Day in the Life of a Blog at Home Mom (August)

I love to do a Day in the Life post every once in awhile…not only do I think they’re so interesting when I read them on other blogs, but it’s a lot of fun to look back at what life looked like a month/year/5 years ago.  We’re still kind of settling into a new season of life (our oldest just started kindergarten), so our day-to-day routine looks a little different than it did a few weeks ago.  I thought I’d sit down and document last Thursday for the blog!

As a hybrid work-from-home/stay-at-home-mom, there’s never a day that looks exactly the same.  That’s one of the things that I love about my schedule.  I tried to pick the most “normal” day possible, but really there will be no day that looks exactly like this.  But there was nothing special about this Thursday – just balancing a work schedule with being a mom!

Here’s what Thursday, August 10, 2017 looked like in our little world:

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6:09 – Wake-up time!  This is much earlier than it was during the summer, but Emmie has to be at school at 7:30 right now (why in the world?!), and right now we’re about 20 minutes away from her school, so we’re up and at ’em early.

I usually give myself one snooze and check my email/social media, so I actually got out of bed around 6:20.  Emmie was already up and Noah was in the shower, so she played in the playroom for a minute or two until he went to the kitchen to fix their breakfast.  I got ready while she was eating.

6:45 – Jackson woke up just as I was finishing up getting ready, so I took him in the kitchen and fixed his breakfast.  He had breakfast casserole and strawberries (still using the Sunday Night Breakfast Project method…works wonderfully for busy weekdays!).

While he was eating, I made my coffee…FYI, Folgers Black Silk with a little bit of whole milk and splenda (and a scoop of collagen peptides) in the Ninja Coffee Bar is my go-to right now.  I drink it every morning!

While all of that was going on, Emmie was getting ready with the clothes I laid out the night before.  Noah works close to her school, so he takes her to school every morning for right now (we still live about 20 minutes away until the house is finished).  They’re out the door by 7.

Meanwhile, this guy is running around like a crazy person.  This weekend is our neighborhood’s annual garage sale (which is why my house is a disaster right now), so we’re in the middle of pricing and sorting right now.  We thought about getting rid of this little wagon that Emmie hadn’t used in years, but Noah thought it might be a good idea to see if Jackson was interested in it first.  Well, this was his reaction.  He’s pulled it around the house all day.

So, needless to say, we’re keeping the wagon.

7:05 – For the next little bit, Jackson usually watches a little TV while I check emails for the morning and do a couple of little things.  This morning, after I checked email, I did some last-minute tinkering with a new email I was sending out that day and responded to a few social media comments.

8:20 – I get Jackson ready for the day.  He’s not the easiest person to dress right now (think of putting clothes on a sugared-up monkey).  After a very dramatic argument over putting his shoes on, he tried for 10 minutes and then asked me to do it.

8:40 – We’re out the door!

8:55 – We’re at the gym. Jackson thinks he is big stuff wearing his backpack and getting to push the button to open the front door of the building. (I recently bought his little backpack from this Facebook page and I’m in love!)

9:00 – I’m in class!  This is something I’ve done 4-5 times a week for the past 2 months, and I cannot tell you what a difference it’s made in my physical and mental well-being.  Today was HIIT (more like Tabata today)…each week, I do a combination of cardio and lighter weight-lifting.  The HIIT class is a little bit of both and is the hardest I do all week!

9:45 – We’re out of class a little earlier than normal today…after staying around and talking to the other girls in the class for a few minutes, I head out to pick up Jackson from child care.

I normally look at my to-do list (in Todoist) earlier in the day, but just didn’t this day…really not a huge list for the day.  The green ones are my daily cleaning tasks from Journey to Clean, purple is just random things I have to do, and blue/red is for the blog.  Color-coding this just makes it much easier to see what you’re in for in the day! (You can see my full post about organizing this list here.)

10:15 – Jackson and I run a few little errands.  We drop a couple of things off at the post office and stop by a friend’s house…she just moved and asked if we wanted her boxes for our upcoming move.

This wasn’t even all of the ones she had.  I had to do a little bit of puzzle work just to get these in!

10:45 – We’re back home and Jackson gets a snack of grapes while he watches a little Lion Guard.  I checked in on everything blog-related quickly (really just make sure my blog is functioning like it’s supposed to and make sure there are no email emergencies) and we had a little playtime.

11:15 – Jackson eats lunch (corndog, strawberries, and Goldfish) while I clean out the dishwasher and get dinner started!

Tonight’s meal was Honey-Dijon Pork Tenderloin with potatoes and carrots.  This one will be in the new Slow Cooker Freezer Meal Boot Camp coming out August 31st.

11:40 – Jackson starts kind of winding down (you can always tell he’s sleepy when he gets mad/irritable over little things), so I put him down for his nap.

12:00 – My lunch break! 🙂 I try to give myself 15-20 minutes of rest/do nothing time while I eat before I get started working (but most of the time I end up actually working).  Today I had leftover Chicken and Dumplings from the FMBC pack that will be coming out 8/31.

12:30 – From now until the time Jackson wakes up, I try to have a really focused work time (since it’s really the only dedicated time I have for work all day).  Today’s big project was writing the 10 recipes for one of the freezer meal boot camps I’ll be releasing on 8/31 and ordering the groceries I need for it.  These won’t be the final recipes (I always end up making a few changes after cooking), but this gives me a good framework of what they’ll look like.

2:30 – Jackson wakes up about the same time I finish up my grocery order (Walmart grocery is the bomb, by the way), so I fix us both a smoothie.  I’m a big fan of a frozen banana with spinach, protein powder, and PB2.  Jackson also has a granola bar with his.

3:00 – Jackson and I head to Nana’s house!  Right now, Emmie is riding the school bus the my mother-in-law’s (who lives in a neighborhood close to our new one) until our house is finished.

3:45 – Emmie is off the bus.  Noah had an appointment cancelled this afternoon, so he surprised us by meeting us at about the same time Emmie got home.  We let the kids play for a few minutes.

4:45 – Since we were close to the new house, we had to check out the progress! The trim work is being done this week.

We were so excited to see a few doors installed when we got there!

Jackson also got to walk around the house…believe it or not, this was his first time to actually walk in there (we just carried him or had him in the Ergo the other times, since there is usually all kind of hazards for a toddler on the floor).  He ran around for a few minutes and we got a couple of super cute videos.

5:45 – We head home for dinner.

6:00 – I finish up dinner and Noah & Emmie work on unloading the boxes from the car.  We all sit down to dinner…and realize the potatoes aren’t cooked.  That’s why I test the recipes before I sell the packs – my guinea pig family deals with a fail or two every once in awhile! 🙂 (Don’t worry – I’m changing the recipe before I put it in a pack.)

6:30 – We’re finished with dinner, so I knock out a couple of chores while the kids are playing and Noah cleans the kitchen.  Every time I vacuum Jackson insists on helping.

I finish up the vacuuming and furniture cleaning chores while Noah gets the kids started in the bath.

6:50 – Jackson’s done with his bath so I start the process of putting him to bed while Emmie finishes up.  I always put Jackson down and Noah always puts Emmie to bed…it’s just how we do it every night.  After I finish up, I usually clean the kitchen and do my 10 minutes of decluttering for the night.

7:00 – The kids are down…Noah and I usually like to give ourselves 30 minutes or so of decompress time before we get started on work.  We both typically have to work after the kids go to bed every night, but it’s super important for us to have a little time together every night.  This night, we watch The Office (I think we’ve watched it all the way through 3 or 4 times now!).

7:45 – Back to work!  I work on the post you’re reading right now and check emails one more time.

9:30 – We call it around this time.  I grab a quick shower before bed. (And yes, you might have noticed that I didn’t even come close to finishing everything on my to do list.  Sometimes I don’t finish, sometimes I get like half of everything started but not finished…that’s the beauty of my organization system with Todoist, it’s easy just to drag everything to the next day!)

And there you have it!  That’s what you can generally expect out of a day for us.  It’s not super glamorous, but it’s our perfect little schedule and we love taking on each day!

Want to read the rest of my Day in the Life posts? Click here!

PS Guys – Don’t forget that the sale on Journey to Clean ends tomorrow! Just enter the code j2cfall30 at checkout…more information on the cleaning system here!