A Day In The Life -- Saturday, December 8, 2018

Once again, I'm linking up with Kimberly, Andi, Tamara, and Tanya for #AMonthofFaves. Today we're sharing a day in the life from this past weekend, and I'm sharing about this past Saturday.

A few things to note:

1) My husband is Jewish and I am Christian and we are raising our children in both faiths. Thus, as of last night, we just finished celebrating Chanukah, plus we have a little bit of Christmas stuff going on.

2) This was not a typical Saturday for us!

3) My family consists of me (Natasha), my husband, Dave, our nine year old son, Sam, and our seven year old daughter, Rachel.

With those explanations, welcome aboard.

With everything going on with the holidays, and with Rachel having had the stomach flu on Friday, I was exhausted and didn't set an alarm. I woke up at about 8:20 and got right to work making supper for a family in our church. The husband just had surgery and I wanted to send a meal to help out. Dave dropped it off on his way to the synagogue with Sam while I stayed home with a still recuperating Rachel. And I drank my first cup of coffee-hot chocolate in my Chanukah mug.

Our church small group came over that evening for our annual Chanukah party (yes, you read that correctly!) so I baked a batch of buns so we could make sandwiches.

 Rachel took a picture of me kneading the dough. This was at about 10am.

Once the dough was rising in the over, Rachel and I did dishes. (We don't have a dishwasher so doing dishes is pretty common around here.)

Around 11am, Rachel and I walked to a local handmade holiday sale happening about five minutes away from us to buy some gifts.

When we got home, Rachel watched a video and I tidied the house and took pictures of our Chanukah decorations for an upcoming post. By this time it was about 11:50am.

 I caught up on some laundry. I LOVE having an indoor clothesline. I rarely use our dryer.

I had been fighting a headache all morning so while Rachel was watching videos, and we were waiting for Dave and Sam to get home from synagogue, I napped for about an hour. It helped.

Excuse my post-nap, still slightly fighting a headache, look :)

 

By 2pm I had formed the dough into buns and eaten lunch. Then I showered and did more tidying.

One thing I had to do was clear space in our dining room for our Christmas tree which we had picked up the night before through our local neighbourhood association.

By around 3:30 the first of the buns were baking and we gave Sam and Rachel some Chanukah presents. We had hoped they would keep the kids entertained while Dave and I got ready to host our small group of about twenty people.

While the buns were baking I updated our family calendar, about a week late. I bought this calendar in the dollar spot when we visited the World's First Target in Minnesota about two years ago and it has become the go-to spot for us all to find out what's going on. We've all be thrown off this past week when I hadn't yet updated it.

By 4:45pm, Rachel was napping (a rare occasion but this one was thanks to recuperating from the stomach flu), Sam was playing with his Chanukah present, Dave was making a triple batch of latkes, and I was doing more dishes and keeping the bun baking going.

From 5 to about 8:30, we hosted our small group. The kids played, we ate amazing food, we lit the candles for the seventh night of Chanukah...

 

... we read our annual Chanukah story, The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming, and the kids played driedel. This is the most intense driedel game and the kids love winning the chocolates.

 

By 8:30, everyone had left. I put the kids to bed while Dave tackled dishes. Then I tidied the rest of the house while Dave continued with dishes.

Rachel had a nightmare around 10pm so I re-settled her, which took about forty-five minutes. Sam was also having a hard time settling and I blame all the chocolate he ate during the driedel game. Finally both kids were asleep and I had another load of laundry going. Dave was almost done dishes, and at 11:20pm, I finally crawled into bed to read and go to sleep.

It was a very full Saturday. I might try to do another Saturday Day in the Life in February when things are a little less holiday intense, and a lot more normal!