scheduling chaos

I just sent my husband an appointment for a family pow-wow.

 We have been home, overlapping some hours, every night this week, which is a distinct variation on the last 2 weeks. But regardless of who is home when each night, by the time we get the kids to bed, clean up the mess of the day, and prep for the next, it is time to go to bed ourselves.

It didn't used to be this way.

When we first got married, I insisted we keep a family calendar.

It started off as a homemade wipe-off poster my friend Erin hooked me up with in college.  

It hung on our dining room door and we would add things to it - with smeary vis-a-vis markers.

I traveled a lot for my first job and had a complicated schedule while my husband maintained a fairly routine schedule; I am not sure he even carried a planner during the first years we were married.

Needless to say, I kept the family calendar.

A decade in, we would sit down periodically and reconcile our day planners {i love a good spiral bound planner}

It was an organic experience, one we were able to maintain with some ease.

However, a dozen years in, with 2 kids, 3 jobs, 2 schools, a private practice, adult soccer, kids soccer, after-school events, permission slips, conferences, random work meetings, family visits, car maintenance, dentist appointments, and dates nights {you know the routine} - 

life is too complex to have an organic scheduling experience. 

Two summers ago we determined we probably needed to be intentional about coming together to coordinate our lives.  Please know, this {intentional scheduling} is not my husband's forte but he has humored me.

We agreed to come together once a week.

We talk schedules, vacation plans, budget goals, family "stuff," and couples issues. 

We try to combine it with big breakfast or, at the very least, with coffee.

We are usually in our pajamas and, while our kids don't usually participate directly, the youngest plays independently nearby and the oldest orbits the table, listening in - waiting for answers to his life's requests.  

See, he is really good at presenting ideas for things he would like to do at the most inopportune times.  So I say "Daddy and I have need to talk about it," then place the idea into the family calendar folder, unable to deal with it right then but knowing we have a set time to get to it.

So now, I carry with me a family calendar folder {because I am still a paper & pencil kind of gal}, we both have smart phones, and we keep a hanging photo family calendar {mostly for decoration}.  Each of us is assigned a highlighter color and we start with the week ahead and work our way out as far as needed in order to get upcoming events on the calendar. 

Next we tackle the miscellaneous requests from kiddo #1 and he orbits our family pow-wow because he usually gets his answers. I love that he orbits because he bears witness to the deliberation that goes into the decisions we make which makes the no's easier to swallow.  We haven't had a pow-wow in a while and recently denied a request or two, resulting in memorable dramatics. 

Trying to explain deliberation after-the-fact is no salve for deep, despairing disappointment.  He also, for better or worse, can listen in on the topics we discuss and join in as he desires {which is how we end up talking race relations or apologetics or family dynamics and such with our 3rd grader}

So, this week I sent my husband an appointment.

Because we haven't met for a while.

Because the list of discussion items is long.

Because there is not enough time in a day to organically come together over schedules and decisions.

What are your methods for scheduling life's chaos?