A Day In Our Life | July 2019

6:45 am: Matt arrives home and I head to the gym next! While I workout Matt gets ready for the day and gets the kids to the morning finish line (shoes on, bags packed, breakfast cleaned up, lather everyone in sunscreen, etc.).7:45 am: I arrive home from the gym, shower and get ready for the day. Depending on calendars, sometimes Matt will take the kids to daycare so I can head straight to work after I’m ready. However, most of the time I do drop-off and he does pick-up. Matt either heads straight to his office, a breakfast meeting, the courthouse or Little Spoon (the coffee shop downstairs where he can tackle work without office interruptions). 

8: 30 am: I am out the door either for the office or to drop the kids off to daycare. On the way to school we say our morning prayers, sing our favorite song (right now it’s You Need to Calm Down by Taylor Swift) and recently I’ve been taping notecards to the back of the front seats for the kids to practice reading letters and numbers (we’re working on phone numbers right now with Caroline). We arrive to daycare in 7-10 minutes and Caroline and I walk Thomas to class to drop him off, then we head to her class down the hall. 

8:45 am: I head to the office. 

The Work Day

Matt’s work day is completely and insanely different every single day. His calendar gives me anxiety when I look at it because he is often fully booked (sometimes even double booked) with meetings (client, marketing, vendor, admin, staff, etc.), new client consultations, court or networking with referral sources. His role has evolved quite a bit in the firm as Marcellino & Tyson has continued to grow significantly over the past year and I am so proud of him and the firm! Despite the craziness of his schedule, he usually calls me to check in while driving to or from a meeting, or will send me a text or two throughout the day to say hi. 

My work day is a little more predictable but still varies from day to day. I am a Business Development Manager for a law firm. I’ve been with my new firm for almost 8 months now and it’s been a huge adjustment going from a mid-size regional law firm of 140 attorneys and 7 offices to a firm of 900 attorneys across 27 offices coast to coast. My Marketing & Business Development team is huge and I’ve taken on several brand new practice areas so there’s been a significant learning curve, but I am finally feeling adjusted and have built so many new relationships. In my role, I support 4 Practice Area Leaders with all things business development. This includes client targeting and expansion, identifying new business opportunities, monitoring industry trends, developing business proposals and targeted marketing materials, business plan development, managing practice area budgets, planning events, facilitating sponsorships, coaching and lots more. My teams are spread out across all of the offices so I spend most of my day on the phone or in front of my computer. 

Evening Routine

4:45 – 5 pm: Our evenings are a little different depending on the day. Sometimes I head to daycare to pick up the kids or I’ll go straight home, depending on whether or not Matt can pick up and what day of the week it is. As much as I love picking up the kids and watching them sprint across the playground together and leap into my arms, I’ve found that if I can beat them home and start dinner, the evening is a little less whiny and we can eat as a family (our kids arrive home ravenous).

6 – 6:15 pm: Kids arrive home and dinner is ready. Sometimes we eat as a family. Sometimes the kids eat at the kitchen island and Matt and I eat outside together later. Sometimes dinner is homemade. Sometimes it’s cereal, eggs, pancakes, lunchables or Chick-fil-A. If dinner is not ready, I’ll tell the kids to go take their showers while I get it ready. It has been a huge game changer now that they can shower themselves! We usually have to regulate the water temperature on the front end and do a quick inspection to make sure they got the soap out of their hair at the end, but otherwise they are good to shower on their own now

Dinners

Since each night is different, I’m going to break our dinners out by day. Again, this is all subject to change on a daily basis!

• Monday: I try to serve a crockpot meal (that I’ve prepared before leaving for work that morning) that can be ready when we arrive home so we can all eat together. I also make sure to double the recipe to squeeze another dinner later in the week out of it. Our go to crockpot meals are Greek Chicken Bowls or Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Sweet Potatoes.
• Tuesday: We have swim lessons so I pick up the kids and take them to AquaTots and Matt meets us there. Then after their lesson the kids always beg to eat dinner a few doors down at Fresh Chef. We say yes 40-50% of the time, otherwise Tuesday nights are dubbed “Lunchable Night” for the kids and Matt and I will eat leftovers from Monday. 
• Wednesday: Matt usually hosts a business or divorce workshop after hours in his office so I pick up the kids and make them something super easy — spaghetti, chicken nuggets, pizza, hotdogs or cereal are my go tos. 
• Thursday: Matt grabs the kids from daycare and I’ll make an easy family meal — usually tacos or breakfast.
• Friday: We either pick up the kids and go somewhere fun for dinner or we order takeout and relax in our backyard as a family. 

The Hall Pass (a year later): I am happy to report that Matt and I are still making the Hall Pass work most weeks! There are definitely weeks this doesn’t happen, but we do try not to let this slip off our radar as much as possible. Matt usually uses his hall pass night to meet a friend after work for pizza and trivia or he’ll come home and lock himself in our room and continue to work while I tackle dinner, bath and bedtime with the kids. I usually use my night for Supper Club once a month, meeting a girlfriend for dinner or most of the time I will come home and lock myself in our room and blog or take a long bath and wash/blow dry my hair. Not only is it nice to have a night to ourselves, it’s also nice to have a night where we get the kids all to ourselves too. Some weeks we combine our Hall Pass nights and instead go on a date night.

7:00 pm: Kids take showers if they haven’t already.

7:30 pm: Coax the kids upstairs to begin the marathon bedtime routine — usually a few board games, teeth brushed, pick outfits out for the next day, etc. Matt usually spearheads the beginning of the process while I clean up the kitchen from dinner, prepare our lunches for the next day, flip a load of laundry (if we’re out of our workout wear) prepare the coffee, etc. 

8 pm: Join the chaos upstairs, detangle and braid Caroline’s hair for bedtime and the kids pick out a few books. Matt and I swap back and forth on who reads to who each night. Say prayers. The kids will then desperately need to ask all the questions about life, the world, anything to avoid going to bed. Then we pop into the other room for a quick hug and kiss goodnight. 

8:30 pm: Matt and I do a quick house pick up and then jump in bed (or sometimes I’ll take a bath), fire up our laptops and turn on the TV. It’s not the ideal bedtime routine but Matt can usually catch up on 2-3 hours of work (responding to emails, drafting agreements, entering time, etc.) and I usually write a blog post.

10:30 pm: TV off. I usually turn a podcast on to fall asleep to and Matt will stay up a little later to finish up whatever he’s working on.