When I was on vacation from work I was full of ideas of ways to make our lives better. Then I went back to work, and enjoyed my first day back and felt very productive and good about how much progress I made, and then I was ready for another week and a half off. Now I'm thoroughly back in the grind and drowning in work and remembering why I don't manage to do all the things I was thinking about during my post-Christmas days off. 

My schedule feels really grueling. On my three work days, I'm up at 5:00, usually on 4-6 hours of sleep, work for 9-1/2 hours, walk for 2 hours, get home in time to kiss my husband as he goes out the door for work, make dinner, clean the kitchen, and have about an hour after that before the kids go to bed and I crash. On my non-work days we cram in piano lessons, gymnastics (twice per week), homeschool co-op, science club, grocery shopping, normal household errands, schoolwork, trips to the library, church, chamber music, 3-4 hours of work that I do from home, a little exercise, etc. etc., and try to keep the house from falling apart and becoming a health hazard. Fortunately my husband does the laundry and sometimes has dinners prepped for me so I can just cook them up when I get home, but this is still a lot to cover in a normal 168-hour week. So, as much as I fervently wish I could find more time to cook nice meals, go on more hikes, see my parents every week, play music with the kids and my husband more often, go on more dates with my husband, and practice my cello and piano more regularly, it just isn't all going to happen.

OK, so I need to regroup. Can I add anything at all? Can I eliminate anything? It all seems important, and aside from the housework, just about everything I do is really rewarding and enriching. I have some good routines, and I think my goal should be to keep these up, for starters. Here are the things I'm happy about that I've added in the past couple of years that want to keep up.

- Going to church, and doing some good activity after church twice per month (assuming I'll play music one Sunday per month and we'll take one Sunday to just go home after church). Right now we've been going out to lunch and then mainly to the art museum or the downtown library afterwards. We should add going to see my parents, to the historical society, and on hikes to our list of Sunday outings, and that would get me closer to a couple of my goals.

-Schoolwork. I think we have a pretty good start with out schoolwork routine. I'm trying to play a game with some educational value most days. We're doing short doses of several books at a time, always keeping a good book going for science, mythology, a biography, history, something like Aesop, Just-So, or Fairy Tales. We're consistent with our nighttime readalouds, which include a good dose of historical fiction mixed in with purely fun stuff. We read a poem at bedtime every night (albeit usually something funny and fluffy). I do some kind of math 3-4 times per week with each kid. We usually do spelling/copywork/dictation 2-4 times per week (3-5 would be better). We do science activities at least once per week, usually more.

-Homeschool co-op and science club--amazingly wonderful kids and families, both of these enrich our lives a lot.

-I'm doing 6-7 one-hour walks every week (usually).

-I eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day, including a big salad many days (4-5 per week?), and A usually

- Chamber music--I've go two quartets that each meet about once per month (sometimes with piano, also). More would be better, but I love playing with these wonderful friends and musicians, and it is absolutely amazing to be able to play the incredible chamber music literature. There are so few people in the world who get to play this amazing music, I'm so lucky to get to do this!

This is all good stuff. Sometimes it seems like all I do is work and complain about working so much and go to the grocery store, but this is enough, even if the list of things I'd like to add or do better or more often is a mile long. I'm sure it always will be. I guess we can survive on baked potatoes and smoothies and salad and Trader Joe's meat balls for another couple of years...