Maybe it’s the observer in me, but I love taking a peek into how other people live their daily lives. Not the big exciting event days, not the holidays, just the normal, typical day. Maybe you do too? Here’s what a day in the DeDeyne household currently looks like.
5:30-6:30am. Jesse wakes up. The kids wake up. For those who are new here, we have Jonah (age 7), Matthew (age 5), Hannah (age 3), and Elizabeth (age 2). I am still getting up in the middle of the night fairly often with the two-year-old, who clearly only needs about 3 hours of sleep some nights, so I don’t get up until 6:30 most days. I head to the kitchen to make breakfast, and the kids watch whatever’s on PBS.
7:30am. Breakfast time. During the week we have either “eggs and something” or muffins. After breakfast Matthew clears the table and unloads the clean dishes from the dishwasher. Then Jonah loads the dirty dishes. I get the coffee going and do a mini kitchen zero clean up. The girls watch their favorite show (Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood), and everyone gets dressed and ready. Our mornings are fairly slow-paced, and I love them.
Since Jesse is a pastor of two churches, he spends some of his time at each church, and sometimes works from home. If he’s heading out, he’ll usually leave after breakfast, and come home some time in the afternoon. His schedule varies from day to day, but whether he’s at home or not, the rest of us generally follow the same routine.
9:00am (ish). We start our structured school day. Every day includes Bible time, handwriting, math, and reading. We do history and science twice a week each, and I’ve just started teaching the boys piano as well. (You can see our curriculum choices for this year here.) School goes for 1-2 hours, with a 10:30am snack break. While the kids are eating, I’ll read from our current read aloud. We just finished Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, which the kids thought was a hoot! I’ve been really bad about reading aloud from chapter books consistently, but since I’ve started doing it at snack time we’re actually making progress.
11:30am. Lunch time. After lunch, the kids go to their room for quiet rest time. The options are currently read a book or lie down quietly. Sometimes they sleep. Often times they don’t. The boys broke my timer, so we are not currently doing the timer trick, but they’ll stay in there for 60-90 minutes of (relative) peace and quiet. This is when I usually write, format pictures for the blog, or read.
2:30pm. If the girls fell asleep during rest time, I wake them up. Otherwise, they won’t go to bed at bedtime. The kids are free to play whatever they want, and they’ll do anything from build Lego creations to run around outside to write a story. If I have veggies to chop or snacks to make or anything to bake, I’ll usually head to the kitchen, with one or two helpers in tow. Otherwise, I try to work on less brain-focus-heavy tasks that are fine with interruptions.
3:30pm. Afternoon snack time. If you haven’t gathered from this post, a lot of our day revolves around food. Jonah and Matthew can tell time, so they make sure snacks are always at the exact scheduled time! Sometimes I’ll read more of our read aloud in the afternoon, although I usually need a snack too. After snack the kids have more time to play, and I start working on dinner prep and any housework that needs to be done.
5:30pm. Dinner time. Lately at least half of the recipes I’ve been making are for blog posts or my next cookbook, so before anyone can eat, I take over half the table and snap a bunch of pictures of the one carefully plated dish of food. Then I quickly dish out everyone else’s portions and we dig in.
6:00pm. The kids pick up their toys while I clean up the kitchen and start the dishwasher. When everything is picked up, we do yoga together. If the kids don’t feel like doing it, sometimes they’ll go in their room and the boys will read to the girls while Jesse and I do the workout.
7:00pm. Family devotion time, prayers, brushing teeth, and tucking in. “What are we doing tomorrow? And will you come check on me in a little bit and kiss me when you go to bed? What’s for breakfast and lunch and snacks?” All the questions happen at bedtime. I give a quick overview of what we’re doing tomorrow and tell them good night. Then Jesse and I have our devotion time together, and we write in our journals for a few minutes.
Most nights we lounge around and either read or watch a show together. We’re almost through season 2 of Man in the High Castle on Amazon, and it’s really good! I also occasionally force Jesse to watch my girly shows with me: Once Upon a Time, Victoria, and This Is Us, at the moment. We head to bed between 9:30-10:00pm.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a typical day.
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Thanks for sharing your day with us!
You’re welcome! I love getting to peek into other people’s days, so I like to share mine as well.