Saturday Routine (or lack there of...)

It was a typical lazy corona morning and day.

I'm grateful when Peter sleeps in, except it unfortunately turns the whole house becomes a "shhh" zone and the kids don't get to work.

We should all get up and eat breakfast together. But I'm also grateful for quiet time to myself where I can get to work. I exercised, read my scriptures, and took a bath.

So this morning I was at first a bit frustrated by how this productive Saturday seemed wasted (chore wise) like last week and the week before that and I thought: "We need a routine..." but then Holly's coaching came to my mind and I thought "You have a routine, you're just not aware of it." So I took notice and realized we do have a pattern that we repeat on Saturdays. There are two parts of it. Part 1 is of me waiting for people to wake up, eat, and then all hold hands as they walk up to me and ask "Dearest mother, we are here to serve you! What jobs can we do for you today?" Or, while I'm waiting for people to somehow spontaneously gather, I'll pick up my violin and will practice will be wishing for the kids to practicing  too. The part of that that actually consistently happens is "me waiting" part.

The other part of our Saturday routine is Corey getting anxious and needing to leave the house. He went to Costco for some food before a family bbq here tomorrow. After he got home from that, he again said "I need to leave...". I said not until the kids practice. They did a review but not hard/deep practicing, so it was a kinda pathetic job. And then I waved the white flag of surrender and they said it was good enough.  Corey's "I need to leave" is a nicer way of saying "I need to get out of this house before I go nuts." He said he was going to the park, and I think all the older kids thought it was the school park, so they didn't care. They left around 2:00 with the few kids that were quick enough to jump in the car before he drove away. But then Corey was gone until 7:30 pm, and the older group felt a little gypped. He took Sophi, Natalie, Owen and Daniel. I think Sophi enjoyed being the oldest kid! I'm sure he took pictures, so I'll try to update with pictures from his phone later. I enjoyed a quiet afternoon doing stuff I wanted: practicing violin, blogged, and read a bit. While Corey and SNOD were gone, Peter took a good nap and I was also able to outsource his maintenance to Wes and Hyrum. He was being cute this evening. He played duplos as I read on the floor next to him.

We love his little squat. And then he came and tucked himself right in front of me with his head under my armpit. I thought it was so funny. I told Abi to get a picture. In this photo he was starting to wiggle out of his little nest but it was super cute cause he just crawled in and held still.

Hopefully Corey and I can talk about our current routine and any adjustments we'd like to make, so that we can be on the same page and neither of us will be frustrated. A quote Corey has shared before is "Frustration is a failure to meet expectations."