We have been in our home for a little more than one week now. I am struggling to find a routine. We don’t have to go anywhere, so it is easy to just stay home and watch the Olympics all day. We have done that for many days in a row and it’s time to get into a routine, a rhythm for our days. I think that is easier said than done. The girls and I were talking about this yesterday. At home in San Fran we didn’t seem to have trouble finding things to do, but here we can’t seem to come up with a plan for how to fill our day. Why is that? We came up with a few possible reasons:

• There was always someone from the neighborhood to play with, so that was an easy, fun activity to fill the day. We don’t have kids on our street, so when your only playmate is your sister…that doesn’t always sound like fun.
• Running errands took up some time, but it didn’t take all day since we had a car to get us there and back pretty quickly. Here we walk almost everywhere, so errands take time, effort and energy, which makes us less excited about doing them.
• The kids enjoy imaginative play, but they didn’t bring any of their “toys” with them, so that makes play more challenging. They only brought art supplies and their instruments. The youngest is wishing she brought a few more play toys with her.

I also think that part of our laziness is that because our days were so full at the beginning of our time here, we have gone to the complete opposite extreme and allowed our days to be slow and at times boring.

With school starting in just a few weeks, I feel the need to get our lives on a schedule and allow routine to reign once again. I am hopeful that this week is the beginning of that change. The oldest has started viola lessons with a great teacher, horse lessons will also begin this week and starting in September the youngest will begin an acting class at the local theatre school.

Hopefully we didn’t go from slow and almost boring to too busy.

**As I finished writing this post I read this. Maybe it’s ok that our recent days haven’t been full to the brim, with loads of activities. Exploring a new park, walking to the movies, watching the olympics in our PJ’s, we have enjoyed our slow syrupy days, and that’s just fine.**