Dear Friends,

Are you ready to make your kitchen sparkle with me this week? The second week of the month is one of my favorite weeks. I love my kitchen, and I love to make it sparkle. The kitchen can be a busy room in your home, and sometimes it just needs a little extra love and attention.

Here are you missions for the week:

Zone 2 Missions: The Kitchen

Monday – Scrub and sparkle the kitchen faucet. Shine your sink while you are there.

Tuesday – Wipe the outside of your cabinet doors.

Wednesday – Declutter anything that does not belong on your stove or in your stove. Declutter around it, too.

Thursday – Declutter leftovers from your fridge.

Friday – Sweep and Mop the Kitchen

Set your timers for 15 minutes and then take a break when it goes off!

Weekly Menu Plan

Monday – Chicken and Rice with a Salad

Tuesday – Corn Dogs and Tater Tots (Salad for me)

Wednesday – Soup and Sandwiches

Thursday – Pork Ribs and Salad

Friday – Take out

Enjoy your week! Keep your routines simple.

Read on for some encouragement for those of you with busy children!

Twenty-four years ago, God blessed us with our second child. He filled a place in our lives that we didn’t know needed filling. He is a talented man, and we know that God has a plan for him. I remember his younger years fondly. He was always busy, but if I sat down in the floor with him and a stack of books, I would sit on my lap for hours.

From a young age, he liked to take things apart and fix them. For some of you moms, you know the mixed feelings I had when he took stuff apart and left it laying around, but he always went back and worked on it.

He taught me that people have different learning styles as we continued our homeschool journey. As a visual learner, I found that he learned best through doing things. He was also an auditory learner (remember all the books I read to him from a young age?). He couldn’t look at a letter and remember the sound it made, but if I helped him write it in sand or rice while saying the sound, he could file it away in his memory.

He could memorize statistics like no one I had ever seen. As he turned his interest to football, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the players and their stats.

He was a never-ending source of asking questions. He always wanted to know the WHY behind everything. For those of you with inquisitive children, you understand it when I say that there were times my ears were just tired of listening to the questions. *I* learned a lot from him.

As he grew, his interest in fixing things never waned. He was so interested in what made things work and the WHY behind them. We did so much science. He loved experiments! If we could blow it up or set it on fire, he was all in!

He always had a way of talking to older people. He loved learning from them. He loved hearing their stories. Some of his “best friends” when he was a child were much older people. He made friends wherever we went, and he was sensitive to the needs of those around him from a young age.

I wanted to share this for you moms who have those active little boys who wear you out with their energy, shenanigans, and constant conversation. Take time to listen to them. Enjoy them. And rest when they rest!

Nick, I am proud of you, and I love you very, very much.

Your Home Blessing for today is to wash the sheets.

Your Zone Mission for Monday is to shine the kitchen faucet.

My menu plan for Monday is chicken and rice with a salad.

Have a blessed day!