Our schedule is nuts. My hubby goes to work around 7 am and while he is doing his thing at the office, I am in charge of keeping the kids from burning the house down. Somewhere in the late afternoon hours, I get myself ready for work and (hopefully) get a dinner game plan ready for Evan and the boys. When my beloved walks in the door, we have about 90 seconds to give each other a quick run-down of what has taken place during the day and what's on tap for the evening before I give each of the members of my family a quick kiss and get in the car. I then put in my hours as a waitress, working until usually about 10:00 pm. I will hit the gym after work if I get out a bit early, but most of the time I am working late enough that I just come straight home.
If you're playing along at home, you've realized that I don't get any quiet time alone or quality time with my husband until about 10:30 at night. It used to be that we would then stay up until about midnight or so before finally going to sleep, only to rise exhausted around 6:00 am.
We finally decided we had to have a bedtime. We settled on a 10:30 bedtime where, if we are both at home, we stop whatever we are doing and just go to bed. Even if we are in the middle of a show or a movie, we pause it where we left off and finish it a different time. If I am not home from work yet, Evan goes to bed without me.
After just over a week of living with our new bedtime I have made several observations.
1. I am significantly less tired in the morning. This may have more to do with the fact that my husband has been bringing me coffee immediately upon rising than the amount of rest I am getting, but I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
2. I am way behind on several things. I am behind on Project Life, blogging, photo editing, and numerous other projects I have going simultaneously. I would often stay up late working on these things so losing that time has really put me in the hole. I'm trying not to let it bug me, but it really is. When I try to get blogging done while the baby is awake, I have found it to be....challenging.
3. My time in the Word has dropped drastically. This one is absolutely unacceptable. I can't blame this struggle entirely on the bedtime, but it's more a combination of several circumstances. The frustration I have encountered with trying to find the right time to meet with God every day is a real hot point for me. I welcome any suggestions!
4. I can't talk to anyone about TV. We are WAYYYYY behind on the few shows that we actually watch on a regular basis so when I hear people discussing the most recent episode, I have to put my fingers in my ears and sing songs from "Mary Poppins." Then people think I'm weird.
So, I think it's a work in progress. Hard to say whether or not it has been a positive change in our world or not, but perhaps some more time will help.
Do you have a bedtime? Or perhaps you have some time management tips that help you make the most of each day? I'd love to hear about it!
