Finding the rhythm of our week.

One of the ways that we try to manage our family life/business balance is by making sure we spend at least one day a week doing certain tasks. It's taken us nearly a year to find our rhythm but finally one seems to have found us and each week we usually just about keep to it.
We often roll like this:
Monday is our pj day. We chill out the three of us whilst the hippy faces the start of another week at work. Newt has now started swimming lessons on this day which has meant we cant mooch all day as we have in the past! Tuesday hubby works from home & we clean pools. Wednesday Newt goes to her grandmas and Has teddy bear picnics & trips to the park on her bike, I have some time together with the Mancub, do house stuff and if there's time a bit of office work. Thursdays is my day off from the business. The office is closed and I either run The Natural Parenting or Natural Learning Club in the morning with fellow attachment parenting, home ed-ing families and often continue this with trips out together or play dates around a friends. Then on a Friday I work on the business, usually doing office based work, whilst the children have Haylie, our nanny/play mate come around and do fun stuff with them for the day. Fridays are my night off. We always make sure we watch a movie together, have something yummy for tea without the kids like Mexican and chill out. No work talk allowed! This leaves the weekends. These are much looser and fit more around the weather and whatever is happening in our worlds that week. We usually divvy it up with one doing practical sometimes boring stuff and one day out. Actually out. This usually falls on a Sunday, and can vary from trips to woods, the coast or just a day in the garden or local park.
I'd love to get to the stage where this all went that extra step further and we had a meal planner that fits in with this but I've pretty much accepted that its just too much for me yet. I might get there one day. I can see how cool this would be, how much easier day to day, how much food we'd save and naturally the pennies along with this. But I'll keep working on it, and try to stop my mind resisting this slight rigidity. Maybe three out of seven days will be enough for now.
I guess the most important thing to remember though is just as things seem to slump into their place something will always happen to give it all a big jump up in the air and all change. For now I will just try to enjoy the peace and not start getting itchy feet at the apparent sameness of the weeks. I'm happy knowing that in life, nothing lasts!

Free play and organic veg

We are staying overnight at my mums house, a little treat that happens every few months when nanny visits my sister. As far as the children know its because we need 'to look after the bunnies' but the reality is both that the pool workshop is at my mums and staying there gives us a whole day catching up on cleaning and maintenance AND that we get to enjoy little luxuries like an evening watching TV on a sofa & lovely hot showers!!
The only occasional downside to this though is a slight over exposure to Nickelodeon Junior, Cheerios for breakfast and all of the noisy, merchy toys that the kids love but for our own sanity we have diverted to nannies house.
Whilst here this morning we've chosen to watch Muppet Treasure island, which if you've never seen it actually makes a good effort to keep to the story and has the bonus of Tim Curry).
Newt is happily playing with her favourite toy here, my nieces old Polly Pocket dolls. It's lovely quietly sitting with but not involved with her whilst she discovers the new games she can play with them. She is oblivious to the expectations of girly toys, and is blissfully unaware of any imperfections, like one missing a head, and even that one is a boy, he gets dressed up in the same glorious gowns like all the others. For me though, the highlight was where she turned to me to ask to make them a little computer. I hesitantly asked why? Apprehensive that technology had so deeply permeated her life so soon, I did chuckle when she told me it was because otherwise they couldn't order their veg box and they'd all be hungry without any food to eat! Go Polly