You do not need a better calendar. You need the one you already have, drawn to the week your family actually runs. Most of the trouble starts when the row fills up with everything people want in it, and nobody counts what a Tuesday really holds.
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Count the trips, not the events
Start with a blank page and list every trip the kids take in a normal week. School run, practice, the friend's house, the library, the dentist once in a while. Put a mark for each drive, not each thing on the calendar. A practice is one event, but it can be three trips if someone has to bring the cleats first and come back for the water bottle.
Then count the trips that need the car at the same time as your other row. That number decides whether the week can be drawn at all.
Measure the gaps, not the hours
Next, write down the gap between each drop-off and each pickup, on each day. Be honest about the gaps that only look open. A two-hour window that starts with a fifteen-minute drive each way leaves about an hour and a half you can use, and much of that will go to the drive.
Look especially at the afternoon window, the time between the school bell and when Mom's week needs you. That is where the calendar usually breaks, so give it its own column.
Mark the collisions in lemon
Once the trips and gaps are on paper, go back through the week with a yellow highlighter, or lemon if you want a color name for it. Every spot where the kids' row and Mom's row both need the car, or both need you, is a collision. Mark them all, even the small ones. A collision that gets written down is one you can plan for. A collision that lives in your head is what keeps you up at 2am.
Check the drawing against a real week
Do not trust the first version. Run the drawn week against the last two weeks you actually lived. Where did you end up driving somewhere that was not on the page? Where did a pickup slip by ten minutes and cost you the next drop? Add those trips, add a buffer, and draw again.
One honest test: if the kids' row has no room for a missed bus, a late meeting, or a sick morning, it is not a real schedule yet. It is a hopeful one. Leave one open block each day and see whether the week holds before you call it finished.
Give every collision an owner
For every lemon mark, write one name next to it. It can be you, a partner, a friend from pickup, or a paid afternoon helper if your family uses one. A collision with no name is still a problem on Friday. Once every mark has an owner, the calendar stops being a list of worries and becomes a plan you can hand to someone else.
When the week is drawn, keep it on paper or on a shared page both houses can see. The Kids' Week and Mom's Week page shows how the two rows sit side by side, if you want a second look at the layout.