Thursday Thoughts: Planner Debates and new planner day

Tonight turned into new planner night!

We always order planners from PersonalPlanner.com.  I love them because they're super versitible, I can change layouts every year, and I've kept a birthday list so they get printed WITH BIRTHDAYS in it that also say how old the person is (if I remember to enter a birth year).  It's great.  This is 24-25:

Last year I ordered a 13 months version, so it started in September and ends in September.

This year I decided we would go for a bigger A4 size rather than A5.  I'm excited for monster calendar... we need more writing space.  We have lots of things and lots of kids.

It's a weekly Calendar and I always do a vertical date layout.  The bottom box is for sport but we use it to plan meals.  Sometimes we use the small writing section at the bottom to add meal suggestions for future weeks. For instance, we had beans tonight and it went well, so I'll add beans to the potential dinner list in two weeks because that's about the right interval for a beans dinner.

I don't like that Saturday and Sunday share a column, but I'm hoping the A4 size will mean there is enough room for everything.

This is the cover I picked - yay! I can't wait for it to arrive.  They are sent from Sweden with free shipping (HOW???) and the company seems so cool.  I also got month tabs so I can put dividers in... a planning pro tip I did not learn for the first 5 years of ordering this planner.

The A4 size only comes in 12 months so I started it in September and it runs through August.

As I went to make the order Andy said it should start in October since our current planner already has September. 

I thought he was joking.

School starts in September.  Planners always need overlap. September (or January, or August) seems like the right time to order a new Planner.

Andy was insistent that I am the insane one because I am basically wasting a month of the old planner. 

As a counterpoint, we have things planned in September already and I feel it's a valuable use of space to have a calendar overlap.  I am happy moving these things to the new calendar.

As Andy's counterpoint, I am wasting 1/13th the price of the 13 month calendar if I just start the next calendar in September.

So, internetland, help me.  Do you do a month overlap in calendars? Would you get a 13 month calendar and move it forward every month?  Andy does have a point that every 12 years we would basically have a free calendar of single months, but also... I love a new calendar in September.  September calendars are the best.

May highlights

I feel that May just came and went with not much excitement.  

However... that is some real recency bias (where your brain weights recent things as more important than further away things)

The start of June has been grey and wet and cold.  But I was looking through photos and I realized that it was sunny in May.  Almost warm!

I was going to be super advanced and work on my photo album project tonight but instead I have decided to write a photo blog post about May.

In May we took a family trip to a local National Trust site.  Aubrey and Clara held hands! This was part of our first all day adventure (ie not being home 11-3 for naps) since 2nd January 2025.  It went OK... but I have definitely gotten used to days having a rhythm that includes a midday baby nap and general downtime.

We did a family trip to the local bike park again with all 4 kids.  It went even better when the twins found this great slide / bike jump:

Ezra rolled some bumps:

After the bike park some of our frineds came back to our house for lunch which is just about my favourite thing ever.  I wish people could come over for lunch every day.

Andy took the kids on adventures in May while doing daddy daycare. Lily knows how to dress for adventure:

We tried our first family "hike" in some nearby woods.  It went terrible since Aubrey decided she hated nature.  She is the first toddler I have ever met who hates the outdoors.  She may have found the whole experience overwhelming... but it was a lot of crying.  We will try again.

Also, Andy has decided that baby backpacks are a first parent adventure because they allow you to take babies on adventures parents like.  Now we basically exist at kid speed we may as well have walked at toddler speed and not carried backpacks at all.

In May we lost and then reunited with Bunny.  It was a happy ending all around

In May I took a cold water dipping course with my gym buddy. When I say my gym buddy is a gym person I am not joking.  Doing arm workouts with a person who has super strong arms is great for building arm strength.  

From photos it appears May was a month of outdoor adventures and family fun.  Here's hoping it stops raining so June can have some fun adventures as well.

What was your best May adventure?  Have you ever done cold water dipping? 

Hello June!

June started with a full day of mountain biking at a local ladies day.  It was the first ladies day I've been to since September of last year.  I don't understand how I possibly went out for a full day of biking in September when the twins were 11 months old but I did... and I can already tell we are moving towards a time when one parent watching four kids is not the unthinkable mission that it has been.  

The day was great, the trails were great and I can tell I'm improving. I rode red technical trails! I did drops and teeny tiny jumps!

Mostly I was pleased that I could still do a standing forward fold on Monday and did not have to take a day off work in back pain agony like last MTB day. Yay!

Work things

We finally have four days a week of childcare again.  Yay! After this week I'm going down to 4 days a week in work and will have Fridays as childcare days.  It seems like the right balance for now.  I may be switching roles / jobs to achieve this, which would be great because the thing I like least about a 4 day workweek was the fact that I always did a 5 day job in 4 days.  Starting a new/different role on 4 days will be a lot easier to navigate than turning my 5 day a week job into 4 days.

Andy is starting a new job in June which is 5 days a week in an office.  He's been mostly WFH since January 2022 and I've been almost fully WFH since 2020 so this is a big change for us . 

Sport things

I've changed my weekly gym buddy morning to Tuesdays.  I think I like it - I used to go on Fridays.  It's nice to have my gym session done so early in the week.  And I like seeing my Gym buddy on Tuesdays when I'm more conversationally fresh rather than dragging and tired at the end of the week.

I'm hoping to schedule more Peloton into my day on Mon-Thursday, and at least one or two mornings a week as well.  However I am also aware that "hope is not a strategy" so need to think more concretely on how I'll fit exercise in.  I'll start training in July for my half marathon (in October) so this month is about laying the foundation of when I can workout, and next month is about... actually training.

Kid things

June feels like a weird in-between month because school is still in session until the 18th of July.  There are 6 weeks of school left, followed by 6 weeks of summer holidays.  The summer holidays feel short and intense, but also kind of long and forever.   Also, some summer camps still are not open for booking and that seems insane to me.

What is the weather in this photo?
Full waterproofs for Lily, jumpers for the twins, and shorts for Ezra. 

Reading things

I got the MMD Summer reading guide for inspiration and I am excited for many of the titles.  I've got a long holds list and now I just need to read.  I've read 11 books so far this year which is far under the 4 books a month I've been reading in previous years but... life is busy.  I did just finish Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe and it definitely pulled me out of my reading funk a bit.  Fun book.

I'm now reading Summer of 69 by Elin Hildebrand because it's summer reading time right?

Really super minor home improvements

This is straying far from June but it's on my mind. I finally got date labels because our leftover situation is confusing and also this should help our nanny decide what makes good kid lunches and what needs eating sooner.  Also, this is our full start-of-week fridge.  It will not be this full at the end of the week:

When we bought this house we bought new furniture for the FIRST TIME EVER and one of the things we got was the long orange footrest under the window in this photo

Our lounge set up has always felt awkward to me because we have a yellow chair which I love but also was in a super awkward place to sit.  The orange footrest couldn't be used as a footrest because the toddlers would stand on it and Clara currently has a black eye from falling off it.  Also, Clara had a super gross habit of putting her runny nose on it and it was just... gross.

Andy borrowed a steam cleaner to try and clean the orange footrest and while it was out of the room I looked a the room and realized that if I did not already own this orange footstool there is no way I would l want to add a giant orange footstool to the room:

I could have tidied for better comparison but... oh well.

We freecycled the stool to some happy person who apparently didn't mind the baby stains. It's still not my favourite room in the house but I love being able to sit on my favourite yellow chair in the window, and I love not looking at a slobber covered footstool and wishing I had a better place to put it and also that it didn't have slobber on it (which is why the yellow chair is covered with a blanket)