American Idol

In a shocking upset, underdog, Kris Allen, became this year's American Idol. Much speculation has taken place as to why. His co-finalist, Adam Lambert, is a stellar performer with a great voice and even greater showmanship. Kris, however, just quietly, but passionately sings his songs. And he won. After seeing this video posted of him on You Tube singing to God with his voice aimed toward heaven, it makes me think. Perhaps, God's hand has been on Kris Allen through this. Very cool!

Roses are Red...

Violets are blue.
I'm still alive;
How about you?

Although things have been pretty quiet here in blogland, it has been quite the opposite in real life. I am finding that in adding an 8th member to our household, my days are incredibly full and I really need to plan out my days and be disciplined to follow a schedule/routine or my days slip away and nothing has been accomplished.

This year I was too cheap to buy the refill planner pages for my Franklin Covey planner and decided to put my scrapbook supplies to good use and create my own. I downloaded the "Daily Docket" page from the Simple Mom blog and have been using this for my daily pages. It isn't a perfect fit for me, but I wasn't quite sure what I wanted in a daily page and thought I would use this for a while until I figured it out. One thing a I do really like about it is that it has a "Things to Do" list with 10 spaces as well as "Today's M.I.T.s" (MITs = Most Important Tasks) with 3 spaces. I have a master to-do list that is a mile long, but these daily lists force me to prioritize what is the most important to complete. I don't always complete my list, and I carry this over to the next day's list. This has helped me be much more productive in my day.

Ok, so you may be wondering about this photo I posted here of the marker covering the arm of my couch. It doesn't really fit into this topic of daily productivity - or does it? Yesterday, I walked into my kitchen/family room to discover my lovely 2 year old daughter with a 5 color highlighter marker drawing on my couch. To say I was upset would be an understatement. She got in BIG trouble and has been banned from anything that writes for the time being. Thankfully, the Bissell carpet pretreatment spray took this all off. I was so relieved. Anyway, I share this because interruptions like this happen continually every day. Today it was the numerous potty training messes I dealt with today. It is always something. That's why it is so important to have that daily docket, so once the current drama has been dealt with, I can refocus on what I need to be doing.