With kids and families being involved in so many activities, many families have calendars they regularly refer to in order to know where they need to be and if there are any potential conflicts of schedule they have to deal with as well as determine which parent is taking which kid where. (Photo illustration by Brett Dunlap)

PARKERSBURG — It is all about planning.

When families have a lot going on with the kids’ school activities and extracurricular activities, it can be hard to make sure there is enough time to do everything that needs to get done. Scheduling and setting priorities will help families get to everything they need to get to.

Jillian Starcher, of Parkersburg, regularly has to balance the needs of her family with finding the time for her and her husband Glen to get their 11-year-old and 14-year-old daughters, Madelyn and Meggan, to everything they are involved in while still making sure there is time for family.

Both she and her husband work full-time jobs while Madelyn is starting sixth grade and involved in fall softball and Meggan is starting her freshman year and is involved with dance as well as now being a part of the Parkersburg South High School Marching Band.

“We rely heavily on our calendars,” Starcher said. “I have one that hangs in the house that is color coded for the kids.

Parkersburg South High School student Ali Evans during a performance of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” at Peoples Bank Theater in Marietta. The production was a mix of local talent and professional actors. Evans is involved in choir, band, theater, 4-H, church youth group, National Honor Society, student council and competition dance team and has to plan her time out to make sure she can get to everything she is involved in. (Photo provided)

“Each activity is a different color, what day they are happening, where we are going, doctor’s appointments, trips, dates for important things at school and so on.

“We also have a chalkboard where we can write the times of all the after-school activities.”

Her daughter Meggan has been dancing with the Mid-Ohio Valley Ballet Academy for 10 years.

“Dance always keeps us running, especially going into the fall season as the (ballet company) prepares to perform ‘The Nutcracker’ for the holidays,” Starcher said.

They travel around to area schools and venues performing the show during the winter season, Starcher said.

Meggan Starcher comes out of the ballet class at Mid-Ohio Valley Ballet Academy in Parkersburg. Starcher’s family does a lot of planning so Meegan can do dance, be in marching band for Parkersburg South High School and more while her younger sister Madelyn plays in a fall softball league. The family has calendars in more to keep track of everything they are involved in. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

“That always keeps us on the run,” she said.

With the older girl now in the marching band, they are trying to learn how to balance the marching band schedule along with her dance schedule. On top of that, their younger daughter is in a fall softball league that Glen is coaching.

Marching band practices took up a lot of their time this past summer, Starcher said.

In many cases, they have a support network of other parents where they can take turns transporting their kids as well as others to different activities. Starcher also has family who are able to help get their daughters to where they need to be if there is a conflict in the schedule.

“We have created a really good village around us,” she said. “We do a lot of carpooling with the other families.”

The family takes an annual camping trip and they had to plan out things as the trip overlapped with a marching band performance. Some of the family went on the trip while their daughter stayed and went to school and her grandparents made sure she got to the game to perform.

Starcher said she drove two hours to be able to be there for the performance and then took her daughter on the trip after it was done.

“It is deciding to make those things work,” she said. “This is where families step in a lot.

“You have to compromise. You don’t want to skip the trip we all have looked forward to, but you also want to support her in an activity she loves.”

It is a matter of making sure the kids have those memories and experiences they will treasure and making sure their family is there during those times.

“You have to figure out what is important for you,” Starcher said. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.

“Sometimes life gets in the way of the best planned schedules and you just have to go with the flow.”

Ali Evans, a 16-year-old junior at PSHS, is involved with choir, band, theater, 4-H, church youth group, National Honor Society, student council and competition dance team.

“The big thing is we have this big calendar where we write everything out,” she said of her family. “We put it all in our phones to make sure we have everything together and we don’t miss something.

“It works pretty well for us.”

The calendar helps them visualize what is going on and see what is happening each day. It also helps them to see what things overlap and where the priorities are.

Sometimes she has to make a choice about which thing she will go to in order to meet certain obligations.

“I try to look at which is more pressing at the time,” Evans said.

There are instances where auditions for theater and band might overlap. She said she would likely do the auditions for theater because if she did not she would miss out on that opportunity to be in a show. If there was a band competition, she would have to look at it a different way in how she decided what to prioritize.

There have been times when she has had to choose between two things she really wanted to do.

This past year she had the state Math Field Day Competition that she wanted to participate in and it was the same weekend as a choir competition.

“There was no way where I could do both,” she said. “The choir trip was in Nashville and the Math Field Day competition was here in West Virginia.

“Both were that Saturday so it couldn’t work to do both. So I had to pick which one was more important. To me, it was the choir trip.”

Since she was part of a choir, she felt like she would be letting everyone else down if she didn’t pick the competition where the math event was more individualized and other people would not be impacted if she didn’t go.

“I didn’t want to let my team down so I picked the choir trip,” Evans said. “I really think the biggest thing is planning out ahead of time and see what you can do to make it all work out.”

The start of school always means things get busy with activities starting and more always seems to be coming.

“I’m busy now, but it always seems to get busier,” Evans said.