Day of rest?

I'm reading "Little House in the Big Woods" with Mosey.  Tonight we read the chapter about "Sundays" which describes how Laura and Mary had to spend the Sabbath Day.  Embedded in the chapter is a story about the little girls' grandfather, and the even more extremely strict way he had to spend the Sabbath as a child.  It sounds so harsh from our modern perspective-- the children walked to and from church with no talking or laughing.  At church they had to sit motionless, looking at nothing but the preacher.  At home they had to sit quietly on a bench studying catechism.  No playing of any kind was allowed.  It sounds harsh!

But then, after Mosey and his brothers went to bed tonight, I looked around at the aftermath of our "Sabbath."  Ben and I just spent the past hour trying to undo the damage.  Day of rest?  Yeah, not so much.  If we made the boys sit on a bench and study catechism all day except for church, we could probably enjoy a day of rest!

I've read of how other mothers really do take Sundays off.  They spend the day enjoying the family, and ignoring chores.  And then they spend all day Monday paying for it...  LOL!  That's fine for them, but I've got to get lessons started at 7:00 AM and I can NOT start the day and the week off in chaos.  I just can't.

I'm not sure what the answer is.  The boys are doing a better job in cleaning up after themselves, but we still need to supervise their efforts.  They won't just do it on their own.  But Sunday afternoons are busy!  Today we came home from church (after my after-church meeting), and I wanted to start on dinner.  Then we discovered that Mosey did an "experiment" involving mud in a closed water bottle in the microwave.  The bottle exploded and there was mud caked all over the inside of the microwave.  So I couldn't start dinner until the microwave was cleaned up (I needed to defrost the meat), and the microwave couldn't get cleaned up until the dishes in the sink were cleared out so there would be a place to clean off mud.  But we couldn't clear out the dishes in the sink until the dishwasher was unloaded.

This was just like "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," only in reverse.

Anyway, FINALLY the microwave got cleaned out and I started dinner.

After dinner, I needed to cut Ben's hair.  I would have done it last night (along with the other kitchen clean-up that didn't happen last night), except that I was at the Relief Society broadcast.  So after Ben's hair was cut I decided to cut the boys' hair since all the hair cutting stuff was out, and after that was done and the boys were bathed and pajama-ed, it was their bed time, with no time to supervise the boys cleaning up unless I wanted them to stay up an hour past their bedtime.  They probably would have been OK with that, but I was not.

Anyway, our "Sabbaths" are a problem.  Saturdays are too busy, and often Ben needs to work a few hours, and so there is not really any extended period of time to get a lot of my weekend to-do-list items accomplished.  For us, Saturday is not really "a special day, the day we get ready for Sunday," as the song goes.  So for us to really honor the Sabbath day, we need to drastically rearrange and re-prioritize our Saturday activities, and I'm not exactly sure what is the best way to attack this.

I really need an 8th day of the week.  Saturdays are for family, Sundays are (supposed to be) for God, but I need an Eighthday for chores and errands and honey-do's and church calling business and all the random weekday things that get pushed to the weekend.

Anyone want to join me in an Eighthday movement?  :-)