My Daily Schedule as a Working Mom

I am a working mom. It is no joke people. It's hard.

I really love being a teacher and feel like it is something I am truly good at but any mother who has worked full-time knows the harsh reality of being torn between two things. It is hard to come home and want to get things done when you worked all day. Normally I want to just play with Nora instead of make dinner or do any type of domestic activity.

I don't know if I will always be a working mom. I have dreams of one day staying home with our kids, but only God knows what my future truly holds.

With all the craziness, The Hubs and I have created ourselves a nice little evening routine to help us stay on top of housework and working out, while also enjoying Nora and each other.

Either way this is a crazy and also amazing season of life and this blog is meant to help document where I am in life. So, here is a glimpse into my daily schedule as full-time working momma!

5:45 AM

Alarm goes off, I immediately get up. That isn't sarcasm. I am not a snooze hitter or slow to wake up. My alarm goes off, I'm up right away and headed to the shower. I take fast showers so I'm out by 6:00 AM.

6:00 AM

Time for make-up, hair, and getting dressed. I do minimal make-up ( foundation, powder, mascara, eyeliner, blush) and really only know 3 hair styles (down and straight, down and curled or ponytail). So this part does not take long at all. I usually pick my clothes out the night before to hopefully eliminate the trying-on-a-million-outfits-dilemma.

At this time The Hubs wakes up and takes both our dogs on a quick walk around our neighborhood.

6:30 AM

The Hubs is back and Nora is usually just waking up. If she isn't already up, we have to wake her up now to give her her morning bottle and get her dressed. The Hubs feeds Nora, changes her diaper and gets her dressed (#superdad) while I eat breakfast and get all of mine and Nora's things loaded in the car.

7:00 AM

Nora and I are out the door while The Hubs gets in the shower. We give kisses goodbye and are on our way to day care and school. Nora likes to make lots of noises the whole drive to day care, it's pretty stinkin' cute! I arrive at Nora's day care around 7:15 AM.

Don't worry, this is not how we drive to work. Just set her down one moring to get the umbrella ready to run into day care!

7:20 AM

I have dropped Nora off and am in my classroom by this time. I made the decision to go into work almost a half hour earlier than I need to be there because it means I can leave much earlier at the end of the day. In the mornings there isn't time for me to sit and play with Nora but there is in the evenings so I don't want to waste that evening time. I work on classroom things like passing out morning work, writing notes on the board and making sure all my ducks are in a row for the day.

7:45-3:00

I am now in full-on Mrs. Smith mode. I am answering questions, teaching things, getting on to kids, being accidentally called mom and saying "listen to me when I am talking" a million times. Like I said before, I really do love my job but it is exhausting. By 3:00 I am ready to be home!

3:30 PM

I wrap up for the day and try to do a few things to get ready for the next day. I head to get Nora at day care, getting there around 3:40 PM.

4:00 PM

Nora and I are home and playing, just waiting for The Hubs to get home! Occasionally Nora will fall asleep on the way home and stay asleep for about 45 miuntes but not always. Most days we fill this our with playing and momma giving her a thousand kisses!



5:15 PM

Daddy is home and takes over while I make dinner. He gets time to play with Nora and I can make dinner without her distracting me. Nora usually eats at around 5:30 so either The Hubs will feed her or I will feed her while we eat dinner.

6:00 PM

We are usually done eating at this time and we have another 30 minutes to play with Nora and clean up from dinner. Most evenings lately, we put Nora on the living room floor and watch in amazement as she attempts to crawl!

6:30 PM

Nora and I begin the bedtime routine. Bath (every other night), jammies, four books, 2 songs, 1 prayer and in her crib awake!

While I am putting Nora down, The Hubs is getting our "garage gym" ready! He takes his laptop out and cues up our Daily Burn video, turns on the fans and fills up our water bottles.

7:00 PM

By 7 Nora is usually asleep or at least drowsily talking in her crib (which leads to sleep about 5 minutes later). Some people have remarked that 7 is a really early bedtime and while it does make it difficult for us to go out and do things, most nights we are just home and it is so nice to have time for just The Hubs and I!

I get my shoes on and head to the garage to work out! We do a 30 minute workout video in the garage 5 nights a week ( Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday). We lock the doors in the house and have a monitor out with us in case Nora wakes up.

7:45 PM

We are done working out and head in the house. At this time we consult our weekly cleaning schedule and do whatever is on that! This is the best thing we ever did! It literally takes 20 minutes and helps keep the house clean throughout the week so we can keep our weekends free of big cleaning days.

8:30 PM

We are done with our chore for the evening so we shower and usually grab a snack. Right now we are watching Season 2 of Castle so we usually watch one episode before we go to bed.

9:30 PM

We are usually off to bed by this time. Of course sometimes it is later and sometimes a little earlier. I am not a night owl so sometimes I even crash curing Castle and The Hubs has to wake me up to go to bed. We go to sleep and get ready to start another day all over!

Christmas Spirit

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE!

This holiday season really made The Hubs and I begin talking about what we want Christmas to look like in our home as we start our family. Christmas has been so commercialized in our world and the real meaning (Jesus!) has been forgotten.

We don't want our kiddos growing up thinking that Christmas is all about gifts, Santa and earthly desires. So here are a few things we plan to do with our kids to help them keep the true meaning of Christmas in sight.


1. Read The Christmas Story

What better way to help our kiddos understand why we truly celebrate Christmas than to read them the story of Jesus' birth? We may start out with a book like the one below and as they get older we will read from the Bible. We want this to be something we do every year as a family, snuggled together on the couch reading the story together and praying together to thank God for the greatest gift of all!  

Buy

2. No Santa

Sorry, this might bother some people but we will probably not have Santa in our home. The Hubs struggled with this because he grew up with Santa and thought it was so fun. But after talking it over we decided we will tell the story of the real Saint Nicholas, because he was actually a pretty cool guy. Our kids just won't think Santa flew around the world to deliver their presents. We will also make sure they are respectful of those kids who do believe in Santa. 

3. Minimal Gifts

Christmas in this world we live in seems to be so much about gifts and spending WAY too much money! When kids are little they will have trouble understanding the true meaning so if you are buying them tons of gifts that will naturally overshadow Jesus. It just will. So we are going to adopt the Want, Need, Wear, Read policy for gifts to our kids. We do not want to go overboard and spoil them or break the bank so we will use the following guidelines to get our kids just 4 simple gifts. 

Want

Our kids get one thing that they really want! That toy they have been begging for and we keep saying no. Whatever item they have been obsessing over (unless it is incredibly expensive) will be their fun gift!

Need

We will buy our kids something that they have really been needing. Maybe new shoes or a coat or backpack for school. Something we keep saying they need but haven't gone out and gotten yet. 

Wear

Something for them to wear. A shirt, hat and gloves or something anything wearable. 

Read

A book! Something they will really love and be interested in and will also encourage them to read more! 


4. Family Time

While Jesus truly is the reason for the season, the holidays are also a great time to be with family and have special times together that you may not normally have time for. We want our Christmas mornings to be incredibly special for our kids and us. We talked about doing some kind of special breakfast that we only do on Christmas morning and then read the Christmas Story and open presents and spend our morning together, just our little family before we head off to big family events.

Whatever your family does this time of year I challenge you to keep God at the center of it no matter what! 

Baby's Room ~ A Mini Tour

So disclaimer, I do not like calling it a nursery. Not sure why, I have just never liked that word much. So we always just call it the Baby's Room at our house. I really had dreams of having the most adorable decor in the whole world because I really care about home decor. However, this room was our guest room and is our only other room besides the master - #starterhome. So I went back and forth for along time about if I wanted to keep the guest bed in the room along with the crib. I ultimately decided that with all of our family living far away, we needed to have the guest bed in the room.

After making that practical decision I thought that I lost all chances to have a "perfect" room for our bebe. I think it turned out pretty stinkin' cute though! It is not finished, there are still a few boy or girl touches hiding in the closet that can't be put up until after peanut arrives. But here is what we have so far!

Also, quick shoutout to The Hubs who was actually very involved in the process of putting this room together! Best hubby ever!

Looking in from the hallway. 

We took the closet door off to make more room.

Still need crib bumper and skirt. A cute wooden pennant with baby's initial will go under the "Dream Big Little One" sign.

Bebe will really know its ABC's!

A big letter of baby's initial in a boy or girl color will go above the changing table. 

Kansas

I am a Kansas girl born and raised.

I now live in Southeast Missouri and Mr. Smith (as I will now be calling him) have settled here.

Missouri is a really beautiful state, the area we live in is gorgeous in the Fall and also has so much to offer when it comes to hiking trails, conservation parks and other gorgeous outdoorsy things.

Case and point:

Gorgeous right?

I love Missouri and this will probably be where we will raise our kids and most likely spend our life. But whenever I tell people I am from Kansas I get the same response... "Oh I'm sure Kansas is nice , but I drove through it once and it was terrible... so boring"

Of course my response is always kind but in my mind I am thinking...

You idiot.
You know absolutely nothing.
There is nothing like a Kansas sunset or a Kansas dirt road.
Or a field full of sunflowers in the summer.
Or a fully-grown wheat field.

I love Missouri and it has so much God-made beauty to offer, but it just doesn't compare to my Kansas! At least not yet...

Source 

Finding Time For Me

Two months.

Just looked, and that's how long it has been since I last posted. And guess what... I haven't missed it one bit, until now.

This Summer was the easiest and most laid back Summer of my life. I did not work, other than teaching two weeks of Summer school which was easy money. So my days were spent laying around binge watching Netflix, being fanned and fed grapes straight from the vine (okay so the last two didn't happen but it felt like it). Not only was my Summer so easy, but I even got to soak up an entire week in South Carolina on the beach.

 Rough life, huh?

Summer was basically three months long of "me time". I got bored of doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and began to crave structure and schedules. I didn't want to blog because that was usually a treat and I was treating myself all the time.









Well things have changed now that I am back at school and teaching 19 rowdy fourth graders everyday. My beach view has changed to this...

So now that I spending my weekdays from 7:30-5:00 in an little room full of 10-year-olds, I am ready again for some "me-time"

I actually started to crave it again. I am not one who has ever defined "me-time" as getting my nails done or going to a spa or even shopping ( I like shopping, but on a beginning teacher's salary that is not always plausible). I am such a homebody that I want my enjoyment to be had in my own house. I made a list of the things I want to do more of in the evenings. 

<< Reading >>  I love to read but I have always seen it as a "treat" and I usually read the least in the summers. Luckily I just picked up a great new book that I am already hooked on and spent over an hour reading yesterday! It is just so relaxing to get lost in a good book.

{Visit my goodreads account here}

<< Blogging >> Sometimes I feel embarrassed about my blog, like I am trying to be way cooler than I really am and people will think I am searching for attention. In all honesty, not that many people read this thing. My mom and sister are my biggest fans and so I write with them in mind! But more than that, I enjoy it! I have always liked writing and I don't get to do it much anymore, except for on here. I also love that when I am older or at a different stage in my life, I can look back and read these posts!

<< DIY >> I am not a crafty person at all, I get very little joy out of making a card from scrapbook paper, or deco-paging (spelling?)  little jars. I do however like to undertake larger projects around the house. I recently got the idea to redo our entire kitchen table. I plan on staining it, reupholstering the chairs and possibly even painting the base. I have redone quite a bit of furniture in our house and I really enjoy it. So i am excited to take on this project, even if it means eating at the living room coffee table for a while!

{Read about my coffee bar redo here}

<< Breakfast >> This one might seem odd, but I love having a nice sit-down breakfast. Every morning I grab a granola bar, apple, or something terrible for me and eat it in the car on the way to work. It just makes me feel even more rushed and isn't the best way to begin my day. I want to start waking up just 10-15 minutes earlier so that I have time to make something and sit down and enjoy it!

<< Walking >> I am a bad person and I NEVER work-out. I literally have not exercised (intentionally) in about two years. I know that is not good and I need to do it before my awesome metabolism (thanks dad!) goes to pot. I hate running and I don't want to go to a gym where there are strangers, I do however love to go on walks and take Kira with me. It is way too hot in the Summer to go and Fall is my favorite season so I plan on taking Kira every evening after work now that the air is crisp!

I may have days or even weeks where I don't have the time to do any of these things. The Hubs and I are crazy-busy right now, not only with work but numerous extra projects we have taken on. I will however, make an extra effort to fit these "me-time" activities into my day and hopefully it will bring some much needed balance and bliss to my life!

Out with the old...

My momma gave me a cute little ribbon board for a mini wedding present that has found a place in both of our homes so far. Currently it sits above our little "entry" table.

Our entry. It will forever bother me that the frame is brown and the door is white. Oh renting...

If you notice, it is almost June and the board still contains all of your Christmas cards! 

 So it was time to change out the holiday cards and get some new pictures/prints in there.
Here's what I came up with, much better!

Kitchen Tour

When I look at houses and dream about when we buy our own, my favorite room to look at is always the kitchen! I spend a lot of time in the kitchen because I love to cook (and I love to eat). So I want it to be a bright and sunny space that is cute but also functional! I will admit, the kitchen at this house has many shortcomings... very little cabinet space, old cabinets with doors that don't stay shut, a stove older than my great grandparents, and a few chips off the counter top (luckily most I could hide). That being said, I still really love it! I love how the window lets in lots of sunlight, and the big doors go straight out to the patio. I also love the flooring and of course my red and yellow color scheme!

So even though it has its imperfections, I really love my little kitchen!

 * you will notice that we let our cats on the table. Am I proud of it? No. Is it reality? Yes. And I try to be real around here!

Living Room Tour

The Hubs and I love our house, we are just so happy here! It really is nothing special, it is a two bedroom, 1.5 bath town home and we are renting. But, our rent is low, utilities are lower and we love our landlords! We will have been here a year in April and will probably be here another year before we look to buy. So, in that time we have made this little house our home and we are proud of it!


Even if it isn't an amazing, perfect house it is the place we call home and have made so many memories! So without further delay I give you our living room. I plan to only show one room at a time, so more to come!

Observations About My Life Right Now

I am at the point in life, where before I can even get all the laundry completed there is as much as I started with already in the hamper again. There are only two of us. 

Some nights I literally would rather barf than cook dinner. On those nights... pizza or take-out it is! No shame!

I have officially reached the point of obsession with Kira. She is growing and maturing so much right now! She is fully housebroken, chewing less and less and has really begun to show that she loves us! I love being a puppy-mom!

In last couple of months The Hubs and I have gotten literally about 6 credit card offers in the mail each week. We only have one credit card but that's enough for us! I like to think they just want us cause we have such a good credit score! Regardless, it's A-N-N-O-Y-I-N-G!

I used to have a complex where I couldn't leave dishes in the sink for longer than a few hours without it bothering me. Now, I can go days and don't even think twice about it. Uh-oh!

I have officially begun what I am naming "The Interview" stage of my life. Had my first interview for a teaching position Monday! Hopefully more to come! Yikes!

I have begun making side dishes for meals. I used to be a killer main dish maker and would just throw some fruit in a bowl or some bread a butter. The other night, I made mashed potatoes and cooked fresh green beans to go with our BBQ chicken. 

Bills. I used to notice their presence on the fridge and let their existence haunt me. Now, I am so used to having to pay them each month that it's almost like they are family members. Only goes down from here :s

In conclusion, I am becoming an old, career-working married woman. And guess what? I LOVE IT!!!