Welcome!  You’ve reached the landing page for my 31 Days of Putting My Family First Series.  I’ve accepted the challenge set by The Nester to post every day on a single topic for the month of October.  I hope you’ll come back here each day to read the latest post.

So what is the idea behind this series?   I was thinking of the many times I’ve found myself busy and heavily involved in activities relating to my family or kids but not doing stuff for my OWN family.  Isn’t there some saying about that?  Something like charity begins at home.  Oh yeah, that one.  I decided that instead of saving the whole world (metaphorically speaking, of course) that perhaps it was time to focus on saving my own family.  I should probably clarify that we aren’t exactly sinking over here.  Far from it.  However, maybe we could be soaring and I could be a little less selfish in getting our family to that goal.  I could admit that a lot of the volunteer activities I filled my time with were more for me than for the kids.  It is time to put my family first.

I thought I’d start the series with a story about my dad’s father who died long before I was born.  Click  on day 1 below to read it:

Day 1:  A Family Fable

Day 1 Bonus Post:  Meet the Family

Day 2:  Clearing Away the Chit-Chat

Day 3:  Quitting the Committing

Day 4:  Struggling to Not be a Super Soaker

Day 5:  A Season for Family

Day 6:  Overcoming Overwhelm

Day 7:  Letting Them Fly

Day 8:  Favorite Family Foods

Day 9:  Giving a Few Extra Minutes

Day 10:  Bucket Lists Do Not Need to be Huge

Day 11:  Giving with Grumpiness

Day 12:  Caring Enough to Make a Chocolate Pie

Day 13:  Detail Duty

Day 14:  Benefit of the Doubt

Day 15:  Be the Mom, Not the Martyr

Day 16:  Family Night Flexibility

Day 17:  Encouraging My Family

Day 18

Day 19

Day 20

Day 21:  Clearing the Noise and Listening

Day 22:  Love Means Clean Socks and Underwear

Day 23:  Everything They Want

Day 24

Day 25

Day 26

Day 27

Day 28

Day 29

Day 30

Day 31

My regular readers might be wondering why I choose this topic instead of something to do with organizing.  I don’t have a real specific answer other than I simply followed my heart which led me here.  It actually led me here last year but then I chickened out because the topic didn’t really fit into organizing (or does it?) and the idea of blogging for an entire 31 days in a row scared me a bit not to mention I’m not sure I’d have even been able to make a landing page at this time last year.  Besides, there are tons of more organized and inspirational people than me.  I would rather write about something that makes my heart sing even louder than the aisles at an office supply store.  By the way, I’m still slightly terrified about the whole posting for 31 days in a row thing but decided to place a pen in my hand anyway (I’m typing but that sounded better than place my fingers on the keyboard).