This is Our Life

Sometimes I feel like our life is crazy trying to live our dream as artists. 

A lot of people ask me how do I find the time to do art and be a stay-home mom?

Well, I don't have a lot of time to do my art that's for sure, but I try to work on it at least once a day.

So here is kinda our schedule for a normal day:

Dustin's work schedule is not always the 9-5 sometimes it's 11-7 and anything in the between. But when he's not working at SeaWorld he's working on other art jobs at home.

I'm lucky most days, Dustin will get Thomas in the morning while I get ready for the day (yes I'm one lucky girl).

After I get ready I usually take Thomas out to do something because this kid goes crazy if he doesn't get out of the house at least once a day. Usually it's SeaWorld and we go see a show or 2 and about half the animals, some days I take him to Aquatica water park, or the park, the mall, the library, and some days this is when I do my grocery shopping. 

This works great a lot of the time because Dustin is working on art and it's hard to stay focus when Thomas is at home because we don't really have a studio that Dustin can work in. 

Then we come home, have lunch, I give him milk and rock him (this is when I read), then nap time.

THAT'S when I do art. 

If  I'm lucky I get 2 hours in, and that's it, so I have to work quickly.

After Thomas wakes up, he wants to sit on my lap and watch a movie while he is still waking up. That's when I do my blogging, editing pictures, research anything about photography and editing. 

After 15 minutes Thomas is ready to play, so I play with him, but he's also good at entertaining himself so this is when I will clean, and sometimes I try to lift weights and do workouts but that's usually a fail because he thinks it's a game. This is when I will do editing if he's playing by himself.

Usually before dinner I will take Thomas for a walk, then when I prepare dinner I will have him finish his movie while he drinks some juice. 

After dinner, if Dustin is home he will play and wrestle with Thomas, give him a bath, while I pick up and do dishes. 

Then read books, prayers, bedtime. If we are on schedule he's down by 8.

We finish picking up, and Dustin is back on the computer painting. 

This is when I would read, browse online, and relax. 

Recently though we started this thing where I would read to Dustin and he would listen while he was working on art. I love doing this because we used to read books together but we kinda stopped, and also I felt like I never had time with Dustin because he was always working. We always have Friday nights be our "date night" but I'm little selfish and I want more time with my husband. So this works great for me, I love it because we talk more and we discuss about the books we are reading. Right now we are on the 3rd Hunger Games book, I've already read them last year but since the movie came out I wanted to re-read them. Next book we are going to read is Timeline from Michael Crichton, again I have read that one before but I think Dustin will like it too. 

On Dustin's day off, sometimes we do something as a family, but most days I take Thomas out of the apartment the WHOLE day so Dustin can work. Thomas loves it, I get worn out by the end, trying to entertain an 18 month-old can be tiresome. We are looking forward to the future when we have a studio so it's easier for both Dustin and I

So what are your days like? How do you and your spouse cope with crazy life and find time for each other?


*A little side note, you know how we had a fire in our complex three weeks ago, well EXACTLY 2 weeks later, same time in the morning, 1:30 to be exact, there was another fire! This time the alarm woke up Dustin, and this time Dustin was the one that said we should get out when I was thinking it was probably a prank, well it wasn't, it was another fire. This time it was about 6 doors down from us, and below us instead of 2 doors down like last time.  I was more calm this time, while Dustin was getting our external drive so we wouldn't lose all our files, this round I smelt smoke quicker because we had to pass the apartment to get to the parking lot, but this fire was WAY smaller. There was only 1 fire truck instead of 3, and we were back in our apartment in half hour. I told Dustin if there is a third fire it's time to move. Now they are saying these fires have been on purpose so they are trying to find out whose doing them, because both apartments were vacant.