Busy weeks, kid life, a chaotic plan is a plan for chaos.

On the train home from the airport the kids used one of my planner pages and my planner stickers to make this party scene, and I love it.  

This week felt BUSY.  I guess maybe every week feel busy... but I keep feeling like if I could just have a day to catch up I would be less chaos.  

We got back from Rennes on Monday night and the kids went to school on Tuesday, however I had a day with the Twins on Tuesday as our nanny is on holiday now.  I took them to Gymnastics, which they loved

Toddler gymnastics is something I'll miss when I don't have toddlers anymore.

Over their nap, instead of cleaning the house and doing dinner prep, I decided to do a Peloton workout.  I haven't been exercising at all because it just doesn't fit into my life, but I realized I need to make it fit into my life or I will never do sport again.  The house was a mess, the laundry was stacked up, and I needed to chop chips for dinner... but instead I did a 30 minute workout.  It's possilble!

Then I picked up the big kids from school and brought one of their friends home for a play date and it was CHAOS.  The twins were chaos, the big kids started fighting, I needed to chop chips for dinner, the twins were fighting, Ezra made them a dangerous slide to play on... I'm really not sure my afternoon workout was worth the chaos that ensued.  At one point Ezra and Lily got in a fight and the friend asked to go home... honestly I would have gone back to five year old friend's house as well if I could have... our house was not nice.

Somehow with the help of afternoon TV we pulled it together and kids calmed down and friend stayed for dinner, but I once again thought that I really shouldn't be trying to have play dates at this point in my life because sometime I feel my life is a basically a sausage factory and no one should see the inside.

On Wednesday I was in the Bath Office all day and it was... busy.  I had to leave early and got home late.  On the train back I talked to Elisabeth (YAY!) to help plan her stay in Wales and then I had a lot of fun making a Wales itenary for her.  If anyone wants a Wales holiday itenary I will make one for you - it was so fun to think of all the things I did as a backpacker and all the things I enjoy doing now and make recommendations.  Nothing says FUN like a good spreadsheet!  Also, I learned that the way to avoid people sitting next to me on trains is not by seat hogging with a bag or by manspreading or by looking scary... it's by talking on the phone.  No one wants to sit next to someone on the phone.  Sorry Kyria (although I was talking on the phone to my ear, not on speaker)

In the evening Andy and I had a FLOM.  During FLOM it was noted that these meetings keep the logistics of our family running but the lack of any grown up fun or hobbies is kind of annoying.  It's great that we keep our kids fed and clothed and we don't leave them places accidentally because we are operationally excellent at having 4 kids BUT it would be great to include some fun into our own lives again if possible. This weekend Andy is going to try and get out for a bike ride on Sunday morning and I am *hopefully* getting 3-4 hours of Rachel time this afternoon.

on Thursday I was working from home and Andy watched the twins.  I finished early to go with Andy to a school fundraiser, where the kids had a good time until one of my kids noticed they were selling sweeties and wanted sweeties and I wouldn't buy any (because we already had cake) and said child had an epic meltdown.  We made it home, had dinner, did bedtime, and then I went back to work for 3 hours because I had a deadline on Monday.  It was not an ideal day.

Picnic at the fundraiser, before the crying started

Friday twins went to their 2.5 hour nursery and I had a pedicure with my mom as an early US mothers day treat.  In the evening I went out to dinner with a friend, we tried a new mexican restaurant however it was expensive and not very good and I think I am giving up on trying mexican food in the UK.  It's just not good!  Perhaps mexican food needs to come from places that have mexicans and also ingredients for mexican food.  Wales has neither.

Ezra really wanted this photo at school pick up.

And now it's the weekend.  I'm excited for my Rachel time this afternoon - I would like to do about an hour of sport, and then do a big planning session for this month and maybe even some sort of meta-planning for how I actually want to approach the logistics of my own life.  Right now I'm definitely in a reactive stage... things *are* getting done, but it would be great to have a bit more intention with what I'm doing when because right now I randomly pick things to do every day/hour and while everything eventually gets done it's just not.... nice.  And also some things don't get done... after 5 years of monthly photo album updates I am now 4 months behind on all of them.

Twins are chirping, time to start the kid-day.