These Are The Days of Our Lives...

This post is probably going to be a snooze fest for 99.9% of the people that read it. It's really a post that I am writing for myself and my family as part of our history. :)

I was talking to Wade last Wednesday night and telling him that I have been so discouraged lately because I feel like I am constantly spinning my wheels. I feel like I work so hard from sun up to sun down, but rarely get anything "extra" done. I am busy just keeping everything at neutral - just maintaining our children, our home, and our other commitments. I LOVE this season of life, for sure. I truly cannot imagine life ever getting better than it is right now. If I could freeze time and live in this exact same season forever, I gladly would. I love the ages that my kids are right now. I enjoy them so much! However, I wish so badly that I could do more for others. There are so many projects and committees and responsibilities that interest me - I want to say "yes" to everything. But, I honestly feel like I don't know what I could put on the back burner in order to commit to more. Just feeding, clothing, educating, and nurturing our children is pretty all encompassing.

I decided to write down exactly what a day in our life looks like right now. I figure that will serve two purposes. First, I think it will be so fun to look back in 20 years and remember exactly what life was like in December of 2011. Second, seeing in writing what I do throughout the day was so encouraging. It reminded me of how I felt back in my nursing days when I would review my charting at the end of my shift. Back then, I felt like I had many sets of vitals, many columns of assessments, and a medical administration record that showed that I had worked my tail off for 12 hours. I got that same feeling after seeing the notes that I had jotted out throughout the day - gratification that I had accomplished a lot during my day.

This is a busy, busy, season of life and I don't EVER want to forget the joys and trials of this season. So, here is what Thursday, December 8th, 2011 looked like in our home.

7:30am - I woke up to my sweet baby whimpering on the monitor. I went upstairs to feed him. In a perfect world, I would have woken up earlier to have my quiet time and shower before the boys woke up. But, if I am honest... there are very few "perfect" mornings right now. ;) We had been up until 1am the night before, so I snoozed through my alarm.
7:50 am - Came downstairs to the boys and Wade in the kitchen. Wade made biscuits and some sausage for breakfast. The boys always wake up famished, so they ate Nutra Grain bars while they waited on their biscuits and sausage.
8:00 am - We all ate breakfast together and talked about the day.
8:30 am - I cleaned up the kitchen and then went upstairs to lay Owen down for a nap.
8:45 am - I sorted all of our laundry from the last 3 days (4 loads) and started the darks.
9:00 am - We started our homeschool day. We read "Jacob Leaves Haran Secretly" out of The Child's Story Bible and worked on memorizing Luke 2:10-11. Owen was asleep and Drew sat and listened to me read the Bible story.
9:20 am - Clayton did his homework assignment. He copied 2 sentences from his history assignment the day before about papyrus and scribes. Clayton struggles with handwriting, so I try to do that early in the day before he is tired. Drew and I played with his Duplos while Clayton worked. We build a tower, which Drew declared to be "awesome!" :)
9:45 am - I worked with Clayton on his "Phonics Times" assignment. It is basically just a review of the concepts that they have been working on in Phonics. We did all of his flashcards (letter and diagraph sounds, sight words, and suffixes) and worked on the newest concept of final, stable, syllables ([ble, [dle, [tle, etc.). He also coded about 10 words using all of the phonics rules that he has learned. Drew continued to play with his Legos while I worked with Clayton.
10:00 am - Clayton did his Phonics worksheets independently while I quizzed Drew on his letter flashcards. He begs to do his letter flashcards. I think it makes him feel big after watching Clayton work on his flashcards. ;)
10:15 am - I let Drew continue to work on his letters using an app on my phone. Clayton read his assigned fluency reader to me and did his spelling fun worksheet (writing out his spelling words using different colors of map pencils and doing a word search using his spelling words).
10:30 am - I got Clayton started on his math worksheets, moved the darks to the dryer, and started a second load of darks. Owen woke up, so I fed him.
10:50 am - I let Clayton take a break to play with Drew while I went downstairs to feed Owen some oatmeal.
11:00am - I walked upstairs and laid Owen down on the floor while I went to his room to get him some clothes. When I came back, all three boys were MIA. Weird. I quickly found them all huddled in their playhouse. They were "taking a nap." Yeah, right. ;)

11:15 am - I got out some puzzles for Drew to work on while Clayton and I did his "Math Meeting" assignment. We went over the calendar (focusing on spelling all of the days of the week and months of the year), the weather (charted on his weather graph), wrote the digital time, wrote out the numbers from 400-600 counting by 10s, wrote even numbers from 0-56, figured out how to make $0.84 using various combinations of dimes, nickels, and pennies, and wrote out a fact family sequence using 15, 9, and 6. We also went through all of Clayton's math flashcards for his timed tests (25 problems in 2 minutes).
11:40 am - Clayton did his Map Skills page and his Bible/History project (a word search using words from the life of Joseph). I helped Drew clean up his puzzles and then cleaned up a massive blow out diaper courtesy of my littlest darling. Good times. :)
12:00 pm - I let the kids play in their playhouse for a bit while I gathered unused baby items for a friend to take to Romania on a mission trip. Then we all headed downstairs for lunch.
12:20 pm - I moved over another cycle of laundry and made lunch. Usually, when Wade is in town, he eats lunch with us. On this particular day, he met a friend for lunch.
12:30 pm - I fed the boys lunch and sorted laundry while they ate. Then we all went upstairs so that I could lay Owen down. When I came out of the nursery, I found the boys in the bathroom playing "Science Lab." This is a pretty common occurrence these days - circuit sets and "potions." I think it is pretty cute. ;)
I was appauled when Clayton said that he was using water with his circuit set. I scolded him about how he could electrocute himself and that he should NEVER use water with his circuit set. He was quick to point out the water powered circuit in the instruction manual that came with his set. Ooops! I guess that I was wrong. It still makes me nervy... I asked him to only set up that circuit when I was nearby and aware of what he was doing. Geesh.



* Side note: He always wears those glasses when he plays scientist. They make his eyes look enormous. So cute...

1:00 pm - I laid Drew down for his nap. Wade came home and brought me lunch - he's so thoughtful. I ate my lunch while Clayton and I discussed what he had learned in Grammar the previous day.
1:20 pm - Clayton did his Grammar assignment (below). I read him a chapter out of The Story of the World entitled "The First Cities in India" and "The Honest Woodman" out of the Treasury of Virtues.

2:00 pm - I responded to some emails and then fed Owen (nursed and babyfood). Clayton worked on his creative writing assignment. He was supposed to write a story about an animal that lives in the water. Over Thanksgiving, he had watched a documentary about the Goonch catfish with Wade and Papaw. He is now officially obsessed with the man-eating catfish. That made the subject matter for his writing assignment an easy decision. Ha!
2:20 pm - I finally took a shower (better late than never!) and tried to psych myself up for the imminent Wally World trip.
3:30 pm - Drew woke up from his nap, and I went to Walmart. Bleh!
5:15 pm - I got home from Walmart and Wade helped me unload all of our groceries. I fed Owen and let him bounce in his Johnny Jump Up for a little while.
5:30 pm - Wade worked on dinner. I helped him and we talked about our day. The boys watched Arthur while we cooked.
6:00 pm - We ate dinner together and Owen played in his exersaucer in the kitchen.
6:30 pm - I laid Owen down for his last little cat nap.
7:00 pm - Baths for the big boys.
7:15 pm - Owen woke up and we did our Christmas devotional as a family.
7:45 pm - Owen got his bedtime bottle (a few ounces of formula to top him off) and his rice cereal.
8:15 pm - The big boys went to bed and we got to spend some one-on-one time with Owen.
8:45 pm - Owen went to bed for the night.
9:00 pm - I cleaned up the kitchen and put away the rest of the laundry while Wade worked on cutting the wood for a Christmas craft that we were making to give to all of the kids' teachers (both school & church) and our neighbors.
9:30 pm - I painted the above project and Wade assembled.
10:30 pm - I made Clayton's lunch for the next day.
11:00 pm - I addressed Christmas cards while Wade worked on stuff for church
12:15 pm - Bedtime for the adults in the family. Zzzzz....

That is a pretty typical day on Tuesdays & Thursdays. We rarely leave the house on those days and spend most of the day working on school. Mondays are typically the day that I clean, catch up on laundry, and go to the grocery store. Wednesdays are reserved for various appointments (doctors, dentists, etc.) and errands. Fridays Clayton has a partial school day on campus, so we take our time getting ready and then take Clayton to school at 9:00. Then I come home and do stuff around the house while the Littles are napping. We pick up Clayton at 3, and then our weekend begins.

I hope that I never, ever forget this season of life - the good, the bad, and the ugly. ;) I love the stage of our young family. There is never enough time or money, but we couldn't want for more. :)