5:30 Am

As is the case with many we have tried to use our move into a new house as an opportunity to make certain changes in our home life. There are the usual suspects like keeping the closet organized, picking up more and doing the dishes every night before we go to bed. Those have been hit and miss in terms of success. We are 35/2 in terms of doing the dishes every night--YAY us! As for the closet, well you saw how that one is turning out. But there are three other goals we set that have been fabulous and just as we'd hoped the changes have improved our family life tremendously. The first one is to walk at least to the gardens 3-4 nights a week. We often walk 5-6 nights a week right after dinner. If our dinner is running late we pop Margot in her PJ's first so she can be easily transferred into her bed. If it's earlier we throw on her rain boots (oh yes it's already started to rain here) walk down the street to the gardens to let her play in the grass or walk down the hill to the park. Once we come home we put Margot to bed and do the dishes together. The walk clears our heads of all the work stress, dishes, laundry, demo anxiety and gives us 30-60 minutes of really fun quality family time. Margot loves our walks and asks for them often.

Our second goal was to watch less TV in the evenings. So we made a rule that we could only watch TV on Tuesday, Thursday and saturday nights. Again this one has worked really well. The non-TV nights we are more energized to tackle (or start) projects because we know TV is not an option. And since the rule we've been reading more books.

But our third goal is a bit more challenging, getting up at 5 am on weekday mornings. I know CRAZY TALK!!! But it gives us both time before Margot wakes up to get ourselves oriented for the day. It allows me to actually drink a cup of tea in peace, groggy peace yes, but peace non-the-less. Chris usually works and I can blog, sketch out house ideas, work on work stuff or edit photos. And so these days this is what my 5:30 am looks like: