Starting The Day Off Right

I love being a stay-at-home-homeschool-mom.  I cherish the days spent with our kids.  I love teaching them, spending time with them, laughing with them, learning from them, doing activities with them, and having an hour of silence away from them so I can recharge, regroup, and energize my soul.

Spending hour after hour, day after day with your kids can be emotionally draining.  It's so important as a mom, especially a stay-at-home-homeschool-mom, that we get a little bit of time alone or away from the kids to refuel.  I find I need about an hour in the morning of silence and a strenuous workout about five days a week to be a focused, loving mom.

Usually I wake up around 6:30-6:45 when the aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafts to our room.  My sweetheart , who doesn't drink coffee, started making my morning brew this year.  I'm so blessed!  I get up, make my way downstairs and pour that first cup of coffee.  The kids usually don't get up until 7:30-7:45, so I have a wonderful hour of quiet.

One of my favorite mugs

I then cozy up in my chair, pull out my Bible, Bible study, journal, book of choice and begin fueling my heart.  I love this time.  Yearly, I used to set goals to read a book a month (this would be an adult book that would further my spiritual development, a biography, fiction, etc., not a children's book), but found as a mom of toddlers this was hard to achieve.  I was perpetually exhausted dragging myself through the day.  If I sat down to read, I'd fall asleep.  I found I needed smaller segment goals to accomplish the book a month.  My goal now is to enjoy at least 10 pages per day.  Ten pages is doable and I find I often can sneak in additional pages throughout the day or at bedtime.  I'm able to read more than a book a month now with this little system.

My escape



My Pile

Just looking at the photos makes me want to run downstairs.  I missed my time today.  I was awakened at 7:10 when a little blond headed girlie cozied up in my bed.  Oh no!  I slept in!  I missed the alone time bus!  As much as she loves to cuddle, I couldn't just immediately run from the bed, but I realized I had missed my time.  Immediately, I felt stressed.  No morning alone time for this momma.  Overcome with the sense of being behind before the day even began, grumpiness was my mood of this morning.  Not a mean grumpiness, just a bummed out, missed my opportunity for alone time grumpiness.

We've done most of our morning schooling.  The kids are working on math.  I'm escaping for a moment.  Soon I'll head back downstairs to make lunch.  Maybe while they're eating, I'll sneak away to my chair, grab my book and get my 10 pages in. 

Some days I just have to roll with it.  I guess I needed that extra 1/2 hour of sleep this morning and I should be thankful for it.