A Week in the Life 2014: Tuesday

7:30 - Eating breakfast.  I'm trying to make better food choices this week and have eaten this meal 3x so far in two days. 

Grandma thankfully showed up at 8am and helped out all the way until 4:40.  She took E to school at 9:30 and M to French at 10.  After that, she and M went to the bookstore, had a picnic, and played LEGOs.  We'll rejoin them after lunch.

Yes, out of order, but this is M picnicking with Grandma later in the day.   Thanks Grandma for the pic!

Brent went to school at 7:15 and was a little late/stressed.

I was taking B to school and he spent time while waiting telling me about Minecraft.  He has a lot ot say about Minecraft and brought his Minecraft handbooks with him for the journey. 

We went to B's school, looked at his art, checked in to his classroom, and were assigned to groups.  I also chatted with his teacher about how he is doing, etc...

This is the calm before the storm at the zoo.  Parents of six school buses of kids (Edmond and Deer Creek) waiting and looking at Halloween Decorations.

We found each other!  Being with him on this field trip was difficult to arrange from a work and parenting perspective, but I knew it was really important to him so I made it happen and thankfully my job is flexible enough to make it possible.  For the next nearly 4 hours we wandered the zoo with his classmate I whom I was supervising.

Feeding Lorikeets.  They also petted stingrays.

Rupert, my current zoo fave.  After this we ate lunch.  My healthy lunch felt small and not that inspiring.  E ate probably 1200 calories.  I ate almost nothing and is allergic to dairy, forgot his lunch (procured one from cafeteria before we left), seems to have ADD and insists I buy him a soda.

This is about noon and I'm oh so over chaperoning at this point. I do love him in the middle of this crush of kids close to the black bears.

I love these trees -- delightfully autumnal and quiet. I am trying to look up and out.  To observe and capture the beauty around us too.  (The student I was chaperoning is not a quiet person.  He is also right about everything.  B and I have begun just smiling and nodding as we trail behind him. ).

M & my guy

From just after 12- 1 most of the kids played at the zoo playground.  B and I left slightly early and apparently lost my jacket in the process.  Thankfully, his teacher found it and called me!  We stoped at sonic and I headed back to work.

Grandma & M were home, but about to leave. I took a call for a couple hours and worked.

B played video games and rested.  Yes, he needs and has longer pants, but keeps wearing these....

Aunt Audra & Grandma took M, E, Zane, and Ro to the "beach" at Lake Hefner. 

Then they explored the Eisenhower memorial.  Apparently M loves Eisenhower?

E at play with his guys - usually batman or LEGO minifigs

They arrived home while I was still working.  Audra went to the store and Grandma held down the fort, and then they switched. I love this about living here. It doesn't happen every week, but it is awesome the eb and flow of family handing off kids and helping. 

M played with/tried to tame the wind at some point (probably several points) in the day.  She is quite convinced she can convince it to blow and who knows, maybe she can. (It does blow very frequently in OK).

Around 5pm, I wrapped up work for the time being and lil' Ro and his crew headed home.  I made this delicious Quinoa Fiesta Enchilada Casserole (minus the adobo sauce + some other spices) and roasted butternut squash with Black Canyon Chili Powder for dinner.  It was surprisingly good or I was starving....

6:22 - M wanted to go running in the neighborhood so we did.  We ran, skipped, walked backwards, twirled, jumped, ran up driveways, etc... We were gone half an hour and went about 3000 steps (didn't turn on my running ap, but I'd guess maybe a mile or so).  She love to jump into the "good" grass and say she was doing a cannon ball? It was a blast. 

LEGO set M & Grandma assembled.  M says she has wanted it for a year and loves it.

7pm - I bathed E while Brent dealt with some house issues (landry gone awry mostly).  Then, I read E his new Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Halloween book from Grandma while M bathed.  She of course had to have her Ladybug Girl Halloween book (I had promised to read this earlier, but got distracted... darn it).  Anyway, Brent left for work after B's bath (around 7:30). I read a bit of Wind in the Willows to B and off to bed.

It is 10:27 and Brent isn't home from work yet, but should be soon.  I've been blogging and photo processing for almost 1.5 hours.  Before that, I did about an hour of work to finish catching up on time missed while at the zoo. 

UPDATE: Brent arrived late and stressed from his students.  As he can't sleep we work on open enrollment which results in my being stressed and lots of talking about frustrations together.  We're both better for it. 

I definitely need more pictures of our dinner/bedtime routines and to walk through how they are different now than in prior years.  I'll try to pick up on that tomorrow.

Today was definitely a flying in many directions busy day!

Did you miss Monday's post? You can find it here.

Have no idea what I'm doing this week? Read Ali's description here.