Putting First Things First

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel to Utah for a Women's Conference sponsored by BYU, my alma mater.  The best part of the conference was that I got to attend with 5 of my sisters in law and my amazing mother in law.  I'm so blessed to be surrounded by such fabulous examples of womanhood.  I had spent some time looking over the different classes offered and found one that I just knew I needed to attend.  The title:  "Putting First Things First."

How fitting right?  Most of the time I feel like my brain is going in like twenty different directions.  I'm sure that at one point in life (most likely prior to giving birth to these six monkeys) I could see a thought thru from beginning to end.  Not so much anymore.  At any given time my thought process resembles an eight year old on a pogo stick.  Here's an example of the six thoughts running through my brain at this very moment:

1.  "How long ago did Carter take his pain meds and when is he going to stop drooling?"  (He got his wisdom teeth out this afternoon.)

2.  "What was it I planned to make for dinner tomorrow night and how many of the ingredients do I actually have in the house?"  (answer:  less than half and I went to the store yesterday!  And left the grocery list in the car...)

3.  "What time do I have to be at the school to help at the Bookfair tomorrow and how nice do I actually have to look?"

4.  "How am I going to remember to send the emails for the auction because I normally write my reminders on my hand but if I do that now in bed I'll wake up with 'auction emails' tattooed on the side of my face from where my hand was squished into my cheek all night.  (And I know this because it has happened on more than one occasion.)

5.  "Wait--what am I writing about??"

See?  It's a wonder I can string more than two sentences together coherently.  I'm a scattered mess!  And this gets back to the heart of the problem that started me on my blogging adventure:  how do I organize my life so that I can better help my children and be less frustrated with the state of affairs at the Morgan hacienda?  I think the answer lies in the title of that class, "Putting First Things First."  I'd love to tell you that I came out of that class with a plan for establishing my priorities.  I didn't.  Because the class was full and instead I wandered the cafeteria in search of a caffeinated Diet Coke--a fruitless search by the way, but I digress...

BUT--I have been giving some thought to what is most important to me and this is what I came up with:

1.  My spiritual/emotional/physical well being--because if I'm not taking care of myself how can I possibly take care of anyone else?

2.  My husband--after all when the kids grow up and leave (they WILL grow up and leave, right?) it's going to be him and I.

3.  My children--because they are only under my care for such a short period of time and I don't want to screw them up too badly.

4.  My church callings and assignments

5.  Other Volunteer assignments (Band, dance groups, community events, etc)

I'm still working out the kinks to how I'm going to make this work--if you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.  Oh--and bring me a Diet Coke while you're at it...

PS--I read this post through the next day and realized that I only listed five thoughts, not the 6 I referenced.  I was going to change it and then thought, "Nope--that about sums it up..."