Pictures of an Ordinary Day in November: One Day Hour by Hour 2022

This Fall is my fifth year participating in documenting in pictures a regular day in the Fall. It’s really an Instagram challenge and hashtag (#OneDayHH), which I have done and enjoyed, but I really enjoy taking my time and reflecting on those pictures in a blog post. (You can see my previous blog posts from 2018, 2020, and 2021) but you could find the other years 2017 and 2019 on Instagram). The idea is to capture the little moments, especially those that you know will change. I knew that this year was going to be pretty different from last year with the kids in school. And in many ways it was, but in other ways, many of the same things were there, but in a different order and at a different time.

Let’s start at the beginning: 5 am!

5:10 am. Evan’s (silent watch vibrating alarm) goes off at 5 am. Sometimes I wake up before him, sometimes after because I have a weird aversion to alarm clocks, but love early mornings and a schedule. Today I was up about 10 minutes after him. My job before the kids get up is to finish packing everyone’s lunches and backpacks.

5:30 am. Usually Evan has ear buds in and is listening to an audio book while he unloads the dishwasher and makes breakfast. Right now, he is re-listening to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

5:45 am. We usually get to eat breakfast, or at least start to eat breakfast, before the kids get up. Every morning we have spinach, Italian sausage, mushrooms, onions, and egg scrambles with a side of sauerkraut. I have a cup of decaf coffee (Equal Exchange Organic French Roast Decaf) and Evan has a cup of half caf (Whole Foods Market’s Organic Buzz Free Full City Roast and Costco’s Cameron’s Organic Velvet Moon).

6:00 am. The kids are allowed to come out of their room at 6:00 for breakfast. 95% of the time they are up before 6. They were up early this morning, and we could hear a little coughing and sneezing, but then seemed perfectly healthy at breakfast.

6:10 am. At the table we usually read a Bible story. Right now, we are in the middle of The Jesus Storybook Bible. We do wordle as a family (mostly Evan does it, but Jackson and I are mildly helpful, and Lily is very funny in her suggestions). And then Evan takes a shower, and I get the kids to finish up. Jackson usually has a banana after he’s done with his regular breakfast and milk.

6:45 am. Kids are dressed and ready to go. It had been really warm until late last week, so we are all adjusting to having to take winter gear to school. Tomorrow it is supposed to snow, so that’ll be another adventure in finding winter gear.

6:55 am. It’s crazy chaos, kissing hands, making sure books are taken to read in the car, and then the door closes and it’s a quiet and messy kitchen.

7:20 am. I start laundry, make the beds, clean up the kitchen, and generally set the house into mom-work mode. In my head this should take 5 to 10 minutes, but it almost always takes 25 to 30.

7:30 am. Evan edited a chapter (Chapter 31!) for me yesterday. So first order of writing business is to enter the edits. For smaller writing things I do, like blog posts, Evan usually just edits the text on the computer. But for the book chapter drafts, I like to see what he’s catching, and I print out a hard copy and then enter the edits myself. After I enter an edit, I put a highlighted slash through the edit, because it’s easy to miss added commas if I don’t. (Evidently, I use commas like 70% less often than I should. Evan is always adding commas.)

8:45 am. I have half of the next chapter drafted, but I have a gap in my outline after that. So I sit down and hand-write out some ideas. Occasionally there are tiny drawings. I think that after I figure out this next bit that I have the ending sequence fairly well outlined. It’s exciting to see how consistent time this Fall has led to consistent progress in the manuscript!

9:00 am. I’m meeting a friend for a walk this morning at 10:30, so after I run out of productive steam for writing, I switch to doing some graphic design work for our family Christmas card.

9:40 am. Then I do a set of back exercises and kettle bell swings. First, I do “The Big Three” from The Back Mechanic by Dr. Stuart McGill. (Here’s a video that covers a stretch and then the big three, but reading the book is worth it.) I’m convinced that they have way reduced the days I randomly have back pain.

11:30 am. I meet my new friend Natalie for a walk. Our mutual friend Gwendolyn introduced us. Originally, we thought the three of us would walk on Mondays while their two four year old daughters are in preschool, but it’s mostly just been Natalie and me who have been able to make it. But we saw Gwendolyn right at the end before pick up. I’m so grateful for my friends! Be a friend who introduces your friends to each other. It’s the best.

11:45 am. I take the long way back home to finish my walk. I leave my best friend from high school Kelli a Marco Polo message. (It’s a video message, so this is what she gets to look at while I walk.)

12:30 pm. On the way home I grab a couple of books from little libraries. At school, Jackson has a required amount of Accelerated Reader books and quizzes he needs to take, so I check whether this book, The Gardener by Sarah Stewart and Illustrated by David Small, is in his AR range of 2.8 to 4.0. It is. It’s a 3.3.

1:00 pm. Salmon salad lunch. I think this has been my standard lunch for over 10 years now. Mix greens, shaved kale, Brussel spouts, and apples with an olive oil dressed salmon. I’m re-watching The Chosen so I am ready for season 3 coming out at the end of the month.

1:15 am. Micro green Mondays! My brother drops off micro greens for us on Mondays. They grow their own microgreens and deliver them, and if you are in Milwaukee area, check them out: Rogers Legacy Farms. I know I’m biased, but the salad greens are really yummy and super healthy. It’s fun that I get a short visit with my brother every week. Although the kids are really sad they miss seeing Uncle Jon.

2:00 pm. I’m tired after lunch and my walk, but have lots of little household chores to do. Cleaning up from lunch, putting laundry away. The frames for the kids school photos came in the mail, so I deal with those.

2:50 pm. Minimalist shoe repair. I’m really hard on shoes, and buy kind of expensive minimalist shoes. (These are Xero Shoes Denver Boots). So it’s helpful to be able to do some basic shoe repair to extend the life of my shoes. I often put shoe goo on the soles of my shoes, but this time I’m trying to see if gluing a bit of felt on the top of these shoes will let me use them for another season. I don’t expect this to be a very glamourous fix, but hopefully it won’t make them uncomfortable.

3:30 pm. Lunch prep. It’s a bit of constant trial and error with lunches, but this is what is working for kids right now. We have two sets of stainless steel bento boxes and little containers so I can make their lunches while they are at school with the other set. Also having them finish their lunches on the way home from school in the car has been very helpful because they just don’t finish them in their lunch period very well.

4:30 pm. Kids are home! Jackson and I do piano. We are trying a new thing of having the kids change out of their school uniform clothes into play clothes. This doesn’t go well for Lily today who wanted to wear a sundress. It was a big melt down. We don’t have any pictures of that, but there was a lot of crying coming from her room while I did piano with Jackson, and Evan took over trying to calm sister down. In piano, we are starting Christmas music. One of the best parts of the season now is little kid piano Christmas carols.

5:15 pm. Jackson joins Lily and Evan down stairs to do Duolingo Spanish and some games with Lily.

5:45 pm. Lily is still pretty sad post-meltdown. She sits on my lap for most of dinner. I fead her bites and read her The Listening Walk by Paul Showers and illustrated by Alki.

6:15 pm. Successfully got dinner into the children. I listen to a Marco Polo message back from Kelli while I clean up. This is a treat since we usually exchange a message once a week or so. She’s cleaning her kitchen in Minneapolis and I’m listening to her while I clean my kitchen in Milwaukee. The asynchronous communication works really well for us and we get to catch up way more often than if we tried to find a time to talk on the phone (although we still enjoy that too when it happens.)

7:10 pm. After bath time it’s family story time. Evan is reading the second Half Magic book Knight’s Castle by Edward Eager. It’s one of our favorite times of day.

7:15 pm. Somehow Lily at 4 1/2 is still nursing, although it’s for just the tiniest bit at the end of the day. It’s so peaceful and quiet.

7:20 pm. And she falls asleep and then I carry her to bed and tuck her in.

7:25 pm. Jackson and I have a special prayer and hug time before I get him into bed too. It’s also the sweetest.

7:30 pm. Look it is 7:30 and the children are asleep. This has been a completely new pattern in our parenting life, to have a half hour or so of chatting at the end of the day. Evan is my favorite. Sometimes we read (I’m currently reading The Patron Thief of Bread and The Day the Revolution Began by NT Wright) but most often we talk. We’re trying to also do a compline prayer together, often from Celtic Daily Prayers And then it’s lights out around 8:30.

This was a good day. Later in the week, snow came, and by Friday, Lily was home with a fever and a cough. It was also my most social day getting to see friends and family outside of Evan and the kids. Tuesdays are much the same plus Jackson has swimming. Wednesdays are completely different because I spend the day mostly out of the house at Women’s Bible Study and volunteering at the kids’ school library. But often, my days look like this day: full of books and chores, people, and starting this fall, a bit of quiet and project time. I’m grateful for this new season, and I also realize there were sweet things about the previous seasons that I didn’t fully realize.

2017