A Few Of The Frye Girls

Joyce (13)



Anya (7) and Odell (8)



Want to see what goes on during chore time? Interested in a sample of the volume while chores are going on? How about the distractions that happen during Frye evening chore time?

If you are...this is the video clip for you!!

Tell Me I Am Finished!

I should finally be finished with my part of the costume making. Although I kind of start to panic that I will not finish, I really, really enjoy the costume making.I wish I could go all out and make all the kids fancy costumes but those days were about ten children ago. Now days I just do things as inexpensively as I can still with keeping the costumes fun and special.

This evening I made a green vest for a child who wanted to be The Joker,two chain maul (is that how it is spelled?) things, and one poodle skirt. I am not real happy at all with how the Joker's vest turned out. It is not even photo worthy!The perfectionist in me is cringing. The poodle skirt turned out REAL cute and making something out of fake fabric net chain maul is difficult but mistakes are hidden easily besides I only made sashes out of the chain maul stuff. Joyce wants to be a STOP sign for Halloween. Now anything other than fabric is Jeff's territory. That should be a very fun costume. I will be sure to get lots of fun pictures of the kids in their costumes.

By the way, one is NEVER too old to trick-or-treat. I am very glad my teens are still exited about costumes and the fun. Although Elena and Grant are going to a party with their church youth group,I think they might hit a few houses before they go.


Here are a few fun pictures I took today you might like.

Today is Floor Friday which means all floors are washed. We do not do one big cleaning day each week.What we have done is divide our house into ten different chore areas (or zones).Ten of the children have a zone for a week. Within that week each zone has a daily core,Mirror Monday,Toilet Tuesday,etc...

That said, here is Joyce doing her Floor Friday in her zone which is the dining room with her helpers. She has a lot more patience than I do.




Anya is a big Tinkerbell fan. Elena's surprise birthday gift to Anya was to rent and watch the new Tinkerbell movie with her once it came out on DVD. Elena has been pretty exited about surprising Anya. Here they are just after they finished watching the movie this evening. Grant,Alan,and Joel joined them. A quote from my 14 year old Grant after the movie was over, "that really was not a bad movie after all,mom ". Maybe we have two Tink fans in the house,now! OK,maybe not but I'm glad the bigger boys were not too big boyish to appreciate Anya's 7 year old interests.

A Few Random Thoughts

I was putting the millionth load of laundry in the washer yesterday and you know what I was thinking? Nothing. It just hit me that I am now so used to some of the mountainous tasks that come with a large family that I did not even think of it. They do not seem mountainous any more. Just a part of life. The same goes for dishes. We are one of those few odd families who does (or is it do?) not have a dishwasher. Well, we do but it broke down about three years ago so now it just sits taking up space in our kitchen until we figure out how to unhook it to throw it away. It is one appliance that will not be replaced even with a bigger better model.

Anyway, I was thinking about what has changed about those particular chores that made them less mountainous. We do a few things different. Let me think...there is one person assigned laundry room duties for the week. The chore is done three times a day which means a guaranteed load of laundry washed,dried ,and put away each time they do the chore. I also made it a habit to flip laundry through out the day as I walk by the washer. Not bad. There can be a back up when our dryer decides to take a few cycles to actually dry the clothes but catch up is just a few loads away when that happens.

As far as the kitchen/dish duties. Once again a child has the kitchen chore for a whole week. The chore is done three times a day by the child including towel drying ...gasp...Jeff and I do the in-between chore stuff.I think the key to the dishes not being so overwhelming is when the children are excused from the table after eating they each do their own plate,cup,and utensils.That takes care of most of the plates,cups etc...not bad.The dish doer just needs to do what it left over.

I do not know how these particular chores fell into place but they did. Of course, our house is far far from what I would consider clean but these particular areas I remember to be so overwhelming last year and now they work rather smoothly. This is a nice random thought.


Another random thing...

Look at this cute Pebbles and Bam-Bam fabric book I found! I was pretty pleased.