High energy weekends, all weekends, low margins, kids sports, turkey dinners

I'm never sure where the balance between doing "too much" and "not enough" is.  For instance - this weekend we did thanksgiving! We did a make-ahead turkey, which was super awesome.  We cooked the following:

• Turkey
• kale salad
• homemade brioche stuffing
• cornbread
• roast sweet potato
• mashed potato
• gravy
• green beans
• Pumpkin Pie (with homemade short crust pastry)
• Apple Pie (with homemade rough puff pastry)

It was kind of insane to fit that much cooking into a weekend that also still had 4 kids worth of chaos.  On Saturday the 5 and 7 year old stayed home in pyjamas in the morning while Andy cooked.  I took the twins to some shops to buy some random things.  In the afternoon Andy took Ezra and Clara to a friend's house while Lily had a play date and Aubrey and I watched a NYT video on how to carve a turkey while carving a turkey (me) and eating yogurt (her)

In the evening Andy and I went for drinks with a friend at a local very loud bar. I was very tired in the morning when Aubrey decided to wake up at 5:30.

Ezra went to grandma's house for a play date, but before he left we had 5 minutes of not rain and decided to try for a family photo.  We got one that was OK but man it is hard to get 4 kids looking good in a photo.  Also I wore lipstick and I thought I looked great and now I think I look clown.  Oops.

Here's an outtake:

Lily was given that dress recently in a hand-me-down box.  Ezra's jumper came from a charity shop a few years ago. Clara is wearing a matching jumper to Aubrey, which we were given from another twin mum recently.  We have been lucky with the hand-me-downs!

Then Andy and I took Lily and the twins to the pool, where we met up with other friends because apparently the indoor pool is the November hangout space.

In the afternoon we did a thanksgiving dinner, which was nice, but It always feels a bit odd to cook and eat a thanksgiving meal without friends around. We don't have a table big enough to have people over for meals at the moment (unless it's a one-pot situation) but someday I would love to make a thankgiving meal more of a friends and family thing and less of an excuse to eat a giant meal in a country that doesn't celebrate the holiday.  

On the other hand, I am so happy with my thanksgiving leftovers lunch today:

How many devilled eggs are in a serving? All of them.

Anyways, it was an exhausting weekend, but I feel like it was no more exhausting than any other weekend.  I don't think weekends with margins or chill out time exist right now, with twin two year olds.  I know they will exist soon. SO we may as well do a lot with our weekends, if they're going to be exhausting and chaotic either way.

And speaking of scheduling and lack of down time, I'm starting to feel my kids could use more sports/hobbies/things.  I never wanted to put them in classes before because I wanted to just have them happy playing at home, but what happens often is just fighting at home.  And also, their friends are doing classes... and some of my kids could use more friends from different places as well.  

Yesterday I signed Ezra up for tennis lessons on Saturday mornings and Lily is trialing Ballet/Tap on Mondays, starting today.  

The other problem with classes/things is getting kids there.  They currently swim on Tuesdays, which means I need to finish work 20 minutes early to drive them to lessons, and our Nanny watches the twins at that time.  I'm hoping one of Lily's classmates can take her to Ballet (it's across the street) and in exchange I'll drop her friend home after class... but I'll again have to finish work 10 minutes early on a Tuesday.  And again... we're paying a nanny for this time.

I guess really the question is "what am I optimizing for" and I do think it's good for kids to try different sports and activities... And the barrier to entry on sports is probably higher as they get older.  I am aware that I'm cutting back on rachel time / work time each time I commit to something like this.  

On a personal level, I haven't done much sport in over a week and I don't feel particularly caught up on anything.  At the same time, I'm unlikely to feel less caught up by adding a bunch more stuff in... right?

Oh, and speaking of chaos and low margin...  for whatever reason I've offered to join the PTA next year. Which is probably insane.  My list of 100 dreams included "be a treasurer somewhere" and I figured I was good with math/money and bad with other people's kids so maybe this was my way of giving back?  Or maybe also meeting other driven/career minded parents?  At the same time, I've spent the first 3 years of education making no effort and avoiding all social things, so perhaps I have made a terrible mistake offering to be involved.  

I guess I'll go to the AGM tonight and find out what sort of chaos I have volunteered myself for.

Have you been on a PTA?  Do you have kids in sports or classes? Did you do kids sports? Is ballet terrible and going to give Lily an eating disorder?  Is Tennis in December in Wales a terrible idea? 

Chaos family weekends, brave houseguests, a bit of wanderlust

I've never been a continuity blogger before - as you may know I dip in and out of life happenings and to do lists as if they hold equal value.  But now I'm behind in the blogging world and I don't really know what the most important thing to catch up on first is... so let's go for...

Clara made a friend!

It's Kyria!

Travel blogger extraordinaire and all around super cool human Kyria came to Wales last weekend, and I took the opportunity to do some local exploring with her and to appreciate how great it is for people to come visit chaos families with young kids.  She arrived on Thursday and as we took the bus to my house (I was on the way back from work) I said "when we get home the twins should be asleep, and then I'll put the big kids to sleep and we can have dinner" and instead I opened the door to four yelling kids having a chaos dinner.  Oops.  Kyria took it well, hung out with the big kids while I helped put the twins to bed, and even helped inflate her own airbed with the "help" of the 5 & 7 year olds.

On Friday Kyria babysat sleeping twins so Andy and I could go out to the Banff Mountain Film Festival in Cardiff.  I had bought these tickets in February so it was super fortuitous that we had a babysitter! I can't remember the last time Andy and I left the house on a Friday.  It was great.

On Saturday we visited an open air museum and then had a quick walk through Cardiff center.  In the afternoon Andy helped set up my touring bike so Kyria could do some cycle touring in Wales... Aubrey wanted to go on the test ride as well:

On Sunday we headed to my favourite local castle with just Lily and Clara.  It's a super photogenic castle and I got zero photos.  Oops. In the afternoon we got out for a quick local hike/walk up a local ridge.  Kyria replaced her travel backpack with a Clara backpack:

In the evening we had a takeaway curry dinner, and then on Monday Kyria caught the train to North Wales for her own cycle adventure.  

I did get a bit of wanderlust having such a cool adventure human in my house, and on Tuesday I booked a trip to France for me and the big kids in February.  We are going to Provence for 5 nights.  The flight out was only £50 for the three of us! The flight back was £230 for the three of us.  We are going to have to reevaluate our holiday budget for next year because I have big travel dreams now.

We have a slightly more chilled out weekend coming up, which is great because the kids are super tired and I am super tired and I I feel firmly in the "countdown to Christmas" now with 4 weeks left of work. On Sunday we are celebrating Thanksgiving (observed) since I'll be in meetings on actual Thanksgiving.  Yay turkey!

And then it's just 4 more working weeks till the Christmas holidays...!

Time constraints, feeling busy, too much life admin, twins are TWO!

It's been very rainy recently but look at this double rainbow!

I've apparently started NoBloPoMo - Like NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) but instead of blogging I'm just... not blogging.

Bloggers I love are doing lots of great posting and I'm so enjoying reading it when I can.  And then I also am feeling very pressed for time.

For instance, it's Thursday night.  Thursday night is my Rachel night - where I can get things done.  The things I want to get done are as follows

• Write a blog
• Update budget
• Buy school trousers for Lily as she's grown out of all.
• Buy a single airbed for future guests
• Take a shower
• Upload October photos to Snapfish
• Do grocery order (this is Andy's project, but he's out tonight and I'm adding some food)
• Wash kids school shirts so they have clean laundry for school photo day tomorrow
• Look at the month of November and map out all the sports I want to do and see if it makes sense and is possible
• Do a 10 minute stretch
• GO TO BED AT 9PM

The thing is... it's 8:10 right now.  That list is clearly totally unachieveable in 50 minutes.

I feel like I constantly have a list of things to do that I constantly won't get to.  I know that none of those things are super urgent, but I still wish I knew when I would have time to go through my list and get things done.  

My new job is great, but I spend most of my time in work actually working (obviously I always did this, employer!) so I can't really make any progress on personal admin in work time

Fridays are twin days, and the big kids are only in school for 6 hours, and twins sleep for 2 hours, and I just don't feel an abundance of time or energy on those days.

Weekends are hard, with lots of young kids at lots of varying levels of energy.  Generally if I do get an hour, I prioritize exercise over any admin.

This week I've been trying to get up earlier, at 5:30am again.  I realized I had started sleeping until 6 or 7am and getting up at the same time as the kids which was not ideal for my general morning happiness.  I know one could argue that I needed the sleep, but I was also going to bed later.

Andy and I had started watching a TV show together, which was super enjoyable, but I also became aware that I had added a 45 minute hobby into my day without thought.  TV obviously has a low barrier to entry, but if I could somehow fit an evening show in with Andy every evening then I should probably be able to fit other 45 minute things into my day.  And of all the things I want to do in the world, hanging out with Andy is high but watching TV is low.  I decided to start going to bed at 9pm again (easier with the time change!) and that has been good for waking up in the morning but bad for hanging out.

Anyways, always chosing one thing or another.  It just feels tricky and tiring right now.

I realized I haven't even posted since the twins turned 2!  Can you believe it?  I cannot.  I love 2.

Are you enjoying NaBloPoMo?  Are you feeling behind in everything?  Can you write a blog about it so I can read it?

Reflections on 2 weeks of not tracking my time, Halloween Party, Random Thoughts, Adult Pro-Tip.

I have officially not tracked my time for two weeks.

It turns out, when I don't track how much sleep I get, I get less sleep.  I've decided to start tracking sleep on my habit tracker instead.  I have also wasted more time on the internet knowing I didn't have to write 4 blocks of "wasted time on the internet" on my time log.  That said, I don't feel the need to spend time on google rabbit holes now that I can spend time on google rabbit holes.  So maybe that one will just go away by itself.

I think time tracking is super cool, but I'm also not sure I need to lean into my own weirdnesses so much, so maybe doing more normal things is more better for now.

Speaking of normal things - Pumpkin carving party 2025 was a great success

We went super minimal on the snacks this year.  Everyone brough cookies/cakes/other snacks.  The fruit salad was a hit. Even the mummy dogs all got eaten!

Although the party was "drop in 2-5" almost everyone showed up at 2:30.  It basically felt like a house party - I think there were about 20 kids in our house and garden and 20 parents as well.  12 families ended up coming.  Some didn't stay for the whole time, but some did. 

Andy once said "people want to have a good time" and it's true - people stayed long after they were done carving pumpkins.  They played with duplo in the lounge, Andy got out the smoke machine for a smoking pumpkin, and overall I think (hope!) people had fun.  Or they hated it and they won't come back next year.

On Sunday Morning (Before the party) we went to a local open air museum and I snapped some very autumnal photos.  I think this counts as a walk! I have done very badly on walking and photoing my walks this October.  I will put the walking challenge as a goal for 2026.

It's NaBloPoMo next month.  I am definitely not going to participate, but I am excited to read more posts by my favourite bloggers.  I can't believe it's been 3 years since I re-started this silly blog.  I'm glad I did. NaBloPoMo was how I met most of the bloggy friends I now have, and it was also a fun way to restart blogging.  

Oh and a random tip for you all on this random post.  Today I did a super smart grownup thing (and yes I'm 40 years old and still think about doing "grown up" things) which was taking all my cards out of my wallet and photographing them so that if I ever lose my wallet I will know exactly what's in it. 

I also found two starbucks cards which I have put in my wallet and I will find the perfect time for a pumpkin spice latte soon.

Pumpkin Carving Party Eve : annual party traditions and a chaotic trip to ASDA

I love pumpkins and carving pumpkins and pumpkin food and pumpkin candles, and in 2022 we decided to throw a pumpkin Carving Party.  

It was raining, and we bought a gazebo, and we put our kitchen table outside and had about 8ish families over to carve pumpkins.  We made pumpkin snacks.  It was fun!

We didn't do a party in 2023 (due to imminent arrival of twins) but we did somehow have a party in 2024 (with nearly 1 year old twins??) We invited 15 families.  9 came, 15 kids and 20 adults (at least, that's what the RSVP situation was).

Tomorrow we are hosting the same party again. I have decided I love hosting the same party every year.  It's easy, we know what the set up us.  People who come year after year know what they are getting into (it's a bring your own pumpkin affair).  We bought some new pumpkin-guts bins and sharpies this year,and massively reduced the food offering (hot dog mummies still on the list, and cracker spiders, and a halloween spooky fruit salad).

This morning we went to ASDA to buy our pumpkins and some more halloween-y decorations.  The kids asked if they could wear costumes, which of course they could.

I am sometimes so entertained by what our family must look like to the rest of the world.  This is normal, right?

I had a somewhat secret ambition to buy some more autumn decoration for the house, which I did in the form of this discount wooden sign:

Which now sits on our mantle with my autumnal candles.  I also got a giant stuffed pumpkin, because the kids had taken my tiny crocheted pumpkins and my medium stuffed pumpkin so it seemed like we needed more stuffed pumpkins in the house.  

The afternoon was spent playing dress up and tidying the house and then making the house a chaos mess again. 

Mostly I am excited for the party tomorrow.

We always run the party as a "drop in" for 3 hours in the afternoon on the last Sunday before Halloween.  This works well for a few reasons:

• We can invite a lot of people so people can come and leave at anytime
• It's definitely not over a meal time.
• It's always clock change day, which makes the day awful and weird, so it's nice to have a fun afternoon activity to drag everyone through to the later bedtime

We also usually have one family stay for dinner with us after (and help clean up) which makes it even more fun.

This year we invited 16 families, 11 have said yes, with an estimated 19 kids and 19 adults.  It always seems like it will be too much (we don't have a giant house) but it's always worked OK before, so fingers crossed it works OK again.

And if it doesn't... then I guess people won't come back next year.

Do you (or have you ever) throw(n) the same party year after year?  Have you ever been invited to the same party year after year?

I wish I had another year on year party I could throw.  Like a Valentine's Day party.  Some other minor holiday in a rubbish time of year.

Hello From Friday - to do lists, new friends, priorities

I couldn't decide what the naptime priority was on my list of things to do, so I decided to write a blog post first

I wonder if there is some Kendra Adachi / Lazy Genius approach I could use?  I have about 1.5 to 2 hours of nap time at most.  

Laundry does need to be hung up, but it could probably sit in the washer untill tonight, but also it only takes 10 minutes

Hoovering is a good idea because the floor is gross.  But also, the floor will soon be gross again so I may as well wait and do it tonight or over the weekend.

Packing up parcels is needed - I have two big returns to make - but it's so boring.  It probably takes 5 minutes.  But it needs to be done by 4:30 so I can make it to the post office before it closes.  

Budget it getting out of control... usually I update twice a month but I haven't done October.  There are a lot of receipts on a magnet on the fridge (we keep not obvious receipts so I can code them correctly)

I want to write a blog post, so this is what I'm doing first

Andy is in charge of recycling, but there seems to be a growing collection of glass on the windowsill and the recycling is full (and smells somewhat like fish, oops).  But also, if I wait until tonight then he can do it.

I think the order will be Blog, Packing Parcels, Hang Laundry, Do Budget.

But then I start thinking... shouldn't I do a workout? Yoga? Strength?  I could do a 20 minute sprint on the peloton... but it would be better to start that sooner so that twins don't wake up during it.  I don't mind them waking up when I'm in the middle of tidying.  I do mind if it's 10 minutes into a 15 minute workout. 

Or I could sit down and read my book.  Or just sit down and relax? Have a cup of tea and a pumpkin biscuit? My mom brought me Pumpkin Joe Joes from Trader Joes and I am savouring each of them

Random aside - Trader Joes is the shop I miss most in the USA.  Other shops on the list - REI, Whole Foods, and New Seasons (a grocery store in the Portland area).

On a totally different note, I had a very bloggable story morning.

The story starts over the summer, when I met a really nice couple at a not-local park but they lived locally to us.  They had a daughter the same age as the twins, and they had lived in the USA for 5 years.  I thought they seemed really cool but I didn't ask for their phone numbers because I felt like that was quite forward for a random park meet, and also I knew I didn't really have much free time to make friends.

Recently I've thought of them a few times as I now have Fridays off work and still don't know many people with two year olds.

This morning I went to a local super cute soft play and there was a guy who looked oddly familiar and so did his daughter, and of course it was the guy I met at the park! I told him I wished I had got his wife's number, and then we swapped numbers and he seemed very keen to meet up again as he and his wife have alternate Fridays off.  I'm not sure we will be best friends but I am so pleased I ran into them again.

When we first met them I told Andy I wished I had gotten their number and he said "well you will probably see them again and then you can get numbers" and he was right.  And honestly, I thought about how if I was on facebook or WhatsApp or other things I could have probably digitally connected before now, but this way felt so cool and organic in a way that the digital world would not.

Then at the soft play a mom said she thought she knew me from the local climbing centre, and I remembered her and we had a great chat and it turns out she used to own an run a vegan restaurant I loved! We did not swap numbers but I hope I'll run into her again sometime as well.  It was cool to feel like there is a community of lovely people around.  I sometimes feel like potential friends are everywhere.

Here are Aubrey & Clara enjoying snack at the soft play:

Now it's 1:30 and I better crack on with my to do list.  I just realized I forgot to add planning to the list.  But I did update my dream naptime to do list and it turns out I have 2 hours of dreams to accomplish and 1 hour left.  I did also realize that I pretty much have to choose between weekly planning / Budget vs. doing sport...

In good news, there's not really a wrong decision.

Do you end up with random difficult to prioritize to do lists?  If you moved away from where you live, what store would you miss the most?  Do you like Pumpkin Joe-Joes?

A really random post about protien and food and running and sports

I've started eating breakfast and I think it's helping with my energy levels during the day.  I'm trying to eat within 30 minutes of waking up, and 30 minutes before & after exercising.

My "breakfast" probably has some hipster name, but it's chia seeds, flaxseed, and ground almonds, left overnight with oat milk (if prepared) or just made in the morning (if not prepared).  People go on and on about protein but maybe "people" are right.   I'm trying to pick more protein rich foods for my meals.  It turns out these foods have lots of protein (so I learned from my vegan friend).  I even measured my overnight sludge today (probably need a better name for this) and it has 17 grams of protein.

I've also been eating salads for lunch.  Salads are good foods to eat at my desk.  I will put almost anything in this salad.  Last week I tried adding tempeh which was tasty.  I'll also add leftover veggie burgers, or leftover beans... or whatever is leftover.  Also tomato and lettuce and cucumber, or sometimes not lettuce because it's expensive.  Also chia seeds and cashews and pumpkin seeds.  And this italian dressing from Two Peas and their Pod. 

I know no one came to this blog for photos of salads but it's happening...

My work has asked us to use copilot more so today I asked copilot to figure out how much protein was in my salad:

The major adjustment that I'm trying to make with my food is to eat when I'm hungry, or when I'm struggling to focus in work, because often that's a sign that I'm hungry. Today I was fairly productive in work, which might have been a result of my copilot approved salad?

I'm also trying to get 3 strength workouts and 2 SIT (Sprint Interval Training) workouts in every week.  I would love to also do yoga and swimming once a week, or 10 minutes of stretching a day, or some other great idea thing that would be good for me... but if I could do my SIT and my Strength that would definitely be a great success.

I have given up on running for now.  I don't have 2-3 hours on the weekend for a fun run, and it's dark and wet and cold during the week.  I don't see any real benefit from running a few miles once a week, because the part of running I like is the part where I run for a long time.  I think I'll be taking a break from the running until the weather improves and maybe start building distance again in the spring... when I might enter my first ever trail half marathon....

Do you eat the same thing for lunch every day?  Are you a breakfast person? A eat when you wake up person? Do you fuel before and after workouts or do you forgetfully chase your day in circles like I often do?