Tuesday, January 8, 2013

What Day Is It?

This morning started like so many others.  There was a sink full of bottles needing to be cleaned.





 This morning I also got big Maren smiles.  She's starting to be awake a lot more and I love that she's smiling more and more each day.


After getting Shannon off to school and Sully and Quinn off to my sister's, there was a bit of breakfast, a bit of work and then laundry.  Typically laundry is something I do on Sundays but being home allows me far more flexibility and so I threw in two loads this morning.

My laundry used to be two loads a week.  One was my clothes and the other was household stuff like towels and sheets.  Then, I had Shannon and it increased by a load.  Then, I had Quinn and was so happy when I realized that I could still manage most weeks just doing three loads.  I had always heard that once you had kids you'd spend all your time doing laundry but clearly those people just didn't know my secrets, like washing everything together in cold.  But then something changed and that change is named Sully.  With Sully, all of a sudden I couldn't fit all the kids clothes into the machine at one time and so I had to start splitting the loads.  Now I was doing four loads.  One for my clothes, one for household stuff and two for the kids clothes.  Then, Shannon and Quinn started school, with uniforms and white shirts and I realized that perhaps there was a reason for the hot setting on the washing machine and that if I wanted the shirts to stay white I would need to wash them separately.  Add another load into the mix - whites!  And then, and then came Maren and along with her came a day practically entirely devoted to laundry.  Shannon and Quinn's darks, Sully and Maren's darks, a load of whites, my laundry and a load of household items.  Then, every other week I seem to have special things too like bath mats, kid's winter coats, etc.  You know, the stuff that is so big you can really only wash one or two things at a time and then, just as bad, it takes more than just one cycle to dry.

After washing comes folding.  So much folding and so many piles.  I actually don't mind the folding but do so hate the putting away.  I can't wait for the day when the kids can put their own laundry away, not to mention do their own.




Maren supervised.





And finally, I rounded out the afternoon with lunch and watching the pilot episode of Nashville which I had missed the first time around.  Lunch was Lean Cuisine Chicken and Cranberry Salad Additions

It's a bag of frozen chicken with veggies and a packet of salad dressing.  You microwave the chicken and veggies, thaw the dressing under hot water and then add it all to your lettuce (which, obviously, doesn't come frozen in the box.)  Overall, I thought it was just okay.  Adding the hot veggies to the salad seemed a little weird to me as I tend to like crisp veggies on my salad, not hot, soggy ones.  There were little sesame crunchies to add on top, but they too got a little soggy once added because of the hot veggies.  The website shows the salad looking like this:
But mine ended up looking like this:




A few years back there was a much better salad kit on the market, I believe made by Jennie-O, with turkey, cranberries, reduced fat white cheddar cheese and lite raspberry dressing.  Since I loved it, it was, of course, discontinued.

Tonight I'm heading out to dinner.  Yea for a night out with friends.  The husband will be home with all four kids tonight doing homework, dinner and bedtime pretty much on his own.  Wish him luck!

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