Stressed, Overwhelmed and Taking Stock

I am feeling slightly stressed and overwhelmed these days.  So much to take care of on a daily basis.  One son finishing up a couple of required courses to complete his official homeschooling days, another one who is taking matters into his own hands and working ahead without me (which is a good thing...just means I need to re-evaluate some of our homeschooling methods and order some curriculum to fit the needs of my highly independent learner), another child who would just spend the day reading and is having a hard time stepping over the threshold from childhood to young adulthood.  There is  another who due to speech delays is now having some reading delays. I see progress, but we need to be more consistent in working together.  And then we have a three year old who thinks he is just as old as everybody else and must have planned activity to keep him occupied and to keep me sane.  I'm in a time crunch (self-imposed) to finish up math courses and history so that we are ready to start new math levels after the holidays and start a new history curriculum as well.

Add the school concerns with the medical needs, special foods due to allergies (I think I will have to take the ENTIRE family off of wheat due to Caedmon's severe wheat allergies...the last few times I have ground wheat he seemed to have a slight reaction), Jeff's and the  children's musical activities outside the home (me?  Yes, I dropped my outside musical activities years ago and now am satisfied with daily singing with the little guys and occasionally sitting down to play for a time at the piano), extra church meetings, remodeling projects and my normal food prep, cooking, cleaning and now the Christmas shopping to do as well...I find myself having to drop projects that I have planned in order to meet the needs of the family.  Isn't that what Moms do?

Lots of toys, books, kitchenware and clothes will be donated to others instead of that yard sale I had been planning.  The Christmas decorating may be taken down a notch as most of the family has been too busy to help with it.  I will drop much of our school plans and focus on finishing up history and math with the older ones and spend more time working on the reading with the younger one.  We'll finish up that missionary biography and try to read a Lamplighter book or two this season. More planned activities for the three year old will be necessary, though.

Hoping I can convince the children that we don't need all those Christmas food treats....maybe everyone can pick ONE recipe that they would love to have.  Ha!!  That still gives us EIGHT treats.  I'm sure my girls will come up with about that many between the two of them...they both love to bake!

Past time to get the ball rolling on this day.  Some laundry to take care of in my freshly tiled laundry area, a kitchen to clean, some organizing to do, some school work to do and piano lessons and shopping this afternoon....which will be much easier to do in our new-to- us Yukon XL!!  Shopping in bulk at Sam's while joined by many children in a pickup truck doesn't work too well in the rain.  The rain won't stop my shopping days now!