31 Days to Surviving Sports Seasons Sanely: Calendar & Schedule
Now, to the nitty gritty. That calendar can be a real challenge.
I have three children on three soccer teams. Each team should have two games and one practice per week. That’s nine events over the course of six days. It’s hectic. It’s also rare that we have a day off during the six weeks of the season, although Fall of 2015 is looking remarkably unscheduled with most events falling on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday!
First, I make myself a spreadsheet (this is from Spring of 2015 because it is more impressive):
I send a copy of this spreadsheet to my parents and in-laws. They like the game list in this format. I print a hard copy for myself (it lives in my purse) and I save it as a Google Sheet so my husband and I can access it on the go if necessary on our smart phones.
The magic, though, is I enter all of these items onto Google Calendar. Each of my children has their own color on the calendar (M-girl = red, N-boy = blue, R-girl = green) and both my husband and I see those calendars. As I enter games, I copy them onto my extended family’s google calendar. That tells my brothers and their families when the children are playing and they sometimes come for a game. After the games are all entered, my data entry isdouble checked to be certain I haven’t missed any games.
If you need help with Google Calendar, I highly recommend Mystie Winckler’s Google Calendar Tutorial. She has great tips and tricks for using Google Calendar for everything in your life. My husband and I both use and share our calendars year-round and he often reminds me of events that are on it.
Having the things we need and knowing the places we need to be is definitely necessary for keeping my sanity during sports seasons.