Weekend in the Life

What’s a typical weekend like for your family? Our weekends are usually all play and no work! (Well, only a little work.) It’s spring in North Carolina, so the weather is getting warmer and we’re enjoying a ton of quality outdoor time.

Here’s what a spring weekend in our house looks like!

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Friday Night

My husband was traveling this week, and got home on Thursday night. When he’s traveling a lot, we usually eat in on Friday since he gets sick of restaurant food. Our youngest (4.5) requests salmon with green goop, so that’s what we made.

Green goop is parsley, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper blended together. Yum! Serve with baked salmon, rice and roasted cauliflower for our favorite meal!

After dinner, the kids and dog and I spend about an hour in the yard playing (kids), sniffing (dog) and relaxing with a beer (me). My husband goes to get a haircut. When he gets back, we put the kids to bed and watch a little TV.

We are both zonked from the week and in bed by about 10:30.

Saturday

7 am – 10 am: Coffee

We are up bright and early. I walk the dog and then come back inside to help my husband find some documents. Our state is having a special DMV day for people to get Real IDs. Since my husband travels a lot and hasn’t gotten his Real ID yet, he decides to go first thing.

While he’s in DMV-land, the girls and I have breakfast. Then I enjoy a cup of coffee on the couch while the kids color. The dog is curled up beside me and I spend a calm 45 minutes making some updates to my website. It’s my happy place!

10 am – 12:15 pm: Soccer Round 1

At 10, it’s time to start mobilizing for soccer game #1 (7 year old). We gather the soccer gear (chairs, water, cleats, etc.). I remember that I’m bringing snacks and grab the snacks and juice.

We’re lucky that the soccer field is only 5 minutes away, so we head over around 10:40 for her 11 am game. This week, we know a couple of the families from the opposing teams and enjoy catching up. The 4 year old also has a friend (from her soccer team) to play with. Hooray!

12:15 pm – 2 pm: Lunch

The kids go to lunch with grandma and grandpa. Husband and I grab Bojangles (so good but so unhealthy) and head home to let the dog out of the crate. We eat and take the pup for a walk, then relax for a bit before the girls get home.

Once they return, it’s time to reorganize ourselves for soccer game #2 (4 year old’s team). I’m bringing snacks again, so I pack all of that back up. Husband drops us off at the field and makes a much-needed coffee run.

2 pm – 5 pm: More Soccer

More soccer. What can I say? It’s 4 and 5 year olds playing soccer. They all have fun and the parents and grandparents chat on the sidelines.

After the game, we all head home to clean up and relax for a bit. We all play a fighting video game that even the kids can play. It’s amusing. I read between rounds because I’m not much of a video game person myself.

5 pm – 7 pm: Dinner

We realize that we meant to buy food to cook dinner, but didn’t. We are famished. Husband runs out to get Chipotle. Disaster averted. After dinner, we all relax for a while and watch TV before the kids start their bedtime routine.

7 pm – 8 pm: Kids to Bed

The kids’ bedtime routine has gotten so much easier in the last year. They can bathe themselves (unless it’s hair-washing day), and they seem to move through things a lot more quickly. I give them the option to have a quick snack, then we head upstairs for a bath.

On this day, the 7 year old chooses a shower and the younger chooses a bath. They each have their own bathroom so we can execute this quickly.

After baths and showers, they put on pajamas and brush teeth. I’m reading Little House in the Big Woods to them, so we read a couple of pages from this. Then daddy heads in and is assigned some reading from The Unicorn Princess Fairy Rainbow Sparkle (*not a actual book) or some such book. He is not a fan but forges on.

They’re in bed a little before 8. We’ve gotten them to the point where they don’t usually wander out after lights out. This is a major miracle. We have a Kentucky Mule (that’s a Moscow Mule with bourbon, right?) and watch some TV before heading to bed around 10:30.

Sunday

Sunday dawns, clear and beautiful. We have big plans!

7 am – 8 am: Need More Coffee

I take the dog out for a short walk while the kids start to stir. When I return, the bacon is cooking and veggies are being chopped for eggs. Yum!

We make breakfast and then hang out talking and drinking coffee for a bit. The kids usually load the dishwasher, so they take over this chore while the grown-ups hang out.  This is my favorite part of the day – when the kids are occupied and we can have adult conversation over caffeine.

8 am – 11 am: Climbing Time

We gather up all of our climbing gear and head to the local climbing gym with some friends. There’s an awesome indoor climbing gym just 10 minutes from our house. The kids love it! So we gather up the harnesses and climbing shoes and drive over.

The gym opens at 9 and we try to get there right when it opens. By 11 am, when we leave, it’s a zoo. Everyone climbs well and the girls behave, so we call it a win.

11 am – 3 pm: Lunch and Hike

After climbing, we pile back into the car to retrieve the dog. Then we go to our favorite local dog-friendly burger joint for lunch. After lunch, we go for a short hike at a local state park just 2 minutes from the burger place!

This is a huge test for our newly adopted rescue dog. She is leash aggressive. Although she recently finished two weeks of training bootcamp, she still struggles sometimes not to react to dogs when she’s on leash. With so many dogs on the narrow trail, this is a huge challenge for her (and me). She does an amazing job!

We only have one or two barks or growls, which is fantastic for her considering we must have passed at least 30 dogs on the 2 mile hike. We hike a mile to the creek. At the creek, we try to get the pupster to play in the water and fail hilariously. Dog is terrified of water. Then we do some rock scrambling and hike back to the parking lot.

Although we only go two miles, we are pleasantly exhausted when we get back to the car!

3 pm – 7 pm: Grillin’

Back at the ranch, we clean up from the day of activity. My husband goes to get dinner food at the local butcher while the girls and I tidy up. Our cleaners come on Tuesday, and we have Taekwondo Monday night, so we won’t have time to clean up on Monday.

The weather is beautiful, so we grill steaks and eat outside. Doggy is so exhausted from the hike that she politely chills on the deck. She is only slightly distracted by the meat smells coming from the grill.

After dinner, we watch a TV show about preppers, thereby terrifying the children, while we wait for brownies to cook. Won’t be watching that one again with the kids.

7 pm – 10 pm: Bed for All

It’s bedtime for the kids, then a little TV and bedtime for us. We fall down a rabbit hole of watching videos about pop-up campers on YouTube. Fascinating! We decide we’ll stick with a plain old tent for the moment.

We head to bed and another weekend is in the books!

What are your weekends like?

As you’ll see, we didn’t do many chores this weekend. We really prefer to fit our household chores into the work week, leaving the weekends free for fun. So many people I know do all of their chores on the weekend, leaving little time to relax. That is not our style and never has been!

So I’m super curious – what do your weekends look like? Are you productive or do you relax and have fun? Maybe a little of both? Please share!