Being a single mom of 3 children I find that there isn’t enough hours in the day to accomplish all the tasks of the day. Here are a few key points that I have found help me to be a time management mom.

It’s a lot harder to accomplish everything you want to when you got little ones that depend solely on you. One of the things I find helpful is to start preparing for the next day the day before.

I have one daughter in school, So I prepare everything school related the night before. Therefore, my mornings are a little quieter. I get up in the morning and make a cup of coffee and sit there in the silence till I’m ready to wake my children.

When the children wake up, I make breakfast, get them dressed, and do their hair. Because everything is prepared and laid out the night before, this is a relaxing time for the children and I. No rushing around to get everything ready. At 8:15am we’re on our way out of the door to drop my oldest off at school. This leaves me with only the two youngest kids for the rest of the day.

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It was one of those beautiful winter days. You know, the ones where the temperature is finally high enough that your nose doesn’t freeze the moment it ventures beyond the cozy warmth of your home and all around fat snowflakes are silently drifting down, covering everything around you in a blanket of white.

It was a day like this when I found the most perfect snowflake I have ever seen.

As I strolled through the snow, enjoying the falling snow, I saw it drift down and land on my sleeve. It was the most beautiful of all the snowflakes that day. Perfectly balanced and intricately designed, it perched there for a moment while I gazed upon it. And then, it melted.

The fragile beauty of this perfect snowflake could not exist in the warmth of my sleeve. Nor would it have survived had it joined the other snowflakes that reached the ground, for even in it’s perfection, it was imperfect. Its intricate shape would have been lost, compressed by the blanket of snow still falling.

For one moment in time, I looked upon perfection and found it to be perfectly imperfect.

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When you go through the process of setting personal goals, make sure that you are the one to define what needs to be achieved to meet those goals successfully. Society, culture, family and friends may all have their own definition of success and those definitions can vary greatly. What matters is what you believe, not what others believe. So before you go with what society thinks, first stop to determine what is important to you.

The goals we set for ourselves generally stem from those things that bring us joy and a sense of fulfillment. They are shaped by passion, curiosity and the foundational principles on which we have been raised. Therefore, what we define as success is unique to each of us.

The experiences we have will always play a role in our definition of success. We are the sum of both our good and our bad experiences. If we see and admire someone who selflessly gives of their self to others, those traits become part of what we then call success. If on the other hand, we see someone who is outwardly successful by society’s standards, but has paid the price of that success with notoriety or loneliness, our own definition of success may include avoiding that which makes the other successful.

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That time of year has come once again when we gather together to with family and friends to celebrate the kinder side of humanity. It is a time of expressing our thankfulness for the blessings we have received and also a time to reach out to others less fortunate so that they in turn may also feel blessed.

Now many of us celebrate at different times and in different ways. That is not what this post is about.

I come from a traditional christian background and as such, my celebrations are anchored in the philosophy that background has given me. However, I do not believe that basic human kindness and charity are specific to any given background. We all have within ourselves the capacity to reach out to others and make a difference regardless of the season. This is just a time when we are reminded of the importance of doing so.

One of my favorite times is the 24th of December. This is the day that has been set aside for my 3 children, their significant others and 3 grandchildren spend time with me celebrating the season. Next year (possibly even this year), we will have another join us as my oldest daughter is expecting. While a busy time, it is also a time and memory that we jointly share.  Good food, warm company and the expressions of the little ones as they open their gifts are pearls of memory that bind us as a family.

To one and all, I wish peace and happiness, now and in the future.

SherryD
http://www.imperfectyou.com
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This is an article submitted to a 1999 Louisville Sentinel contest to find out who had the wildest Christmas dinners.. It won first prize.

As a joke, my brother Jay used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them.

What they say about Santa checking the list twice must be true because every Christmas morning, although Jay’s kids’ stockings overflowed, his poor pantyhose hung sadly empty.

One year I decided to make his dream come true. I put on sunglasses and went in search of a doll to fill those pantyhose. They don’t sell those things at Wal-Mart. I had to go to one of the more mature bookstores downtown.

If you’ve never been in a specialty store of this sort, don’t go, you’ll only confuse yourself. I was there an hour saying things like, ‘What does this do?’ ‘You’re kidding me!’ ‘Who would buy that?’ Finally, I made it to ‘doll’ section.

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