One month left until she reaches the big #1.

Big brother was VERY worried she would fall.

Made by my sweet friend Kimberly, who blogs at Raising Olives.

As a homeschooling family it isn’t often we need to be out the door early in the morning. This makes Sunday mornings quite a challenge for our family, with seven children going in seven different directions it is easy for patience to run short. Anything I can do to simplify our morning routine keeps the Happy family, happy on the way to church.

A few years ago I started doing two simple things. It started just on Sunday, but it has become our routine any time we need to leave the house early in the morning.

The night before we lay out all our clothes for the next day. From shoes to hair bows, everything is grouped together and set aside for the next morning. Clothing is approved by mom or dad and we make sure it all fits before crunch time. This saves us from mismatched socks, missing shoes, too short pants, and stained shirts the next morning.

I know many people already do this, so I am going to share with you my other secret to getting seven kids ready on time in the morning.

I let my kids sleep in their clothes.

There you go, for those of you who wonder how I do it all, that is my secret weapon. I know all my ironing readers (like my mom and mother-in-law) are cringing at this idea, but it really works! My boys wake up in the morning dressed for church. For those of you who are picturing my children in wrinkled clothes, that is not totally true. My boys usually wear knit shirts and they don’t wrinkle too much.

Getting ready the night before applies to lunches, book bags, and anything else you need to take with you the next day. For some reason getting ready the night before is always a time saver.

How about you, how do you simplify your morning routine?

This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

Those of you who frequent my BlogFrog community know that we have had a terrible time getting Cora to eat ANYTHING! We have tried homemade baby food, store bought baby food, mushed fruits and veggies, unmushed fruits and veggies, waffles, pancakes, muffins, rice, couscous, just about anything that we eat, we have tried to get her to eat.

Her typical routine goes something like this:

Look eagerly at the food. Attempt to grasp food and shove it in her mouth. Chew on food for several seconds and smile. As soon as the entire family is ready to explode in shouts of joy she spits food back out onto her tray.

This has gone on for a few months. We continue to try new things, old things, basically anything and she just won’t swallow food.

Until this week. When she ate an entire plate of this:

Seriously Cora?

Actually this is the second snow, but we were in England for the first snow, so I am not counting it.

You can read about our First Snow Tradition on my guest post at Better in Bulk.

Parents.com has updated their Toy and Product Recall Finder.  Keep your kids safe this year, by making sure their toys are not on the naughty list.

They also have plenty of activities to make the Christmas holidays a special time for the family, and keep your kids busy during the winter break.

Christmas traditions – Family activities that can grow into Christmas traditions, such as visiting a tree farm each year, giving to people in need outside of the family, and participating in neighborhood Christmas caroling.

Christmas printables – Cut outs of paper ornaments for kids to color and decorate and easy-to-make gift tags that kids can personalize.

Christmas crafts – ideas for handmade gifts and ornaments, featuring everything from handmade ribbon ball ornaments, light bulb snowmen, gingerbread ornaments, to felt stockings and creative wreaths. It’s not too late to get crafty and make a few homemade gifts this year.

Finally if you are looking for timeless toys that you played with as a kid, check out their classic toys recommendations. Dozen of the classic toys inducted into the Strong National Museum of Play’s National Hall of Fame.  These toys, many of which have been revamped for today’s kids, include basic Crayola crayons, Legos, and even the Radio Flyer wagon.

This week’s You Capture theme is what makes you happy. Since my blog is all about being happy, this was pretty easy for me. But as Cora turns 8 months old this week (can you believe it???), I am reflecting on how happy I am, that even though when I met her she looked like this…

Today she looks like this…

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a recall of 1.2 million drop side Stork Craft cribs due to an entrapment and suffocation hazard. I know I have a lot of mom’s with babies/ toddlers who read this blog so please check your cribs to see if you have a Stork Craft crib manufactured between 1993-2009.

The Stork Craft website is very slow to load, due to the crib recall, but you can follow them on Twitter. They are not currently tweeting information regarding the recall, but you could tweet a question if the site stays down for an extended period of time.

Please visit the Consumer Product Safety Commission for specifics regarding the Stork Craft Crib recall as well as instructions on how to repair the defective part.

One of the best climbing trees on the east coast, located behind the courthouse in Colonial Williamsburg.