Our Mondays

I realize it's Tuesday, but I'm going to update you on what our daily routines are like these days (since we lead such scintillating lives).  I'll post each day this week, recounting the previous day.  (Trust me, a little time to reflect upon/forget about excruciating details is in your favor.)

So, Mondays.  I try to get out of bed as early as possible each and every day, because I love quiet mornings, but usually it's hard.  On average I get up at 6:30 a.m.  Chet leaves the house between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m.  The girls come out of their room at 7:00 a.m. (sometimes Sydney sleeps a little later than that).  When the girls get up they watch a show on TV and drink some orange juice, while I get dressed (I cannot, cannot, CANNOT bring myself to get dressed before they get up -- why waste precious, quiet, morning minutes on getting dressed?!).  Getting myself dressed is easy on Mondays because I head to the gym after preschool drop off (Sydney and Lorelei both go to preschool on Mondays), so no need to spend a lot of time choosing an outfit or primping (as if I ever do that anyway -- HA!).

Ford wakes up between 7:00 a.m and 8:00 a.m., and we just fit him into the morning routine.  After I'm dressed I feed the kids breakfast.  Yesterday was cereal, bacon, and strawberries.  Sydney ate Crispix, while Lorelei requested "white crispies" (Rice Krispies -- actually, Crispy Rice, since I buy Harris Teeter's brand).  Each morning I clean up the dining room and kitchen as much as possible; my goal is to at least get the table cleared and all of the dishes into the kitchen, and to wipe down the table.  It gives me hives to come home later and see a disastrous dining room the moment I walk through the front door (you can pretty much see our entire downstairs just by walking through the front door).

During the breakfast routine I pack the girls' snacks for school, and then we head upstairs to get the kids dressed, fix hair, brush teeth.  By the time all of this is done, it's time to rush out the door.

Preschool drop off is at 9:30 a.m.  After drop off, Bubby and I head to the gym.  He normally falls asleep in the car on the way to the gym, so I park in the underground parking garage and let him take a quick nap while I comb through e-mail, read, etc.  I like to drop him off at the gym's daycare by 10:30 a.m. so that I can do a quick treadmill warmup before the 11:00 a.m. "core" class that I take on Mondays.  The class is only 30-minutes long, but it's really good, and I'm usually sore for 2-3 days afterward.

I retrieve Bubby from the gym daycare by 11:45 a.m., and then we usually go to Target afterward.  The gym and Target are attached, so I don't even have to get in my car to go there.  Yesterday I didn't even need anything, but there's an awkward amount of time between finishing at the gym and picking up the girls.  So yesterday we just walked around, but Bubby and I both enjoyed it (who wouldn't?!).  After we left Target we had time to run to the dry cleaner to pick up my cardigan that I live in when it's not at the dry cleaner.  Then we picked up the girls at 12:30 p.m..  Since it's only about a 2-minute ride home from the school, we're usually home by 12:45 p.m., unless the girls are moving especially slowly (tell me my kids are not the only ones who move at an injured turtle's pace).

After school I feed the kids a very simple, quick lunch.  Yesterday was rolled up turkey slices, Cheetos, and strawberries (I bought a gigantic container of strawberries at Costco on Sunday, so I'm pushing the strawberries before they turn).  Then Lorelei and Ford go down for naps, and Sydney has quiet time.

Yesterday during nap/quiet time, I started a project I didn't plan on starting: completely reorganizing our desk.  I didn't take a "before" picture, but here's the "after" picture:

Our desk is actually a door, held up by a filing cabinet on the left side, and two table legs on the right side.  (It's the girls' closet door.)  I love it, but we have to be deliberate about what goes on the desk, since there are no drawers to hide anything in (the filing cabinets are full of files).  The dark mass to the left of the black filing cabinet is a shoe holder, with a boot tray on top.  The front door is what you see in the far left side of the picture.  The dining room is on the far right side of the picture.  Underneath the desk, just to the right of the filing cabinet, is a Trader Joe's shopping bag full of things I need to shred, but never seem to get around to.  The white box sitting on the floor, to the right of the office chair, houses the power strip to the computer, because Bubby's favorite pastime is flipping the power switch on the power strip.  The box on the floor, just inside the dining room wall, is full of stuff that I need to file.  Just keeping it real, folks.

I digress.

This little project took me most of the afternoon/early evening, but it was a good project for yesterday, because we had maintenance men show up at the house to fix a couple of things, preventing me from going about my usual routine.  The workers showed up around 2:30 p.m. (by this time, Sydney and Lorelei were up from naps), and they first fixed the bricks on our front walk that kept falling every time you stepped on them (thanks to all the moisture we've had recently).

(See that big dark patch of asphalt on the street?  That's where the water company worked last week, lulling Bubby to sleep with their jackhammers.)

They fixed the bricks pretty quickly, but then needed to run to Home Depot for the correct faucet (our kitchen faucet had a pinhole leak on the left side, spraying water every time you turned it on).  The one they brought back was defective, so they had to go back to Home Depot (not an easy trip during rush hour on a Monday), and were finally able to finish the job around 8:00 p.m.  We are very happy to have a new faucet.

Meanwhile, and before 8:00 p.m., Bubby woke up from a nap, the girls mostly played in their room (the weather in the above picture looks pretty, but it's still quite chilly outside!), and I soldiered on in my desk organizing project.  Chet caught the 6:00 p.m. bus home (later than usual for him), and we had leftover Costco lasagna for dinner.  Well, Chet, Sydney, and I had leftover lasagna; Lorelei and Ford ate scrambled eggs and...strawberries.

After dinner everyone headed upstairs to get the kids ready for bed (baths, pajamas, teeth, vitamins, a post-dinner-pre-bed-good-Lord-didn't-you-just-eat snack).  With the men working so late on the faucet, we were a little thrown off schedule, but the kids were tucked in by 8:30 p.m.  Then we had to clean the kitchen, since we couldn't before without a faucet.  (We almost always get the kitchen cleaned before putting the kids to bed.)  While Chet washed dishes, I sat at the dining room table and worked on my Bible study (David Platt's Counter Culture).  Then Chet and I watched an episode of "Grey's Anatomy" on Hulu and went to bed.

If you're still reading...bless you.  How was your Monday?