Every February for the past several years, I’ve done a traditional “Day in the Life” post just to show how much changes (and what doesn’t!) from year to year. In last year’s post, I was recently coming off not only a two-week-long COVID bout, but also a missed miscarriage and a subsequent D&C procedure. This year, I’m currently 22 weeks pregnant with our fourth and last child, and I’m staying plenty busy in the meantime with teaching a community education class through the local college, prepping for our flower farming season ahead, and chasing after the kids.
If you want to see past years’ DITL posts, click HERE.
On this year’s day in the life, I chose to do a Monday, which is a day I haven’t done in awhile. Although it’s not an opinion shared by most people, I actually really like Mondays — to me, they signal a fresh start, and I’m also usually quite motivated on Mondays to really be productive and get a lot done. This Monday was no different in that respect.
Here’s what a little sliver of our life looks like in this particular season:
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Day in the Life 2/6/2023
3:35 a.m. Pregnancy bladder forces me to get up on the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Luckily I’m able to fall asleep without a problem after…a small miracle these days.
6:30 a.m. I hear Matt’s alarm go off and promptly roll over to go back to sleep for 15 minutes while he gets up and showers 🙂
6:45 a.m. My own alarm goes off (still an obnoxious crowing roosting — soooo effective), and I immediately sit up and turn on my light so I’m not tempted to go back to bed. I check a few apps and do the daily Wordle to wake up my brain, then I say my prayers.
7:00 a.m. Normally I’d make our bed, but it’s Monday and I’m washing sheets, so I strip them into a heap in the center of the bed to take care of later. I can hear Raven’s alarm going off through the monitor. (Honestly, this alarm clock we got her for Christmas was one of the smartest purchases we’ve ever made. Not only do the kids love that it had a built-in night light and soothing white noise options, but it also keeps them downstairs until it goes off, whereas before we’d almost always have a kid or two in our bed from about 5 a.m. and onwards.) I hear the older two come upstairs shortly thereafter, Mathias crying over some perceived offense. Raven has already gotten dressed for school, so I quickly do her hair while she verifies how many days are left until Valentine’s Day. Mathias goes to seek comfort from Matt, who’s now out of the bathroom.
7:15 a.m. I clear the dishes off of our drying rack (our dishwasher has been broken for two months), and then I go take a bathroom break.
7:30 a.m. Time to get dressed for the day (during which the puppy eagerly noses his way in to say a very enthusiastic good morning). After, I go out to the kitchen, where Matt has already gotten the older two breakfast. I decide to sit down right then and eat my breakfast, too.
7:40 a.m. Matt is finished eating and goes down to get Hyrum, who isn’t feeling great and had started running a low fever the day before. When he brings him up, it’s clear that Hyrum has had a nosebleed, as there’s dried blood all over the bottom of his face and Matt is bringing up his stuffed animals to get washed. While Matt cleans him up and gives him a dose of medicine to help with the low fever that’s come back on, I go down with the older two kids and help them strip their sheets and put on new sheets, then I go into Hyrum’s room and do the same. Hoping that all the blood will come off easily if I spray it and then wash it immediately, I waste no time getting the load started.
8:00 a.m. Matt and Raven need to leave for work and school, so it’s time for hugs and goodbyes.
8:05 a.m. I collect all the laundry from the house and bring everything up to the washer so I can do loads throughout the day. I also clear out the clean laundry from the dryer and clean the lint trap while I’m at it. Then I put the milk away and put all the cereal boxes away from breakfast. Somewhere in there, I need to clean a poopy diaper of Hyrum’s (we’ll be potty training him in a couple weeks, so this should hopefully be one of the last ones until the new baby comes), and then I also help both boys get dressed (Mathias doesn’t need help actually getting dressed — he just couldn’t find his “pizza shirt” that he was looking for).
8:30 a.m. Time for Mathias to do his online preschool, which he does each weekday morning in addition to going to in-person preschool twice a week. Hyrum always happily pulls up his chair to watch and participate where he can. While the two of them are engaged in that, I put on makeup and do my usual custom of listening to a church talk while I do (to ensure that I get some kind of spiritual/scripture study in each day). In case you’re curious, this is the talk I listened to on this day.
8:45 a.m. Hyrum and Mathias are still doing preschool, so I go out to the kitchen to transfer the clothes to the dryer and start tackling all the dishes. We didn’t wash the dishes last night after dinner or after lunch, so I have three meals’ worth to wash by hand. I put on a YouTube cleaning video in the background while I do.
9:20 a.m. Mathias usually just wants to do online preschool for a half hour, but he went a little longer today. Once he’s finished, I let both boys choose stickers for their preschool charts, and then they go off to play with cars. I take a quick bathroom break, update this post, then go back to doing the dishes.
10:00 a.m. Every last dish is finally washed, and whenever that occurs, I try to clean the kitchen sink while I’m at it since it doesn’t *always* happen every day 🙂 I normally just use the Dawn Powerwash Spray, but I recently found our Clorox (which I basically hadn’t seen since we moved in two years ago) and wanted to see if it would make our yellowing white kitchen sink any less dingy looking. (For the record…yes, but it will never look like new again.) After I’m done with the sink, I put the clothes in the dryer through a second time and then wipe down the kitchen table and all the counters. While I’m doing all this, Hyrum comes up for frequent snuggles and hugs, even asking me to pick him up for about five minutes at one point. It’s clear he’s not quite feeling 100%, but he’s at least still wanting to play, which is a good sign.
10:20 a.m. Kitchen clean, I take a break to update this post and also update our monthly budget spreadsheets. Basically all that means is that I’m putting in all the purchases and bills that have been paid as they clear the account, which helps me to stay on top of our budget throughout the month. Hyrum comes and sits in my lap while I do that.
10:40 a.m. I take another short bathroom break (pregnancy, you guys…), then am reminded that I need to purchase a new bra when I see that my (ruined-in-the-washer) favorite one is still lying on the bathroom counter as a reminder. I look up the style on Amazon and am elated when I find that it’s 60% off — just $16! I probably should have bought 3, but as I know my bra size will be changing drastically over the next year from the pregnancy and nursing, I content myself to just buy one in my current size. I *maybe* added two books to my cart too since it’s tax return time and Matt and I both give ourselves $50 to use as purely fun money from that (I got this book and this book, in case you’re wondering, because I keep hearing a lot of buzz everywhere about them and I CAN’T STAND BEING LEFT OUT OF THE BOOKISH LOOP).
11:00 a.m. After I’ve completed my Amazon order, it’s time to start thinking about lunch. I ask the boys what they want, and Hyrum picks yogurt and granola and Mathias picks oatmeal. I also slice up fresh pears for both. As for me, it’s leftover chicken and rice and a fresh pear, too. I also take the laundry out of the dryer and put in a new load as I’m waiting for the microwave.
11:35 a.m. Lunch is over, and I debate doing the lunch dishes right then while they’re easy, but I really need to get a headstart on some important flower farming projects for the day (both of which have definite deadlines). I decide to start on addressing all the gift certificates that need to be mailed out to people who bought bouquet subscriptions for the upcoming season–that way I can stop by the post office and put them in the mail on our way back from picking up Raven in a couple of hours. It’s important that I get these out ASAP since many people bought the subscription as a gift to their spouse for Valentine’s Day, and I want to make sure they get the gift certificate well before that point (since the bouquets don’t actually start until April).
12:20 p.m. Envelopes addressed, I do a quick social media check for all the flower farm accounts and respond to some messages and comments. I also check my to-do list for the day to remind myself of what I still need to do, which reminds me I need to schedule an eye exam for this week, which I do right then. While I’ve been doing all this, the boys are in the front room playing happily with a super long cardboard tube we saved, which they like to zoom their cars down. A few months ago, they used to really struggle getting along, but once Hyrum matured a bit, they now get along really, really well the vast majority of the time, which I definitely don’t take for granted.
12:50 p.m. Since the boys are still happily engaged, I start on the slideshow for the class I’m teaching tomorrow at the local college on cut flower gardening. Usually I would have started that several days ago, but our flower farm opened its bouquet subscriptions last Thursday, which has kept me pretty busy fielding questions and taking down people’s information who sign up.
1:10 p.m. The boys are done with cars and want to color, so I print out a few pages from our favorite online source for free coloring pages for them, and they go to town. I continue work on the slideshow, responding to a few texts from friends and potential customers every so often.
1:40 p.m. I take a break to switch a load over to the dryer and start another load through (as well as take another quick potty break, of course). The boys are eager to show me the pictures they’ve been working on and insist I take a picture. I also take a couple minutes to vacuum up the granola Hyrum spilled everywhere during lunch.
1:55 p.m. Back to working on the slideshow.
2:15 p.m. We need to start getting ready to go out the door and pick up Raven from school, so I help the boys get on shoes and then get on mine as well. A minor tantrum breaks out from both boys over who gets to put the dog in the kennel.
2:25 p.m. We’re all in the car, and I decide to stop by the post office first to mail off all the certificates since we still have a little bit of time before Raven’s out.
2:35 p.m. The certificates are mailed, we pick up Raven, and we all head back home. Then it’s the usual flurry of putting coats and boots away, getting snacks, etc.
3:00 p.m. Since it’s Monday and we always have a family night together on Monday, I start looking up cookie recipes I can make quickly to prepare as a treat. I end up going with this one because it actually transitions over to gluten-free pretty easily with just a 1:1 substitution on the flour and an addition of a 1/4 tsp. of xantham gum. It also doesn’t use any eggs, which is a bonus since our chickens only recently started laying again and so we only get 1 or 2 a day from them. I start pulling out the ingredients for that and get to work.
3:30 p.m. The first batch of cookies is in the oven, so I tell Raven to get out her homework so we can work on that. She’s learning about telling time right now.
3:50 p.m. The homework is finished, so Raves goes to practice her songs ahead of her piano lesson with me. While she does that, I finish up the cookies, then go out to start her piano lesson. She’s about halfway through the primer book, and we should start learning the actual staff next week, which is exciting.
4:20 p.m. The boys have made a huge mess in the front room throughout the day, so I instruct them to clean that up (and Raven pitches in). Once the room is totally tidy, I let them turn on a show while I get dinner going.
4:35 p.m. The rice is started and the hamburger meat is defrosting, so I vacuum the (now tidy) front room.
4:45 p.m. Matt gets home from work bearing Diet Dr. Peppers from McDonald’s for both of us 🙂 I keep going on dinner prep while he feeds and waters our chickens and checks on the water levels in the high tunnel where we have a few crops growing for our flower farm. He also takes out all the trash in the house and takes the trash can to the curb for garbage pickup tomorrow.
5:30 p.m. Dinner is ready: Korean BBQ beef rice bowls with broccoli 🙂
6:00 p.m. Matt cleans up a bit by putting food away and doing some of the dishes, and I gather the kids together for family night.
6:10 p.m. Matt does a short lesson on the symbolism of light and the importance of letting our light shine, and the kids have fun shining the lanterns he’s brought out for everyone. As usual, Raven knows all the answers before we give them and the boys don’t seem to take in a word, but rather hyperactively run around. Pretty typical. We finish by having the cookies I made earlier. (Normally we’d do an activity too, but I’m super exhausted by this point in the evening and we’re nudging up on bedtime.)
6:35 p.m. While Matt gets Hyrum ready for bed and makes sure everyone gets their teeth brushed, Raven does her reading homework with me for about 25 minutes.
7:00 p.m. We reconvene as a family for a scripture video and family prayer. We all say good night to Hyrum, and Matt puts him down to bed while I keep the other two on schedule for their own bedtime (going potty, getting drinks, etc.).
7:20 p.m. Time for our family read aloud. We’re currently in the middle of the last Fablehaven book (I’m always the reader), and I read about a dozen pages tonight.
7:35 p.m. My Braxton Hicks contractions are already pretty intense at night, so I opt to stay upstairs rather than walk the older two kids down to bed. Before they go with Matt to get tucked in, I sing them each their special song and give them hugs and kisses.
7:45 p.m. Kids are all down in bed, so Matt and I take a few minutes to check in with each other and see how the day went.
8:00 p.m. Veg time. Matt and I usually watch a couple episodes of an old show we both like (in this case, Chuck) since we’re usually both too tired to want to do much at this point in the night.
9:35 p.m. We ended up watching two episodes tonight, then it’s time to get ready for bed (especially since I’m already struggling to stay awake). I do the usual bedtime routine of washing off of my makeup, brushing my teeth, etc., while Matt gets the clean sheets on our bed.
10:00 p.m. I finish updating this post and then read some pages out of my current book (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow) while Matt gets ready for bed and finishes the game he started on his phone, then we read scriptures together as a couple and say our prayers together.
10:35 p.m. Lights out!
And that’s a wrap! Pretty typical of how life around here goes lately, with helping kids, doing flower farming chores, and trying to keep up on the endless housework. How are your days looking lately?
