Random Sunday Thoughts, plus our "school" for summer

Good morning everyone!

I haven't put as much time in here on the blog this past week because I have been busily preparing "Mama's Cookbook":

It's a collection of recipes that I thought would be easy enough for the girls to prepare.  I included healthy options, some of the girls' favorites, plenty of easy options, and everything's allergy friendly of course.  I'm going to spend the summer teaching them to cook!  They all already have lots of experience from helping here and there, so I have confidence that they're ready to take the helm.  My plan is to help them sufficiently in the first few weeks of summer and then taper off my helping until they're cooking pretty independently.

We did a meal sign up yesterday and I ordered all the groceries (Hannaford To Go, I love you!) so I'll keep you updated on how it all goes!  That's going to be our "school" for this summer!

One of the reasons I'm initiating this change is that I have been sooooooo burned out by this year.  My typical school-night evening, when I wasn't teaching until 7 or 8 or going to a rehearsal, was to spend an hour or more cooking dinner, followed by cleaning up everything and putting all leftovers away, cleaning out the lunchboxes from the day, and packing the lunches for the next day.  The girls had homework or after-school activities and couldn't help with dinner cleanup chores, and M was often too tired after a long commute with the girls and crazy work days, or he was simultaneously helping with homework or pjs or other bedtime tasks.  M had all of that combined on the nights I wasn't home.  Yeah.  It was a lot for both of us.  Homeschooling was definitely busy, but school-away-from-home had its own kind of busyness, usually in the form of a frantic hour at the beginning of the day and four frantic hours at the end of it.

Combine that with weekends that were, about 60-70% of the time, filled with activities (although we really tried to guard our weekends carefully!) and yes, you have a pretty good recipe for burnout.

I actually took the time to keep track, one week (I might have already shared this with you?), of how I was spending my time.  I just quickly jotted down throughout the week how much time each task was taking me, and then because we had one of those lovely free weekends after that week I was able to sit down for about an hour and make a bar graph:

I did this because I was feeling like such a miserable failure as a mother and homemaker, never reading to my children, never cleaning the house (or spending only 1.1 hours per week cleaning, as you can see), and not accomplishing the endless to-do list of house tasks we had at the time because we were preparing to sell.

BTW, do you see that tall tall tall column that far exceeds all the others, even the amount of time spent at my part time job?  Are you wondering what that one is?  It's food preparation and cleanup.  About 14.75 hours spent on that task in this particular week, or a little over two hours per day.  And I really didn't cook gourmet meals this year... I deliberately tried to go simple and make things easy for myself.  That seems to be a bare minimum for a Mama taking care of a family of six, one of them with multiple food allergies.

I know that I'm being Captain Obvious for all you Mamas out there, and you all share the plight.  So, thanks for listening, and keep fighting the good fight.  Don't mean to complain here, obviously I'm extraordinarily blessed, but I think it's also okay to vent every once in a while.

On Friday this past week I came down with the stomach flu that had been going around C's elementary school in the last few days.  Now as an aside, I don't get the stomach flu the way a normal person does (except for that one time).  In nearly 11 years of parenting we've passed around many a stomach virus, and if I do get it, it usually happens for me the way it did this past Friday-- low fever, feeling extremely tired and achey, but no vomiting... however when I do put anything at all in my stomach, I suffer severe cramping for about 45 minutes after eating.  If my stomach's empty, I'm fine, relatively speaking.  It's a great way to lose 5 pounds in two days!  But most stomach viruses are, I guess ;-}

Anyway, the day I got sick I was scheduled to bring C to a party that evening, and we had another get-together with some family friends the next day.  I was sad to have to cancel both events, because we were all looking forward to them.  But you know what?  As I lay there in my bed, just being sick, and doing nothing, I said to myself...  this feels AMAZING.  When is the last time I laid in bed for an entire afternoon, and half of the next day?  I was actually really, really, really happy to just be sick and have an excuse to do nothing.

You know you're really burned out when you're relieved to get the stomach flu.

I'll just share a few photos from L's birthday party last weekend, and then we're off on a family hike!

We did her party at Puzzle Break.  She wanted to do an escape room and this was the one we found that was within striking distance for her school friends and also gave us a private room for food so we could have all the festivities in one place.  I highly recommend it!  We had a blast!  The escape room they attempted was called "Escape the Midnight Carnival" and... they did it!  They escaped!  Those smart 3rd graders :)

It was also perfect for a lazy, burned out Mama because they provided the pizza and an employee led all the festivities so all I had to do was show up with the cupcakes (pictured above) and of course the allergy friendly food (you see in the tupperware containers on the table pictured above).

The pink cupcakes were the gluten-free ones, but the chocolate frosted funfetti cupcakes that L requested I thought ended up going really well with the carnival theme, sort of accidentally.  What do you think?  And they also matched the puzzle pieces I used as decorations!  I love it when these things work out without me having to try too hard.  It's the little things, right?

A Puzzle Break employee took this hilarious picture for us as we were leaving.  J was holding up the wrong side of the puzzle piece for a "win" scenario... but her face... lol.

We had to open the presents at home because we ran out of time, but she got so many nice thoughtful things.  She really does have a sweet little group of friends and I'm so happy she was able to fall into that at her new school this year.

That's all I have time for!  Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone!