Demerits and Gold Stars: Summer Edition

I've decided to completely steal this Demerits and Gold Stars idea from Elisabeth - thanks Elisabeth!

Here are a few things going great, and a few things not.  In no particular order (I should have started with Gold Stars... I give myself an immediate Demerit for the layout of this post)

Demerit: Planning

I hit a planning groove in July.  I got my new Sprouted planner out, I made a fun landing page for the month, and I kept it updated... until I didn't.

I even wrote "Consistency is the Real Flex" on the top, because I just love an inspirational Robin Arzon (of Peloton) quote.

And then school ended on 20th July and everything went blank.  Here's my August looking forward:

I realize that it's summer... and planning or not, things do get done. Fun stuff happens.  But also, I usually like planning, so it's always a bit odd to me when I suddenly don't.

Or maybe it's that I'm enjoying now so much that I don't need to plan fun for the future?

Of course, that is the exact behaviour that makes the future un-fun... I'm enjoying the fun summer I've planned since May, but it's going to be a cold dark winter if I don't plan anything fun at some point.

I ordered a Sprouted weekly planner in the supersale which is arriving next week (there's always a delay when planners need to be brought over from the states by friends and family!) and maybe I just need a change of planner scene.  Maybe daily planning is not my jam right now.

Gold Star: Walking

When we went camping I wore my apple watch and I realized I was walking 15-20k steps every day and felt great.  I stopped wearing the apple watch many months ago when I realized I was walking 2k steps a day on my working days.  

Since we got back I've been trying to go for little walks more - maybe a few times a day - and I am loving the walking - and think it's good for me.  

It's not a shocking change, but the lows are less low and the highs are more high and that's good enough for me. 

Gold Star: Food Tracking / Protein

I know food is a weird topic BUT I started tracking food about a month ago and I have found it interesting.  First thing I discovered (which I already thought, but nice to have data) is that I eat a lot of food.  And that it's usually because life is hard and I need energy to manage the day to day of kids and jobs and house etc.

This is a good start because it's nice to be a person who can eat a lot of food, but it might also be nice to be a person who can eat healthier food to fuel me better and not 50 random things from the kids snack pot and then a giant plate of kid dinner (mac and cheese, cottage pie, etc) every night.

Also, I've been keen to cut down on meat and increase protein and there are very few quick win high protein vegetarian foods.

I've been eating more eggs, tempeh, tofu, seitan... and then other foods like lentils (which are surprisingly protein rich!) and I think I've been feeling more energetic?  I obviously can eat better when I have time to make food (ie my work days) than days when I'm with the kids all day, but it's been interesting to track over a few weeks.  

Demerit: Sports

I have been exceptionally demotivated in the sports arena as of late.  There are some pretty valid reasons for this.

1) It's been hot and my peloton is in the loft room which is also my office which is also upwards of 80 degrees many days in August.  It's just too hot to ride or work out (for me)

2) My gym buddies have been away some, and my one buddy and I are in a bit of a motivation lull anyways (we both like goals, we started going to the gym together to get stronger for circus skills, then quit circus skills and stopped getting stronger).  

3) My office slash gym room has been full much of the summer.  Lots of projects on the go does not make for an inviting workout area.

That floor space with the boxes and cords is my workout area.

Gold Star: Cleaning my house

I cleaned this weekend and it's great

Gold Star: Planning kid fun
I had a morning with just the girls and I took them to an adventure trail. I don't normally go to this one because it's £10 a ticket but the kids had a great time and I got lots of steps in and sometimes £40 is worth it:

I am fundamentally against activities where kid tickets and adult tickets cost basically the same - kid activities should cost for kids, adult activities should cost for adults.  

Demerit: My own aesthetic

I wish I spent about 15 minutes sorting myslef out everyday instead of wearing my hair in a bun and my face without makeup and generally looking as tired and as one would expect a mom of 4 to look.  I get a bit envious of the put-together moms with 1 or 2 kids.

Demerit: My Social Life

Things are busy and people are busy over summer, but I'm in a bit of a "meh" state with my own social life.  I used to be much more social with play dates and people over but too many times I just feel like such chaos that it's not worth trying to engage with friends.  And then it gets longer and longer since I've seen someone and harder to invite them around for what may be some sort of poop spectacular and then I really won't see them again.  It's just... easier not.  (Although it's also easier if people just live around the corner from me and come over all the time like when Elisabeth was here.  Can someone come be my neighbour friend?)

Gold Star: Watching TV

Andy and I watched a show! I loved White Lotus.  Best thing I've seen on TV for a long time.

Gold Star: Twin Bedtime / Andy time

We mostly sorted twin bedtime, it's not a nightmare anymore.  Andy and I get to hang out at home in the evenings again and it's nice.

That's it from me - any gold stars for you??

A Rachel Morning, come clean my house with me? Or at least help with my patio design?

 I feel that my blog narrative might support a theory that I am always complaining about the state of my house and also always cleaning my house.  I think the actual fact is that often when I get a chance to blog it's also when I've allotted time to clean, and therefore it seems like I'm always cleaning and rarely blogging.  This may not be your impression though.

Today started with a 6:30am swim at the Pontypridd Lido - a restored victorian outdoor swimming pool.  Most pools in Cardiff area are indoor because weather is awful, so it's nice to actually swim in fresh air.  The morning was hazy due to wildfires (a totally not-Welsh experience but we've had so much sun and so little rain it is currently a Welsh experience, sadly):

I came home, helped get Andy and the kids out the door to visit his family, and then started work on the house.  It was a tip

Two hours later the downstairs was not a tip!

I really do miss having a cleaner, but I cannot bear the thought of trying to find a good cleaner.  I did realize that if we didn't want to pay for a cleaner we could instead pay for 3 hours of weekend childcare sometime and clean the house ourselves.  The price is probably the same, although the extrapolated argument is that if we are paying for 3 hours of childcare we should do something fun that is not cleaning the house.

I had originally hoped to sort bedrooms as well but I was done after 2 hours and ready to move onto other more fun things.  Also, doing life admin in a clean house is way nicer than doing life admin in a chaos house (at least for me).

Oh and while I am sharing gross pictures of my hosue, we own a single nice chair.  It is the one you can see in the lounge covered by the throw blanket.  There are rules about this chair which is that kids are not supposed to climb on it or really be on it at all.  Today I removed the throw blanket and found the following:

Girl Next Door recently did a podcast called "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" and I guess... it's true.  I'm hoping it's water (we don't drink anything but water, and we're not supposed to have water in the lounge... but also I don't have enough eyes to watch all the kids all the time).  I'm also hoping it's washable, and at least the cushion is double sided so maybe in like 3 years we can flip that side down and then we can have a nice chair again with a grotty face down cushion.  Waah.

Then I had lunch and updated photo albums and the kids albums are now updated through June! Only one month behind!  Family Album is still back in January (it starts in January... so basically it's not started) but I think I will be caught up with kids by the end of the month which is a gold star for me.

I am not very good with before and after photos but we got another to-do off the list this week - a new light fixture in the dining room!

The old light fixture was from when our neighbours put this fixture out for recycling:

Andy installed the new one today - light fixtures are hard but I think I like it.  It gives off a lot of light which will be good in the dark dark winter.

But of course once we fix one problem I move onto the next one, which is our outdoor space.  At the beginning of summer we ate outdoors a lot and kind of awkwardly squeezed into this table

The table is a bit worse for wear from being outside all summer, and it's somehow not easy to sit at because it's tucked into a corner.  But our patio is mostly for toys (as you can see) so we can't really center it which is where it would need to be so we could eat at it.  

I know the answer is that we should have bought a smaller table really... but right now it's the worst of most worlds.  We don't sit at it because it's awkward and somehow just not appealing to eat at, and we can't move it further out because we need the space (and also because of the steps back there which we really regret having built).  I would love to have my coffee outside it the morning but I look at the table each day and think "not today" which is silly because I also want to get a tiny bistro table to have my coffee at.  There has to be a way to make this table coffee-ready.  Outdoor table cloth?

AI gave me the following ideas:

So, basically, I can't make it more nice because I'm not sanding or varnishing anything.  Maybe next year.

5 on a friday - summer edition, Weather, work, admin rhythms, food, swims.

Using my colander to view the eclipse

"Summer" is now more than half over for us.  I know that those in the US are feeling the "end of summer" vibes but I'm squarely in the "late middle" vibes.  

It was hot again this week - 33c/94f yesterday.  I went to the office so I could get some air conditioning.  It was so nice not to sit in a loft room slowly melting into the afternoon.  It was also nice to see people.  I need to go into the office more.  The only downside is the 5 hour round trip commute.  At around 2pm I noticed that all the trains to Cardiff were slowly being canceled due to heat, and at 3pm I ran for a train to Bristol hoping I could transfer.  The 4pm train was cancelled but I managed to get on the 4:30 train and make it back home by 6pm.  In time to do dinner and bedtime.  Was that the right call..?  maybe.

Tonight I am solo parenting dinner and bedtime for the first time in a very long time.  I am a bit scared but everyone will be fine.  

I definitely miss my Friday life admin time I had when the twins were in 2.5 hour Nursery on Fridays.  I'm behind on a lot of things.  The house is really gross.  You know what makes a house gross?  Potty training.  Ugh I am not into the potty training.  We decided to start with Aubrey because she was more keen.  It's going well, I guess, but I can't wait to be on the other side.  Survive till 5!

Today our nanny is coming in the morning for the twins so I can take the big kids to the open air pool.  It should be fun, they can both swim so much better than last year.  The poor twins don't get to go swimming because often pools have a 1 to 1 kid ratio and at no time does my family work in a 1:1 capacity.  I realized the other day that at almost no time does 1 kid get 2 parents ever.  I think I'll put that as a future goal for the big kids.

I've started food tracking recently and it's gone on longer that I've ever tracked food before.  It's been kind of interesting.  I'm being a basic human and trying to eat more protein but also not eating meat (except fish) so that's a fun project.  I must have some unexpected brain space or something to be able to think about high protein veggie meals for me that also suit the family.  Last week I made DIY taco bowls with Tofu:

We have a pretty low key (for us) weekend coming up.  Maybe we'll get a chance to clean the house somewhat, or update photo albums, or install the new light fixture for the dining room... or maybe we'll ruin our life by starting White Lotus season 2.

Is your summer winding down or endlessly long?  Are you jumping on the protein trend or have you been there all along?

Day In the life - Stay At Home Mom Of Twins edition

Remember when I was a SAHM for like two weeks with twins?  Me neither, but it happened in June.  Here is what June 2nd was like:

6:30 am to 9:30 am, not pictured, dropped Ezra (7) and Lily (5) at school, packed lunches, slowly got out of house with Aubrey and Clara (2.5)

9:30 At the park:

10:00 Snack Time

10:30 More Park

11:00 Take the train from near the park for no reason going nowhere

11:30 get off train then get on train going back to the same station we left from

12:00 Spend hours (or maybe minutes) getting back into the car to go home

12:30 Lunch time gets messy

1:00 Naptime. See lots of mess to clean up and sit down instead and instantly lose all motivation

2:30 and also what felt like seconds later, time to get up from nap 

3:00 Pack snack and head off to pick up big kids from school

3:30-4:30, not pictured, walked to the park, suddenly a kid yells I NEED A POO and then we have to go home but the other kids cry because they wanted to go to the park.  And yes this is the same park that we previously abandoned a play date because a kid had to poo so I really don't understand how anyone does after school park trips because for us it ends with crying and running home for poops every time.  Is that a lot of poop chat for a blog?  Too bad, poop is my twin mom life.

4:30 Drive to a different park instead, after everyone uses the toilet

5:00 everyone looking tired from lots of park time

5:15 Walk back to the car, slowly.

5:45 tidy up before dinner

6:30 I have no memory of what dinner was but I guess there wasn't enough and kids are eating something with peanut butter after?

7:30 kids bedtimes done and time for tidying up and also bed

And that was a day of twin life.  It's cute, they're cute, and I feel tired and mentally unstimulated just logging that day out on this blog.

Saturday Update - Random bloggy things, photos, fun time,

My bloggy rhythm is just... off right now.

I was working on photo album project and I realized I have so many photos I took to write blog posts with us and then I never wrote them and now the photos are just random.  I have a post on being a jerk and a day in the life with two year old twins and have written neither post.

I'm happy to report that twin sleep is much improved.  They are now sleeping around 7:30, which is the right time.  We can usually get all kids down by 8:15, and the house sometimes even sorted by 8:30.  It is good.

Last night a friend offered to do bedtime and babysit so Andy and I could go out.  The last time we left the house together with kids awake was March so this was a big deal. We have had two date nights/days so far in 2026 (two got canceled due to twins terrible sleep and Nanny's unfortunate injury).  We went for a hike up a local mountain (yay!) and then went to a local pub for a drink and some cheesy chips.  I tried to take a cool photo:

We dropped off the car at home and went for one more drink at a walking distance pub but then the pub was too crowded and loud so instead we went to the grocery store and bought some cans (and some fruit for the kids) and came home to watch White Lotus.  

We are really enjoying season 1 so far.

This morning I got some Rachel time, so went to the gym for a quick strength workout courtesy of ChatGPT

And then I went and did Parkrun - a free 5k run.  I have not run at all since the half marathon in October of last year so I took it very easy, except for racing past to people at the end because I had a bit more in the tank.  Does it make me a jerk to run fast at the end of a social 5k timed run with 237 people running?  It does mean I came in 214th instead of 216th so I guess that's good, but it does make me feel a bit rude to pick up the pace in the last 200 meters just because I can and because someone is ahead of me - I ended up 4 seconds ahead of the next runner.

There are a bunch of life admin things I should/could do with this Rachel time... but I am not feeling them right now.  Because of summer holidays my fridays are now kids-all-day days, not kids 2.5 hours of childcare days, and losing 2 hours of life admin time is basically losing 1/2 of my garunteed weekly admin time so I'll cut myself some logistical slack here.

On Thursday I did manage to spend about an hour working on kids photo albums.  Albums take about 1-1.5 hours a month to stay up-to-date.   I got very behind.  This far behind:

I'm fairly sure I can catch up in 3-4 hours... but every month I don't catch up adds and hour to the load.  Since the kids albums are printed on their birthdays the first album is "due" in September, when Lily turns 6!  Then Ezra/Aubrey/Clara all have birthdays in October.  I was somewhat behind last October so it would be great to not start the year behind.

Maybe if I wasn't watching White Lotus I would be up early enough to write a blog.... but I'm really enjoying White Lotus

Have you seen White Lotus? Do you feel bloggy behind sometimes?

We made it! Family camping trip 1 - Camping with 4 young kids is not impossible and actually kind of fun.

We survived our first family camping trip!

It went amazingly well.  Some things that made it work:

1. We camped with friends who were experienced family campers and owned all the kit needed, like a kids play gazebo and also brought so many toys

2. We found an awesome campsite which had 4 pitches and we basically had a private field

3. The weather was basically perfect the whole time, because we did not pack anything for rain/cold. 

I was fairly nervous about this trip because I could not imagine family camping but it turns out kids love fields and playing and freedom and fresh air and I am a converted family camping person now.  

We stayed in West Wales, about 2.5 hours away.  West Wales is gorgeous and has amazing beaches.

Andy bought a second hand 6 person tent a week before we left, and we all crammed into one room together, but it worked:

There were a few nights of sleep shenanigans, but there were also a few nights where grown ups hung out and played games and drank beer by the fire and it was awesome.

Twins slept on one of these IKEA pads, and we bought £10 inflatable mattresses for the big kids.  Air beds are annoying and break and are also the most comfortable camping bed that exists IMHO.

We visited a local castle and the kids had lessons in being knights and loved it:

We went to the harbour and ate lots of snacks:

The beaches were gorgeous, as always (when the sun is out)

Aubrey loved a breakfast ice lolly on our departure day.

So far I have done 4 loads of laundry since getting back and have about 2 left.  Andy has taken the kids out this morning to give me some admin time.  I have a million things I want/need to do.

• Updating budget for July
• Uploading July photos 
• August thinking/planning/goals
• Making a plan for how to keep going with photo albums
• Listing some twin stuff on Gumtree/Ebay that we realized we don't use/need
• Hoovering (done!)
• More laundry
• Texts/emails
• Blog post (a better one than this)
• Exercise (I need to do a peloton thing today or I'll lose my week streak!) 

All those things sound boring.  I would rather be camping.

Are you a camping person?  A family camper? A wilderness camper? Camping curious or a camping no?

Photos and Happenings from the First Week of Summer

One week of summer down!  Here are are some bits from the first week of summer:

Long Slide

When Elisabeth was here she visited Wales's longest slide, which opened a few weeks ago (or, actually, just over a month ago because it was when Elisabeth was here that the news excitedly asked "Is This The Longest Slide in Wales?"). On Thursday we took the kids to check it out for ourselves.  

It is, indeed, long! It was hot and I failed to get a good photo:

There was a cute kids park too (my kids are cute, but the park was also cute)

Everyone got on a wide slide together and I said "oh let me take a phot before the crying starts!" and then everyone went down the slide and at the bottom Aubrey somehow fell off the side and went mouth first into a rock and there was a lot of blood and it was time to go home.  Her face has recovered, but sadly her shirt is now in the clothing scrap pile.  Maybe this relates to my aforementioned inability to get stains out of clothes, but I could not get the blood out with a double wash or air dry or stain remover or sun.  Oh well.

That afternoon,  I decided to "cool mom" and give the kids ice cream for snack!  Then, everyone had a really rough behaviour afternoon and I maybe I am not actually a cool mom.  But in this moment they enjoyed it.

New Planner

During one of the mornings of parent-childcare I managed to sit down and order our 26/27 planner while some subset of the kids played! This is a crazy new level of parental independence during parent-childcare.  I haven't looked in it to check I didn't make any mistakes BUT It looks good! 

We order our planners from Personal Planner and have for years - I love having a big family planner to work with.  I also love that it prints birthdays and memorable dates in the planner.  This year I splashed out on some new pens too:

Last week at some point the twins helped us decorate our existing weekly spread:

Does this week look way more fun when unreadably stickered?

My Science Kid

This week Ezra donated his brain for science!  Cardiff University has a Tiny Tots Research Lab which was doing an experiment on something and I signed Ezra up.  In April Ezra did an experiment with a smartwatch and tangrams. We got invited to another part of the study where he got to play a game on a tablet (Scratch Labs Junior?) and then they monitored his brain for ???.  I probably should have listened more.

I was mostly watching this one:

She is my first ever "plays quietly with toys" kid.  It is so new and different.

In the research study, Ezra liked the tablet but did not like the gel that they put in the EEG hat thing.  

First Doctor's Appointment of the Summer

On Wednesday Aubrey had an allergic reaction to a new suncream (I think it may have gotten in her eyes) and ended up at the doctor.  She looked truly awful and unhappy but with time and antihistamines she was better in the evening.  It was so sad to see a poorly kid and so good to see her feeling better!  

I often feel I go to the doctor with a kid who looks healthy but I think is ill (they perk up for the Dr!) but this time I had a kid who looked terrible and the doctor spent a good amount of time making sure she wasn't actually as ill as she looked

She was back to normal that evening, poor Aubrey.

Unphotographed things from last week

• I had 2 really productive days in work and then one way less productive day.
• My gym buddy and I walked up a local mountain/hill (my favourite local small hike which I did with Kyria and Elisabeth
• I made a really good dinner of veggies and vegan sausage in the air frier
• Andy and I got everyone to bed at 8pm last night and there was a TEAR FREE and super easy twin bedtime.  Before bedtime project there were both tears and long bedtimes.  Hopefully this is a sign of actual progress
• I finished Aubrey & Clara's photo albums through April, and Ezra and Lily through March.  It would be awesome to get caught up by August... I think my block with albums was that we took so so many photos on our Portugal holiday and it was an overwhelming amount of photo updates to manage.  But you eat an elephant one bite at a time and you update an album one photo at a time.
• I did not make my two strength training sessions this week. My brother was visiting (and sleeping in my office/peloton room) and my kid days are tiring.  
• I wore my apple watch this week and apparently I do 10,000 steps on kid days by never sitting down because I definitely don't do any actual exercise.
• After the last day of school I washed all the kids school uniform and pulled out everything that was too small and/or too stained and then ordered everything we need in a slightly larger size ready for September.  Last year all the uniform was sold out when I was trying to get it before school so I am glad I have already done the audit, and a mere £60 we are all kitted out for next year.   Lily managed to not destroy a fair amount of uniform which is now boxed away for Aubrey and Clara.

All in all, a good start to the summer holidays!