Day in the Life - Summer 13'

It's time for another Day in the Life. These are so fun to go back and read, but man, they are a lot of work. I really wasn't feeling it the day I decided to document & didn't do super great at taking pictures. It didn't help that Charlie & Levi were both extra tired from the busy weekend, which meant I spent my energy trying to avoid major meltdowns. But, the weather was perfect and we still managed to have a pretty fun day!

Monday, July 29, 2013
Charlie - 3 yrs, 5 months
Levi - 1 yr, 5 months

6:50 am - Charlie is up. This is about 1/2 hour later than usual but he has had a pretty busy weekend at the fair. We are all happy about the extra zzzz's.

7:00 - Levi is up too. They don't like to wait long for breakfast and they eat pretty much the same thing every day - frozen pancakes and fruit. Erik heads upstairs for work.

7:30 - All done with breakfast and washed up so the boys start hauling hay (blocks) with their skidloaders. They fight over the green one but eventually they play somewhat independently/together. I make a couple of eggs for myself.

8:15 - We get out the tunnel which occupies them for a long time. I gather all of the dirty towels, sheets, and clothes and start the washer. Charlie pushes the buttons, Levi puts in the soap. We also unpack their clothes from the weekend, get dressed, brush teeth, and play trains.

Putting away his own clothes.

9:30 - Charlie works on putting the correct numbers on his calendar while I quickly sweep the kitchen floor. Charlie wants me to help him and proclaims "You're driving me bonkers!" No idea where he got that one from :) Levi is starting to lose his mind and is being super loud. Erik has a conference call at 9am on Mondays so I try to get out of the house to keep the noise down a little. We decide to head into town and go to the park since it's a nice day out.

10:00 - We get to the park and I figure I can probably plan out our menu for the week while they play (LOL). As usual, we are the only ones there for most of the time and the boys have fun. Levi is a crazy child on the slides & of course wants to go down all of the same ones Charlie does. Except he likes to go head first. This isn't a huge problem because these slides are pretty slow & I'm at the bottom to catch him. I decide he needs to learn the proper technique and put him at the top on his butt because Charlie says he will catch him.....yeah, Levi starts on his butt but somehow flips forward & shoots out the end of the slide doing a face plant into the ground. Besides a mouth full of dirt, he's fine and resumes action.

We have to check out the animals at the park

11:15 - I decide we need to get going because I have a few things I need to pick up from the grocery store. We are entering dangerous territory because they are used to eating lunch about this time. I let them ride in the car carts (gross) so we can hurry. Levi keeps climbing out so that earns him a spot in the cart basket. We get our few items & head to check out. They are out of suckers. TRAGEDY.Levi cries for the 8 mile drive home and then falls asleep with approx. .2 miles to go.

12:00 - Finally home, I make them sandwiches (turkey & cheese for Charlie, pb &J for Levi). They also have peaches, grapes & string cheese for lunch. We picked some beans from the neighbors garden so I steam a few to see if they are good before we start canning them. Erik also comes down & has some leftovers for lunch. I put away groceries & decide to eat after the boys go to sleep.

12:45 - Everyone is ready for a nap. I read to Charlie and he goes down really well. Levi points to the chair so I rock him and he is passed out before I get through "twinkle, twinkle". He rarely lets me rock him any more (he's currently more of a "just put me in the crib" kind of guy) and I don't even remember the last time he was rocked to sleep so I savor this moment.

1:15 - I eat lunch (but I don't remember what!) & hang sheets on the line. I am home 2 days during the week and I try to be productive one of those days. I really want to be lazy today but I know that tomorrow I have a phone call scheduled during nap time so I need to be productive now. I watch TV for a bit (Rachael Ray or TMZ are about my only options...) and then force myself to do the dishes and clean up the kitchen. As soon as everything is relatively picked up, I start prepping supper. No wonder it feels like the dishes are a never ending battle!

3:00 - Levi is up. We go down to the basement & get some pears. I am pretty impressed by how close we came on all of the stuff we canned last summer. It's also very daunting to see that many empty jars and know that soon we will be filling everything back up again. While we're canning, I hate the garden. But it's sure nice to have all of that food through the winter. Levi eats some pears and I do a speedy run through the kitchen & around the table with the steam mop. Add floors to the list of things that are constantly disgusting.

3:30 - Charlie is up. I put the sweet potatoes in the oven & we head outside. We check out the garden and they each eat a strawberry (not much of a crop!). The rest of the time they are climbing on the lawn mowers, playing golf, and playing with the water wall on the swing set. Levi is soaked but keeps trying to either drink the water, dump it out, or carry it away.

most adorable cowboy boots ever

Some of the tomato cages are tipping over they have so many tomatoes on them!

4:45 - I come back in to keep working on supper and Erik heads out to play with the boys. I make chipotle chicken sweet potato skins. Except I just used green peppers instead of chipotle peppers. Food I make never looks like the pictures though. Here's what they are supposed to look like!

Source
5:15 - The boys come in and we sit down for supper. Erik & I think they are good. Levi doesn't seem to like it. Charlie claims right away he doesn't like it but eventually he does try it. We also have green beans. Charlie cries for the first 1/2 of supper because he wants the blue spoon that Levi has instead of the orange one. As soon as he settles down, Levi starts crying because he wants out. A relaxing supper indeeed.

5:30 - I have to speak to some kids at a vacation bible school tonight and I feel 50% sorry for abandoning Erik with them mid-supper and mid-meltdown and 50% relieved to not have to listen to it all (That 50/50 ratio is debatable :) ). I quickly put one some decent clothes & take off. It's just a couple of miles from our house at a little country church. The kids are collecting money for the non-profit I work at this week so  I take a few minutes to tell them about what we do and the people we help.

Erik tells me that during my time away Levi had a full blown tantrum that included lots of feet stomping & screaming but absolutely zero tears for the remainder of supper. After supper the boys took a bath & Levi was in bed by the time I got back home at 6:45.

6:45 - I'm now back home. Erik & Charlie are watching tractor videos on youtube. I clean up the mess from supper, Erik & Charlie pick up the toys.

7:30 - As usual, Charlie insists that I take him to bed. I tell Erik that when I come back down I expect 1.) he will have gotten the clothes off of the line and most importantly 2.) there will be a "smore" shake waiting for me! Charlie makes going to the bathroom the most drawn out & complicated process imaginable. While I'm waiting for him, I stuff the diapers that are still hanging up from when we left on Friday. We read books (XL Jake & the Neverland Pirates coloring book --yes, a coloring book & The Little Red Caboose).

No need to spread out the sticker placement here.

Get your red eye

8:00 - Charlie is done for the day. But not really, because as soon as I get down stairs he needs to go to the bathroom again but Erik must help him. He has figured out that the bathroom excuse will work every time. I am very sad when Erik tells me we don't have any graham crackers left so we can't have smore ice cream :( :( Instead we just have choc chips in our ice cream & it's ok. I also start the dishwasher to run over night. We have the loudest dishwasher on the planet & I'm not sure why it took me so long to discover the "schedule start in 2-4-6 hours" feature.

8:30 - We have a call with our financial advisor tomorrow and we are supposed to complete some info beforehand so we finally sit down to do that. Neither of us are too excited to talk about financial stuff so we don't spend much time on it but enough to get by.

9:15 - Erik runs up to do a little bit more work and I decide to go to bed. The sheets that were on the line aren't quite dry yet so I put them in the dryer & bum around waiting for them to dry. I watch "Siberia". This is potentially the worst show I have ever seen. I still haven't figured it out but it's just terrible. Yet, I watch the whole thing.

10:00 - Sheets are dry. Erik brings them down. I make the bed while he locks the dog in the garage.  We each do some facebooking/candy crushing/pinteresting/craigslisting/reading before officially calling it a day.