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?