Fly On The Wall-A Wednesday

This is for my own interest and journal keeping, but, for those of you that are curious about what goes on at other people's houses (I know I am!) you can be a fly on the wall for a day.  Welcome to the Finlay house. :)

Do you ever wonder what you did all day?  I've been thinking I want to record a typical day for me.  Last week at our Relief Society conference, our stake president taught a class.  It was a follow up on a class from 9 years ago.  He surveyed women in the stake about how they spend their days and compared the results from 9 years ago and now.  As the women in the stake have collectively gotten older, they are spending less time with kid duties and running around, and more time reading, exercising and with church.

I know there is no day that is exactly like the rest, but my idea is to record about once each month on different days of the week so I get a sampling of how my time was spent through different stages of life.

I set the alarm on my phone to go off every hour.  I wrote down what I was doing at that exact moment.   It will miss a lot of the in-between time, but it will capture a piece of my day.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

6AM-still in bed sleeping.
Went to bed too late the night before and turned off alarm on purpose to not have to wake up any earlier than I had to.

7AM-running.
Even though it was a beautiful day and James was home, I still chose to run on the tredmill.  It is faster that getting ready to run outside, and I wanted to read while I ran.  Checked e-mails, responded to texts,  and read Daughters in My Kingdom, all while running intervals.

8AM-eating breakfast with the kids.
Usually Wednesdays we have waffles, but because I ran late and James had to leave early we had parfaits instead.  James has already left for work.

9AM-getting laundry off the line outside.
Kids are starting to fold and put away their own laundry while I fold and hang the rest.
between 8 and 9 I have showered and gotten ready and gotten the kids ready for the day.  I also cleaned up breakfast and discovered I had somehow (from distraction of kids finishing) forgotten to finish mine.

10AM-cuddling Ethan outside, who has fallen off the step and hurt his foot.
Gavin and Elise have been dropped off and the 4 kids are all playing outside about to come in for snack time.

11AM-working on craft project with kids.
then spent a significant amount of time helping the kids pick up all the little 'googly' eyes that have fallen on the floor.

12PM-getting lunch prepped for the 4 kids. 
kids are currently playing upstairs in the kids room.
kids ate spaghetti, green beans, pears and plums.  I had left over corn chowder.

1PM-talking with Megan Warnick, who is picking up her kids for the day.
we are outside.  kids are playing on scooters and bikes.

2PM-working on a blog post.
kids have been read to and are laying down for naps. both have fallen asleep today.

3PM-at Brielle's Dance class.
had to pull kids up from their naps to get to dance on time.
Ethan and I are watching Brielle dance as we have an apple for a snack.

4PM-driving.
headed to gas station.  running errands.  post office, credit union, and church.

5PM-writing note for YW getting honor bees tonight.
Brielle is also writing notes with me.  Ethan is in his room, making messes.

6PM-cleaning up dinner.
kids are having a dance party in the other room.  James is not yet home.
Nothing exciting for dinner, as the fridge needed to be cleared out. Choice of hot dogs or left overs.  Left over options included Jalapeno Chicken, Corn Chowder, Chicken Cordon Bleu, or pasta.

7PM-arriving at Stake Center for medallion night.
James raced in the door just in time for me to leave, so I was able to go without the kids tonight. Have a YW with me that I picked up on the way.

8PM-at Medallion Night.
listening to Stake YW president talk about inner beauty

9PM-saying good night to kids that should have been asleep long ago.
Just walked in the door.  Kids are in bed, but not asleep


10PM-working on plans for next month preschool themes.
putting books on hold at the library

11PM-in bed.
time to go to sleep and start it all again tomorrow.  Good Night!

Easter (Family Activities)

Easter activities started a couple weeks early with our ward's primary activity.  The kids got to dye eggs and go on a hunt.  

We also went to our city event for yet another egg hunt and a chance to meet the Easter Bunny.  Yes, that is a giant Egg next to the Easter Bunny.  Who knew eggs could walk?  :)

It was amazing how fast the kids could dye all the eggs.  I'm still hoping they get more into the decorating part of the egg dying.  Brielle did scribble with crayons on a few of the eggs, but none of the kids were interested in taking time to do anything too ornate.

The Saturday before Easter was spent at Aunt Eileen's ranch for the Finlay traditional Easter reunion.  

We played games like the 'bunny-hop' sack race

went searching through the tall grass in hunt of Easter Eggs

Ethan was proud to have found (with help from the nice older cousins) the special golden egg.

It is such a fun day to spend with extended family.

Easter (Preschool)

 It is so much fun to look forward to holidays.  Being able to talk and read about them with the kids builds the anticipation.  We believe in Easter as a religious holiday and celebrate the resurrection of Christ.  We focused on that in our Family Home Evening lesson at the beginning of the week, and talked about it throughout other activities.  However, we still like to have fun with the Easter time traditions and for our school time used Eggs and Bunnies for our learning as we played.

Activities

We used the book by Jan Brett called The Easter Egg to spark some creativity for decorating eggs.

I pulled out various materials and let the kids choose what they wanted to use.

Ethan's is top left, Brielle's is top right

Gavin's is bottom left, Elise's is bottom right.

they definitely show their personalities.  I love it.

We used this idea from No Time for Flashcards to paint with marshmallows

We used eggs for hiding letters and practicing the sounds they make

We had lots of file folder games preschool pack activities.  These are the same as used last year.

Food

Easter Egg Hunt snacks and lunches were a favorite of the week.  I filled the eggs with a variety of fruit, nuts, cereal, crackers, etc.  They were always excited to see what was inside.

My family has a tradition of making bird nests with jellybean eggs at easter.  Instead of the chow mein noodle nest this year we made rice krispy treat nests.  The kids practiced counting the marshmallows as they helped make them. 

Brielle requested a bunny lunch.  Quesadillas tend to be my fall back when I can't figure out how else to make something.

Books 

The kids thought The Easter Bunny's Assistant was hilarious.  The skunk keeps stinking up the room.  It plays into the potty humor that the kids are big into these days.

Space

Brielle has been asking for months if we could go back to Griffith's Observatory.  I finally worked another Space Theme into our school schedule so we could make the field trip a priority.

We went to a show at the planetarium that was amazingly well done.  The narrator had a voice that sounded synthesized, even though she was real and obviously talking live, her voice made you feel like you were really going into space.  The kids kept reaching out thinking that we would crash into the planets.  It was fabulous.

Some of the other activities this week:  

Last year we painted the planets and put them on the wall.  This year Brielle insisted they needed to orbit.  We used the light as the sun and hung them up.

We used the planets from the preschool pack provided by 1+1+1=1  

We used the song to learn the planets in order.  We also learned about pluto this year, but Brielle calls it playdoh instead.  Ethan likes Earth best because it is green and blue, his favorite colors.

to the tune of 'She'll be Going Around the Mountain'

There are 8 planets in are solar system

There are 8 planets in are solar system

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune

There are 8 planets in our solar system

Games and Activities

We had some new file folder games to play (as always, thanks Annie!)

Name rockets the kids wrote the letters of their names on squares and put them together to build a rocket

we did a lot of pretend play, building rockets and blasting off to different planets.  We used the closet under the stairs at our house again to put glow-in-the-dark stars and built rocket ships with boxes to go in there.  We also used our kitchen strainer and a flashlight to create the space look in dark places.

Food

And looking back at pictures, we apparently played with our food a lot.

Planet Quesadillas.  I let the kids decorate their own using food safe markers

planet and star sandwiches

moon pizza (I cooked the dough and let it bubble to form craters).  The kids then put toppings on it and were excited to be eating the moon.

Brielle was building a space station

and gavin designed rockets

Books

One of the books we borrowed was from a friend who works for NASA.  It was a giant book about space that fascinated the kids.

They also loved the silly book called "The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot"

 we also played with games NASA kids site