A day in the life

Perhaps I'm the only nosy curious person out there, but I'm always interested to see what someone else's "normal" day looks like.  How do people navigate incorporating fun, summertime activities as well as the mundane, everyday stuff that also needs to be accomplished?  I for sure don't have the answers, but this is a snapshot peek into how our days usually roll out--at least it was for last Thursday.

Both J and I are early birds--I always have been and he's grown (more) into one.  That being said, 4:20 a.m. is early.  No matter how you cut it.  Groan.  We take turns on whose day it is to workout at the gym--Thursdays are my day--so it is time to hop out of bed and get the day started.

Once I'm dressed and downstairs, it is time for my devotional time.  I'll either read my book that I'm doing for my bible study or I'll do a daily devotional from Dr. Charles Stanley and In Touch Ministries.  They send them out free every month but suggest that you make a donation every so often.  I also read from Jesus Calling which is another wonderful daily devotional.

 Time to head to the gym and the 5:00 a.m. spin/abs class.  Let's do this!

One hour later, I'm done and ready to head home and see who is up.  Both girls never rarely sleep until 7, so I'm sure someone will be waking soon.

The Noodle is up first--6:45 or so.  Both J and I have showered so we jump into bed and snuggle with her for a few minutes.

About 10 minutes later Mei Mei calls out so I go in to cuddle her.  Love all those early morning kisses and hugs!

After we get J out the door (in the summer he works longer hours M-Th so that he only has to work a half day on Fridays) I get breakfast on the table.  Applesauce, half a banana and toast with "lemon curly" or lemon curd as Mei Mei calls it, for her. OJ, coffee, half a banana and oatmeal with peanut butter, flaxseed and a smattering of chocolate chips for me.  Oatmeal with flaxseed and honey for the Noodle.

Then it is time for "table time".  I started table time with the Noodle many years ago and we picked it back up for Mei Mei.  During the school year Noodle does her homework and Mei Mei works on activities/lessons based on RRSP, found here.  During the summer things are more relaxed.  Mei Mei was working on finding all kinds of yellow things, cutting them out and gluing them down.

I was dictating "trick" words to the Noodle to have her practice her spelling.  Using the magna doodle helped make it a bit more fun.  The Noodle also does some kind of math every day and always flash cards.  Sigh.  -, + and now adding in x to be ready for 3rd grade.

Since I knew today was going to be cooler and dry, we decided we wanted to go pick strawberries. You can read more about it here, but it ended up being a great morning.  Both of them were so helpful and worked really hard so we finished with 3 buckets.  Yeah!

Towards the end of picking, when you're starting to feel really hot and tired of bending down, sometimes you need the proverbial carrot dangling in front of your nose...fro-yo usually does the trick!

I typically find that the time period right before lunch is often when one of my kiddos will have a meltdown.  Especially after a busy morning.  Thankfully on this day, I was able to get everyone home (awake), get lunch on the table and into mouths before any beasts reared their heads.  Score one point for the Mama.  I know that you all are coveting my lovely tablecloth.  Not.  Our fancy table, read plywood top, usually has a tablecloth on it but the day before tomato soup was spilled all over it.  It was still in the wash.  I'm happy to report no one got a splinter.

After lunch and reading a few books it is time for quiet time.  Let me just say, I LOVE ME SOME QUIET TIME!!  The Noodle has to read for 30 minutes and then can play freely in her room.

Mei Mei can also play in her room, but some days, depending on what we have going on later, I will still put her down for a nap.  She's been known to quietly sneak into the bathroom and do a little water play in the sink, so I have to keep an ear out for what she's doing, but overall, she enjoys listening to music in her room and playing.  One thing I will say is that there is no screen time during quiet time.  I'm kinda a stickler about screen time anyway, but I really feel that it is important that kids learn how to entertain themselves, rather than constantly being entertained (by others or devices).  Quiet time helps facilitate that.

And what am I doing during quiet time?  Almost every day I take a 15-20 minute nap.  I used to feel kind of sheepish about this, but I'm so over that now.  I know my body needs it and I feel so much better once I wake up.  I'm a biiig advocate for napping :)

Once the nap is over, it is time to start on dinner prep, cleaning, e-mails, any projects I'm working on, etc.  Today it was cleaning the mudroom and the downstairs bathroom.

Quiet time usually lasts for about an hour and a half.  Once we were finished, we had some errands to run, but I wanted to take some of our strawberries over to a single neighbor.  I've talked before how I feel it is important to be intentional and this is an easy to way to do it.

 Then it is off to the bank

 and the grocery store.

When we got home, I unloaded the food and sent the girls into the other room to play.  The Noodle called me in to explain a game she had made up using the headbandz cards and then she went in to join Mei Mei in playing Legos.

Now, in all honesty, this is a relatively new occurrence.  For whatever reason, the Noodle has a pretty hard time staying chill when Mei Mei and Legos are used in the same sentence.  In fact, it is pretty likely that at some point in time, tempers are going to flare.  Thankfully on this day, they didn't...until later.

I finished with the groceries and then everyone came in to make the strawberry pie.  Easy, tasty recipe you can find here.

I went to sit down for a moment on the porch while the pie baked before getting dinner ready and these two goofs decided to start being Chinese soldiers fighting the Huns.  It was all fun and games until they began running laps around the downstairs and getting suuper wound up.  Sure enough, tempers flared and people had to go to their rooms to calm down.  Ugh.

With everyone calmer, peace restored and jammies on, I finished dinner--a new recipe of mac-n-cheese in the crock pot which was meh and brussel sprouts.  Both of them thought it was good but they were holding out for the pie.

The double thumbs up say it all.  Some nights J is able to make it home in time to eat with us and other nights he has meetings or has to stay late.  This was one of those nights.  Again, longer weekdays but also longer weekends.

Since Mei Mei hadn't had a nap today she was down for the count by 7 p.m. and the Noodle soon followed at 7:45.  We're in the middle of reading Otherwise Known As Sheila the Great, which I remember from years ago.  Ha!  God's Little Princess' Bedtime Devotional has been a very good devotional which the Noodle has used for a few years now.  We just read from Mei Mei's preschool bible and aren't using a devotional with her yet.

J got home just in time to kiss the Noodle good night and then after he had eaten, helped me clean the strawberries.  Not gonna lie--cleaning those berries is a p.a.i.n.  Blueberries and raspberries are so much easier.  However it was the perfect way to catch up and hear about each others day and I so appreciated the help.

 By 9:15 I was ready to crawl into bed and read for a few minutes.  I was reading Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen.

 9:40 and it was time to turn out the light and get some sleep.  That's a wrap, folks!