26,081

That's the number of steps I took today all before I even sat down at the dinner table. The average woman in this country takes about 5,200 steps per day. Often times higher body weights yield lower daily step counts. My goal is to try to walk the recommended 10,000 steps a day every day this week.

Today started as an ordinary day - I decided to go for a walk with Daniel in the stroller after dropping the kids off at school. I walk a few hundred steps just getting the kids out the door in the morning! Daniel and I walked almost 2 miles. When we got home, Keith was feeling bored and wanted to go to Target for a few things we've been needing to get, so off we went. He felt so good walking around, that we walked for nearly 45 minutes, mostly just lapping the store.

Then after picking up the kids from school and doing basic housecleaning activities, I noticed the lawn needed some trimming. It really hurt hubby's pride to see me mow the lawn (he's still not cleared for that type of activity).

After mowing the lawn and other basic lawn work, I needed to adjust the pool chemicals.

Then it was time to make dinner, and toss in a load of laundry.

Yikes - how on Earth do other mom's do all this? Seriously? How do moms do the whole "take care of the house and family" thing, and juggle extracurricular activities? Seriously? I don't feel any ill-will toward these super-moms, I just want an ounce of their time management and energy!

I'm blessed that Keith is home with us more than usual right now while he is recovering from his surgery. However, for the next 9 months, it will most likely be just me and the kids. Because we knew that we wouldn't be living in the same house while he completes his time in the Coast Guard a few hours away, we began to jokingly call this year, "survival year". Meaning we are not taking on any extra activities, we are just going to work on keeping our family afloat while we financially manage two house holds and I act as a single parent.

I'm so blessed to have flexible kids that are loving the fact that we are spending time together as a family doing things together for ourselves and our home and occasionally for our church, instead of racing to individual activities. And today as I walked 9.03 miles between 6am and 6pm today, I realized that sometimes it's about the individual sacrifices we make for our family, that will hopefully leave a lasting impression on the kids teaching them to appreciate what we have and not long for more. Perhaps the exhaustion from being too active today has made me a bit philosophical.