April Tisher is a mom to three kids in the house (ages 9, 13 & 15) plus a hubby working from home. Find out what a day in the quarantined life of April looks like!
MORNING
7:30 a.m. ➜ Wake up call from the dogs wanting to be fed – this is one of the perks of online schooling! During normal school days, my alarm clock goes off at 6 a.m. every day.
8 a.m. ➜ By now I have fed the dogs, let them out and made the coffee, which is the most important part of the day. Hubby gets up, grabs his coffee and heads up to his home office to hibernate for the day. Depending on the day, I may have a Zoom call for one of my volunteer positions. Or, one day a week I go pick up bags of food from the Food4Kids Backpack Program Warehouse and deliver them to schools that need them for students.
9 a.m. ➜ My third-grade daughter has a Zoom call every day with her class, so I make sure she is up, ready and on Zoom. Then I check my boys’ rooms to see that they have started their school day as well. This is the first time of the day I will tell them to stop watching “The Office”/YouTube/ESPN and get to work!
9:01 a.m. ➜ Someone needs my help with a schoolwork assignment and I will spend the next hour helping them. During “normal times,” I drive all three of the kids to school, so I start at 7:15 a.m. dropping off my elementary-schooler, then take the high-schooler by 8 a.m. and the middle-schooler by 9 a.m. It feels strange not to be in my car so much, but my gas bill has drastically dropped.
10 a.m. ➜ I ordered my groceries via the Walmart App yesterday, so I drive to pick them up. Note: my grocery bill has drastically increased since the stay at home order! After Walmart, I still go to Publix to get all the things I don’t get from Walmart. I love the order ahead option for the Publix Deli, so while this takes me about an hour to pick up and put everything away, this is still a time saver! My husband texts me 20 things for the grocery list while I am gone.
11:15 a.m. ➜ I’ve wiped the groceries down, put them away and wiped all the countertops down. I got back to check on the kids and their work. My daughter needs my help, so I spend another 45-60 minutes helping her finish her schoolwork for the day. I go check on the boys to tell them to stop watching The Office/ YouTube/ESPN again and do their schoolwork!
AFTERNOON
12:30 p.m. ➜ The dogs (we have two chocolate labs named Digger and Buzz) are starving and need to be fed again. I make myself a salad or sandwich and yell upstairs to everyone to see if they are ready for lunch. They come in shifts and run through the food like the Tasmanian devil.
1:30 p.m. ➜ Since my daughter has basically taken over my laptop, I have to wrestle her for it so I can log in and try to get some of my writing, advertising client or volunteer work done. It’s a good thing I can use my cell phone for a lot, but sometimes I need to work on my computer!
2:45 p.m. ➜ Forgot to take out something for dinner, so I grab some frozen chicken and put it in the sink to thaw. I also throw a load of clothes in the washer and remind my oldest teenager to come to unload the dishwasher (his job!)
3 p.m. ➜ This is when my marathon used to begin. With three very active kids, I spent my afternoons prior to COVID-19 driving them to dance lessons, football practice, basketball games, club meetings and the like. I really miss watching them do all the things they love. Instead, I take a bike ride with my daughter and some of the neighborhood kids. We have been doing a lot of bike riding since it doesn’t involve touching shared surfaces or close contact. Before I go, I tell the boys to stop playing video games, finish their schoolwork and get a workout!
4 p.m. ➜ After our ride, I come home to referee the boys working out in our gym in the garage. They challenge me to a burnout workout. I accept and can’t move my arms afterward. I explain that they have to share the garage space with their sister so she can do her ballet class with her dance teacher, so they go shoot hoops or play football.
4:30 p.m. ➜ I remind my teenager to unload the dishwasher again. My husband comes downstairs and is done with work for the day. I head outside to help with his current yard project. Since quarantine began, he has built an outdoor shower, laid pavers, painted the outside of our home and is now building a fence on one side of the yard. The rest of us have helped…some.
5:30 p.m. ➜ I start cooking dinner. We were gone for so many nights for games and practices before that it is nice to be home to cook and eat together so much. I still miss their extracurricular activities, though. I remind my teenager to come to unload the dishwasher again, he finally comes in and does it while I cook….and watches “The Office” while he does.
EVENING
7:15 p.m. ➜ Dinner is over and the kitchen is cleaned up. I run a plate of food to my mom’s house with my middle- schooler. She is a Registered Nurse at UF Health and works four 10-hour days, so I try to deliver her food whenever we have extra. We have been careful with exposure to her and that has been hard, so we don’t stay long. But, it is nice to see her for a little bit.
8 p.m. ➜ I send kids to the showers and sit down with my husband to discuss the day. Sometimes we all watch a movie together, play cards or go for a night swim.
9 p.m. ➜ It’s technically my daughter’s bedtime, but when I go to tuck her in, she will tell me I still need to check her math or help her finish something, so we do. Then I tuck her in.
10 p.m. ➜ The boys are usually in their rooms on FaceTime with their girlfriends/ friends or watching TV in the living room. I jump in a shower, I always shower before bed.
11 p.m. ➜ Bedtime
11:02 p.m. ➜ I forgot to put the clothes from the washer into the dryer, so I go do that. I end up folding the load in the dryer I forgot about yesterday.
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