I loved the long weekend! I got to play with my friends all weekend long!
He said
After having worked through part or all of the last few weekends, I was due for a weekend off. And, as luck would have it, that fell on the weekend that Family Day (today) gave us all a whole extra other day off! My weekend started precisely at 7:00pm Thursday night after my work day ended. Well, actually it didn’t really begin until after my workout at the gym after work in order to ensure I closed my daily rings, but more on that later. But after all that I was looking at four straight days off work, with three of them with Danielle and Emelia off with me too! It was a perfectly timed and much-needed respite from what has been a busy couple of months at work.
As I alluded to, the Close The Rings Challenge at work is still ongoing. I have (and am pretty proud of my success) managed to close the rings for both exercise and move goals three times each day for the entire month the Wellness Challenge has been on. In fact I have reached the maximum points I can in each of the three rings (Move, Exercise & Stand) every day of the month. With eight days left to go in the challenge, I am 138 points away from reaching my goal of Gold. At a daily average of 105 points scored, I should hit that goal in a day and a half which is great! And means I get the t-shirt too! I definitely feeling a bit lighter and better for it. It’s always a great answer to the post holiday season weight and bad habits I accumulate. Once the challenge is over, I will move to trying to achieve the goals I have throughout the challenge five of seven days of the week rather than all seven. It will be nice to have some off/lazy days to not stress about maximizing points.
The one thing I love most about the challenge this year is that it became more of a family affair. Nights I go to the gym after work, Danielle and Emelia meet me there and we all join in the exercise. Emelia especially is learning the importance of exercise and how to make it part of our daily lives. She went last week and took the course so she could start going with us upstairs to exercise to her own program rather than going off to play in the kids youth programs in the gym downstairs. It’s really good for her to see how important exercise is to staying healthy, but we like that she sees the gym as fun and loves to do the exercises too.
And the best thing about having this weekend off was the surprise unseasonable warmup that happened. The forecast heading into the weekend predicted temperatures of 12º Celsius and sun all weekend long. By the time Friday arrived, it was clear we were getting that and then some! By the time I had left my usual Friday morning hockey, the weather was already starting to warm up. But Saturday was like a beautiful spring day hitting 16º and taunting us to get outside and enjoy the weather. Thankfully, we picked the warmest weekend in some time to repaint the basement in the house. Now, mind you the warm weather did allow us to have the windows open to minimize the paint fumes and we did get outside in any moment we could. We even got the windows in the rest open wide open and freshened up the rest of the house.
And yes, we spent a good portion of the weekend working on painting the basement. Well, to be honest Danielle did, but as much as it sucked that the weather was so great, it made sense to get it done this weekend as she had three days without daycare and I was off for four straight days. Once I helped her get the room readied and she started cutting in, we were reminded how tedious and time consuming the basement playroom and bathroom was! It had been nine years since we painted that space readying it for Danielle to start the daycare, and in that time we forgot what a pain in the hindquarters this area of the house was!
But the good news is, as we work away at the post the room is all fresh with it’s fresh, new colour ready for the kids to check it out tomorrow. There’s a little bit of finishing touches to do here and there and next up is to the paint out all the trim in the basement to white to go with the new wall colour and freshen it up too. But that is something we can tackle here and there. Funny how we had that room near 90% complete from the reno we did to open our home for the daycare, and we will finally finish, finish it after the second coat of colour we’re adding to it… ten years after we started it.
As we close out was a wonderful Family Day long weekend for us, and the weather still has us convinced that Spring is right around the corner, I can’t help but think about what a great week that it was. And how these four straight days of getting to the gym, helping Danielle tackle the paint project in the basement, and not really sitting idle save for the evenings with Danielle on the couch, was the perfect remedy to the last few busy months. Who knew being busy would be the remedy for being busy?
She said
What an incredible, busy and productive weekend. As John has alluded to we took on the sizeable task of redoing the daycare space which was in dire need after almost nine years of use. I had been wanting to refresh the space for a while but needed some time to dedicate to it. With Family Day weekend upon us and John having the entire weekend off it was perfect timing. When this decision was made we had no idea what the weather was going to be but we had it planned and honestly it was the only time that was going to work.
Over the last few weeks we had been playing around with colours and finally decided on a crisp brighter green. We brought samples home to see the various greens in the space and decided on the colour. Once we had finished up at the Y with our workouts and Emelia’s swim we headed home to organize ourselves. As chance would have it Emelia’s besties came over to see if Emelia would like to play and with her settled in to a play date John and I ran over to Lowes to get the colour. With a sizeable sale on we managed to get the paint for 40% off which took a bit of the sting out of the costs of doing the job. John suggested we should get 3 full gallons to do the room, at first I thought he was picking up too much but thank goodness we got that much because it took over 2.5 gallons to do the massive job.
Once we were home and started working on the room I quickly remembered what a royal pain in the ass that basement is to paint – the cutting in alone took me four hours and half of the first gallon. It was very quickly becoming a realization that this job was going to take me more than a day to complete. I pushed through past dinner into the early evening and finally gave myself a solid break after Emelia went to bed.
The next morning after breakfast I was at it again. Emelia wanted to help but let’s be honest she’s 10 and she would help for a few hours here and there but thankfully her friends were around to keep her busy with play and enjoying the sunshine and mild temps. Yesterday I worked through to about 4:00 pm when I quit so we could take a break and take in some family time. We had planned to go visit Helen and Doug earlier in the day but the day got away from me. We did get there for a good visit later in the day and got to catch up with them. Once we got home John helped Emelia get ready for bed while I finished up the stairwell area of the basement.
All in all it took 2 solid days to transform the space but I love it! It is crisp, bright and playful without being too much. I cannot wait to show the kids and the parents the space tomorrow. We have some small final touches to take care of this week but other than repainting the trim and rebuilding the coat hook area we are about 90% there. Now let’s hope this 90% there doesn’t take forever to finally say 100% like so many other projects we have started around here.
With the basement mostly done today we spent Family Day together once again enjoying the sunshine. We got in a long good workout in at the Y as a family, got a visit in with Greg, Testza and Zoe and ended the night with Emelia’s gymnastics training. All in all a very busy day to cap a very busy weekend!