It’s been a while since I’ve given real attention and focus to this blog. Life has happened to me, and I know that you totally get that. Like one of my absolute favorite bloggers says, we are all juggling invisible balls. To be honest, this blog is a ball that I’ve willingly not only dropped but kicked under the couch. That’s part of what makes me The Decent Mom, right?

So here’s my focus now.

Reading Aloud

Life got busy and I stopped reading out loud to my kids. They are 7 and 9 years old now and are reading everything they can get their hands on by themselves. It can feel awkward reading out loud to older kids, but I miss the time we spent together every evening. There are so many benefits to reading aloud and I fully intend on picking it back up next week. For a great resource on why you should be reading aloud to your kids please check out the Read Aloud Revival. I’m actually listening to this podcast as I type this article, getting really great tips.

Meal Planning

Meal planning can be a huge pain in the ass. Let’s not sugar coat this. Most of the time planning happens when you aren’t hungry. Coming up with a realistic plan needs more than a Pinterest board. Pinterest is for inspiration, but some recipes require a million ingredients or more time than I’m willing to invest. I tend to review past plans and pull from the meals that went over well, but that gets repetitive. Here’s the thing though…doing a mix of scouring the internet and pulling from past hits makes meal planning less tedious. Even if the time that meal planning takes seems like too much, let me tell you a not really secret. Meal planning can (and probably will) save you a LOT of money. There are meal planning services with a fee, but that eats into your savings and there are no guarantees that you’ll like those recipes. I’m tired of going to the store and overspending while buying a week’s worth of half thought out meals. So after we finish watching My Little Pony this morning, I’m planning this week’s meals.

Teaching

It’s mid-September, and my son has been doing his school work but my daughter hasn’t. We “do school” year-round instead of following a traditional school schedule. That means we don’t typically take a large summer break. This year, however, as previously mentioned, life happened.  We’ve taken some time off guilt free…but now it’s time to focus on our studies. The worst part about taking a larger break is that the kids now dread getting back into a structured day. One of the things we love about homeschooling is flexible scheduling and being able to dive into our interests wholeheartedly. So on Monday Gordon’s School for the Gifted resumes.

NOT Blogging

Wait…this is the first post I’ve written in months. Shouldn’t I be writing about how I’m back? No. The thing is, I‘ve done that before and I wasn’t really back. Part of a successful blog is marketing and putting out new quality material regularly. I’m not going to focus on marketing or putting the images on here that I normally do. What I’m going to focus on are the areas I’ve listed above…and writing. So I will be posting, but having to worry about SEO is just too much right now. When I put pressure on myself in order to have a “successful” blog it takes away some of the joy and stress relief of just writing. So maybe later I’ll go through and add images and ensure things are fully optimized. For now…I’m just going to write for me. I hope you’ll still enjoy the content.

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