I used to think the worst thing to happen to a weekend would be no plans.

Now?

I pray for just one day for one day free from activities and schedules. And then I realize that my daughter is one-year-old. The schedules will only become exponentially busier.

I’ll be trying ducking and weaving through panic attacks in my future, but today I’m simply struggling to balance my family-faith-friends-work-volunteer balance. As you can understand, this is no easy feat!

Last weekend, I was constantly on the go. Looking back at my time – Friday through Sunday – I can isolate four, maybe five hours of quality time with Charlotte. … And that makes my heart ache. I find myself sneaking into her room to swoop her up for extra hugs and kisses.

In order to make up for missing out on the precious time offered on the weekends, I let dinner cook in the crockpot so I wouldn’t need to cook today. I designated all night as family night!

We all three enjoyed a meal AT the dinner table. This was huge for us! We rarely eat the same meal, let alone at the same time. Enforcing the family meal time isn’t a possibility with HOS’ career, but I’m happy to take advantage when I have the chance!

After dinner, we let Charlotte paint her first pumpkin! This was another example of cute ideas online that never turn out as expected in real life.

First, Charli decided to taste the paint and then spent a good five minutes gagging, coughing and spitting.

Second, painting MY pants turned out to be far more amusing than painting pumpkin.

Third, Charli wanted to actually paint. … With a brush! We now have some nice purple and blue splatter on the kitchen walls.

Most importantly, though, we had a happy baby girl covered in paint and smiles.

We ended the night with a bath, play time and reading.

Life isn’t going to be slowing down any time soon, so it’s up to me to take advantage of what little time we do have as a family. I guess that means more scheduling? 🙂

What do you do to take advantage of rare free time with your family?