Day in the Life - Summer 2017

It's time for another day in the life post, this time hosted by Liz at ellie and addie. If you don't like long posts, you can scroll through the pictures or just skip this one.

Friday, 21 April

6:55 Miles wakes up, and I convince him to climb in bed with me. I'm exhausted and feel like I'm getting a cold, so I skip the workout I was planning on doing. I don't feel guilty at all.

7:07 We get up and head downstairs. I make coffee, and we snuggle while Miles watches a show.

7:35 I hear Clara singing in bed and go upstairs to get her. Parts of our conversation:
"Daddy sleep well?"
"Why Daddy work?"
"Lily sleep well?"
We join Miles in the living room.

7:47 Lily comes down, and we have family snuggles.

8:09 I throw a bowl of nilla wafers in front of the kids (mom win) and shower. I don't hurry.
The weather is supposed to be cool and rainy. Darn, I wanted to take the kids to the park.

8:35 I have my make up on, and I'm dressed and back downstairs. Clara needs a new nappy. Once I've changed her, she says, "Please trousers," so I get her dressed. She wants to zip jacket herself, so that takes about 8 minutes.

8:50 Clara and I go back downstairs, and I get a proper breakfast ready. Waffles for the kids, cereal for me. Lily isn't hungry.

9:20 I take the kids upstairs to get dressed. Lily wants to wear matching leggings with me.

She is bold with pattern mixing

A few months ago, Miles came up with the idea of 100 day socks. He wanted to wear the same socks to sleep for 100 nights. Maybe a little stinky, but we made a countdown calendar and made sure he didn't skip any days. And upon waking today, he completed his 100 days! I ask him how he wants to celebrate, and he says he wants to have a Star Monster party and play pass the parcel. (Spoiler, the celebration doesn't happen today.)

They've been mended more than once

9:40 We all go back downstairs, and I start to make a grocery list. The kids color and play, and I break up several fights.

Throwing a fit because I won't make this into a slide for her

10:00 Someone asks to play Snapchat, so we do that for a few minutes. I only have an account because the kids love these funny faces.

10:15 I go back to my grocery list, which mostly involves browsing Pinterest.

11:00 Matt gets home from work. I decide to finish my list later.

Clara is coloring Lily's hair

11:15 I'm not feeling great, so I take some ibuprofen while Matt makes me an egg. The kids watch TV.
I eat my egg and toast, sit around and look at my phone a bit.

Noon: We decide to leave house.

12:30 We're finally all ready and head out the door. It's still gray out, but barely drizzling, so we bring our umbrellas and hope for the best. And it hardly rains the whole time we're out.

We go to a charity shop and the bank, and then just walk. We end up having a coffee at a grocery store, and grab a few things while we're there. We are so exciting.

Every time we leave the house, Clara says, "I walk bit."

The love walking on walls

3:30 We come home, and I'm beat. I relax on the couch. The next day I feel much better, so I think my body just needed rest. The kids watch TV again.

Someone skipped their nap today

4:15 Matt goes to the kitchen to make dinner (a big salad, and random freezer bits for the kids). And since I was talking earlier about the couch and comfort food, he valiantly goes to get me fish and chips.

5:00 Matt is home. We all eat dinner.

5:30 I make tea and put on my jammies. Matt and I talk in the kitchen.

6:10 I really started slacking on my Duolingo progress, but I'm trying to get back into it. I do my French for the day. We also just got Rosetta Stone on Prime day, but haven't started that one yet.

6:15 I'm back on the couch. Sometimes it's nice to have a lazy day.

6:45 We put jammies on the kids, and of course they ask for one last snack. Then it's upstairs to brush teeth & do the bedtime routine.

7:45 All three kids are in bed. Matt and I play on our phones in our room.

8:20 We go downstairs to watch a couple of episodes of the Blacklist. It's on a new streaming service we got so we can watch Game of Thrones.

I think I took this between 9-9:30

10:30ish I go upstairs to go to bed. Matt stays downstairs to watch more TV.

Keeping it Real - First day of summer break

This was my first day home with all three kids, and it almost went swimmingly. We had a little picnic lunch in the park (which makes it sound much better than it went, but it wasn't too bad). I had the kids working on learning. They got a little TV/tablet time. Then I tried to make dinner.

The meal I tried to make was a bit more involved than I normally do (it was a cauliflower lasagna). In the middle of my prep, I gave Lily a small pot of applesauce, and I didn't notice when she took it into the living room. Then she came running to the kitchen shouting about how Clara took her applesauce. And of course, it was all over the sofa (which we can wipe off, thank you Matt). I got everything cleaned up, and stripped Clara's clothes off, and went back to my cooking. And a few minutes later, Lily was back shouting about more applesauce. Apparently, Clara took another pot from the cabinet and tore through the foil, this time getting it all over one of Lily's books in addition to her clothes and the sofa. So I cleaned it up again.

This is dinner on her face; I didn't take a picture of the applesauce. She still needed a third outfit change though.

By this time, my lasagna noodles were all stuck together and ruined, so I had to improvise and make new spiral noodles for a casserole. As I was doing this, I turned around to a new mess on the kitchen floor. I threw my casserole into the oven and ran all three children upstairs for a super quick bath. And I opened a bottle of wine.

This was by far the hardest part of the day, and it's why the house looks like this. I'm not even worried about it.

Bubble Club!

The older kids are now out of school for summer break, so I thought it would be fitting to join an alcohol subscription service. Enter Bubble Club.

I signed up for the bimonthly subscription, but may change that depending on how much I like it. I received my first box last week, and this is what I got:

This shows four of the five items I received (I'd already opened the second snack). I'll try to drink the bubbles this week and do a review, because I'm excited to try everything!

Independence Day - Knaresborough

Both of the older kids had school on the 4th of July, so Matt, Clara, and I decided to celebrate by wandering around Knaresborough.

We took the train, and the first thing we did was grab breakfast and a (much needed) coffee at a waterfront cafe. The food was good, and the view was very nice.

Sausage sandwich

Full English

Next we just walked around a bit.

I wouldn't want to use this narrow driveway!

"Flowers! Cute!"

We saw a sign for Knaresborough Castle, so we headed that direction. We had to go up a lot of stairs...

... and through a lovely park.

Big hill

Just a little farther up

Then we were standing in what used to be the moat. The lady at the museum said that the ground was very porous, so it was a dry moat. There would have been sharpened logs pointed out, and unpleasant waste items (like animal carcasses, or what they cleaned out of the toilet). Whatever they could do to make it undesirable to travel through.

There were some pretty amazing views from the top.

We bought an admission ticket, which allowed us to see inside the castle ruins and the courthouse.

According to the volunteer at the museum, much of the castle was destroyed during the English Civil Wars. When the Parliamentarians took control of the country, they demolished many such buildings and sold off the stones. Some housing in town might contain materials from this castle. In Knaresborough, the townspeople petitioned to conserve the keep and the courthouse, to have a place to carry out justice.

First we went into the King's Tower. There were several rooms (or partial rooms) to explore here, and a nice information sheet to carry around. And the best part was that we were allowed to take pictures of everything.

The dungeon. This room was originally used to store provisions, and became a prison by the 16th century. The walls were 15 feet thick, and there was only one small window to provide light. It was hard to get pictures here because the room was small, but I did try.

The room was built around this central column. This gives you a sense of scale.

The window

Medieval graffiti

More graffiti

Next we explored the main floor, which had the servant's quarters, the buttery, and the garderobe.

Servant's Quarters. This was the area where the servants worked and lived. They slept on thin straw mats (so much for being a king's servant). The room was the same shape as the dungeon, but larger. There was a huge fireplace, which would have acted as sort of a central heating for the building.

Fireplace

Garderobe, aka the toilet. The seat has now been capped with concrete. This was a larger room, as clothes were also stored here (the smell would keep moths away). There was a chute leading underground, which could be a weak point in the castle's defense. So it was common to really let the waste build up before having servants clean it out. Gross. Of course, we took pictures of ourselves sitting on the toilet (we are classy like that).

Buttery. This room originally stored barrels, or butts. The Keeper of Butts lived here (this is where the term butler originated). After the rest of the castle was destroyed, this tiny room was used as a prison. Up to 26 prisoners were kept here at one time! I promise this would be more impressive if my picture showed how small this room really is. Just believe me when I say that no one would've been able to lie down.

The King's Chamber. We traveled up the servant staircase to get to the king's chamber. And maybe I'm chicken because I broke my leg on stairs (one step, I broke my leg going down one step), but I was a little freaked out here. Going up wasn't that bad, but I was almost scooting down on my butt on the way back. Have a look.

Not much room to move around

The stairs were so worn. And they were damp, which made them more slippery.

My extra careful descent. I couldn't even think about Matt carrying Clara.

There wasn't a lot left of the actual king's chamber. Our information sheet told us that the king would've sat on the raised area, with a fireplace on one side and a (probably stained glass) window on the other. This is where the king hung out, but his bedroom would've been the next floor up, which was completely gone.

This is where he would sit

Fireplace

Window

A bit anticlimactic after the stairs, no?

Courthouse. After viewing the keep, we walked across the bowling green to the courthouse. There was a small room set up to look as it would have in the Tudor age, then a couple of rooms with artifacts. We could have spent more time here, but we wanted to make the tour of the sallyport.

Courtroom

Courtroom

Stocks

3D beadwork

Can you read the text in that last picture? The shirt was worn by Sir Henry Slingsby when he was beheaded. A little gruesome, but interesting.

Concluding our visit to Knaresborough Castle was the tour of the sallyport.  Built in the 13th or 14th century, this was an underground tunnel that provided secret entry to and exit from the castle.

The entrance wouldn't have been quite this obvious at the time. It was probably hidden under a stable or blacksmith's floor.

Inside the tunnel

Exit into the moat

The lovely tour guide waited until we were outside again before telling us about the protected species of cave spider that lives inside. So I won't be joining that tour again, but I'm glad I did it once.

We had just enough time after our exploration to eat lunch before we needed to catch our return train. We decided on fish and chips, since it was on the way.

It was excellent. The batter was light and crispy, and the chips were cooked perfectly.

We made the train easily, and had the perfect amount of time to pick the kids up from school.

Of course, the kids didn't have any sort of Independence Day celebration at school, but Miles did bring home a few coloring sheets. I love how inclusive the school is.

Happy (late) Independence Day to my fellow Americans!