Saturday Update: Charity shop wins, getting caught up on photo albums, things are sometimes nice.

We are having the kind of Saturday where things just *work*

I know it's only 2pm, so anything can happen, but I cannot believe how nice the hours between 6am and 2pm have been so far.

I think signing Ezra up for Saturday morning tennis was definitely the right call.  It feels so anchoring to have something to plan the weekend around.  Last week I took Lily with me, this week I took Aubrey.  While Ezra was in his lesson Aubrey and I walked to some charity shops on the hunt for Christmas decorations.   I had a mega win of a bunch of christmas stuff for only £15!  We have at least 4 new light sets and also a giant bag of tinsel.

I also refilled our spices at the zero waste shop. £1.50 for a new jar of Cinnamon and Coriander and also a bag of banana chips to snack on.  Yay.

Lest you think I'm a frugal dream, Ezra and Aubrey and I then went to the grocery store to buy nappies and spent £50 on random stuff (well only £35 on random, £15 was needed nappies)

I've started letting Ezra ride in the front seat sometimes.  

It's fun having him next to me in the car and he loves picking the radio.  He was astonished to learn that you cannot chose songs when listening to radio, you can just choose stations.  Also, you can't pause the stations.  The music plays when you are not listening.  His little mind was blown.

Aubrey and Clara both have pretty sad winter colds right now, so they are a bit sad and tired.  They went down for a nap and then I got some time to work on photo albums project.

But first I enjoyed my last pumpkin biscotti from Trader Joes

Part of the reason I've felt so behind and chaotic on my photo albums recently is that I do one album per kid, per year (from their birthday to their birthday) and then one album for the whole family.  All the kids had birthdays in September and October.  Because I didn't fully finish the kids albums I hadn't started new albums, but also some kids needed new albums sooner and some twins are born right at the end of the month.  I didn't want to start their next albums until finishing the last ones, but I wasn't really sure where I was on all of them.  Of course, this was easily solved with a google sheet:

I managed to complete and print all 4 kids albums (some were basically done already) and now I just need to work on setting up all of their new albums and updating for October and November.  And finish the family album for October and November.

The place we order books from had a 50% discount on books, so I ordered all 4 plus a copy of last year's family album for a family member that requested it

Spending almost £200 on photo albums certainly isn't cheap but it's way cheaper than £386!

Hopefully this evening we can finish (and order) our family calendar.  

Aubrey and Clara will wake up soon and we'll have to think of afternoon entertainment.  We might go look at a bunch of christmas lights.  The weather is atrocious but we are unlikely to last in the house until bedtime.  

I spend a lot of time complaining about kid stuff here so hopefully this post balances some of that whine-ness from me...

What's your latest charity/thrift shop win?  Do you shop at zero waste stores?  

Friday things, tidy house, kids disco, weekend plans

This evening I took all 4 kids to a school disco by myself.  The disco was at 4:30pm (great time for a party!) and we were home by 5:45.  Andy had his work Christmas party, so he wasn't home when I got back, and I managed to do a 4 kids dinner and bedtime by myself.  Kids ate yogurt and shreddies for dinner (the disco had pizza and hot dogs)... and everyone was asleep by 7:45.  

Andy does 4 kids dinner and bedtime twice a month when I'm in the office, but I can't remember the last time I tried.  It went fine! Tiring, but fine.

After they went to bed I wasn't sure what to do with my sudden free time.  I thought that I could go to bed early and get up early and workout... or I could do housework...

I could order myself a pizza and watch the Barbie Movie (it was a goal of mine to watch it this year).  This sounded great, except that ordering a pizza for myself seemed kind of weird.  We don't ever order takeout, and I know the one thing I can't do when at home with 4 asleep kids is leave the house, but it just seemed like not the best use of £20 right now. 

I decided to putter around the house and tidy it up.  I've been very intentionally trying not to spend all my free time cleaning and tidying lately.  I've stopped hoovering multiple times a week.  Friday twin nap time is Rachel time, I've been doing Peloton or other Rachel-adjacent things.  But this evening I started listening to some recent Organize 365 podcasts and enjoyed properly cleaning and tidying the downstairs. 

It took about 1.5 hours but it looks so much better, I've hoovered everything, taken toys upstairs, taken down the fall decorations.  I do feel nice when spaces are clean, and even though it's still somewhat cluttered (the rising tide of "stuff" that happens with a reachy & grabby 2 year old is legit!) at least things feel a bit more orderly.

I've also been intentionally not defaulting to putting away laundry all the time, which means that our bedroom has a giant clean laundry basket which gets fuller and fuller until Andy and I find a time to put it away together.  I used to operate a very "just in time" clothing system, where the kids had enough clothes to last exactly the time between washes.  I've slowly accumulated more clothes so that technically we could go 3-4 days between washes if we needed to. While putting away 3 loads of laundry recently Andy said "I think the issue is the kids have too many clothes".  I told Andy that was the point of the new laundry system - it was no longer dependant on me.

[BTW I feel this post is turning towards "look how much I don't do" but Andy and I both spend so so much of our life tidying up after kids that it's definitely not a "more or less" comparison.  It's a "there is endless work to keep things running but also we both need to carve our own time too" situation.]

Also,while I am on the division of labour topic, one great thing is that my favourite end of day routine is sortng the kitchen - loading the dishwasher (I am thankful for dishwasher daily), wiping the counter, putting away food, washing other dishes, sweeping the kitchen... if given an evening tidy choice I will always chose kitchen.  Andy always starts with dining room.  I hate dining room (sweeping under tables is awful).  It works really well.

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I am not sure how this weekend will go.  Ezra has tennis lessons on Saturday morning and we need to go refill our spices at the zero waste shop in the village. Sometimes my life is just too middle class.  There is a local Santa tour around our village on Sunday which we will try and see.  We are hoping to get to the charity shop to buy some christmas decorations. I am making Turkey chili tomorrow with some freezer turkey from thanksgiving.  And otherwise, it's just a december weekend!

I'm feeling less Grinchy than I was last week now that our house is tidy.  Which maybe means I should tidy more? But then I feel grumpy about my time spent tidying.  There is no win.

Maybe next year we can find a cleaner again (I will someday blog about my multiple failed attempts at hiring a cleaner recently)

Tuesday Randoms - Christmas meh, Planning meh, Photo successes

OMG it's December.

I told Andy yesterday that I just need a half day to catch up on life admin, like photo Albums (still undone from December) and budget and house stuff and all the stuff which I need to do on a monthly basis (or ideally more, our house is kind of a mess)

Then decided that instead I could just not catch up on anything and wait like 9 more months and take a week off to catch up instead.  

My planning is not great at the moment.  Check out this weekly plan!

Oops.

On the plus side, I was very excited to get a family Advent calendar this year.  It's a Jam advent calendar from Bonne Maman.  The kids are delighted.  Many conversations were had about who opens doors and in what order.  Clara got to open first and Lily helped, because we are (apparently) going smallest to biggest in size.

We had honey apricot jam this morning on toast.  It was delicious. 

I have lots of fun stuff planned in December and I am kind of dreading a lot of it.  We went to our local village Christmas fayre on Saturday and I had thoughtfully bought the kids some light up wands because every year there is a light up wand seller who sells extortionately priced wands and I found discount wands at the local pound store.  The kids immediately said they didn't like my poundland wands and wanted other wands, or balloons, or food, or cake... basically they wanted STUFF!  and not the stuff I had.  OTHER STUFF.  It was very stressful and we went home.

Is Christmas just a pile of things and events that should be nice but are actually made kind of awful by the Christmas buildup?  Inquiring minds do not want to know.

This evening we ordered our Christmas cards! It might be world record early for us, and also they are New Years cards because I don't trust myself to actually post on time.  We have a spreadsheet of year on year Christmas cards and addresses and this year we had 24 for the UK and 19 for the USA.  Cards come in sets of 20.  So we ordered 60.  I might be reaching out for more addresses from my blog-o-friends.

Not our Christmas Card photo.  However... it is very hard to get 4 kids to look at a tripod camera.  We may end up paying a photo person next year.  I never regret having nice family photos.

Thing I am excited about this week:

• Going to the office on Wednesday
• Doing more stretching and mobility on Peloton
• Gym with my gym buddy on Thursday
• Omelettes with Jalapenos and Mozzarella cheese (new 10am second breakfast fav)
• Maybe getting some photo albums updated?
• Sleep
• Kids school Christmas Disco on Friday

What are you excited about this week? Are you a Christmas lover, a Christmas buildup lover, or a total Grinch?