This Friday in my life starts at 4:30 am
I thought that it would be fun to take you along for a Friday in my life as a stay at home mother of seven. I hope you enjoy coming along as we do our weekly grocery shopping and date night.
My day always begins at 4:30 am, especially on Fridays. I never thought I would be a morning person, until about a year ago. Now I love being a morning person and feel awful if I sleep past 6 am.
Anyhow, this Friday in my life started out the same as any other. I got up and made Aaron’s coffee, started a load of laundry, washed my face, and put Aaron’s lunch together. Then I got myself and baby Simon ready to head out to take Aaron to work. The biggest difference was that winter has finally set in around here and we had to bundle up.
5:45 am
At 5:45 am on the nose we started off for Greenfield to drop Aaron off at work. We always leave at 5:45 because even though it is only a 20 minute drive in heavy traffic, my husband insists he will be late if we leave any later. He doesn’t have to be at work until 6:30 friends. We usually pull in at 6:00 sharp this Friday was no exception. I love that he likes to be early, even when he’s rushing me out the door because the baby pooped and I had to change his diaper, again.
I got home at about 6:30 and laid Simon back down then got my Bible out to begin my devotions for the morning. Just as I was getting into my reading in I John chapter one, little Ruth woke up and started asking what was for breakfast. The problem with starting my devotions later than normal is that sometimes the kids get up before I’ve had very much alone time with God. They are good about letting me finish, though.
7:15 am
At about 7:15 Micaiah woke up, and Mary shortly followed. They were, of course, all starving. So, I did what any good mother would do. I finished up my time with the Lord and fed my babies. Then I got to work finalizing my menu for the week, and making sure there wasn’t anything missing from my grocery list. Once that task was accomplished I went into the basement and started another load of laundry.
I wanted to be out of the house and at the store by now to get an earlier start on grocery shopping. My husband hasn’t had a ton of work the past month due to Christmas and New Years. Needless to say I had been a bit more conservative in my spending, and we were in need of a bigger grocery haul this week.
My efforts to get Noah back up from his 3am workout with his father had gotten me nowhere. So, I decided to do a few more things around the house. I folded and put away the laundry and cleaned the toilet, again.
10:00 am
After cleaning up a bit more, I decided to read a bit then try again to get him up. This time I told him he had no choice but to get up. At 10:20 we were finally on our way, three hours past the time I had planed to be.
Since we had gotten off to a late start we headed toward Costco first. At Costco we bought water and other essentials. We spent $136.05, which was really good considering all that we ended up needing. Then we were off to Meijer where we things like Q-tips, organic produce that Costco doesn’t carry, and onion powder. There we spent $77.88, which again wasn’t too bad.
After that we went to Aldi, at this point my poor husband was off work and waiting on us. This was another reason I wanted to get started sooner. In the warmer months his work days are much longer than in the colder ones. Needless to say we ran through Aldi. We were still able to get everything on our list, too. We were in there for about 15 minutes and got things like, salad dressing, cheese, and fish. There we spent $76.81, as I was looking over my receipt just now I noticed that they over charged me.
2:05 pm
It had been a long day of shopping but we were finally headed home. We pulled up in the driveway around 2:20, and quickly unloaded all of our groceries. I helped the kids put some of them away very quickly then headed back out to pick up my husband from work. At this point the poor guy had been waiting on me for 2 whole hours! I felt so bad, but he told me when he called that he wanted me to finish my shopping first.
I called him to let him know I was finally on my way, as I always do. He and I had plans with my sister and her husband to go out for dinner, in celebration of her birthday and the upcoming arrival of their precious baby boy. We were taking them to a new place that Aaron had seen a few times driving his dump truck, and we were quite excited about it.
After I told him that we were on our way to get him, he informed me that the weather was expected to get really bad later on. He said that he wanted to reschedule with my sister. I told him that I thought it would be better to just go ahead and go since she was scheduled to go in for an induction on Tuesday. He was insistent that we reschedule, so I called my sister. She was just as bummed out as I was. We got to talking and decided to look up the doppler radar to check the timing.
3:15 pm
When I pulled into the shop to get Aaron I pulled up the radar and he and I checked it out. We saw that Aaron had been misinformed, and the weather was not supposed to get bad until much later into the evening. We were able to keep our plans after all. Since there was still about an hour until my sister’s husband got off work we came home.
We pulled up in the driveway at about 4:15. I took Simon in the house and changed his little diaper and nursed him while Aaron got his shower. With Simon’s little belly now full I helped the kids clean up a bit before we left them for the next few hours.
Our arrival at the restaurant
I made reservations at Firebirds Wood Fired Grill for 5:30. We pulled into their parking lot at 5:00 sharp, and thought about waiting in the car for Edna and Robert to arrive, but decided against it. We went in expecting to wait for our table to be ready, but were thrilled to be seated right away.
The waiter came over almost immediately and got our drink order. We both had the fresh lemonade, for every purchase of their lemonade, they donate a portion of the purchase to childhood cancer research. It was delicious, too. We sat and talked for a bit about our day and what a nice place he had chosen for our dinner.
We have been trying new places as much as possible. Finding a restaurant that serves good quality food that is better than I cook at home is very hard. We go out every Friday night, not always to eat but just to have some time together to reconnect from the week and talk to each other. At home our conversations are interrupted by kids who also need our love and attention or Aaron’s snoring.
Our take on the menu
I love sitting down and the hostess handing us a one page menu. I always second guess our choice of restaurant when we get a menu that is more than one page. You can bet that if it takes more than that to display what they offer it is likely all frozen and over processed.
As we talked and looked over the menu we were even more satisfied with what we were seeing. Not only did they have the things Aaron was looking for but they also had a lot of the things I wanted. Folks, this almost never happens. He loves how I cook at home but when we go out he’s looking for things I don’t typically make. Such as, steak and baked potatoes. I’m looking for things I would love to cook at home but that only myself and maybe one or two kids would eat with me. This place had both.
I was able to chose my selection rather quickly. I didn’t even have to ask him what he thought I would enjoy better. They even had organic salads as well as other organic produce. My sister and her husband were equally as impressed.
We finally found great food
For once it finally took our men longer to order than us. We started out with bread and salads. I ordered the lobster fondue salmon with seasonal pilaf. My sister ordered the Chilean sea bass with southwest street corn. Our husbands ordered steaks with loaded baked potatoes and steamed broccoli.
The salads were fantastic and when the food came it looked every bit as good as it sounded. We had finally found the great food we have been looking for. It was absolutely delicious. We spent $260 after the tip for the four of us, and it was well worth it.
In short the service was top notch and the food was exactly what we were looking for. We will defiantly be going back.
This is what is normal for a Friday in my life, except usually Aaron and I are alone on our dates.
