a restaurant, but we were all just a little bit hungry. Next time we are going to be in a hotel for a long period of time, we think we’ll bring an Instapot so we can have more food that we are used to that is more filling. Quiet Time: I got some activities at the dollar store (coloring book, sticker book, playdough, standup) as an experiment to see if having a little novelty could get me a short nap in the middle of the day. It worked about 50% of the time, but the activities were a big hit and did get me about 20 minutes of rest. It also gave the kids something to do while we were waiting around in the morning for everyone to get ready with one bathroom. This was something that went well, and I would add more intentional effort into it next time because it was a budding success. Activities: I started by looking at the weather to get a general idea of what we were facing and saw some rainy days and clear days with generally cooler weather. My conclusion was we needed a mix of indoor and outdoor activities, leaning heavily on indoor options. We went to a few paid museums (National Civil Rights Museum, Cotton Museum, Flight Museum, and Children's Museum), and a few of those had groupons with huge discounts. We took advantage of local parks and found some awesome gems, and it also gave us outside time in spaces where the kids could just run and play and not be corrected by us. We also found things we would do things in our town anyway, like going to the public library. Took me off guard: I had zero moments without the kids. In the past, when the kids were little I would be awake an hour or two before them and work in the bathroom in the morning, but this trip, we went to bed together, woke up together, and spent every waking moment together (except for my 20 minutes of quiet time when they were one bed away). On the last night, Andrew took the kids after he finished working so I could go on a walk by myself (and then I found something fun and invited them to join me because it was too good not to share), but even that 15 minutes really rejuvenated me and is something we will be more strategic about next time we join Andrew on a work trip. Public Transportation was a huge hit: It saved a lot of hassle with parking. It was a fun activity that the kids enjoyed, and it helped them build some confidence in navigating a new place. We got a day pass for a few dollars each, so it was very economical. Include your kids in the entire process. Instead of adventures being all on mom's shoulders, use trips to build family unity and help the kids learn from and own the effort and the joy of adventures. My oldest created the packing list a few days before the trip. Everyone helped clean out the car, gather activities, shop and prepare food, and pack clothes. We might have gone a little slower, but it kept everyone doing the same thing, and there were fewer messes in other spaces around the house. When I started to get a little frazzled at the end of the trip packing things up to go home and everyone running around, I remembered I could ask the kids for help, and they did - with joy. Involving the children in the process of family adventures is something I want to get better at with future trips. Keep Similar Rhythms to What We Do At Home: Friday night was still pizza and movie night (with Papa Johns Pizza). At night, we had the same bedtime routine and morning routine. Every day, we came back to the hotel in the middle of the day for quiet time. We kept the basic anchors in our day and week so everyone knew what to expect and didn't start from scratch. We could have brought in a few more daily habits 

When I shared 3 Thriving Thoughts for Hard Days a few weeks ago, we were not at the end of the unexpected and hard around here. The reality is that my capacity and desire for doing things and running the household are shrinking as my energy is being diverted toward the emotional and physical realities and reactions to our circumstances. I’ve also realized that my physical energy and health vary greatly every month, and I have some ongoing health challenges. I want to have a more realistic handle on what I’m committing to. When I created my vision at the beginning of the year, I had no clue what the first few months would throw at us, and I very excitedly jumped into lots of things, but now I’m finding myself stressed by these self-imposed expectations. As I was pondering this situation earlier this week, I had the inspiration (in my usual place, the shower) to write a Yes List. What is a Yes List, you ask?  A yes list is a list of everything you’ve said yes to. Because I really don’t like not finishing things and seeing them through to the end, it was very helpful for me to put things on paper and look at them objectively. Then, I could sift through everything and simplify those “yeses” to the absolute essential. I used a Think and Process page in my Thriving in Motherhood Planner and carried it around with me during the day so I could add to it. Here are five areas from my Yes List that I’m currently simplifying: Books: I revisited my reading list and wrote down all the books I wanted to come back to in the future. For now, I’m focusing on reading this that builds my character and less on books that require me to take action. Gardening: Instead of an all-or-nothing approach, I’m simplifying our gardening activities and making progress without making it too complicated.  Rooms: We are continuing our journey to simplify our living spaces, focusing on reducing clutter without getting too overwhelmed with perfection. Programs/Commitments: I evaluated all the programs I’m a part of and sorted through what is time-sensitive and what can wait. I’ve also re-evaluated my commitments, saying no to some things I had previously said yes to.  Homeschooling: We are embracing our current homeschool and focusing on relationships over perfection. This approach fosters a deeper and more meaningful learning experience. In a nutshell, I’m on a quest to get really clear on what really matters RIGHT NOW and redirecting my energy and focus where it counts the most. Writing in my Thriving in Motherhood Journal every day is really helping me find the guidance I’m seeking.  

If you’ve been stuck on Exploring on the 5 Step Path from Surviving to Thriving, this week’s episode is for you! Monica Packer shares how a Do Something List can be a powerful tool for exploring and discovering who you are and what you love. It’s a practical push to find fulfillment in your everyday life. It is separate from a goals or resolutions list. It’s more about exploration than competition.  Monica is also no stranger to struggles and survival seasons and you will hear how she has learned to navigate those seasons a little more gracefully and find peace with things looking differently when life gets hard. For Monica, the biggest lesson from the Do Something List is that the transformation lies in the process, not the outcome. It’s not completing the list that brings fulfillment. It’s in the trying that you rediscover who you are, be more of yourself, and experience the trickle-down effect that comes from that. Monica’s Tips for a Do Something List Pick a timeframe that this list applies to (for example, the whole year or a season). Start with a lot of reflection on different parts of yourself that you want to bring back and things you want to try or are curious about. Finalize the list based on the things that are right for the season - not paying prices that are too high for the season you are in. It is a push to find time, but not to break you. Start small and in doable ways so you can gently stretch this part of yourself. You can take things off or add things to the list. Start with the funnest thing on your list that also seems doable or something that fits into what you are already doing (like trying new recipes). You don’t need to complete your list! Monica never has in the last 8 years. You can get a step-by-step through and more ideas in this week’s episode and dive deeper with Monica at: https://www.workinprogressacademy.co/dsl

We’ve had an intense few months over at our house, and it has taken its toll. But the wonderful thing is that with breakdowns come breakthroughs. Today, I’m sharing three new Thriving Thoughts (what I call the new way of thinking I like to hold onto) I’ve had that are helping me in this season.  Whether these thoughts resonate with you or not, I hope that when you are struggling, you will follow this pattern that allows you to find more empowering and helpful thoughts. Pattern for Creating Thriving Thoughts: Notice when you are feeling negative emotions and uncover the thoughts you are thinking. This takes practice and may take some pondering. Write down the unhelpful thought Pray for a paradigm shift - how can you look at this situation differently? What is another way to think about it? For me, prayer is essential because only God truly understands my brain and how it would be helpful for me to approach my own struggles Ponder better ways of thinking. Write down the new thriving thoughts.  Here are three new Thriving Thoughts that have come from this season: Focus on who God is and what He can do instead of my circumstances.  I was caught in a loop of repeating our challenging circumstances. I noticed when reading scriptures that there are two groups of people: those who focus on the circumstances and those who focus on who God is and what God can do. (Moses and the Israelites are a great example of this). I’m now working on repeating who God is and what God can do - looking up instead of getting caught in the struggle. I don’t have to feel good too… One of the struggles I have about not feeling good physically or mentally is that it’s hard to be the mom I want to be. To be lighthearted, gentle, and patient is such a challenge when carrying stress, pain, and exhaustion (can you relate?) Then I feel guilty for not being those things and kind of mad that I’m dealing with pain, stress, and exhaustion (brains are fun). No, I’m even grumpier. But one day during this cycle, I had a wonderful Thriving Thought pop into my mind (inspiration, I’m sure): “I don’t have to feel good to smile.” And then I realized that applied to pretty much anything. I don’t have to feel good to be patient, lighthearted, make dinner, play a game - add your own. This was incredibly empowering. It would be easier if I felt good, but I don’t have to feel good to make the choice to behave the way I want to behave. I can do one small thing that will make a difference today.  I find it incredibly easy to get overwhelmed when we are in hard seasons. Energy and time allotment for regular tasks get taken up by different things. The house gets out of hand, and I don’t have loads of capacity to deal with it. Multiply this by a few days or weeks, and running away can seem like a good idea. But you know what? One small thing makes a HUGE difference. I sat down with my daughter and sorted through a pile of papers and cleared a shelf and we both felt on top of the world. And it gets some momentum going in the right direction. And then I can do it again tomorrow. A five-minute effort multiples over days, and you can absolutely see progress. What Thriving Thoughts carry you through hard seasons?  

If decorating your home feels overwhelming and you don’t know where to start, this conversation with Myquillyn Smith will bring clarity and hope. We discuss house rules (and how to break them), how to fix things when they don’t look right, how to decorate on a budget, and how to figure out what your next step is when it comes to creating a home that you love being in and feels good. I have personally read and implemented what Myquillyn has taught in her books and community since 2018, and I’m so grateful to be able to introduce you to some whom I’ve learned a lot from when it comes to creating rooms in my home that I truly love. One of the decorating principles that has made the biggest difference in my home is Myquillyn’s decorating trinity. The Homey Trinity: Rugs, Drapes, and Lighting As someone who doesn’t love a lot of trinkets to care of, understanding the impact of these three items has set me free and allowed me to to confidently create spaces I love to be in. If you are just getting started putting rooms together, an invaluable resource - and where I first learned about the power of rugs, drapes, and lighting is in Myquillyn’s book Cozy Minimalist Home. A confident decorator is someone who, when the room doesn’t look right, knows what to do. No one is born knowing that. You learn from mentors, from trial and error, and by asking lots of questions. Decorating can be scary because other people see it. But your home should be your safe place to try things out.  Decorating is low stakes and is a great place to take a risk and learn from your attempts. It is a great thing to teach your kids that some risks are high stakes, some are low stakes, and decorating falls into the low-stakes and fun category. A fabulous starting space for learning what doesn’t look right and why is Myquillyn Smith’s fourth book, House Rules.

I’ve been meal planning for years in pretty much the same way. I’ve put my process into seven steps for today’s episode.  As my 6-year-old said when she sat next to me while I edited this episode, “Mom, just because it works for you doesn’t mean it will work for anyone else.” She’s 100% right. But I hope that seeing my exact process will give you some inspiration and a starting place to figure out a meal planning system that works for you. My 7-Step Weekly Meal Planning System: Determine what stores you shop for groceries at. What is the schedule for ads?  Look at the weekly ads. What is on sale that you can use in your meal plan? If you have themed nights, pick that first (e.g., Pizza nights on Friday) Look at your calendar and figure out what meals need to be fast/simple. What needs to be prepped ahead in a crockpot or Instapot? What nights do you have to cook more (maybe a bulk recipe to have leftovers for lunch)? Fill in with your favorites. I pick maybe one or two new recipes each week, but no more than that. Have favorite sources where you go to look for new recipes. I use Faithful Plateful’s website and cookbooks the most frequently. I use Mealboard to collect recipes we like. Currently, I’m creating a meal binder that has our favorites broken down into different categories: quick and easy breakfast, lunch, dinner, road trip food, and having people over for dinner. Then, topical rotations based on ingredients: lentil meals, quinoa meals, beans, tofu, etc. (Once I have this finished, I’ll give access to it to members of my Simplify to Soar Club) Keep track of my meals in the Thriving in Motherhood Planner for the week. Sometimes, I treat it like a list of seven meals that we have ingredients for, and then I pick what sounds best each night. But at this point, I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out what type of day we are going to have and sticking to what I wrote.

I’ve started this year by reading a lot from many different genres and areas of interest. Today, I’m sharing six of the books I read in January and my takeaways from each. How To Grow Your Small Business Awaking Wonder Hidden Potential Habits of the Household The Psychology of Money The Penderwicks on Gram Street  

I’ve had three challenging pregnancies with other kids at home. I was very intentional with the time in between pregnancies to prepare for the next one, figuring it would also be a challenge.    Today, I’m covering what I did, what worked, what didn’t, and tips to help you figure out where to put your time and energy. These are the same tips I’d give you even if you aren’t planning another pregnancy but in a season where things are going well. You can put your efforts to use in a challenging pregnancy or enjoy the increased capacity in other pursuits. 1 - Establish Strong Anchors In Your Day Begin and end your day with consistency. Having set routines for mornings, quiet time, and bedtime creates a predictable routine for everyone. 2 - Create Family Systems During non-pregnancy times, set up family systems. While they may not always run smoothly when you’re feeling sick during pregnancy, having these systems in place allows for a quicker return to order when you’re feeling better.  In My Made to Soar: Next 90 Days program, I delve deeper into this process but basically you identify one small problem, set up the environment to make it easy to do the thing you want to do, walk through the process yourself, and then teach your family how to do it and give everyone a role. 3 - Food At first I cooked freezer meals and snacks ahead of time, thinking we could rely on those during morning sickness, but I never got the timing right. It always took longer than I hoped to get pregnant and that food would not be great by the time we needed it. I started creating meal plans with lots of different recipes in it for variety knowing I would probably only eat them once and then not want them again. What I discovered was we really just ate basic, simple meals during that time. Stock up on paper products to reduce the amount of dishes you need to do. 4 - Toys I put all the toys away and just leave one or two favorites. I wish this was to keep the house cleaner, but I found that my cleaning up ideals were quickly dashed when I was so sick. But it did create options to pull out something “new” to occupy my young kids with. 5 - Activities For homeschool, I’ve set up a daily rotation of activities for my younger kids and I think this could be an interesting option to carry through a pregnancy as well - as long as they are easy enough that you’re not too sick to manage it. 6 - Reduce Screen Time to Almost Nothing This way everyone will be ready to enjoy it when you need it most. Come up with a curated collection of things that you are okay with everyone watching. We’ve always relied heavily on Sound of Music to get us through this season. 7 - Develop Audio Book Listening Skills Listen to the guide I share in this video 8 - Physical Health Invest in your physical well-being, starting with a foundation of good nutrition and regular exercise. I’ve always liked incorporating bar workouts for strength so I could build up muscle before the sickness begins. 9 - Read When Mommies Get Sick With Your Kids This book helps show your kids how to make the most of it when their mother experiences illness or injury and can be helpful to prepare your kids for what’s to come. 10 - Create Comfortable Places for Sickness Prepare a designated space for yourself and your children to rest during times of illness. In our case, an Ikea couch that transforms into a queen-sized bed provided a convenient gathering spot. 11 - Focus on Mental Preparation This made the biggest difference. I went to therapy in between pregnancy three and four specifically with the goal to prepare and train for another pregnancy because I didn’t handle the third one all that well. Learning about cognitive distortions, specifically “should” statements, started to set my mind free from how things were “supposed to be” vs. what reality looked like.  I also created the Thriving in Motherhood Journal with Megan Dilworth and Pheobe Cook with the intention of using it to keep my mind going down helpful paths after doing so much research to learn where I went wrong and focus on who I want to be instead of what I want to do. For more on this, you can watch the Soaring Mother’s Summit season: Thriving in a Difficult Preganancy with Jayne Anne Osborne. We have other pregnancy-related sessions in there as well.

Our family has been using audiobooks for years and they have become an integral part of our routines. Today, I’m sharing why we love listening to audiobooks in our home, how we listen, how to develop the skill of listening to audiobooks, and our favorite audiobooks to listen to by age.    Why Audiobooks? Audiobooks have been our trusty companions for years, adding a touch of magic to our quiet time and car rides. Here’s why we love them: A daily break for me. Empowers the kids to explore incredible stories independently. Encourages my kids to work on projects longer because they can listen while they work (or clean!). Introduces challenging books in an accessible way, fostering an excitement to read the actual book.   How We Listen: Our audiobook journey started with a CD player from Goodwill. We burned CDs with our favorite MP3s or borrowed them from the library. Over time, we upgraded to basic Kindles snagged on a Black Friday deal. With a passcode in place, the kids can only use it to enjoy audiobooks. We use the Libby and Hoopla apps for library access, making audiobooks an affordable choice.   Developing the Skill: We started with audiobooks during my pregnancy with our third child. Sick on the couch with a three and a one year old, we used the CD player to listen to stories while the kids played with playdoh or did quiet activities near me. This started to train the skill with me in the room.   Once the kids stopped napping, we rebranded the time to “Rest and Read Time.” Since none of our kids were actually able to read yet, we started with audiobooks.   Road trips and errands turned into shared listening sessions, which got the younger kids excited about audiobooks.   Our Favorite Picks By Age: Ages 3-5 - Start with story telling adventures with music. Alexander’s Amazing Adventures Focus on the Family: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe Scripture Scouts Ages 4-6 Mr. Poppers Penguin Little House in the Big Woods Little House on the Prairie Little House on the Banks of Plum Creek Winnie the Pooh Stuart Little Trumpet of the Swan Magic Tree House Boxcar Children Chronicals of Narnia All of a Kind Family A to Z Mysteries Calendar Mysteries Fairy Tales: Jim Weiss Collection 7-10 - Classics start Little Women Little Men The Penderwicks The Secret Garden 5 Little Peppers and How They Grew My Side of the Mountain The Far Side of the Mountain The Moffats Series Pinky Pie Series The Shakespseare Stealer The Birchbark House Story of the World Anne of Green Gables Harry Potter 1-3  

This is my seventh year creating a vision for my year. It is always a new experience, and I’m amazed at what comes out of this exercise. In today’s episode, I’m sharing what I’ve learned in 2023 and what I’m focusing on, changing, and working toward in 2024. Here are a few areas from my 2024 vision:  Investing More Into What’s Working: Road trips Family adventures (beach, historical sites, new experience) Vegetable gardening Having friends over for dinner Hiking and time outdoors Relationships with our siblings and parents Projects: Rock climbing wall Write and publish a book Plant fruit trees and berries Start a medicinal and culinary herb garden Fix our fence Back to Basics Home management and our weekly rhythm  Taking care of myself My relationship with God Every year what my vision works like is a surprise. It is unique and fits for the season I am in. I continue to share what my vision looks like as an inspiration for you to see that there is no wrong way to create one. I don’t try to stick to a specific formula. I try to include God in the process and just see where I am for my learning and growth. If self care and creating good habits are part of your vision for 2024, Mom Matters Too is the place for you. Learn more HERE. And if you need help creating your vision, check out my Create Your Vision Mini-Course.

When it comes to goal setting, moms need different strategies in different seasons of motherhood. In this week’s video, I’ll be sharing what works in setting goals for the pregnancy and baby phase, when you have children under six, when you have school-aged kids and a full schedule, and when your children leave home. There are also principles that apply to all of us, no matter what stage we are in.  Tips for Goal Planning in Every Season of Motherhood: Survival Seasons (pregnancy, postpartum, baby stage): Create goals around who you want to BE. There is plenty you are learning how to do in this phase of motherhood. When You Have Children 6 and Under: This is an exploring phase to figure out what type of motherhood you want to create and what you like to do. Do projects, try new things, and start something that scares you. Keep two lists - things you can do when your kids are sleeping and things you can do when they are awake. When You Have School-Aged Children: When schedules are full, and you feel like there isn’t room to add more, ask yourself, “Where do I want to see progress in my life this year?” and be intentional about improving and going deeper on what you’ve already committed to. This progress will create excitement and energy. Empty Nesters: This phase can feel a lot like becoming a new mom - disorienting if you don’t know how to fill your days. This is a good time to set goals to explore and figure out what matters to you or do things you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t gotten to you. It’s important to remember that as a mom, goals can include things you do with your kids, too. For a long time, I thought that for a goal to count, it had to be something I did away from my kids during alone time. So not true! I love to have a whole list of things I can work on when my kids are with me. Some things are more mindless activities that I can do next to them while they play, like wood carving or crocheting. Others are things we can work on together, like growing a garden. As you are figuring out your goals this year, make sure at least one thing can be done with your children. It’s good for everyone to see mom working on goals! If you’re ready to achieve your goals, tune in, grab a pen, take some notes, and get excited about the progress you’ll make in 2024!

At the start of this new year, I realized I needed to make some changes to how I’m using my phone. In this week’s episode, I’m outlining the problems I was having with technology and how it impacted my daily life, the parameters I’ve set for myself with my phone, and how I’ve set myself up for success. 5 Reasons to Reduce Phone Usage: Often, when things are out of balance, or we’re not in our usual routines and rhythms, it’s easy to fill the lack of structure and numb our feelings with screen time. This just makes things worse. I find that when I have things I want to do on my phone - whether it’s an audiobook, podcast, course, project, etc. - then it is easy for me to come up with lots of excuses for the kids to keep playing, not involve them in helping out around the house, or for me to step away and finding ways to spend less time with them. These are great resources, but I want a break from the pull to step away. When I did my yearly review, I was surprised by the stories I was telling myself vs. reality. I was shocked at how much we did with family experiences and relationship-building with our family and people close to home. I want to be more aware and let reality count. I’ve been on my devices a lot more the last quarter with business and Christmas prep, which then turns to wasting time because our phones are masters at rabbit holes. I’ve gone down great rabbit holes I’ve learned a lot from, BUT it was still many hours on a screen and disengaged. I want to course correct and be more engaged at home. I want to give more attention to intentional rhythms with my younger kids specifically, which means firmer boundaries around screens for all of us. How I Set My Phone Up To Be…Just a Phone! I deleted all the apps off the home screen on my phone except for phone, text, calendar, and camera. I deleted and disabled Google Discover and Search, so I have zero ability to check email or look things up. I put my phone in greyscale mode. It looks horrible and makes it very unappealing to use for much besides phone calls. I got a flashlight to replace using my phone as a flashlight at night and in the early morning hours. I can’t get sidetracked with it if it isn't in my hand. I got a pocket-sized notebook to carry around with a pen. I’ve replaced grabbing my phone with grabbing a notebook to write down a note or to-do item.

One of the skills in the structure pillar of the Three Pillars of Thriving is automation - making a decision once and having it happen over and over again. We can apply this principle to our weekly schedule. When we sit down and create a template of when we do things every day throughout the week, we can refer back to it with many decisions already made.  Every quarter, I like to sketch out our current weekly rhythm or schedule. For years, I’ve done this on a piece of paper, but now we’ve added a two-page spread every quarter into the Thriving in Motherhood Planner for easy reference! In this week’s video, I’m going to walk through my process for setting up our weekly schedule. This exercise is called an “Ideal Week” - which I really struggled with as a stay-at-home mom with lots of young children. It seemed like there was nothing ideal in my life, starting with the lack of sleep! I’ve adapted the concept in an empowering way for me as a mom, and it doesn’t require me to have it all figured out yet. How To Set Up Your Weekly Schedule Step 1: Write down your anchors. For me that’s our three meals during the day and quiet time. These happen no matter what. Step 2: Write down what’s on the schedule. Church activities, music lessons, sports practices, library story time - what are your recurring appointments for the next few months? Step 3: Write down your essentials (there can’t be a lot of them) for you and your family. Pair these essentials with an anchor. For us, that is scripture study at breakfast and my morning routine before everyone wakes up. Step 4: Write down what your days currently look like. Write down things as they are (in pencil). This isn’t supposed to be ideal but reality. Step 5: What is working well? What isn’t working? Use this to make 1-2 tweaks that involve your kids and another 1-2 that involve you. Step 6: Write down the essential things in the “puzzle pieces” section you want to have happen every night, but maybe not at the same time. For me, this is a time to record a podcast episode, have a date night, or have someone over for dinner. This is something that is going to develop over a period of YEARS, but making a few tweaks every quarter adds up to big things! I started with just figuring out what our mornings look like with young kids. Each day had a different activity: library, grocery shopping, nature walk in the woods, meeting friends at the park, and home projects.  As we started homeschooling, we built morning routines to get to everyone’s schoolwork. We made bedtime routines for the kids to get the next element figured out. Then, I focused on developing a good morning routine for myself and the kids (the 6 am - 9 am window). This included getting the kitchen cleaned up after breakfast as well as getting us ready for the day.  We then added some structure to our afternoon hours, getting dinner ready ahead of time and resetting the house. Finally, I added some structure to the household management and cleaning and assigned certain tasks to certain days. Now, I’m working on creating a bedtime routine that gets me set up and even ahead for the next day.

In this week’s episode, I’m sharing the #1 thing moms need to do for 2024 - and I can’t think of any exceptions. In my 10.5 years of motherhood, this is the thing that has helped me in EVERY season, from hard pregnancies where days creep by to full schedules with lots going on in life and business. Every mom needs to create a vision for the year.  There are an almost endless number of paths each day, but with your vision as a guide, you can walk in one direction and get to a destination you want to end up at. You can go to bed confident with how you spent your time and energy and wake up excited for the day ahead. Here are three steps to start creating your vision for 2024: Start a technology fast. Determine what you will and won’t do for the next 14-30 days. The goal is not to have outside influences present - even good ones! This will help you get mental clarity about what matters to you in this season of life. Make it so the only factors in your life are your own thoughts, your spouse and children, and inspiration from God. Reflect on 2023. What went well? What didn’t go well? What did you learn? What are you most proud of? What do you regret?  Create your Vision for 2024. What do you want to do or experience? What projects do you want to work on? What habits do you want to develop? Who do you want to become? What household routines do you want to put in place? What matters for your family this year? As you begin to create your vision, remember this important principle: you have to go slow to go fast. This was a principle I learned as I recovered in the post-partum periods that if I wanted to get back to normal life as quickly as possible, I needed to do as little as possible to let myself heal.  When it comes to productivity, we need to slow way down and create space in our lives to think, dream, prioritize, and plan so that we are ready to hit the ground running in the RIGHT direction. The direction that matters to YOU. If you want to learn more about creating a vision for your year, check out my Create Your Vision Mini Course. Inside, you’ll discover: The steps to create your vision for the year The secret to making goals you are excited to accomplish How to eliminate stressing about time management and productivity - permanently!  How to see the good you are already doing in your life to build momentum towards creating what’s next for you You get IMMEDIATE access to the Create Your Vision Course when you purchase a Thriving in Motherhood Planner, or you can get the course on its own for just $15. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, bored, lost, or crazed by motherhood's demands, creating your vision will make all the difference. It has a compounding effect that will allow you to create a unique life that is better than you could have imagined.

I have spent a lot of time inside with young kids who have loads of energy (even though we get out as much as we can). We’ve been in tiny grad student apartments and smaller houses without clear places to physically move their bodies for all 10.5 years of motherhood. As we get into winter, I start to feel a sense of panic about what we will do for months with shorter daylight hours, colder temperatures, and lots of need to move our bodies. In this week’s episode, I’m sharing how we’ve set up our home (even when we lived in tiny apartments) so the kids have places to play hard inside, as well as activities I have to direct the energy when needed.  Setting Up Inside So Kids Can Play In The Winter: Create a few intentional places for big movement. Even in our small apartment, we had a picker triangle and a small trampoline. We’ve added a pull-up bar in a doorway.  Have self-directed activities like yoga or calisthenics cards and teach your kids how to use them. Have a list of activities you can refer to when things are going crazy (usually afternoons in our house). Here are a few of our favorite activities from my list:  Tape pennies on shoes for tap shoes Skate on the floor with socks - bonus with wash clothes and Force of Nature for a mopping party. Have an indoor snowball fight with rolled-up socks or indoor snowballs. Wheelbarrow walk - hold your child’s legs and have them walk around on their hands. Get my personal likes of 25 activities HERE. I don’t want to entertain my kids - I want to set up an environment where there are a lot of options for movement. Having these things in place allows us to stay active in the winter months and keep my kids happy and busy. I’d love to hear your best inside activities with kids!

If you had told me ten years ago that I could be a full-time stay-at-home mom, living 30 hours away from our family, homeschooling my four children, and running a business in small pockets of time, I wouldn’t have believed you.  In those early years, the days ran together in one big blur, our cinder block student housing had stuff strewn around the floor, and I felt horribly guilty if I put my baby down, let alone did something I was interested in. In this week’s video, I’m sharing my brand new 5-step PEACE Method Planning system for your week that has transformed my life from surviving the days to waking up excited. Many other productivity strategies work when you have uninterrupted blocks of time, but that is rarely the reality as a stay-at-home mom. This method is different because it takes thos interruptions into account and allows you to create a schedule that works. 5-Step PEACE Method Planning System: P: Purpose - what matters most to you? E: Energy - review the previous week for wins to build momentum and energy. A: Appointments - Write scheduled items on the calendar.  C: Choose 3 - write down your big 3 for the week. E: Everything else - Write other “have to-dos” in context-based to-do lists for the week. This method is easy to start doing and doesn’t need to be implemented all at once. Even doing one thing will increase your peace and confidence in how you use your time.  You are building a foundation here that will be an upward cycle, and who knows what you will create!  Let me know which one of these five steps you’re already doing well and which ONE you are going to try this week.

How do you feel about chore charts? I like the idea of them, and I don’t mind creating them, but when it comes to having a marker or stickers handy to actually fill them out, we drop the ball pretty much every time.  This week, I’m sharing a new discovery I made that is simplifying our family cleaning routine: chore boards. This completely self-contained system allows me to clearly communicate each and every step that needs to be completed in a job, like cleaning the bathroom. In business, there is a crucial principle of writing standard operating procedures so that someone besides you can do a task and you can scale over time as you systemize. It’s the same in our families. As my kids are getting a little bit older, I’m ready to delegate a bit more to them in things that it takes to run our household smoothly. We have lots of great habits in place (they all have jobs to keep the kitchen clean, they know their personal habits, and they each have a zone they know they have to pick up), but I need to have a better system to offload regular dusting, vacuuming, and bathroom cleaning. I was thinking of making chore lanyards for them, and while doing some online research, I stumbled across something even better: chore boards. I got so excited I purchased 10 of them so I could write the process for cleaning a bathroom, deep cleaning the family living space, as well as personal daily habits and weekly chores. Now I can give a child a job and a board with a clear step-by-step plan to execute it and then have a clear checklist to inspect it with. Expectations communicated!

Every month, I write down the books I read or listened to. Today, I’m sharing my 12 favorites that I read this year from a wide variety of topics and subjects.  Reading lots of books has allowed me to actively learn while being a stay-at-home mom. When designing a planner for my needs, keeping track of the books I read or listened to each month was an essential piece.  Why? Two reasons: it helped me to read more because I wanted to be able to write things down AND to remember all that I’ve read, learned, and enjoyed. A Books Read section is still in the official Thriving in Motherhood Planner in the monthly review. You can get your 2024 planner today and have it arrive by Christmas! Here are my 12 favorite books of 2023: How to Break up with your phone: https://amzn.to/3sDNw8J The Coddling of the American Mind: https://amzn.to/49L62g8 What Happened to You?: https://amzn.to/3unnc3b Habits of a Household: https://amzn.to/3GchGmo Love Life and See Good Days: https://amzn.to/3sy10Tv Grace Where you Are: https://amzn.to/47Dwcj1 Good Inside: https://amzn.to/3uo8bOu The Richest Man in Babylon: https://amzn.to/49BzWDk My Side of the Mountain: https://amzn.to/3SPyXJR On the Far Side of the Mountain: https://amzn.to/47m0zKX The Anatomy of Peace: https://amzn.to/49InIZA The Outward Mindset: https://amzn.to/3MRUxK5 I’d love to know your best book recommendations from this year to add to my 2024 reading list!   

In this week’s video, I’ll take you on a virtual tour of our homeschooling setup for this year. As a homeschooling mom of Kindergarten, 2nd grade, and 4th grade kids, I’ve tested a variety of resources and materials over the years.  So, if you’re a fellow homeschooling parent looking for inspiration, you’re in the right place! We’ve made a few tweaks to how we are doing school this year. Now that I have three school-aged kids, we are shifting to more of a family school focus with a few individual subjects, instead of primarily individual studies.  Here is what we are focusing on this year:  Family Subject Resources Science: Science in the Beginning  Picture Study  Addition Facts That Stick  Subtraction Facts that Stick  Language Study  History - Story of the World  Picture books from the library on a variety of subjects Individual Study Busy town Eye Found It Game Spot It All About Reading  Rightstart Math Minimalist Math Curriculum Research Parent/ Right start  Hoffman Academy  (Get 10% off with code LEARN) Good and the Beautiful books/reading for 4th grade  The Great Illustrated Classics Organizational Resources Backpacks with pencil and planner Hooks for backpacks Notebooking pencils  Pencil sharpener Kids watches How to stitch a notebook I’m often asked what the secret is to being consistent with homeschooling. I’ve found that consistency in homeschooling is easier to achieve when you have a reset space that makes it easy to do the thing you want to do. I want to do all the things in our homeschooling day - math, science, history, music practice, nature study, language study, etc. - so I often would pick just doing one more thing instead of cleaning up.  What I’ve discovered this semester is that if we just do a little less each day and leave time and energy to reset the space, it is SO MUCH EASIER to get into schoolwork the next day. So instead of doing lots of school a few days a week and getting frustrated and burned out by the amount of effort it took to keep going, we do a more measured amount each day and leave time to reset for tomorrow. It has made all the difference in our consistency.