It's my life: April 15, 2009

We've been taking turns on my Mormon Mommy website documenting a typical day for each of us. I decided to copy it here just in case I ever forget what it is like to have 5 young children. Ha ha.

Warning: This is extremely boring. Nevertheless, this is my life.

6 am. Get up and go on my daily run. I like to run on the path that goes around the pond by our house. This is what it looks like:

This is the most peaceful time of day for me. It's the only hour of the whole day that I have uninterrupted thinking time. It's just me, the birds, the rabbits, an occasional otter, and the sunrise.

7:15am Get showered and ready for the day and get all of the kids ready to take the older 2 to school.

8:30 am Walk to school (It was warm enough =))


and then take the younger 3 kids on a short walk around the pond to check out the ducks, geese, rabbits, blue heron, otters, seagulls and an occasional hawk. Here is a picture of a blue heron. Sorry it isn't that great of a picture. I really had to zoom in.

Jackson and Alexia ride like this (Jackson isn't happy because he wanted to go to school with G and H):
and Macy rides on my back like this:

9:15 Feed the younger 3 breakfast and do "learning time".

This is where we read, do letters, numbers, adding, writing, etc. This is another favorite of mine except when Jackson is being uncooperative like the other day and just kept repeating "It's not ocho" over and over.

After this I cleaned up breakfast, got some laundry started, checked out facebook and my email and then played with the kids until it was time to go get Hailey from school.

11:00am. It's time to get everyone in the stroller to go get Hailey. That sounds easier than it was. I picked up Jackson to put him in the stroller and noticed that he needed a diaper change so I took care of that. Then I noticed he had taken his socks off so I put them back on and then put his coat on. I picked up Macy and she needed a diaper change too so I took care of that. Then I looked over at Jackson and he had taken off his coat and socks again. So I put those back on. Then we were all ready to get in the stroller and go. Wrong-o bucko! Alexia had to go to the bathroom before we could leave, and then we had to put her coat back on. We eventually did make it out the door.

11:30 We make it over to the school to pick up Hailey. On the way I call Mandi and bore her to tears, I'm sure. We wait in line for Hailey. They have a VERY particular process in which you pick up your kindergartners. They issue you a sign with your child's name and the teachers name on it which you MUST have in order to pick up your child. Believe me. I found out the hard way that you must have that sign. When we first moved here I kept telling Mandi that I was afraid of doing it wrong and that they were going to yell at me like in movie "Mr. Mom" ("SOUTH to drop off moron!!").

This is the line that you wait in if you are in your car.

When you pull up they radio into the school and tell your child to go stand by a certain color of cone and then you pull up to the cone and they hop in.

On the way home Hailey claimed that she was too tired to walk the rest of the way so she hopped into the stroller with Jackson and Alexia and sat on the bar.

Alexia is hiding behind Hailey's backpack. You can see her arm sticking out to the side. I figure that I was pushing about 120-130 pounds and carrying another 20 on my back. Shouldn't that count for a workout? I could feel the burn!

I wonder what the neighbors thought of my pushing 3 kids in the stroller and carrying one on my back. According to my neighbor a bunch of the neighbors were talking one day and were trying to figure out if all of these kids are mine or if I am a nanny.

Noon. Help Hailey with her homework and get the kids lunch. Put Mandi to sleep with some more of my endless chattering on the phone. Do some more laundry and fold it while I am listening to a couple of sections in the Doctrine and Covenants and Elder Scott's talk from conference. Play with the kids.

3:00pm. Get ready to go pick up Garrison from school. Sit in line (according to procedure)

and wait for every single kid to get into their parents car before they let anyone go. At least I got to read over my young women lesson while I waited. The kids listened to primary songs and climbed all over the van.

3:40 pm. Help Garrison with his homework, take a short reading break (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain) and then start dinner.

The rest of the evening went by pretty fast......and I didn't take any pictures. Basically I just fed everyone, went to the library, got everyone in bed, swept and mopped the floors and watched "Lost" with Conal.

10:00pm: fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I know, I know. That was really exciting. At least I left out most of the diaper changes.

Simply put, I spent my day being a mom.