Apps for busy moms and dads

Parenting sometimes requires some extra motivation to wake up and get through the day. Bloom lets you schedule notifications that are little motivational slideshows. A “bloom” can be one of many preassembled ones or you can easily create them yourself using your own pictures, music, and titles. It’s a good way to start your day on the right foot.

Now that you've woken up, it's time to make sure the offspring are getting out of bed. I'm sure parents with younger children are aware of how long morning routines can take. If your child happily jumps out of bed ready to start his or her day, then I envy you. For the rest of us, there is Morning Kids, an app that turns those essential routines into game. Many parents have already sworn by this app and state that their children are now ready within fifteen minutes, a great time save for the busy parent.

While the children are getting ready, you should probably check the weather to see how it’s going to cooperate with your plans for the day. This app gives accurate forecasts that include all the important details in a great looking format that makes sense. The detailed hourly forecast is the best part.

What if you want to take the kids out and it is raining? While eWeather HD will tell you the likelihood of rain, Dark Sky can tell you, within the hour, a fairly accurate estimate of when rain will actually be falling where you are. This is a great app to let you know when the storm will break so that you can unpack the car or leave the mall with minimal soaking.

While each phone-toting family member will likely have their own favorite productivity apps, getting everyone on the same page can be difficult. Cozi is a nifty organizer made for families to easily share calendars, todo lists, shopping lists, and a basic journal. It is an effective way to help everyone to work together.

Any parent knows that having children makes keeping up housework exponentially more difficult. HomeRoutines breaks down household chores into manageable scheduled zones which are easy to complete. Following the famous Fly Ladies routines, the app has sections that require a short time to finish such as "Entryway and Stairs" and allows you to check off each as done. You also can input your own chores as needed. HomeRoutines takes the pain out of housework and makes sure that busy parents are not overwhelmed. If you cannot afford a live-in maid, treat yourself to this app. It is worth every penny!

Voxer Walkie-Talkie PTT is a great app for when you need to relay a message, but don't have the time to type out a text or make a phone call. The app is a cross platform messenger which makes it available to your friends, family, and coworkers that don't own iPhones.

Rather than waste your time looking for documents around your house, why not scan them with the camera on your iDevice? With JotNot Scanner Pro you can scan important documents, pay stubs, bills, and receipts. You can then turn them into PDFs so that you can share them via email and fax. Uploading to Dropbox and Evernote are other helpful options.

Speaking of pennies, nothing stresses out families more than money issues. You can really get control of your finances with MoneyWiz, which combines a check register, budget, reports, bill reminders, and a great sync feature that works with the iPad and Mac versions and anyone else who deals with the family funds. If you were using something different, MoneyWiz can import your data and set up your payees like magic.

You can stretch your eating out budget by knowing which restaurants offer special deals for kids. This app will give you suggestions around you that will not only offer good deals, but will likely also have more families with kids eating there that day. Who doesn’t like free food? Well, your picky kid might not like it. At least it was free.

Of course, you can seriously save money by fixing your own meals at home. There are many recipe apps, but ultimately, Paprika eats them all. Apps dedicated to single websites tend to have limited search functions, separate shopping lists, and UI problems. Paprika lets you browse over a hundred sites and keep everything together in a way that makes sense. It also syncs with the separate iPad and Mac apps wonderfully. This is a much better way to manage and plan quick meals for the pickiest eaters.

Having a busy schedule can make it difficult to keep track of your own thoughts. If this is one of your struggles, then ScatterBrain is a note-taking app worth checking out. Each note can be assigned to one of seven colors, which you can use however you want. This is a very different and fun way to get your thoughts organized.

A few other time-consuming, yet enjoyable tasks are trying to catch up on the news that you care about and having to access each of your social networks seperately. Flipboard puts all of your topics of interest, news, and social networks in one place with style. It's like reading a magazine published specifically for you.

This app can keep track of everything else for you. The sky is really the limit. With all the built-in functions you can keep track of homework, exercise, nap times, behavior, allowances, checklists, and about anything else you can think of. One way you could organize the app would be to create a folder for each family member’s lists. Yes, the dog can have a folder, too.

After a busy day with your family, everyone else might not be as exhausted as you are. Sleep Pillow has a wide variety of noises that are sure to help family members of all ages get to sleep. Each sound is very distinctive and the controls are simple. Whether you use Sleep Pillow to calm a fussy baby, a fitful toddler, or yourself after a long day, you’re sure to wake up refreshed and ready to do it all again tomorrow.