I’m so tickled to be here on the third day in a row just sharing life. I need to and will get back to some more curated content- recipes, Friday favorites, etc, but gosh right now it feels good to just show up and chat with you. I’m so encouraged by your responses that you miss this style of blogging, too. It’s less in your face, isn’t it? That’s how I feel reading my favorite blogs. Like I can just drop in when it works in my schedule and check in with a friend. I hope you feel that way here.
Enough waxing poetic, let’s chat about a less balanced day 🙂
Thursdays have been our super full days and yesterday was no exception. I woke up (6:15- trying to slowly move back to that 6:00 mark), had coffee, wrote my blog post, then realized I had skipped right over my available window to walk the dog. Sorry, Finley. She got a quick up and down the driveway, then I headed to the kitchen to prep breakfast and pack lunch at the same time.
Breakfast was Greek yogurt with chia seeds and no grain granola with two fried eggs and my usual cod liver oil and vitamin D. While I ate that, I prepped some earl Grey tea to go, washed the produce, and threw lunch stuff into our big cooler. I got dressed and the girls and I were out the door on the way to co-op by 8:30 (ish… funny how that gets later and later as we get closer to the last co-op day).
Our co-op is super sweet and we’ve enjoyed it so much. We start with morning time which consists of composer study, artist study, and bible study, then I assist in science for the oldest kids (we played with circuits), then I helped with the toddlers, then music with the young kids, then lunch, nature study (my fav!), and ended with Shakespeare. We stayed afterwards to let the kids play in the gym (basketball and then some fierce dodgeball) and the moms chat. It’s my favorite time of the day!
We will miss seeing this sweet group weekly when we switch co-ops next year. We’ll be switching to an option where I don’t have to teach so I can concentrate solely on my kids’ curriculum and lessons, which was a bit of a struggle for me this year since I’d spend Wednesday prepping and Thursday teaching other kids. It felt like we missed two homeschool days and at the ages my girls are at, we need to adjust.
We left the church just shy of 4:00, which meant a quick turn around at home. I threw in freezer meatballs in my trusty Dutch oven slow cooker, ate a quick snack (cottage cheese and BBQ chips), grabbed and Spindrift, and K and I were back out the door by 4:20 to head to theater rehearsal.
She had rehearsal until 8:00 and while she did that I returned phone calls, swung by Target to get a kid birthday gift and a dust pan, and got gas at Costco. We got home around 9:00 (it’s quite a drive for us to the theater) where I inhaled some spaghetti and meatballs, poured myself a magnesium, and chatted with the family before we all headed to bed shortly after. It’s weird when your bedtime becomes the same as your kids!
Theater runs through this weekend, with three more performances. I have mixed feelings on the program we’ve been part of this spring, as they allowed everyone who auditioned into the show, resulting in a ton of tiny parts (think two minutes of stage time for a 80 minute production). Combine that with a demanding schedule and mandatory volunteer hours on top of the monthly fee, and it was… a lot.
However, they are adjusting things for the fall musical theater set up and now K (and maybe even H!) want to audition. It has me thinking a lot about family priorities and how to match those up with kid activities. I am a big believer in the benefit of free time. It’s one of the reasons we homeschool- time to explore personal interests, play outside, be bored, etc. I also see the benefits of activities- learning how to be part of a team, sportsmanship, gain experience in performing/speaking to a crowd, etc.
I’ve said all spring season long, that we would be signing up for less in the fall. But figuring out exactly what that looks like is challenging. H is fairly straightforward; she wants to do piano and soccer. But now she’s curious about musical theater as well. K wants to do musical theater, soccer, softball, TKD, and voice lessons. Obviously we can not (and don’t want to) cart her around to all of those. Plus the girls will do youth group at the church, which is one night a week.
Add in appointments (chiropractor, dentist, hair cuts, and all the other little things that pop up) and co-op and we’ll be setting ourselves up for another drive-happy fall.
All moms know we have to start figuring this stuff out by summer because that’s when all the registration happens, so I’m curious how you handle this. I have friends that do nothing outside the home and their lives look idyllic- slow evenings, unrushed mornings, time to make beautiful dinners, and kids exploring outside. My heart mostly craves that, but yet I also love cheering on my kids from the sidelines and watching them shine up on stage. Is there a balance to be struck or is it simply a season of life that gets a little crazier and you just buckle up and enjoy the ride?
If you’ve figured it out (or if you haven’t), I’d be curious as to how to A) plan to handle it if you have little kids B) are handling it if you’re in the same season or C) handled it when your kids were in this stage and if you (in hindsight) would have changed anything or have any advice.
And if you’re just silent reading from your phone today, that’s OK, too. 😉 Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Oh, and one last picture from our busy day- proof of dinner and crazy kids wrestling on the couch.
