January 12, 2025

Sunday Update: Reading, Sports, Sleep (and a great weekend)

We have had a great weekend.  I know that might sound like bragging, but we have not had a lot of *great* weekends.  We have recently survived a lot of weekends.  It was cool to enjoy one.

On Saturday morning, Andy went out for a swim and I had all four kids at home and IT WAS FINE! The house was a mess when he got back, but it was a fine mess.  Yay!  Then we fed the kids a snack and walked down to the library for LEGO CLUB.  Our local library does a Saturday lego day where kids can just do lots of lego together. Isaac made a Pool and Cafe and Trap lego, and labeled it as such, but he spelled "trap" as "chrap".  On his label. I asked if he wanted to spell it correctly and he said "No, I'll keep it that way because it's mostly for kids to read".  One of his friends met us at lego club and then we got a sandwich at a cafe before walking home.

In the afternoon I went to the shop with the babies in the pram, dropped off some baby stuff to a neighbour, and then ate pizza for dinner.  I went to bed too late because I started a new book I wanted to read more, and I also finished downstairs craft storage improvement project!

Before - the white drawers have all the kids art stuff:

After: Yes, we finally own an IKEA Trofast.  It works much better.

On Sunday morning we decided to try kids parkrun - a free 2k race for kids.  We've never been before and it was very cold but the kids did great.  Andy pushed babies and I ran with lilah. 

After parkrun we went out for breakfast. At a cafe!  The cafe didn't have a kids menu so we ordered 3 english breakfasts (bacon, sausage, egg, tomato, mushroom, toast, baked beans) and split them amongst all of us.  The babies mostly had toast, beans, and eggs.  The kids love sausage.  I ate all the tomatoes.  

The babies then had a great nap at home and I had two hours of Rachel time while Andy watched kids.  I Mostly did exercise.  When the babies got up we decided to go to the climbing gym where the kids ran around and climbed for an hour and the babies lived their best life ever.
 
After climbing we had a super quick dinner and all kids were asleep by 7.   Amazing.

Reading:
I finished The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year and it was so fun.  Read this book! 

I started reading The Measure and it's very compelling so far.  What an interesting thought experiment:

Sports:
  • Monday
    • 30 Minute Upper Body with Ben Alldis (The Stronger You Program on Peloton)

  • Tuesday
    • 45 Minute workout with gym buddy (dumb 9am meeting ruined my hour session!)
    • 90 Minute really hard hot yoga with a friend

  • Wednesday
    • 30 Minute Full Body with Ben Alldis (The Stronger You Program on Peloton)

  • Thursday
    • 30 Minute Feel Good Ride with Ally Love

  • Friday
    • 10 Minute Meditation with Kirstin McGee

  • Saturday
    • 10 Minute Meditation with Kirstin McGee

  • Sunday
    • 2k "run" with Lilah
    • 20 Minute Lower Body with Ben Alldis  (The Stronger You Program on Peloton)
    • 30 Minute Upper Body with Ben Alldis (The Stronger You Program on Peloton)
    • 5 Minute Upper Body Stretch with Ben Alldis (The Stronger You Program on Peloton)
I was doing a 4 week course (The Stronger You) but I missed 2 days of week 3.  Now I'm in week 4 and I will finish it, but someday I would like to do a Peloton course without missing any days.  And, as per the lovely Julie, meditation does "Count" and my streak therefore continues.  I think meditation might actually be good for me too.

Sleep
Ugh.  Not good.  I have averaged 6.9 hours this week.  Babies have been waking up at 5am again.  Last night I woke up for an hour between 2 and 3 and couldn't sleep.  I keep going to bed late because honestly, I'm enjoying my evening hours and I like writing blogs or talking to friends or reading or hanging out with Andy.  We usually finish our tidying by 7:30 but 2 hours doesn't feel like a huge amount of time to fit EVERYTHING ELSE into.  Anyways, I am hoping more excercise will = more sleep next week.  I need above 7 hours.

Other stuff
I am really loving Kae's goals posts over here.  I love her tracking systems and I have decided I might move a bit more digital with my tracking!  My time log is digital and I haven't yet bought any 2024 planners so watch this space.

Laura Vanderkams "Before Breakfast" podcast "A Confused Mind Says No" was super interesting.  It made me think a lot about making super specific offers, especially in work.  "What can I do to help?" is less good than "here is what I can do to help".  

Lisa Woodruff's Organize 365 podcast "My Household Manager Predictions" was super interesting.  Especially the part about our crafted realities - that we are all basically creating our realities now with what we consume and that we need to be more mindful of our consumption.  Also that AI is not going to help us at home anytime soon.  I love how Lisa thinks.

That's my week.  How was yours?

7 comments:

  1. I LOVE that you had such a great weekend. It sounds really wonderful, especially going out to breakfast. <3 Kat

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! I can't believe we can now go out to breakfast without days of planning. And with all of us. This is a whole new world.

      Delete
  2. Well, aside from the sleep, it seems like things were pretty good. I am loving that you guys got a run in with the kids. I remember (vaguely) my first race, which was a 5k with my Dad, and I hated it! I mean, I think I hated it while I was doing it. Of course, look at me now, so go figure. It is funny how we often do the things in adulthood that we disliked or complained about as a child. Did your kids enjoy it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lilah liked doing high fives with the marshalls at the race. she got really upset at the start becuase "everyone was blocking her"... there were about 150 kids plus parents so it was very crowded. I tried to explian that she had 2k to catch up with everyone but she was not into the slow start and ran off the course crying. Once we got back on she did do some running and walking and seemed to enjoy but said she was too tired and didn't want to do it again for a long time.

      Funny that you did kid races and hated them. I did not do any racing as a kid and I love it now. I remember hating running so much I used to hide in the bushes on a 3 lap circuit so I could come out when other people had done 3 laps and pretend i had also done 3. I thought I was tricking my PE teacher but I think he just didn't care.

      Delete
  3. How wonderful!!! I love how Isaac spelled trap and the reasoning behind it - know your audience, right? Plus I said it as he spelled it and it totally sounded like the word he meant.

    That picture where Andy has created a standing spot/playpen for one baby with his legs! Sounds like the whole family got to have good times this weekend. Huzzah! -rachel

    ReplyDelete
  4. I know you're in Wales not Northern England but I just listened to a book, 10 Things that Never Happened, and one of the characters calls another character a dick, but he pronounces it with a soft 'ch' at the end, so it sounds like 'DIKch' and I just want to start calling people that on the street it's so awesome.

    Regarding your post now, rather than my random UK thoughts, I'm glad that you include the meditation. This has been a struggle for me. I sometimes feel like if I'm not working HARD physically, it doesn't count. but getting into a daily yoga practice has helped me to see the ebb and flow of it, that some days are just laying there on the floor or siting and breathing, while others are trying to balance in complicated ways or doing a bunch of planks.

    Life is good, but also, life is hard. When we have a really good weekend, it can buoy us for a while, right?

    ReplyDelete
  5. I really enjoy the process of my digital time tracking! It's a nice ritual to sit down and update every morning. And I especially love the digital journal part! I literally feel like I cannot remember what I do with my life otherwise sometimes, without my records! haha!!

    ReplyDelete