A Day in Review

I like being busy, but some days are too much even for me.

Friday, 10 September 2004
5:50am - Crawl out of bed. This is going to get harder as the mornings get darker.
6:00am - Wake up girls. Always difficult with Katherine. Had to do laundry last night so she would have a green shirt and khaki skort for a program.
6:25am - Put girls on bus with bags in one hand and a bagel in the other. Life is so much smoother now that I make lunches the night before. And today the girls are buying pizza and the boys have Club Lunch. Only needed to pack snacks.
6:30am - Clean for dinner company. Make grocery list. Have an unsuccessful reading lesson with Nicholas. We're on Lesson 22 in 100 Easy Lessons. He's getting bored with it. Text two parents telling one that the girls won't be at the birthday paty that evening (just got the invite the day before, and it's at the same time as Katherine's time trials), and tell the other one that Rebecca will be at the party on Saturday afternoon. There's another party on Sunday afternoon that all the kids are invited to. It's at the same time as their swim lesson.
8:30am - Pile into car, pick up Katie, head to AmeriKids.
8:50am - Drop off kids at AmeriKids. Take new photos of the field and playground for the school website. Go to ARC office to let them know the kids won't be at swimming lessons on Sunday. The kids won't complain. The ARC office is empty.
9:00am - Work in Seafront library on the Gs.
9:30am - Check ARC office again, someone is there. Tell them about Sunday. Head to the grocery store.
10:00am - Grocery store run for fruit and ingredients for lasagna.
11:00am - Home and break.
11:30am - Put lasagna together. The sauce has onions, ground beef, sausage, carrots, tomatoes and mushrooms. Oh, and a can of Garlic and Herb Hunts. Cover and put in fridge.
12:15pm - Head to Seafront.
12:40pm - See the kids finishing their Club Lunch.
12:55pm - Head home with Kelly and Katie in tow as well. There was something huge going on at the Colegio in Dasmarinas Village. EDSA was completely backed up from all directions entering the village. A normal 15 minute ride took over 45 minutes. Once we were in the village, took a circuitous route to get to Katie's house. Dropped her off.
1:50pm - Go directly to ISM for Katherine's time trials.
2:10pm - Finally at ISM, with a convenient parking spot even.
2:30pm - At the pool, Christine arrives which makes Kelly very happy, and general chaos ensues as computers don't work, parent volunteers are collected for timing, kids are wandering about, etc. I volunteered to time which left my younger set entertaining themselves.
5:00pm - Texted Ian to put the lasagna in when he got home.
5:30pm - They entertained themselves for 3 hours. The parents scored free sodas for standing there. Katherine did her best, even with the freestyle trial where she jumped in at the whistle (take your mark) instead of the beep (go), and swam the entire length... the only one who didn't stop as people were shouting at her. She even tried the butterfly trial. For the last 5 meters she hardly moved with each stroke, she was so tired. The kids had been bribed with pizza afterwards but by 5:30 no one stayed. Meg needed a ride home, my younger three were so filthy and Katherine was wiped out.
5:45pm - Meg dropped off and we enter the house. Kids are tossed unceremoniously into the shower. We had dinner guests coming. Ian was setting the table.
5:55pm - Kids are dressed in PJs. I get into the shower.
6:15pm - Guests arrive. I'm showered and clothed. The lasagna is finishing up. Ian heads to store to get edible bread since the baguette I'd bought earlier is hard as a rock. He also gets dessert from La Nuovo Pastelleria. Yummy.
7:30pm - Dinner done, boys are asleep, girls eat some ice cream. I promised them that since they didn't get pizza after swimming we'd have pizza saturday night.
8:00pm - Girls are asleep. Katherine said she didn't want to read. I don't blame her.
9:20pm - Guests leave. They depart post on Thursday. We'll see them at FSI next year.
This is where I turn off my brain and veg for an hour, then give in and go to bed.