Hi, friends! How are things? I hope you are having a good start to your week. And if you’re not, maybe you can turn it around somehow. I bet you can. 🙂

This blog post is a light one, but it’s one that I thought you may enjoy, because whenever I ask for requests for topics, many of you want to hear all about the little stuff. The regular. The routine.

Now I know I mention my daily and weekly routines here and there, and you may see me post about them on Instagram stories as well, but I wanted to share them here in one post. Let’s do it …

These are some of our regular daily and weekly routines

Friday night is sushi night

Every Friday, Brady and I pick up sushi from Whole Foods in the early afternoon after the gym, and then Dave and I eat sushi for dinner that night. I like to get the salmon and avocado roll or the spicy salmon roll, and Whole Foods sushi is actually really good for grocery store sushi. Having sushi every Friday (unless we are traveling or if we have visitors) makes things really easy for that last night of the week, when we are usually not in the mood to cook.

That way, we’re not always trying to decide what to get or do for dinner on Friday night too. (We make plenty of tough decisions throughout the week, and dinner doesn’t need to be one of them, you know?) Dave likes to have some ramen along with his sushi, and I like to have some miso soup along with mine. (I started eating warm miso soup with my cold sushi many years ago after I healed my hormones, because warm miso soup is something my acupuncturist always said was very healing for the insides.). Anywho, on Friday nights, Brady eats his regular dinner, of course, because he doesn’t do sushi yet. But he loves to play with the chopsticks.

I look forward to Friday night sushi night. It’s so simple. It’s so tasty. And since the spring, we’ve been eating this meal on our patio too quite often, which is a nice place to relax, while we look forward to the weekend ahead.

Sunday night is pizza night

Every Sunday, we have pizza and salad for dinner. When we lived in California, we had a brick pizza oven behind our house, and Dave loved to get out there and build his fire and make fresh home-made pies. We hosted so many parties where Dave cooked pizza for everyone too. And over the years of having that pizza oven, he got really good at it. We both miss those pies so much, and no, they cannot be recreated in a regular oven.

Even though we don’t have that pizza oven any longer, we still do pizza every single Sunday night without fail — once again, it’s another decision we don’t have to make, because it’s just a standing thing.

These days, in an effort to keep it easy again, we buy a Home Run Inn cheese frozen pizza with a pre-chopped sweet kale or sunflower salad (either from Sprouts or from Publix, because both stores carry both items), and we love the regularity of having that same meal every Sunday evening.

On Sundays, we usually finish up our chores, play and work, get showered and get in our pajamas before we all sit at the table and eat together, with Rudy in his seat as well. During our Sunday night meal, we talk about all the things coming up during the week, we talk about the weekend we just experienced, and we chill, while enjoying one of my (our) favorite foods — pizza. It’s a good routine.

Making time for our Saturday morning workouts

Dave and I each do a workout on Saturday morning, and we take turns doing our respective workouts. Yes, we also work out throughout the week too, but we’ve always made time for our Saturday morning movement for pretty much as long as we’ve been together. We don’t usually work out on Sundays at all, so that’s more of a slow morning.

These days, I have been trying to go to an early 8:30 a.m. class at Life Time (a 45-minute legs workout called Gluteus Maxout, if you want to be specific), and Dave stays home with Brady in the morning (the class starts the same time as the kiddo care opens, so it’s better if I leave Brady behind). Then, when I get home from class, I hang with Brady, while Dave gets on the Peloton bike we have in our playroom room, and he does a ride. Dave likes to do the hard 30-minute rides, and he does very well on the leaderboard — way better than me. 

I like that we both like to do a tough workout on Saturday morning, then take the rest of the weekend off. And I’m glad we have a schedule where we can both fit it in. Saturday mornings always include workouts unless we’re traveling or if we have visitors, and that’s just how it goes.

Sharing duties for Brady’s night-time routine

If you have kids, then you know that the night-time routine is typically a process. It’s a lot for one person to do for one kid, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like for multiple kiddos.

Because it’s a lot, Dave and I split it up nightly, and now that Dave is home most evenings, it goes like this: We eat dinner together. Then, Dave gives Brady a bath, brushes his teeth and gets him in his pajamas, while I clean up the dishes. Then, I get Brady’s milk ready (he still likes some warm whole milk before bed), and I read Brady’s stories to him in the rocking chair. After we read a few books, Dave comes in and sits with Brady for a bit in the chair before putting him in his bed.

It’s a tag team, and we each have our roles, which works out really nicely for us. During the week, I do more of the Brady duties during the day, because my schedule is more flexible, so it’s super nice that while Dave is around more he can at least split up the night-time stuff with me. And I love to read Brady his stories, and it’s something I hardly ever miss.

Sharing duties for Brady’s morning routine

I’m happy to say that I wake up before Brady, and I wake up using my alarm every day at 6:45 a.m. As soon as I get up, I snuggle Rudy (yes, he sleeps in our bed between us curled up), then I pull out my headphones and do my meditation sitting up in our bed (fun fact, I recently switched back to the Headspace app from the Calm app, and I’m enjoying the change). From there, I head down to the kitchen to get organized, turn on my tea kettle for my tea latte and get stuff set out for the gym, if I’m teaching or just going to work out that day. During this time, Dave (who is the first to rise in our house) gets Brady up, gets him changed and brings him down to me to take over.

Then, once I have Brady, we usually sit on the couch for a bit and he watches a show while I work, then we move to the table for breakfast together. I like that I have time to do my meditation and get situated before I have Brady responsibilities, and I’m thankful I have Dave around to assist with that. Once again, when Dave goes back into an office or starts to travel more, all of this will be switched up, but I like it how it is right now.

A few other daily and weekly routines …

• Sunday face mask. I do my Beautycounter Charcoal Mask every single Sunday evening without fail. I usually pair it with pajamas and a glass of cold white wine — and it’s just a regular thing I look forward to to end the weekend. When I used to put on this mask, Brady would be scared. But now he doesn’t mind it at all. It exfoliates. It detoxes. I like that I never have to recall the last time I used my mask, because I always know it was the previous Sunday night.
• Walks. Over the last year-and-a-half of having Dave work from home, we have truly enjoyed seeing him much more often and we tried to take advantage of it. We had gotten into a great routine of going for a walk every afternoon before dinner, which believe it or not, started out with Brady in the stroller, but now of course, Brady is big enough to walk the whole time or hitch a ride on one of our shoulders for a portion. However, it’s been far too hot for afternoon walks over the summer in Charlotte, so our walks went by the wayside the last three months or so. I hope we can bring those back when it cools down a bit. I feel like the hottest time of the day right now is when we’d normally walk, so it may be a while until we get back out there.
• Lunches out on Sundays. This post isn’t just about food, but food is a big part of our routine. We eat all of our meals at home, except for usually lunch on Sunday. We’ve been going out to lunch on Sundays for the last few months, which is something we always did in California before the lockdown too. In Charlotte, our go-to weekend lunch spot has been First Watch, but there are a couple other decent ones too. Once again, so far, the healthy lunch options here have not been as good as they were in the Bay Area, but that’s to be expected, and it’s not a big deal.
• Nightly TV wind-down time. Every night, after we put Brady to bed, Dave and I sit on the couch together. I usually work for a little bit, then close up shop, and we watch one episode of a series. Right now, we’re watching “Million Dollar Listing New York” and “Ted Lasso,” and we’ve made it through a lot of series in the last year or so, having both of us home every night. I’m not exactly obsessed with TV and it’s not a huge part of my life, but I sure don’t mind watching one show a night cuddled up, without having to think too much. However, every once in a while, I’ll take a break from work on the weekends when Brady is napping and catch up on my favorite trashy reality shows. That’s a real treat. In fact, I did that this past weekend and watched some of “The Hills: New Beginnings” on MTV, and it was awful, but in a really entertaining way. No shame for liking crappy TV.

And that concludes our very random list! Hope you enjoyed this simple one about our daily and weekly routines! See you soon. 🙂 

Other posts you may like …

• Ask-me-anything A Lady Goes West Advice Corner: third edition
• Specific improvements I’ve made in the last year for my health and life
• How to start meditating and why you should start

Questions of the day 

What’s a routine that you have each week?

What’s your favorite food?

What shows are you watching right now?