Livin'

This is my typical nightly schedule:

When we get home from school I like to get all of our homework done and out of the way. If Eli has earned all his pennies at school that day, he gets to play Wii. So I prefer that they play and be done by dinner time.

At 4:30 or so I start making dinner, so that we can eat by 5:30. Rick gets home around then. If he's running late I go ahead and start feeding the kids and he and I eat when he gets home.

While dinner is cooking, I like to get Eli and Brynne's beds ready for bedtime, fill their humidifiers, get their water cups filled and on their nightstands and get their vitamins out and ready. Then I like to get my coffee pot prepared for the timer the next morning.

Once dinner is done I want the kitchen completely cleaned and everything for the night done by 7:00 p.m. I even try to get Eli and Brynne bathed and in pjs by 7:00, sometimes earlier.

My goal is to be done for the day by 7:00 so I can watch t.v., unwind and just hang out with my family without having something to do.

This past week Rick was on a business trip. He was getting home around 6:30 Thursday night and wanted to know if I would meet him in town for dinner. I was planning hot dogs for dinner that night because I didn't know when he would be home. So, that would work well ... easy dinner for the kids, easy cleanup and I could pull it off.

I got the kids' dinner done, and then he texted me and said that his final flight was going to be delayed, possibly by an hour or so. So, that meant he wasn't going to get into town until 8:00 p.m. My first response was, "well, so much for dinner!" Cause, as you see above, I like to eat early and be done by 8:00 p.m., not just then heading out! In fact, we often joke that on our date nights it's always us and the "blue hairs" having dinner because we are there so early.

But we decided to go ahead and meet, and it was only going to be around 7:30 instead of 8:00. So, I took to feeding the kids, getting them bathed, getting my nightly routine done, and I left the house around 7:15 to meet Rick for dinner.

Did you know that people actually go out together on a Thursday night and eat dinner past 5:30 p.m.?? I didn't either! And, actually, LOTS of people do it! The restaurant parking lot was so packed I had to park at the adjacent movie theater!

People in the restaurant were eating and drinking and laughing and having a good time! There were even KIDS out at that hour!

The point of this post is to say ... this is what Rick has been talking about when he has said, "I just want to live." We don't HAVE to have dinner at 5:30 and everybody ready for bed at 7:00. And even though my nightly schedule was disrupted it's OKAY to leave the kids alone on a Thursday night and meet my husband, who I haven't seen in three days, for dinner at 8:00 p.m.

That was date 9 of 52.

And, that's livin'.