Yesterday marked the first official day of Spring. For many families that means flowers, sunshine, walks in the park and lazy afternoons relaxing in the grass.
For my family, it is the equivalent of the opening of the flood gates. We don’t think flowers, we think Spring sports…
This time of year, our oldest son plays tennis for the High School 5 days a week. Meanwhile for our younger son, after a short break in the Winter, the arrival of Spring signifies the start of the baseball season. With this comes 4-5 nights a week of games and/or practices. In addition, both boys are on Travel Soccer teams, with practice 2 nights a week and a game every weekend. You can only begin to imagine the logistics involved not only in the commuting, but also simply keeping track of it all.
While I have not yet gotten their schedules for tennis and baseball, I did receive both of their Travel Soccer calendars. Historically, I have spent quite a bit of time inputting this into my Blackberry and writing it on both our family wall calendar and the boys calendar in their room. This year, I was delighted to discover how much HATCHEDit streamlined and simplified the process for me.
One of the coolest features is the ability to input a sports practice (for example) as a weekly recurring event. No more having to write, “Soccer practice: 4:30pm – 6pm” sixteen different times per season, per kid, per calendar. All it took was a few simple clicks of the mouse and voilà it was done. Check this out! First you click the gray “Add an Event” button on your calendar page. When the box you see below opens up, click the “Recurrence” box (it says :”This event repeats or spans multiple days” next to it)…
Select how often you want it to recur. In the event of weekly practices, for example, I clicked “Recur every Week”. When I did that, the days of the week then opened up for me…
I selected the correct days of the week,  chose a start date and an end date (beginning and ending of the season), added the time the practice started and how long it lasted. I then clicked “Save” and watched as HATCHEDit filled in my family calendar in seconds! The entire season’s soccer practices auto-filled in every single week for me with just a few clicks of the mouse!
This feature is particularly handy when your athlete has consistent practice times every week, but even entering individual practices is super easy.
I no longer dread receiving the tennis and baseball schedules within the next week. I know HATCHEDit will help to keep our family organized while simultaneously sparing me the writers cramp this season. Have you joined yet? It’s FREE!
As a side note, I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am for the upcoming iPhone app! To be able to make changes to our HATCHEDit family calendar while on the run will give a whole new meaning to the term convenience!
