An organized schedule

Calendars are cool. It gives me great hope to fill up a calendar with all the exciting things I am going to share with my family and friends. I use Google Calendar for all my various hats, and this allows me to view everything in one place or hide the stuff that clutters up my schedule and add on the go using my phone. You can even have your Facebook Events feed into your Google calendar.  And the color coding... it's enough to make me get up early to start filling in the rainbow!

But yesterday it occurred to me that my frustration with having to remind my family and rush around when I thought they already knew what the plan for the day was... so I re-purposed an old white board. Step 1- let the middles play with it to their hearts' content. We drew and colored and cleaned and re-cleaned together for over an hour. Then set it aside to get snack and clean up a bit.

These Dry Erase Crayons from Crayola are really great and make it easy to color code. They don't wipe off when the side of your hand touches the things you have already written. And they DO wipe off easily when it is time, no matter how long the writing has been there.

A little hand sanitizer works best if it becomes a murky- the special cloth that comes with it is black, so it can tend to leave dark smudges on any sticky parts.

Step 2 was applying tape in a perfect grid. I gave G-pie the dimensions and asked her to do the math for me since my brain is fuzz, while I nursed may. She got it right (I didn't bother checking, just started doing and was very pleased to see how well proportioned it was!!

G-pie also filled in the dates and special occasions for me- then I got to work adding in all the classes, field trips, playdates, book launch parties, meetings, museum tours, park days and other adventures we have coming up.

It took almost all day with all the serious doll playing, dish doing, dinosaur imitating, diaper changing, and of course the costume creating (we actually have all 3 of the kids ready with full costumes- yes, yes we do!!)...

But I am please to report there is now a huge calendar for all to see where we need to be and when... now to get those who can read to look at it and teach those who can't to read! Then add it all into the appropriate Google Calendars, write it in my cute little organizer, update www.learningbarefoot.com and THEN I can relax and never miss anything again! =)

Oh and get Sugar Daddy to actually hang it... this was just a test.

How do you manage your family's time. Digital or in real world? Does it work? Do you feel like a cruise director?