A Day in the Life–Amy

Yay! Today is round TWO of our Day in the Life series and a whole bunch of women we admire are sharing their days today. I am also on deck to talk about my routine as a mom and blogger, which now that I am sitting down to write this post it’s a bit intimidating 🙂 but be sure to read till the end, where you will find the links to all the other “days” listed. If you are new to our blog there are two of us here at 11 Magnolia Lane {read more about us here}, and I am a mom to three kids–a son in in high school, a son in middle school and my daughter is in elementary. Good times for sure 🙂

 

I had a hard time finding a ‘typical’ day to share with you all, as the last few weeks have been filled with random but fun events–last week I spent the end of the week working on a “Friendsgiving” photoshoot with my friend and our former co-blogger Terry {see peaks of it on Instagram}, and then we had houseguests over the holiday weekend. Since there is nothing like waiting until the last minute, I am chronicling what went down Tuesday (yesterday) in an effort to be as real as possible with what comprises a fairly normal, busy day around here.

One thing is for sure, I like my routines so capturing that post of this post isn’t that hard. However, we are in a pretty busy season of life (I am guessing I am not the only one!) as our two sons fully in the swing of fall sports and my daughter in Nutcracker so our days (and especially evenings) are much fuller than they were over the summer.

{some affiliate links are used in this post}

 {I use phone alarms all day long to keep me on track 🙂 }

My day starts bright and early around 6AM. If my oldest son needs to take the bus, we have to get up at 5:30 so he can make a 6:15 bus (don’t get me started on how early that is for an exhausted teenager, the football schedule is no joke), but so he can get as much sleep as possible, we try to drive him if he can’t find a ride with a friend.  Thankfully my husband is working from home today so we decide he will take him {a 40 minute round trip drive} and I’ll handle our other two kids. The biggest anomaly in our day today is that it’s my daughter’s first day of school–finally! Her brothers have been back since mid-August, but her school has the traditional day after Labor Day start. I admit she is ready to get back, as am I 🙂

 

{Yes, we have two coffee makers. I am a Keurig girl, my husband swears by this one.}

I try to get up before my kids every day by at least 15 minutes, even earlier if I can. I find I need the quiet {and some coffee} before the morning chaos begins. I hear my high schooler get up as I sit down with my coffee, my Day Designer Planner, and my Calendar Pad and I spend a few quiet minutes getting myself together.  This is probably my most important ritual of the day, the 15-20 minutes I have to myself to figure out how the day will go down makes all the difference.

 

 

The time flies by and by 6:45 my kids are all up, dressed and eating breakfast. Normally, I would throw on exercise clothes and a baseball hat and make a fruit/greens smoothie to take with me to drink during drop offs but today, since it’s my daughter’s first day, we agreed that I would drive her to school because she has more to carry than she can manage on the bus. So, I make the effort to wash my face, put on a minimal amount of makeup and some real clothes to be presentable enough for an in-person drop-off.  I grab some breakfast (more on how I eat in a minute) since I know I will be gone for more than an hour but don’t finish it, I am not that hungry yet and our time is getting tight. The closet above is by our back door, so everything we need for school lives in this area, which helps us get out the door easily. {See how we built it here}.

 

 

At the last minute we realize we need a ‘first day’ of school picture for my daughter. While my middle school son runs around getting his school stuff together, we quickly stick “third grade” on our letter board {no time for “first day of”} and snap a quick picture of her on the front step for posterity. She’s excited! We all jump in the car and get to the middle school around 7:20.

 

We survive the chaos that is the middle school drop-off and head towards her school, it’s about a 20-minute drive and about this point, I am really wishing I had some coffee with me. We get to the school way early so we sit in the parking lot for a few minutes. We have time to braid her hair {which I take a picture of so she can see it} and talk about how excited she is to see her friends again. At 7:50 we go in,  find her classroom and greet her new teacher. She’s ecstatic to see her friends again, it’s been a long summer.  I make sure she is settled, give her a kiss for good luck and head back out. Walking to my car I notice the absence of any sad first-day-mom-feelings and realize it’s because she is so happy to be there. I head out for the 20-minute drive home and really, really wish I had some coffee.

I get home and finally get more coffee! I need a few minutes to regroup after the events of the morning so I sit down to knock out a few quick tasks that are hanging over me, like signing up for lacrosse tryouts (thankfully my neighbor texted to remind me about it) and sending a birthday present via Amazon. Then I change into my normal morning attire of leggings and a t-shirt and leash up a dog. We have two labs, and one is always crushed when it’s the other one’s turn for a walk (I can’t manage both at once, much as they wish I could), and so the two of us head out in the neighborhood. The weather feels a bit like fall; the morning is beautiful and I am grateful to have some quiet time to clear my head after all the rushing around. We walk for about 20 minutes, sometimes longer, but I can feel myself getting anxious about how much I have to do today so we head home.

shoes | leggings | top

Before I settle in my office for the day, I spend a few minutes doing all the morning tasks like emptying the dishwasher, loading it, starting a load of wash (I pretty much do wash every day but Sundays–again football practice–you can’t leave that stuff laying around) and I make up the beds. Of course my kids are supposed to make their own, but only my high schooler has attempted to make his today, though that in itself is a victory.   I also spend a few minutes cleaning up because we have a friend coming by later to discuss our plan to sell our house and build a new home. I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry and have the upstairs straightened up in case I give him a full tour. {edit: which I do, so good thing I took the time to clean up!}

 

{our bedding here}

I finally settle at my desk around 10, I know I still need to fit in a proper shower at some point and to get dressed so I tell myself I’ll work for about an hour then I’ll take a break. I spend a few minutes before I start “working” doing a devotional, which is typically the first thing I do when I sit down in my home office each day.  I always read the daily devotional in Jesus Calling; it’s my 3rd time through it but it’s just so good and I just ordered this one, and can’t wait to start it. After some quiet time, I pull out our family Calendar Pad and start to figure out our week.

 

| the calendar pad |

I normally do this on Sundays, along with a meal plan/make a grocery list, but I admit the holiday weekend threw me off. The Calendar Pad is the main tool I use for our family organization (and good news, they are for sale again in my store!}, it helps my husband know what’s going on and even the kids can look at it to know what’s for dinner, because they always ask! I keep my personal daily planner in my Day Designer and I work off that list of things to do. I should mention I copy anything over from the day before that isn’t crossed off, I guess that’s a fairly simple and obvious strategy but it helps things from falling through the cracks. I have some attention and memory issues from my Lyme Disease so I use this system to keep me on task, otherwise, I would probably accomplish nothing all day long because I got sidetracked on Pinterest 🙂

 

 

I knock out some blog-related tasks, work on posts and typically about this time of day Christy and I exchange emails and texts about our schedule, sponsorships and such relating to this blog. Since I haven’t showered, I finally force myself away from the computer (only 30 minutes later than I had planned) and get dressed for the day. Some days this doesn’t happen until 3 or 4pm but I almost always get out of my exercise clothes and into ‘real’ clothes at some point, today I grabbed one of my go-to outfits–favorite jeans, favorite top and Miller sandals. {necklace is here, cup is here}

 

 

Most days in the late mornings I head out and do whatever errands need to be done. Today, I don’t have anything pressing so after I am dressed, I make some lunch. I recently started ordering groceries from Amazon Fresh, so that is saving me a ton of grocery store time. Hopefully they will roll that out in more areas soon because I seriously love the convenience.  (Note: I am not going to share what I eat in this post because it’s kind of complicated, last spring I went on the AIP Protocol diet (like paleo but much more restrictive) and it helped my health tremendously. I have much more leeway in what I eat now but I won’t include all that in today’s post or we’ll be here forever! I will write an entire post on that soon). I will show you my favorite snack though, rice cakes and maple nut butter–I literally live on this 🙂 so good and healthy too!

 

After lunch I have our meeting about our house, it takes about an hour, then I get back in my office in front of the computer. I have about an hour to catch up on blog work, answer emails, reorder some things for my organizing store and start crafting this post. I also have to edit and send some pictures for our Fall Home Tour which will be on the blog next week.

At 2:45 my son is home, and by 3:15 I am back out the door to pick up my daughter at her bus. In my stage of life, truthfully my afternoons are mostly spent driving my kids around, so things get really exciting from here (#sarcasm!).  My daughter has dance today, so after 20 minutes at home, we’re back out the door to get her to dance, ballet bun intact. I walk her in the studio, say hi to my dance mom friends, then head back toward home. My husband calls to tell me he can pick my son up at football, so that saves me 40 minutes of driving and actually ups the odds that dinner will get made instead of picked up somewhere.

 

 

Knowing tonight would be crazy I had planned a make ahead meal, which ideally I’d have made in the morning, but well, that didn’t happen. I manage to throw a pizza/pasta casserole together when I get home {I make up the recipe as I go, just using pasta, sauce, italian sausage, pepperoni and mozzerella cheese–all designed to feed hungry teens}. I also make lunches and stick them in backpacks {really, a chore I don’t like very much so I try to ALWAYS do it ahead of time} and fold a load of laundry while the pasta boils. I snack on some Terra Chips while I cook.

 

 

We’re back out the door for basketball practice at 6:30, and we pick up two other boys we carpool with first {their moms drive Thursdays so this is our harder night of the week}.  The practice goes until 8:30 which is kind of late for a school night but what can you do?

 

 

Luckily, that practice is close to our house, so in about 20 minutes I am back and my husband is home with the other kids. They eat, do homework and we talk about our days, especially our first day of school girl 🙂 who gives a good report. I eat some leftovers, and my kids eat enough of the casserole that I think it was a dinner win. My husband is still sending work emails so I run back out to grab the boys at basketball, drop them all off and return home around 9. Phew!

 

I tuck everyone in, spend a few minutes on the computer returning some emails and finish up writing this post . I pick up my Kindle Fire (I ordered one specifically to keep next to my bed, I can read on it, watch Netflix, I can even add things to my Amazon cart or check email if I need to} I power it up and turn on Gilmore Girls. I am so close to done with the series; during the summer I usually read before bed but I tend to stay up too late when I do, so now with our early mornings, one show is perfect.  I am usually asleep between 10 and 10:30, 6AM will be here again too soon and it will all start over again!

That is a day around here! It isn’t always exciting, and it’s definitely a bit of a juggling act but I am trying to appreciate this stage of life because one thing is for sure, it all goes by way too fast!

Now head on over to all the other bloggers sharing their days via the links below:

 

And here are the posts from last week:

 

 

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