One weekend:
Saturday:
Extended morning cuddle time.
DH and DC1 go grocery shopping: 8-9:45
DH takes DC1 to robotics (last Saturday before tournament, DH is there because the last two times DC1 went by hirself we got complaints from the teacher about DC1 wandering around): 10-4
I take DC2 out for lunch: 11am-whenever
Kids chores (I help with workbooks) and homework
I do so much laundry and dishes (kids fold their own clothing– usually DH joins too but I did his stuff while he was at robotics) and made a bunch of food (start beet salad, freeze the rocky road liquid that DC2 and DH made the previous night).
Finished and scheduled a bunch of blog posts.
DC2 and DH watch Paddington Bear in preparation for seeing Paddington 2 in theaters. It is too scary for DC2 and we spend the next few nights with hir complaining about being too scared to sleep. Paddington 2 is nixed.
Sunday:
Extended morning cuddle time.
DH does online gaming with friends (I help kids with chores and putter with other chores): 9-12
DH helps my students with a tricky programming problem: 12-1
I finish making beet salad and make tuna noodle casserole.
DH and DC2 make angel food muffins with the eggwhites leftover from the ice cream we made Friday/Saturday.
Did a bunch of financial/family chores (2018 IRAs, ordered a book from the library for DC1, emailed about getting on the middle school math practice mailing list, etc. I had a list of about 9 things that needed to get done sometime that weekend and worked on them in between answering math questions.)
DH and I kiss a bunch.
Cranked through some work emails in preparation for Monday.
Listened to a bunch of 1960s and 1970s songs and sang and danced. Taught the kids the mashed potato and a few arm moves from the 1970s (that I learned in kindergarten in California…) DC1 showed us hir preferred hopping dance move. DC2 has an impressive group of dance moves. I realize that I really need to wear a sports bra if I’m going to twist like we did last summer.
Help my sister with some activism stuff.
I just cannot schedule weekends. It makes me really unhappy to have them scheduled. I could be getting more work done, and before kids I worked 6 days a week, but I have a really hard time doing that now. DC2 especially is really good at interrupting me when I’m trying to get something done that requires thinking. I really enjoy unstructured weekends.
How do you deal with weekends? Feel free to link up to your previous weekend scheduling posts if applicable.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
February 14, 2018 at 7:32 am
I prefer the amount of structure you have. Planning down to the hour exhausts me, and I rarely stick to it anyway. Plus if you’re going to plan every hour, then you end up having to make rigid schedules for everyone in the family. I don’t want to be responsible for their happiness. I also need unstructured time to recuperate from my weeks. Unfortunately I’m at the stage of life where I need to plan to do work on the weekends, and have exactly the problem you describe with my daughter interrupting me. I also feel like having a general idea of what I want/need to do ensures I get most of it done and gets me out of the House. I really wish I didn’t have to work weekends though.
February 14, 2018 at 11:33 am
I wish I were better at getting myself to work on weekends, but task switching is so hard and I have a hard time fighting the “I just don’t want to”.
February 14, 2018 at 8:49 am
This is is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, I may write a post. We definitely schedule our weekends, specifically scheduling family social events, time with friends, and date nights. We also have scheduled workouts: my husband plays tennis in a league, and we both do Orange Theory (a major highlight) both days. We try to host a dinner with a school family at least once a month (a dinner usually), and we scout out concerts months in advance we want to see, and also schedule Sat night couple friend events–which means we schedule a babysitter in advance too. We also schedule playdates, our son has his beloved coding one day, and we go grocery shopping so we can plan our meals. That said, not every single minute is planned because that would be too much. We do stuff on the fly sometimes, like see a movie. Like this weekend, we’re seeing “Black Panther”.
I think it depends on preferences for kids and parents. We’re kind of a rigid family who enjoys having things planned, so this is more our style… :)
February 14, 2018 at 11:37 am
Definitely write a post!
Usually DC1 has math circle on Saturdays instead of robotics. We don’t schedule playdates, but DC1 often has one– we’re generally the schedulee rather than the scheduler and if zie went to the other kid’s house last time, we’ll suggest our place this time. (Though if we had to say no last time because we were already scheduled, we’ll ask next.)
Black Panther looks SO AWESOME!!! But I think DH and DC1 are going to wait because it’s going to be packed this weekend if it isn’t already sold out. (I have so many students who already bought tickets for this weekend and preordered the sound track. I haven’t seen anything like this excitement since the second harry potter.)
DH and I have loose plans to finish taxes this weekend (Etrade 1099s should drop tomorrow!)
February 14, 2018 at 6:13 pm
Still some seats for the early bird showing, but even those have seats already purchased!
February 14, 2018 at 9:35 am
I like SOME but not overly rigid scheduling. Our last weekend was pretty good.
Saturday morning swim at 10:45, Sprouts run at 11:30, home for lunch at 12:30. After a leisurely lunch, ze falls apart because TIRED so it’s naptime. Ze spends 12:45-3 pm not napping, periodically asking for things to help zir nap, and ultimately only gets a few minutes of sleep but sometimes naps just don’t happen. I’m laying down the whole time. Ze and Pic played some board games and planned to watch a little tv. I come join them and we go to the library for a couple hours. Home for dinner.
Sunday was a grumpy morning so I took over and sent PiC to work and the gym as planned. JB and I walk Seamus together, do some chores, do some kid yoga, read, play with puzzles, read books, play more puzzles, then lunch together when PiC comes home. I can’t remember what we did in the evening though. It was good enough to not be memorable.
I don’t like having more than one regular weekly thing scheduled on the weekends that makes it hard to add socializing if we want to do any.
February 14, 2018 at 11:39 am
We’re generally pretty easy to do pick-up socializing with. :) So long as it isn’t for DC1 during math circle.
February 14, 2018 at 9:56 am
That sounds like a nice weekend! I don’t have to schedule in other’s activities on weekends, and for that I’m thankful. For me weekends usually include grocery shopping, trying out new recipes, more “exciting” locations for dog walks that involve a short drive, and time at the barn with the horses. Weekend evenings are usually solitary time of reading or watching streaming TV and knitting. I’ve tried cultivating friends who have weekend evenings free and haven’t had much success to date; I may step up my efforts again, but for now I’ve learned to enjoy weekends solo.
February 14, 2018 at 11:41 am
We do most of our chores on the weekend and not during the year. Back when we were in paradise we did a lot of exploring, and that was fun. Around here there are city suburbs we haven’t explored, but they’re not that different from each other.
February 14, 2018 at 10:01 am
We have a routine which I guess looks a lot like a schedule, but we’ll deviate from the routine for special events, and it doesn’t fill the entire weekend, anyway. The kids have gymnastics on Saturday morning, and my husband goes for a run while I take them to that. I have a friend there most weeks (her daughter is in my daughter’s class, and we became friends) and this is also my crochet time, so I have actually come to like this part of the routine, especially now that the Y upgrading the seating in the waiting area! Saturdays are my husband’s long run days, so sometimes he’s gone for more than 2 hours. He always gets at least one load of laundry in before he leaves, and I hang it up and start the next load when we get back from gymnastics. On Sunday mornings, I get to sleep in (usually to about 8 at the latest) and then after breakfast I take my pot of tea into the office and spend an hour or two on my own projects (mostly writing or publishing company things).
Our routine/schedule is done before lunch each day, which leaves a lot of open hours. Sometimes we have a lot of other scheduled things: usually things like kid birthday parties, but occasionally one of the adults has an event on the weekend. There are other chores to get done (more laundry- 5 loads/week!, groceries, etc). We generally try to do something fun together as a family, mostly because otherwise the grown ups can easily fill the weekend with chores and we find that leaves us feeling a bit sad on Sunday night. My husband and I sit down with beers on Friday night and write our to do list (noting scheduled events) and decide what fun thing we might do and when.
I know our routine would be too structured for some people, but it works for us and unless there are too many kid events, I usually get some time to read or nap in my hammock and/or say yes to a kid-directed project or two. One of the best things about the kids getting older is that birthday parties are smaller, so our kids get invited to a more manageable number of them!
As I struggle a bit to settle into a new work week routine with my new job, I’ve realized how much I like have a routine, as long as it doesn’t fill all my time. It is like a nice sturdy structure I can hang the fun stuff on and that makes sure the important things get done without me having to think about them that much.
February 14, 2018 at 11:45 am
I send DH out to do the things that involve socializing mostly because he works from home and needs more adult interaction whereas I need way less interaction with anybody! There are definitely a lot fewer birthday parties now that the kids are older! Our gift closet is starting to get too full! (Though we did send a book today for the valentine’s day book exchange, and DC2 did go to a birthday party last weekend, so there’s still some movement out of it, just not enough to keep up with the inflow.)
When I’ve not been working, I create structure. My work weeks are so very structured that I prefer not having to pay attention to the clock on the weekends.
February 14, 2018 at 10:10 am
We schedule theater events well in advance (and symphony and opera for my wife), but mostly my weekends are unscheduled—when I’m teaching, that usually means 15 hours of grading on Sat and another 15 hours on Sunday.
February 14, 2018 at 11:47 am
The kids used to go to the ballet more, but this year they just did nutcracker.
February 14, 2018 at 1:28 pm
That much grading sounds horrific. Every weekend? What do you teach? I have a lot of grading too but am finding ways to fit it into my work day, but I teach high school and don’t have to do research. I’m also doing a lot more peer grading these days so as not to take up weekend time.
February 14, 2018 at 9:14 pm
I’m teaching “Applied Electronics for Bioengineers”. I have a class of 85 students, with 3.25 hours of lecture and two lab sections (another 3.17 hours each, though more like 4.5 hours with the time to set up and pack up the lab each time—the lab equipment all is stored in tubs in my office). I have one TA this year (first time for this course!) and 4 undergrad group tutors. The TA does the 9 hours in lab with me and about another 11 hours a week of grading. The group tutors each do about 4.5 hours in the lab, though one has done a couple of extra make-up sessions and one does a weekly 1-hour discussion group.
Grading the 10-page design reports every two weeks is what takes all the time—I get about 44 of them to grade. On “off” weekends, I just grade quizzes and a little homework—maybe 10 hours over the weekend. I could do some of it during the week, but I’ve generally got a lot of office hours (minimum of 3 hours a week, and usually more like 5 with all the students whose schedules conflict with my scheduled hours), committee meetings (undergraduate directors’ meeting, Committee on Courses of Instruction, and departmental meeting), paperwork, and piles of e-mail to process.
February 14, 2018 at 11:47 am
I use a to-do list instead of a schedule. DH works a full day most Saturdays, so I have the day alone to do house and yard chores, run errands, and – very rarely – just goof off. I find it hard to just goof off! (border collie type) Unless I have a girls’ day out planned with a friend.
Because DH works Saturdays, we rarely go out on Saturday nights. I am nearly always responsible for feeding us, 7 nights a week, which is a constant irritant since he goes by just as many food purveyors as I do. But because of my long-ass commute now, Saturdays and Sundays are the only nights I am remotely likely to Cook (even if I don’t want to) rather than just Assemble. Would much prefer to go out. This needs to be negotiated.
Sundays are our one regular day together. We always have some kind of chore to do, a thing I can’t do alone or a thing I can help him with. We do not do nearly enough “fun” stuff together to suit me. We are both really tired of driving by Sunday, and since in L.A. every damn thing you want to do requires driving, we tend to just veg out at home. One Sunday a month, we are trying to get to a social dance thing this year. When we invite friends over, it will be on Sundays.
February 14, 2018 at 4:23 pm
Negotiations sound like a good idea.
February 14, 2018 at 9:05 pm
Suggestion for something to do in LA without driving: explore the public transit system—there is one, and it is not as bad as most Los Angelenos think, if they think about it at all.
February 15, 2018 at 11:26 am
It would literally take me two hours to get from home to work or from home to downtown or from home to the beach using public transit. No.
February 14, 2018 at 12:02 pm
We don’t schedule, except we take the dog on a long hike in a park that is about 30 minutes away both mornings – the earlier we schedule this hike, the more productive our weekends are. This is scheduled because we meet up with others to hike. We run errands on the way home. I recently switched grocery stores and am trying to figure out a new plan that doesn’t have me going there on Sat/Sun when it is a total zoo. There really isn’t another option, and I can’t go early morning like your DH does because of the hiking.
If we don’t have social or plans to go see/do something, the rest of the day is luxuriously free, typically with chores and house projects mixed in. Laundry and cleaning primarily happens on the weekend. I cook a something yummy usually. Sometimes, we’ll go out to eat. Sometimes one or both of us will work, but I also have the “I just don’t want to” thing that is hard to overcome without a specific urgent task.
This weekend, we opted to start painting the bedroom around 3p on Sunday (5 p by the time we had paint in hand), sooo…. clearly had we planned better, we could have started that task much earlier…. but it was fine.
February 14, 2018 at 4:26 pm
It seems like 8-10 am is the time to do everything in the Bay Area if you hate crowds, except that hardly anything is open then! So hike or groceries but then by 10:30 everything is packed.
February 16, 2018 at 7:40 pm
Yes! We are rarely home from the hiking before 10… but we could make it directly to the grocery store a bit before 10, assuming we have our list. We only have one car, so we can’t divide and conquer easily.
February 14, 2018 at 1:27 pm
We also prefer very little structure, especially with little kids. Our eldest was going to gymnastics on Saturdays, but I talked my dad into taking her on Tuesday morning and then dropping her off late to preschool (has worked well in many senses — frees up our Saturdays, bonding time, and helps with her squirrely preschool behavior because she gets bored at school). Sometimes we go to church on Sunday mornings.
The only problem with such little structure is that we really do have to grocery shop. My husband had dorm duty the other week and didn’t grocery shop, and I didn’t get to it because I taught a science class on Saturday morning. It was enough for me to just get all our laundry done, which is my other major weekend thing.
We end up putting off a lot of cleaning to the weekend and then have to force ourselves to clean while hanging out with the kids. That’s a bummer.
Can I ask what was scary about Paddington? Or is DC1 just not into anything remotely scary? Our eldest won’t watch Moana because it’s too scary, but Nemo is somehow okay. We are quite sensitive about her media intake. We mostly watch Curious George, Daniel Tiger, and Super Why. Infuriatingly, her preschool shows netflix shows sometimes (grrrrr and currently not director so there’s really no one to complain too), and sometimes she ends up watching slightly scary things there and then telling me all about it or having those fears come out while she’s trying to fall asleep. I’ve talked with her teacher about her sensitivity, and that has helped a little but not much. We had a Frumious Bandersnatch poster on her wall (Alice in Wonderland) and have since she was born, and we just had to take it down because it’s now “too scary.”
February 14, 2018 at 1:30 pm
DC2 liked Moana. I don’t know what specifically was scary about Paddington, just that there were a lot of nightmares and not wanting to sleep for a few days.
It does sound like you’re ready for a preschool change!
February 14, 2018 at 6:37 pm
I am ready, but she’s not quite. I’m hoping being home with us for the summer makes the transition easier. We’ll see. We toured a school, and she said she liked it. I told her she’d have to leave her current school to go to the new one, and she was so sad. Since her class is small, she is really close to the other kids (there’s 6 kids total).
I keep meaning to schedule a play date with one of the kids. I have such a hard time reaching out and making friends in this town.
Interesting about Paddington. And interesting about what things scare kids and what things are totally fine to handle.
February 15, 2018 at 4:02 am
We have a general ‘routine’ – I work 4 days (M-Th) so I actually feel like my weekend starts on Thursday evening when I crack a glass of wine while cooking dinner. I often try to get to a yoga or barre class on Friday morning, then come back home and get the kids ready for school. This year my youngest has kindy so I have like 5 hours of child free time! ( tomorrow is my first day of this so I’m planning coffee post school drop off, a meeting with my running coach & then a leg wax). Friday night is frequently family movie night + pizza for dinner. Saturday morning I run & I may follow the run with a strength or yoga class. Usually done by 10am (earlier in winter when my older has sport on Saturday morning- which can involve big drives) then we try to do family fun activities on Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning my husband goes for a long bike ride & I take the kids to the pool for swim lessons followed by morning tea. Sunday afternoon one of us goes to do a click & collect grocery order plus picking out fresh fruit & veg.
We find we really (or rather I) need to be either at home by myself to do chores/work or out with kids. I go mental when I’m home with kids because I see things I want to do but can’t do them because kids…
February 15, 2018 at 12:30 pm
Sounds pretty nice!
February 15, 2018 at 12:28 pm
A couple of good things to call about today:
https://5calls.org/issue/americans-with-disabilities-act-ada
https://5calls.org/issue/action-against-gun-violence
February 16, 2018 at 3:15 pm
[…] Grumpy Rumblings prompted me to write about whether I prefer to schedule my time for the weekends as opposed to not scheduling. Over the years, we’ve definitely tried both approaches, but finally have come to the conclusion that we prefer to a more scheduled weekend. […]