Ah, Saturday...

If you read my blog you know that I keep talking about Saturdays. A good deal of posts are about that blessed day of the week.

Days in the week I like most:

Monday.
Why ? - are you wondering. Is that I like so much to work outside that I'm happy to go back to the stress of getting ready in the morning, do lunch boxes, yell at the children to be ready and fly off the door so we will not be late ? No. It's because it's a new beginning and I feel the hope of being better this time.

Wednesday.
Ah, it's the middle of the week, such a good time, when I go home in the end of the day I know that the following day will be so close to the weekend.

Friday
Ah, Friday!... The day after is Saturday, I will not go to work, I will be home with my family, I will delight myself with the pleasure that is to stay at home. I will... Yes, all the world will be in my reach when it's Saturday because I will not go to work.
And I wonder and dream and plan...As if would be no end for Saturday.

Saturday
At last ! At last ! Ah, blessed day !
In the early morning I will get up and spend a good time flying the internet, I will be on Flickr a good deal of time, I will spy what is going on in Facebook and if I can I will even go to Pinterest.
Then I will get ready for the day. Oh, the endless possibilities that lie ahead. Not to be outside, mind you, I am outside my home all week long, Saturday is the day to celebrate domesticity, to be happy at home and pretend I am a stay at home woman. And I am, at least for this day and next one.

Sunday
It's the truly blessed day. Day to go to Mass and not to work much in the house because it's rest day, Our Lord's day. I can just stay in the sofa and read, watch movies - notice the plural, movies. Or series.
Life is good.
The problem is that the day after I must go back to work and that part is not so good - even if that work is good but not so much good as staying at home.
Never mind, Monday is good to make plans and try to be better - a week at a time.

The bliss of Saturdays

There's a thing on Saturdays that make me feel happy.

I work full time and even if it's a good, peaceful job, it doesn't compare to being at home. To be a stay at home woman is the dream of my life - well, one of them.

Most of my dreams have come true: to grow up and being a wife and mother, to have my own grown up home (being married) are some of my dreams and truly the most important ones.
But living here it means to work full time and I did.Not because what the others would say if I didn't, it's just a normal thing that grows with us and it's so normal as going to school.

But  don't want it anymore. I had enough. So I dream on having an earlier retirement. This moment it looks like to wanting the moon but I will not despair because one of these days ( years) it will  come a law that will allow me to retire before the extreme date of retirement. It must be !

Meanwhile I play the full time housewife on Saturdays and Sundays and on holidays. I even can have a free day each month providing I do those hours through the month. Ah, on those days I do play house.

Today is Saturday and I can't stop dreaming about all those chores I will do in the house.
I can already feel the smell of those clothes freshly ironed, the light of the morning sun through the kitchen window and the voice of my children waking up happy because it's not school day and they can stay at home - like their mother, they like to stay at home.

The blessing of having a house and being able of giving thanks for it.
Thanks God for everything He gives us.

Recovering

Thursday was a whole day of recovering of my strong cold so not much work at home done either. Oh, well, never mind, tomorrow is another day and teh weekend is approaching - which makes me feel better already.

Not much work today

No work today at home, other than making dinner. I have been all day long in pain with a strong cold so when I arrived at home, at last, after doing some errands when I finished work, I just wanted to dive in my sofa and rest. So, after making dinner, no work today. At all.

Is this a busy mom?!

Too Busy for Family?

It’s 6 a.m. You begin your day with two cups of coffee, feed the kids, and grab a granola bar as you run out the door to meet the school bus. Then you make a mad rush to do errands. By 10 a.m., your blood sugar is dropping so you stop by 7-11 and grab a high caffeine drink ( never! ) and a couple of cookies (maybe). Then it is home to do laundry and clean up from the morning rush. You have a meeting at the school and the dog needs to be seen at the vet so you run by the fast food drive through, grab a burger and fries (you are really hungry now) and a Coke. The guy in the car in back of you cuts you off and you scream out your window—Jerk! (I would never do that, I just wave and smile as my grandmother used to make when she drived. This makes them crazy!)Back home to meet the kids and start thinking dinner. As you meet the kids at the bus, taxi mom begins her route. ( Well this I what I do all day long) Dinner is out because one kid has soccer, the other has ballet, and the other is in a school play; no one will be home at the same time. ( In the evening we are all at home) You decide to grab pizza on the way home because you haven’t had time to prepare dinner. Everyone eats whenever they are finished with schedules. Homework help is given and then the kids get ready for bed. At 10 p.m., you flop down on the couch exhausted and grab a bowl of ice cream to relax a minute. Your husband asks you a question and you snap at him.( This is bad!) He wants time with you, but you are tired and just realized you need to throw in a load of laundry and pay a few bills. Finally, around 1 a.m. (around 1 am?! ), you crawl into bed and set the alarm for 6 a.m.What’s wrong with this picture? ( A lot! )

The red sentences are my comments .
More at http://blogs.cbn.com/familymatters/archive/2010/10/07/too-busy-for-family.aspx

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Mind that this mother pictured here it’s not an working outside mother and, even so, she is too stressed to give some time of her to her husband and goes to bed in the a.m.!

I wake up at 6 am. I wash and dress and then I wake up my big girl. Then I empty the washing machine ( the dishes washing machine, not the clothes) and iron two shirts or any similar amount of clothes while I wait that my girl is ready. When she is I take her by car to the station so she can take the train to the university. She does that everyday and everybody in the several universities here do the same. I take her by car because I don’t want she goes on foot alone in the dark at that early hour in an empty street to take the bus to the station. We live in a very good and safe place but even so, we never know.

I come back home. Wake up the other 3 girls. While they wash,dress and have breakfast, I prepare their mid morning and mid afternoon snacks – lunch is made by the school.

We enter the car and after dropping each one in each school and taking my husband to his work, I go to work and there I stay till the end of the afternoon, some times till the evening.

Because the two middle girls haven’t the same class time everyday, some days they don’t go in the morning so, because I must have a compulsive hour rest around 1 pm, I run home and take them to their respective school.

When it’s only the nº2 that needs a lift, being a teenager, I let her go by bus.
Usually, she comes back home by bus and so does the older one – in the end of the day. It’s very safe at that hour with lots of cars and people of several ages going around. Meanwhile I went to pick girl nº3 and 4.

If there is a day that the big ones come home earlier, they pick the little one.

Twice a week, after ending my work day – outside working day, I mean – and after picking the younger ones, and taking my husband from his work and taking him home, I go to my mother to stay a bit with her and, on the way, to do some shopping.

Arriving home,  exhausted, I put the shopping in places – sometimes the big ones help me, if they arrived already, and I put the laundry to wash. Later on I need to put the clothes on the line and on the day after take it out of the line, fold and put away - in the morning or in the afternoon, depending on the season and weather.

All the other chores? Hoovering, dusting, washing the floors, cleaning, etc. ? I find some little spaces between arriving home and going out again in the next morning. Most things are made on Saturday. Some little things on Sunday, not much, because it’s the Lord’s Day. We go to Mass.

Meals? My husband makes them to ease my load.

I never go to bed late, otherwise I would be crazy.

Now you are asking: why this woman works outside her home? Why doesn’t she stays at home as she should ? For the money, quite a nice income to a big family.

But I dream about staying at home. One day, God willing, I will be a stay at home woman!

Image from http://www.millan.net/

Computerless days and staying at home

My computor is back home. Also one of my girl’s computor. The problem is our internet is still off. She doesn’t mind because the main interest for her – computor speaking – is to play Sims after a long day at school – and after her homework is done.
We also have my oldest girl computor but the internet is general, for all our house so, nothing.
I’m writing elsewhere but I can’t post my new pictures, even if I can now download them to my computor.
But the truth is I can’t wait no longer without posting something. The solution is to go to my Flickr account – way too in need of updating – and post some old ones. Sorry for the recicling.

Anyway.
The weather here is very much to my liking: a bit cold, raining cats and dogs and foggy when is not raining. Maybe you don’t like it but I do. I feel happy and relaxed.
I even liked Monday when the wind was so strong that one roof at my 9 yo girl’s school went out. The television went there to put it in the news and all. The good thing was my girl mot being there when it hapenned. It was just before she went to school. But she thought it was a big fun to have the reporters there.
Something similar happened in the school where my brother is a teacher but there the pupils are older, all them teenagers.

This is a nice time. Everyday, after I go home more death then alive after working all day long, car pooling and shopping and after taking care of dinner and eating it, I seat in my sofa and make my crochet with that lovely burgundy wool. It’s growing slowly because I’m always outside my home, which brings me a lot of frustration.

Let’s hope for better days.
Tomorow, for instance, I will take the day off work because I worked enough hours to take a day off. Oh, hapiness.

I will, after taking some of my girls to school, be back home to do a lot of homemaking.
And even maybe baking.

I think I’ll have my apron on all day long.

Ah! The joy of staying at home.
I can’t wait for tomorow.

It's saturday

I've been away from the blogosphere and I miss so all those beautiful blogs I know. The problem has been so much work I have outside of my home plus the fact that I'm a taxi mother, always taking my children from a place to another. In the end of the day there's no time for anything else.
The good thing is, when my husband is not traveling, he makes the dinner and let me just collapse on the couch. That is the best time of the day, being at home with my husband and children.

Talking about traveling. My husband went to a place in the middle of the country and brought us some biscuits and cookies traditional to that place.
See it here.

It was much apreciated. He also brought us a jar of pumpkin and pine nuts jam.

Can you see the little nuts here?

Ooooh!... All good things.



Today, because it's saturday, I'm in my home all happy doing homemaking and enjoying my home and the company of my children and husband.
My next chore is to make some soup. I think I will make spinach soup.
See here the last one I made: broccoli with a little bit of carrot - most portuguese soups take potatoes and carrots.



I hope to come back later on to update on my saturday adventures - or maybe tomorow.

Stay-at-Home Mom Worth Nearly $117,000 a Year

Study: Stay-at-Home Mom Worth Nearly $117,000 a Year
Thursday, May 08, 2008

BOSTON — If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars rather than personal satisfaction and unconditional love, she'd rake in a nifty sum of nearly $117,000 a year.

More at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354638,00.html