A day in the life ...

Here is a glimpse into daily life here at the Vontz household/Holden's Landing :)

Thursday, August 14, 2008

9:30 - noon. We got a late start today, not getting up until almost 9:30 (I love that my kids are late sleepers!). Kids had breakfast and played. I topstitched 3 BedBugs, made a serged BedBug, sewed the 8 soakers for the 4 BedBugs and an additional 4 soakers, snapped the 4 BedBugs. Packaged up the 4 BedBugs, printed out shipping, cleaned up my sewing room/bedroom and answered a ton of emails while Holden cut Webkinz trading cards into "bookmarks" and McKenna watched some of 101 Dalmations.

Chore time - Noon to 1. Kenna is cleaning out the bunny cage and Holden is cleaning the bathroom (which means basically that he is spraying me with green cleaner in an attempt to actually hit the surfaces of the bathroom that need cleaning, lol). Cleaned the kitchen, bleached out the sink after my last dyeing session (didn't get around to it the other day and it was looking pretty bad), did a load of dishes, swept and mopped the floor (Kenna mopped the bathroom floor - she is a really great helper!), cleaned the living room and the closet. Kids ate plums. We are really random about meals lately. They get up so late and don't eat breakfast until sometime between 9:30 - 11, so they don't usually want to eat lunch, so instead they snack on fruit in the mid afternoon and we have dinner early, by 5 usually, then another snack before bed.

1:15 - 4:15. Thursday is our CSA pick up day, so we trek half an hour to the farm a few towns away to get our produce for the week. On the way the kids noticed the first few leaves changing colors already! It's too early for that - it's only mid-August! Kids played around at the farm while I got our all-organic and delicious veggies - this week's haul included corn on the cob, potatoes, garlic, hot peppers and bell peppers, yellow bans, lettuce, tomatoes, celery, basil, etc. I share our share with another family so we stopped there afterwards to drop off her half, and the kids played together for a while. Had a long discussion in the car with Kenna about picking up food from the CSA vs buying it at the store. She was upset that we didn't get any kale this week, and I mentioned we had some at home still form last week. She said "Yuck! That kale is a week old!", so we discussed how if it grew in southern California (basically as far away from us in Connecticut as you can get an still be in the US) how long it would take to actually get to the store here. of course, now I don't think she will ever want me to buy produce from the grocery store again, lol. We also had to stop to buy some milk on the way home.

4:15 - 5:30. I checked emails. Kids played and cleaned up while I made dinner and took care of all the veggies form the CSA. Had a great dinner - shepard's pie with organic mashed potatoes and organic corn and ground turkey, salad with all of our CSA greens and veggies, yellow beans (raw), corn on the cob from our CSA and roasted kale. If you have never had roasted kale, you have to try it. Use the leafy, "frilly" (for lack of a better word) kale, massage some olive oil onto the leaves and sprinkle with sea salt. Bake at 425 degrees for a few minutes until it starts to brown, then turn over and do the same. Serve as soon as it is cool. My kids will eat tons of this!

5:30 - 7:30. Cleaned kitchen and did another load of dishes (there are only 3 of us - who would think we would go through so many dishes???). Baths for kids. Kenna played on her computer for a while, and Holden and i played Sweetopia on mine. He was really good at this game through the first 30 levels or so. Now we are up in the 50s (we have been playing this for weeks) and he can't shoot the candies into the lines quickly enough, so "playing with Holden" means he plays a level for 15.6 seconds, loses, gets frustrated and gives it to me to finish. Then he starts a new level and we repeat the same cycle again, lol. Afterwards, we all climbed in my bed and read books, then Kenna went to her bedroom and wrote me letters and i started the 2 hours of putting Holden to bed. so there is a black hole for the next 2 hours ;)

9:30 - 11. Yay! Both kids are asleep! i curled up in front of the computer with a bowl of cereal (I don't eat breakfast or lunch most days, only dinner and then something after th kids go to bed. I have too much going on all day most days that I never remember to eat. Thankfully I do remember to feed the kids!) and reflected on the things we never got around to doing today that we wanted to do - Holden wanted to plant a chestnut from his vast chestnut collection (found every Thursday morning last fall while Kenna was in art class, he has hundreds of them), we were going to do an experiment to see if there is any measurable difference in absorbency between bamboo velour and organic cotton fleece... we will have to do those things tomorrow.

I am working on another co-op, so I spent most of the 9:30-11 time frame sorting that all out, posting totals and confirming/asking questions about embroidery choices. I won't start work on this co-op until 9/1, but I am anal and like to have all my details in place before hand so I can plan. I like to plan :) I am a big geek ;) No, it is 11, and since i am still sitting at my compute, I am sending out the invoices for Round 11 BedBugs. i usually do that after midnight, right before bed, but i want to get some sewing in still tonight and don't want to have to come back to the computer to do the invoices later on. I am off to invoice!

11 - 1:15. Sewing! I finished Jenny's BedBug, and Devin's and Katy's BedBugs only need topstitching and snaps in the AM. Debs' BedBug is ready to serge up in the AM as well now, so those 4 will be out of here tomorrow afternoon.

now I am off to bed!

More as the day goes on ...