Today’s going to be no different from any other day since the start of summer – well except for the fact that I’m a bit more spry than I was even a few days ago. We’ll start our day out with a healthy breakfast from Skinnytaste. Then we’ll have our morning clean-up hour. This is where I try to get all three small kids involved in making our house a much better environment. My husband tries hard, but with me down for the count, 3 against 1 is a match he loses. Everyone joins in and focuses for the entire hour on cleaning as much as they can – starting and stopping when the timer goes off. Even if no further cleaning happens today, I’ll know that we got in this hour – and it does add up quickly and make a huge difference.
Then, we have two camps we’re doing this week with Miss Six. She’s doing an archaeology camp through our local science museum and our Girl Scouts Council’s Camp At Home Program. That means that we’ll have our morning basket time at 11, following back-to-back Zoom meetings. I usually like to read our books and do our projects for the hour before the meetings start, but since the meetings start at 9 am, we do this hour at 11. Following that, we’ll pick up the kids’ lunches and breakfasts for the coming days from the local elementary school.
The afternoon has us working on the science projects and art projects from our virtual camps. In that time, I also try to get work done – things I can do while also paying attention to the needs of small children: email, updating social media, and updating my tasks lists. I’ve been trying to get up early to get things done before kids wake up – especially since we’ll be moving back to homeschooling for this fall. I’m still digging out of the hole that COVID created, so I’ll also be trying to schedule out guest posts that have been backlogged, photograph products for review, and outline the reviews.
After the last Zoom meeting for the day, I usually instate a “quiet time” for 30 minutes to an hour. I don’t make the kids nap during this time, they just need to go do something and play independently. This seems to help with everyone’s moods, including my own. I’m usually able to get some work done that requires brainpower during this time – writing an article draft, getting a press release done, writing up a review.
After the break, we finish up any of our projects that are outstanding then clean up our projects/camp area so it’s reset for tomorrow. My husband will start making dinner, and we’ll settle into our evening routines. Having a solid evening routine is a good thing. The kids play and enjoy a movie, or television show, we eat dinner, read more books, and we adults sometimes play board games if we’re up for it or we watch whatever TV show we’re currently into. Right now, that’s Desperate Housewives and Big Bang Theory.
