Schedules and Routines

I am a list maker and a schedule junkie. I love looking at other peoples schedules to see how they manage their time and organize their days.
BUT I don't actually have a schedule. NOPE! cant block myself into one, I just cant function in blocks of times. I am, however, great at checking things off my list and sticking to routines,
Whats the difference between a routine and a schedule?

A schedule is set into periods of time. Such as 

9:00 Breakfast

10:00 Laundry

11:00 Clean Bathroom

etc.

A routine is a habit, a flow, a way you go about your day. For instance, I know that I need to do 3 loads of laundry a day to stay on top of mount washmore. I know my day goes smoother and I'm more motivated if I take a shower and get dressed first thing in the morning. I know that if I tidy up the bathroom while I'm in there, it's more likely that the bathroom will get cleaned then if I try to go back and do it later.
By paying attention to your household needs, the way your home flows, and when your most energetic, you can set up your own routine. Start one habit at a time. For me, I started by making sure I got in the shower first thing in the morning, before coffee (if I sit down with a cup of coffee my day gets away from me). Know yourself and be honest with yourself about your weaknesses and strengths. Next I added making my bed and sweeping my bedroom floor. There really is something to seeing your bed made that is super motivating. I just continued adding one thing at a time. When it became a habit I would add another. Of course, I still had to do the other things in my home but in time it was less of a chore and just a habit.
I created a morning, afternoon and evening checklist. I wrote down everything that I wanted to accomplish or that had to be done in the morning, afternoon and evening. Some things like feeding the kids are at set times and obviously can't be put off. I tried to list things in the order that I'd like to get them done. But because it is a list/routine and not a time blocked schedule, there is no guilt or loss in flow of my day from moving things around or skipping over somethings if need be.

Morning Routine

• Take a shower, get dressed, do hair and light makeup
• Tidy bathroom,wipe down sink and toilet, give the toilet bowl a swish with toilet brush
• Take out laundry from laundry basket and start a load
• Make coffee and wake kids
• Get kids started on their morning routine, make my bed and sweep my bedroom floor
• Everyone outside to do animal/garden chores
• Everyone eat breakfast and tidy kitchen
• Math, Reading, writing,phonics
• other studies based on day of the week 
• Start another load of laundry, Everyone folds and puts away

Afternoon Routine

• Lunch and tidy kitchen
• Baking and dinner prep.
• Outdoor time or projects
• Start another load of laundry, Everyone folds and puts away

Evening Routine

• Dinner 
• Clean Kitchen including dishes, stove top, sweep and mop floor,
• Clean living room including floors
• Start another load of laundry, Everyone folds and puts away
• Kids take baths 
• Take out last load of laundry, Everyone folds and puts away
• Kids Bed at 9:30

I like to have my night time routine set me up for a good morning the next day. It is much better to wake up to a clean kitchen instead of waking up to yesterdays mess. Do I sometimes wake up to yesterdays mess? Of course I do. I have learned to give myself and my family grace. I try not to make it a habit though. Remember what you do most frequently is the habit you have created and its hard to break old habits so set yourself up for success by creating good habits, one habit at a time. Once you have a good habit try to keep it.

Kids Routine

My kids also have routines. And like myself I started them one habit at a time. I started with a good bed time routine. A set bedtime and a predictable flow. Even though we are a very relaxed family I think children really do thrive with routine and predictability. Next I added a mourning routine for them. They wake up and make their beds. Then they get dressed for the day, tidy their room and everyone heads out for some fresh air and animal/garden chores. My son feeds and waters the chickens, turkeys, goats, dogs and cats. My daughters share the milking chores and make sure the goats have their minerals and baking soda. I water the garden and do any weeding with the littlest one and we all share coop cleaning and run raking. If there are wood chips that need moved or fruit trees that need water we just split those up between each other. For the most part we do all the outdoor and in door chores together as a team. One might wash dishes while the other drys and puts away. Someone else will put the leftovers away and clear the table. We have really gotten to the point where we all just know what needs done and everyone just jumps in and does it. I think by doing it as a team and a family has encourage everyone to help, no one wants to feel left out. We try to have fun and play around. Do we sometimes have someone who doesn't want to join in? Of course, sometimes you just aren't in the mood, but like myself, I don't want them to make a habit of skipping out on their routine so at times I do have to step in and enforce the habit. 

My Bill Binder ( how I stay on top of our finances)

I have a few binders that I use regularly. My Family Binder, My Kitchen Binder, My Farm and Garden Binder and my Bill Binder. I will make posts about all of these binders and how I make/use them in later posts. I want to start with my Bill Binder first.
My Bill Binder has been so helpful in creating and sticking to a budget. It is where my bills go as soon as they come in the mail and it's where I go on pay day when I am paying my bills. I know what is due and to who. I can make little notes like so and so's birthday is this month, or field trip on this date and what the cost is so I can remember to budget it in. All my expenses are written in there.
My go to place for organizational printables has always been Donna Young. She has amazing printables for homeschooling to.

Now lets build our Bill Binder.
First you will need a three ring binder. I like the ones with the clear plastic cover on the front so I can slide in a pretty print and label it my bill binder but any three ring binder will work. Some people like to cutsey theirs up, some like to keep it simple. It's up to you. I find it easier to do one of my least favorite chores if I can do it while looking a prettiness so I use washi tape and colored pens to decorate and write in my binder.
Next I add 2 folders with pockets. One is for paid bills and one is for bills that need to be paid. If I pay a bill online I can write the confirmation number on the bill and add it to the paid bill folder. Having my previous months bills available also lets me compare what we are spending month by month.
I also like to add a pencil pocket. I always write in my Bill Binder in pencil because I sometimes have to change when I will pay a bill or amounts. I also like to keep a highlighter in there, when a bill clears my bank I highlight it. This makes it easier to balance my account.
And finally I print out one page like the example below for each month of the year. (12 pages total) Just click the link below.
Donna Young month at a glance 
 (Update: these are no longer free on her site. She now requires a membership but you can find others like it for free just Google bill planner free printables)

I hole punch it and it goes into the binder as well. 

Now when I receive a bill it goes into the To Be Paid folder and I write it on the page for the month that it is due. 

Here is a sample of a page in my binder. 

Remember these are Donna Young's Printables.......Not mine. I have been using them for years and they are EXTREMELY helpful.

Israel and James Christian's Story

DISCLAIMER: This is a copy of an article written by Wendy Schultz of the Mountain democrat. I did not write this article and have no rights to it, I am merely posting it for friends and family.

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 | Posted by Wendy Schultz

PART 1: 

Rising from the ashes: Local man recalls Eureka rescue

EUREKA MEDICS carry Israel Jaure on a stretcher after Jim Christian, now of Diamond Springs, rescued him from a burning building. News clipping from 1991 Eureka times Standard

All firefighters have stories. Firefighters go in when most of us come out. Sometimes the stories have  happy endings and sometimes you just wish they did.
The story that began for retired Diamond Springs Fire Chief, Jim Christian, on April 5, 1991, continued on April 17, 2011, and the end  is still unknown. It is presented here in two parts and italicized sections are Jim Christian’s own writings about the event.
The story began when Christian was a firefighter in Eureka. It wasn’t my normal day to work because I had traded a shift … I opened the back door of Station 3 and stepped inside just as the klaxon in the apparatus room went off. The bay door was already going up and the three-person crew of Jim Ballard, Gary Cahill and Mike Bakke was getting into their turnouts. As soon as the klaxon quit the dispatcher announced. “Engine 1, Engine 4, Tuck 1, Engine 3 3F2, a structure fire, 1122 J Street, reports of children trapped inside.”
I was putting my breathing apparatus on when I heard Chief McFarland over the engine’s radio tell us to go to the south side toward the rear of the building. I didn’t have a portable radio of my own. I wasn’t even supposed to be there.

As I got close to the house, people actually grabbed me, urging me to the side of the house, crying that there were kids trapped upstairs.

There was an aluminum construction ladder leaning against the single story roof. Officer Tony Zanotti of the Eureka Police Department was standing on the roof… I climbed up the ladder. Zanotti grabbed my shoulder as I got to the roof. He said, “ If there is anybody there, they are right there.” He pointed to the window he had just broken. I looked at the fire billowing out of the adjoining room five or six feet away. There was fire at the top of the window Zanotti had broken. The smoke was pushing out hard and fast.

I looked around for the other firefighters from Engine 3. They were close and coming to help me, but I couldn’t see them. I thought I was alone. I remember thinking that I would not get out of this unscathed. I dove head first through the window…The impact partially dislodged my mask from my face and I breathed in a lot of smoke and hot air.I couldn’t see anything. It was dense black and very, very hot.

I was lying on the floor when I heard something that sounded like someone snoring. I straightened my mask and went for the sound. My hands found him, wedged in the small space.. I hadn’t been expecting someone so big.
Fifteen-year-old Israel Jaure was sleeping when a crashing sound awoke him around 7 a.m.
“There were flames everywhere and there was so much noise,” he said in a phone interview with the Mountain Democrat. “I panicked and screamed. I knew there was a way out through the back door of the kitchen and I opened the door to my room. A horrible blast of heat knocked me down.”
Disoriented, his body numb and his eyes burning, Jaure fell back into his bedroom and crawled as far from the fire as he could get. He lay on his back, in a space between the bed and the far wall. His body went into convulsions. “I was flopping like a fish out of water. It was like drowning and being burned at the same time. I kept saying ‘God, help me’ over and over.”
Finally the convulsions stopped and Jaure became acutely aware of his surroundings. ” I could see the flames all around me; I could hear my mother screaming for me downstairs, even over the noise of the fire. Then the pain stopped and all I could feel was peace.”
Jaure says he saw instances of his life unroll before him like a film. “I took the deepest breath of my life and when I let it out, my eyes dimmed, my hearing went away and I knew I was about to die.”
Jaure said he went to a place of total darkness; a lonely void where he had no body. “I called out in my mind as loud as I could. I heard a huge, heavy door open and the sound of thunder.”
Jaure felt himself being lifted and placed on his feet. He fell forward onto his knees into a huge beam of light. “God spoke to me and it was like shockwaves going through my body. He told me about my life, who I was and why I was suffering. Then he took me up on a high plateau and I could see people as far as the eye could see, dressed in clothing the color of lightning. I turned to look at God, but he stopped me. I was upset by this but a man with a shining face said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not your time to see Him.’”
“I couldn’t stand up because of the heat. I grabbed his right arm and tried to pull him toward me.  The burned skin on Israel’s arm came off in my glove. I laid across the bed and grabbed his upper body and somehow got him over the bed to the floor near the window. I could hear Captain Ballard taking the window frame out to give us room.

I was dragging Israel toward the window when Mike Bakke came crashing through it. I was never so happy to have someone jump on me in all my life. We dragged him to the window and lifted him gently as possible through it. It was the first time I could actually see Israel Jaure.

Israel was placed on the shoulders of Engineer Tad Sundquist who carried him down to a Medic Unit. He was flown to San Francisco where he spent several weeks in a hospital burn unit. No other children were in the building.
Christian lay on the roof of the building resting, his turn-outs smoking. Then he went back to work fighting the fire. He wouldn’t see  Israel Jaure again for 20 years.
Bakke, Ballad, Sundquist and Christian received commendations for their part in the rescue. Jaure’s parents brought a letter of gratitude to the fire department thanking the Eureka Fire Department, which stated, “He has become the memorial of your valor and the thankfulness which we cannot describe.”

Short URL: http://www.mtdemocrat.com/?p=65667

Posted by Wendy Schultz on May 31 2011. Filed under Diamond Springs, Featured Stories, News. 

PART 2:

Rising from the ashes: Rescuer, rescued reunite in El Dorado Hills

ISRAEL JAURE and Jim Christian meet in Christian's El Dorado Hills home. Photo by Elaine Christian

Part 2 of Rising from the Ashes– On April 5, 1991, 15-year-old Israel Jaure was trapped in his family’s burning second floor apartment in Eureka. Jim Christian, a 39-year-old Eureka firefighter, dove into the flames and smoke to rescue him and, with the help of another firefighter, pulled the burned boy out of the building to safety. This is the second part of a two-part story detailing the events of the fire and the reunion of survivor and rescuer 20 years later.
Israel Jaure woke up in an ambulance. “I couldn’t see much of the man in the ambulance, but I heard him say, ‘He’s awake,’” and I heard the surprise in his voice.”
He woke again in Eureka’s General Hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses trying to enervate him. Then he woke once again, to find himself wrapped like a mummy. He could hear the engine of the plane flying him from Eureka to San Francisco. In St. Francis Memorial Hospital, Jaure woke once more, in a big metal tub of hot water this time. Again medical staff were surprised at his waking. “The air smelled like bleach and I lifted my hand to look at it and I could see my veins and muscles. It was horrible.”
Israel suffered first and second degree burns on 22 percent of his body and doctors grafted skin from his back and hips onto his hands and left leg.
“I was a boxer and felt that nothing could hurt me, so I was into drinking with my friends and partying,” said Jaure. ” Then I was burned and scarred; my friends looked at me with pity in their eyes. It was a pretty humbling experience and a dark time for me. It took years to recover. I coughed up soot for a year and my hair fell out when my skin started to regrow. I was angry.”
The grueling day-to-day recovery pushed his amazing spiritual experience during the fire into the background and Jaure admits to years of anger, wondering why this had happened to him. His parents moved the family to Arizona two years after the fire. The girl he’d been dating at the time of the fire in Eureka, Tracy O’Hara, had been at the scene of the fire and witnessed the rescue. She stuck by Jaure and they eventually married. They became the parents of six healthy children — the oldest daughter of their five girls is 16, and their youngest child, a boy, is almost 3.  Tracy, 34, home-schools all the children. Israel, 35, changed the direction of his life and became a corrections officer working with maximum security prisoners for Pima County in Arizona.
Christian, now 59,  moved to El Dorado County in September of 1991, five months after the fire, becoming assistant fire chief for Diamond Springs ,and after his retirement as fire chief  in 2003, a fire management consultant and division supervisor on the Northern California Interagency Incident Management Team. Most recently, he oversaw the application of the Incident Command System to the recovery process at the San Bruno pipeline explosion.
Of the Jaure fire he said, “It made such an impact on me. I’d been in peril in other fires, but not by my own choice. Firemen get to do really cool things, but when the time comes to step off the abyss and you don’t know if you will be coming back, will you do it? I thought I was alone and I was scared to death. I made the decision to go in because if there was a kid in there and I didn’t go in, how would I live with myself?
“I thought about the incident every day and I put a photo of the house on my desk when I became assistant chief to remind me of  where I came from and what firefighters are supposed to do. I wondered what kind of person Israel was. I knew he had been in continuation school. Had he become a good guy or not?” Eventually, to help himself process the impact of the event, he wrote an accounting of the fire and the rescue.
Christian told few about the incident that impacted him, but this year, 20 years after the fire, he shared his story with a friend and admitted that he had always wondered what happened to Israel. The friend did some Internet research and returned with two possibilities for Israel Jaure. Christian checked them out and one of them led to Tracy O’Hara Jaure’s Facebook page. He e-mailed her, asking if she were the wife of Israel Jaure of Eureka who had been in a fire 20 years earlier. When Tracy replied in the affirmative, Christian told her he had been involved in the rescue.
“It was my day off, ” Israel Jaure remembered. “She told me, ‘You’ll never believe who e-mailed me.’”  Jaure e-mailed Christian back thanking him for whatever part he had played in the rescue. “I never expected him to be the guy who came in and got me.” The two exchanged phone numbers.
“He told me to call him anytime, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to intrude,” said Christian. Finally, he made the call and the two shared the details of the fire with each other in an emotional conversation.
On the weekend of April 17, the Jaure family came to California to visit Tracy’s father in Valley Springs and made a five-hour stopover at Jim and Elaine Christian’s home in El Dorado Hills. Both men said they felt an instant connection.
“I felt like I was going to visit my second father, one I had never met,” said Jaure. “It blew me away that I got to see the man who saved me.”
“They were like family we hadn’t met yet,” said Christian.”It was the most amazing and cathartic thing that happened to me in a long time.”
As a surprise for Jaure and his family, Christian had asked his friend, retiring firefighter Mike Wilson of the El Dorado Hills station, to drive  the ladder truck by his home . On his last run as a firefighter, Wilson brought Station Truck 85 to show Jaure’s children. They knew the story of the fire and their father’s spiritual experience.  ”I wanted them to know that there is something bigger; something beyond going to work everyday,” said Jaure.
Jaure had a surprise for Christian too — a silver pocket watch engraved with Christian’s name and “April 5, 1991,” the date of the fire. “Then he rolled up his sleeve and showed me the tattoo, ” said Christian, “I was trying not to lose it, but my wife looked and burst into tears and that was it.”
The tattoo on Jaure’s right bicep is new. “I wanted to do something for him,” said Jaure. The black ink tattoo is a large Maltese Cross with a pair of crossed fire axes in the middle. “April 5, 1991″ is tattooed above and below the axes and the words, ” James”, ” Christian,”  ”Fire”  and “Dept.” fill the arms of the cross.
For both men the reunion was a powerful experience.
“It was like a reminder of what God had promised me that day,”said Jaure.” I’ve had 20 years of life, we have six children and I am big and strong enough to deal with the prisoners on my job. I realized that God sees far and he was truly looking out for my interests.”
For Christian, it was all about redemption. “I’m not a perfect guy, but in the low times, I remembered that I had done something good once and it sustained me. To find out that Israel is a nice guy with a great family meant a lot.”
Both men declare their intention to keep in contact. “This is a lifelong connection,” said Jaure. When Jaure’s 16-year-old daughter thanked Christian for her life, it was the first time he realized the far-reaching impacts of what had happened during that fire 20 years earlier.
“The vast majority of people don’t come back to tell you what happened to them after they survive. I’m glad I know it was a good outcome,” said Christian.

Short URL: http://www.mtdemocrat.com/?p=69266

Posted by Wendy Schultz on Jun 9 2011. Filed under Featured Stories, News.