Day 49: Friday Motivation

Yippee, the stars finally aligned for a good Friday! It is one of our first since homeschooling started last spring. Fridays were hard even before COVID due to the exhaustion that accumulated at the end of the week.

Rob and I each got a run in this morning. The conditions were crazy (at least for us) though: 82 degrees and 70% humidity. We were both drenched after returning from our respective runs.

The key to this awesome day was having the kids motivated to get their work done, and the source of that motivation was two 6-year-old boys in campsites near us. Our boys were ALL about getting to play with them, and it has been amazing. We took fewer pictures this day because they were outside so much with these other kids.

We were all so much more productive today. It might have also helped that I joined a parenting call about child emotions during the pandemic the previous night and am trying to bring more calm to the day. It always helps to get little reminders along this parenting journey.

Laundry was my big job: four loads, which fortunately can all be done at once when there are four washers and dryers. We wanted to get everything washed to prepare for our upcoming 10 days in the Keys. The motivation to quickly get the laundry folded and put away is two-fold. First, there is nowhere to sit until you are done. Second, it is your chance to make sure you grabbed everything from the dryer and didn’t drop anything on the walk back (see earlier post about having your undies brought back by the camp worker).

I couldn’t resist ending the day with fresh-baked cookies, thanks to the oven being already warm from the tater tots and my pre-made frozen cookie dough. We followed that by starting a movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules. Cooper, always nervous watching movies, had prepped by reading a book about how it was made, so he was ready to watch it all.