What do you do all day? Part 1

Recently someone asked me, "What do you do all day?" Maybe you all wonder the same thing.  Well, here is a description of a typical day for our family.  Of course, not every day is like this....sometimes we change it up a bit, but for the most part, here is what we do!

between 6:30-7:30- Sammy and Emma wake up

7:30- Eat breakfast- Sammy is always really hungry when he wakes up and Emma drinks a cup of milk and then is full for a few hours. So this is the first breakfast time- Emma usually eats one bite, then says, "all done".  Emma will eat more in a couple hours. 

Then the kids play (and sometimes fight) while I clean up breakfast and do dishes from the night before if I was too tired to them then.

8:00am- Checo leaves for work

8:30- Kids brush teeth and get dressed

8:45- Morning walk- we used to go for about an hour or so, but as the kids get older, the less they want to sit in the stroller.  So we only go for about 30 minutes now....I'm holding onto the walk though, so that I can get a little excercise and we can all get outside in the morning.  I took lots of pictures so that you could see what we see on our walks.

Turning the corner from our house, walking around the loop in our neighborhood

The other side of the"loop"

Walking down the main road in our little neighborhood

Sammy and Emma in the stroller.  Corn flakes are on their trays to keep them busy!

Outside of the gate, walking down an empty road

Sammy always wants to recline, that's why he chooses to sit in the back every time!

Horses!  It's always the highlight of the walk if we see horses.  They are sometimes in an empty lot that we pass.

The road.  What you can't see is that there is a 4-way stop at the next intersection and how NO ONE stops!  It's really a danger zone.

On the road back to the entrance to our neighborhood

Almost there!

Back on our street, pretty mountains in the background

Home, sweet home.  Sammy is giving me quite the look because he's mad that I won't give him my keys to play with.

9:15- Back at home. The kids finish breakfast (or more like start breakfast for Emma) and watch a DVD while I plan our little "preschool lesson" for the day

My planning notebook- you probably can't read it because I usually write really messy and fast. 

I have a Sunday school curriculum that I've been using to teach Sammy and Emma Bible lessons with.  It's really great because it comes with all the character and visual aids to go along with the stories.  The other book is a wonderful book that has a developmentally appropriate activity for every week for the first 5 years of life!  The activities are pretty simple and don't require a lot of materials.

Here's the lesson for Emma's age (2 years, 3 weeks old)

9:30am- "Book time"- the kids go in their cribs and look at books by themselves for half an hour while I take a shower and get ready for the day. 

As you can see, Sammy loves "book time".  He just hops right in his crib and gets comfortable!  Yes, he's 3 years old and still in a crib.  We haven't gotten the rails to change his crib into a bed yet, so he is still there.  He doesn't complain and there is plenty of room to move around.

Emma during book time. 

Some of you might be thinking that it's crazy that I have things scheduled at different times each day.  Well, it works for us.  Sammy and Emma love knowing what they are going to do next and they happily transition to the next activity.  Of course, I am flexible with this schedule.  This is just for the days that we are home and have nothing "extra" do do.  I find that it helps the kids stay out of trouble too because they aren't bored, wandering around the house, looking for something to do.  It helps me make sure I'm doing their little preschool time also (more about the preschool time in part 2). 

By the way, somehow my spell check is set on Spanish or some other language, because when I click on it, it highlights almost every single word.  So I'm sure there are always errors in my writing.  If that bothers you, I'm sorry.  Most of the time I don't even proof read before I post!  So please just ignore all errors from here on out.

Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.  If you find this boring, that's okay, you don't have to read the future parts.  I'm kind of running out of ideas of things to write about (could you tell?) and I still have to write 21 more posts in the next 21 days.  I'm open to taking suggestions about what to write about, if you want to make some!