Building a Routine • Week 2
Week one of my family’s routine-building challenge is in the books. Our goal was to get 5 exercise sessions in during the week. We did it! Did it play out like we planned it? Not at all.
We try to loosely plan our week out on Sunday evenings and so our strategy was to calendar the week’s exercises. The intent was to do all of these as a family. Here’s what the calendar looked like:
M, W, Th: Walk at 7pm
F: Climb at 4pm
Sa: Walk at 7pm
Here’s what actually happened:
M: It was real hot at 7pm so I went on a run later in the evening with my brother and Auni went on a walk earlier in the day.
W - We worked on painting the inside of our house after work (ICYMI we’ve been renovating our home for what seems like a decade). Auni did some exercising earlier in the day. I didn’t.
Th - I swung a kettlebell around and Auni rode the stationary bike.
F - Auni had been painting most of the day (at Penny University and at home) so we opted to skip climbing – until Emilia remembered we were gonna go and got sad that we’d rescheduled. So I took her and we had a good session at Alpine.
For whatever reason this is her go-to pose, even while climbing. Not sure how I feel about it.
Sa - went on another run with Spencer – he’s training for a 10k, I’m trying not to die. Nailed it. Auni rode the stationary bike some more.
Su - we finally went on a family walk - Ramona even towed my cousin’s dog, Mochi for a bit.
As you can see, everything went according to plan.
Here’s what worked this week and what didn’t:
What worked:
Putting something on the calendar meant exercising was more on our radar than a nebulous “we should do that more” thought.
Accountability - since we’re working on this together we did better making sure if we couldn’t do it together - we were at least finding some time on our own.
What didn’t work:
The routine part of this challenge is the hardest part - getting our exercise in at a regular time comes with the benefit of not having to put so much mental energy into planning out our week. Definitely didn’t succeed at exercising when we planned.
Involving the kids more - some days we got to the park or had activities for the kids to get out their energy, but other days we could’ve had more for them.
So what are we adding to our routine this week? I asked Auni the same question:
Good to know but not sure that answers my question.
So I guess I’ll make the call. Let’s cook a meal as a family. My grandma on my mom’s side helped put together a family cookbook some years ago and it has this ravioli recipe that looks pretty good.
Have a great week – let’s finish off August strong.