I often hear people remark, 'You work full time, have 4 kids and a farm....I don't know HOW you do it!?' I always kind of chuckle and say I have no clue myself! I thought I'd give you a glimpse into just how busy I really am. First off, I've been trying to type out this post since last Friday and tonight I've had to stop about a dozen times to tend to one of the kids...if that gives you any clue!
Let's take a look at an average day shall we?
Day starts around 6 with Savannah waking for her breakfast. I lay back down to catch a few more winks until the alarm clock goes off at 7:00, i usually snooze until about 7:30 since the kiddos are out of school now. We are fortunate to have a nanny (I'll refer to her as L) at the house over the summer so she takes care of everyone as they wake up (for which I am VERY grateful). By 7:30, I'm up, I go brew coffee (my lifeblood) and turn on my pc for work. I wake up hubby (J) and turn the shower on for him. By this time coffee is done and I grab my first cup of the day...ahhhh. While I'm enjoying my coffee, I'm checking work emails and then I log on to my mac to check farm emails and the FB page. J gets himself ready and then makes a quick trip down to make sure all the animals have food and water. I check eggs in the incubators and take care of any newly hatched babies. We try to spend a few minutes in the morning discussing what the day will bring and he leaves for work around 9. By this time, the kids are all starting to wake up. Most of the time they come in my office to say good morning and I often go downstairs for a few minutes with them to help with breakfast. Usually Savannah is awake again and ready for her second breakfast. I feed Savannah while checking emails again and trying to get a few work tasks done. After Savannah has her second breakfast I bring her back down to L who watches her until she is ready to eat again. I'm nursing Savannah and it's more of a pain (and more time consuming) to pump than just feed her when she is hungry.
Once Savannah is settled I head down to the barn to check for eggs and check food/water again (usually around 10-10:30). If it is a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday my next task is packing eggs for orders. I try to get those all ready to go before lunch so I can stop at the PO at lunchtime to drop them off. After I wrap eggs, I usually have meetings for work or other work related things to do so I continue with that until around noon or 12:30. I try to break around this time for lunch. First lunch task is feeding baby again and then I pack her up with me and we head out for afternoon errands. Sometimes I meet J for lunch to make my PO drops easier (I can leave baby in the van and just run the packages in this way). If I meet him we try to take a few minutes for 'us' and chat, it's a very nice break. :) After errands it's back home and back to work. I try to do a lot of my data work (reports, emails, etc) in the afternoon as I often have meetings most of the morning. I make another check of the incubators (we hand turn the peahen eggs in addition to using the turner).
Savannah usually naps until about 3pm and is then ready for another snack, I'll feed her, bring her back down to L and the big kids and head back to work for a few more hours. L usually stays until at least 5, sometimes 6 which is nice because I can finish out my work day and take a minute to catch my breath before the evening fun begins!
I usually finish working around 5 or 5:30 and head down to make another pass at all the animals. J is usually back home around 6 or 6:30. Lately we've had to make a few trips out to our rental house (our old house) because we are looking for new tenants. Luckily I think we've finally found someone so that should be ending this week (finally). If we aren't running out for something, when hubby gets home the horses, donkey and goats go out to the other pasture to graze for a bit. I get dinner going while J makes another check of everyone in the barn and pens. I usually have at least one helper making dinner and J gets at least one farm hand for his chores too. The kids all love helping on the farm! While I am getting dinner ready I usually need to break a few times to feed Savannah again, she has been teething lately and either wants to nurse or be held almost all the time. I try to get dinner ready by 7:30 and make sure all the kids eat. I usually sit with them and have a little something but wait until when Jay is finished with chores outside to really eat dinner. After dinner I get everyone baths and now that it is summer, they can watch TV for a little while before bed. I aim for 9pm for bedtime but we often miss that and if the kids are all being good, I usually don't mind too much.
While I am tending to all the inside work, Jay takes care of all the animals. He makes sure everyone is fed and watered, collects eggs and then gets the horses, donkey and goats back in for the night. It usually takes him about an hour or so to finish up so I'm usually just about done with dinner and baths by the time he is done.
Once we get the kids in bed, we spend some time cleaning up from the destruction of the evening, I do a load or two of laundry and then we try to eat dinner ourselves in between answering farm emails, uploading the daily (St)Eve picture and feeding Savannah almost constantly from 9pm to 11pm (well, I'm solo on that particular task, lol). After I am finally able to get her down for the night, J and I try to spend a little time together catching up on TV or just sitting and chatting. Mostly TV (lol)...it's a guilty pleasure for us both. ;) During the evening I do have my mac within arms reach and can often be found IMing, texting, web browsing, etc while watching TV. By the time we wind down it's usually after midnight and often closer to 1am before we finally fall into bed, exhausted and ready to start all over the next day!
Whew! makes me tired just typing that all out and I still have no clue how I do it! ;)
The fabulous life of a #farmgirl!
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