Another week and, as usual, I’m glad it’s Friday. It was a productive (and largely enjoyable) week. But still, the relief and sense of expansive freedom provided by Friday evenings just can’t be replicated.
My (admittedly superficial) highlight of the week? We got Wordle in two tries. Our family celebration would rival any touchdown dance at the Superbowl.

Before I launch into my weekly recap, I want to, once again, offer a disclaimer. I don’t intend for people to feel obligated to read every word of these posts; skimming is expected/encouraged.
I regularly export the text from my blog, and these Friday summaries represent a family diary of sorts…which doesn’t necessarily translate into riveting reading for others.
Without further ado, the week that was:
FRIDAY |
My second Soup-and-Sandwich Oasis lunch for 2022 was wonderful. We had soup (carrot, squash, and lentil). We had a sandwich (tuna, tomato, cheese, garlic, and green onion on potato bread, grilled to perfection on a panini press). And then we each ate an Aero bar. And the tea, as always, was brewed to perfection.

Home in time to tackle work tasks and greet the kids.
We headed out to do some errands and promised the kids a playground. It started raining en route, but wonderfully the clouds parted and we got a favourite park – complete with ziplines – all to ourselves.
SATURDAY | This was, without a doubt, my ideal Saturday. If I had to repeat a Saturday, this would be the very type of Saturday I’d choose. It might sound boring, but I love “incidentally-productive puttering” and this day was full of that.
I woke up at 2:30 am (ugh) and fit in three hours of work in the office (amazing). I got back to sleep from 5:30-6:30 am and realized the best night to have disturbed sleep is Saturday morning because it is the only morning we don’t have a set/early schedule. I relaxed in bed until John took the kids on a walk.
While they were gone I did a quick grocery run and made a batch of muffins (these, always).
Levi hosted a friend for an impromptu playdate. Within seconds of this friend arriving they were playing chess on the couch. So cute! Meanwhile, John, Abby and I started planning stops on our summer trip to NYC/Boston!
We tackled more landscaping projects. Twice a year (spring/fall) our local sanitation department offers “big garbage” cleanup, so we took some items left from renovations to the curb.
After lunch we made a quick stop at my favourite thrift store. I know I’ve been going a lot recently, but…it’s fun. We spent $18 and got 5 items, all great finds that fill holes (literally, in the case of pants for Levi, and proverbially) in our wardrobes.
Home to clean the car (vacuum, scrub).
I spontaneously asked a friend if she could walk and she was available. We fit in a 6 km loop and I managed to get a great stack of books from the library while getting my new card activated. Notably, on this walk, my friend casually mentioned she was pretty sure she knew “The Knitter“. Alas, “The Knitter” does have a name and it is not, shockingly enough, “The Knitter“.
Home to do laundry.
Date-night* with John (he made a delicious supper), while the kids had a sleepover.
*The only lowlight of this Saturday was our movie selection; we watched The Batman and I hated it. I was expecting something akin to the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale movies, which I really enjoyed. This version was much grittier – dark and devoid of any redeeming qualities (to me). I kept waiting for it to get better (or be over; it was so much longer than I anticipated). I should have cut my losses and abandoned this movie within the first 10 minutes when I could sense it was not going to be my thing. Live and learn.
That one hiccup aside, this was my idea of a perfect Saturday. No pressure, no set plans, but with a nice balance of productive puttering.
SUNDAY | Church. No sign of “The Knitter,” but it was a wonderful service.
Weeks ago a friend mentioned an interest in having “fun friends – like the type that will go to concerts with you.” That same day I messaged her about a free concert series locally…and Sunday we went together.


While I still don’t love classical, the pianist was superb and I really enjoyed my time. I also walked to/from to fit in my daily km.

Book highlights with the kids. The Odd One Out was a very engaging hide-and-seek-style book and was our favourite of the week. Petal the Angry Cow had a bit of “rude sass” but the kids loved this so much I had to include it!
MONDAY |
It was my turn to host our small group discussing friendship. (I don’t actually belong to a book club; we’re just a group of women coming together to specifically discuss Jennie Allen’s book Find Your People.)
This week was all about vulnerability with close friends, and we ended up sharing some hard stuff in deeply personal ways.
I’ve had mixed feelings about this book (mostly because of how dissimilar I am from the very extroverted author), but this week was my favourite. It made me think of one of my favourite quotes:
To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. Timothy Keller
I feel known and loved by this little group of women (and hope they feel the same). It was just a very powerful experience.
I’m reading a book right now (This One Wild and Precious Life – Sarah Wilson) that classifies most relationships in our modern era as being “connection-lite” which the author terms as “the cheap, diet version of showing up to others and to life.” There is a place for casual friendships, of course, but “like the diet version of anything, it leaves us hungry for the real thing. You know, full-fat life.” Food for thought and I’m glad to be forming relationships with others that are deliciously “full-fat”.
Down to the office for hours of work, a walk, and then over an hour at a playground where the kids reveled in the sunshine, playing soccer and doing flips off the equipment.
Home for supper. There were lots of complaints – so. many. complaints – over an objectively delicious Ham, Lentil, and Vegetable soup and, for the record, one of Abby’s friends spontaneously came for supper and ate TWO BOWLS of said soup.

Reading with Levi. I love these moments. Watching him learn to read is like getting the front row seat to a magic show. His world is opening up more and more each day.
TUESDAY |
Back to that “big garbage” cleanup I mentioned (think old couches, desk chairs, books, empty paint cans). This happens each spring and fall and is…an event. For a week trucks and cars with trailers patrol neighbourhoods, looking for hidden gems. Tuesday morning on the way to school, I collected (spotted by John!) a like-new Herschel backpack from a neighbour’s pile. I can imagine some might find this odd/unsettling, but where I live it is 100% normal. To me, the only thing better than something thrifted is something free. I also wanted a backpack with a laptop sleeve. I’ve been using a bag (thrifted) for the last two years that I don’t love. It works, but I was thrilled to pass it on to another home and start using this more aesthetically pleasing (and functional) backpack!


In between work tasks, I did a 5 km run with John on the waterfront. We had a tough headwind on the way back, but it felt great. I tend to give myself layers of goals: run this far in this amount of time at this pace. This time my goal was to get to 5 km; given the wind, my time of 32:18 felt like a success.
Highlight of the day: coming home and tackling a fun work project with John. So satisfying.
Lunch and then I worked in our home office until supper. John took the kids to a local park and sent these pictures. They have a good life.


In other news: I sent “The Knitter” an e-mail introducing myself. This makes me seem more extroverted than I am. At worst I figured she would think I was crazy; at best, I’d make a new connection/friend. Life is short.
Supper was another gong show. I thought I would make the leftover soup experience more pleasant by offering a surprisingly-rare grilled cheese sandwich to accompany it. Somehow one child heard there was something “special” for supper, walked in the door, took a whiff, and thought they smelled equally rare, but more celebrated, souffle pancakes. This child then proceeded to wail and gnash teeth upon learning it was “only grilled cheese” which we have “all the time” (we do not have grilled cheese all the time, by the way; #realitydistortion). And all this fuss was before they learned the soup they disliked was also on the menu.
It ended up being fine and the soup was tolerated. Onward and upward.
WEDNESDAY |
Rain, so no walk to school.
With this extra time, Levi learned how to tie shoelaces. In like 10 minutes. How do these things happen so fast? He’ll now have this skill mastered for the rest of his life. The days are long, but the years (and skill development) can fly by.
(For the record, I love that Velcro can now be found on shoes for all ages. But still. This feels like another milestone ticked off, in a bittersweet way.)
It was a sluggish start to the day and I felt tired and unmotivated. I have some big – but decidedly “unfun” – work tasks to tackle that don’t have a set deadline so they just feel unwieldy. Such is life.
Work.
Work calls.
Work.
I met “The Knitter” for coffee. Seriously.
Library run, and two texts: my best friend wondering if she could pop over with her kids for a spontaneous visit (she brought hot chocolate in a Thermos and I sent her home with two little baggies of seeds – flax and sunflower – because in addition to sharing hard stuff, this is another wonderful aspect of our “full-fat” friendship; on Thursday I gave her a skirt, two winter hats, and my old laptop bag. She gave me 6 potatoes. I’m not making any of this up).
The second text was for Abby to join a friend at a bring-a-friend dance class.
I wrote down two quotes from The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker.
- Decide what, among the things you notice, you might declare to be public works of art. Perhaps a disheveled pylon marking a street flaw…Grant yourself the superpower of making “art” wherever you go, and see how that changes what you perceive. Art is everywhere if you say so.
- We may never be able to recapture exactly the feeling of looking at the world before we’d spent so much time looking at the world. But next time you are confronted with some scene or situation that feels numbingly familiar, stop and ask: What would a child see here?
Incidentally, I didn’t finish this book – it was overwhelming in the number of exercises it suggests (131) which felt like too much of a “good thing.”
I did a lot of reading after the kids went to bed (some All Creatures, some of Matt Haig’s The Comfort Book, some of C.S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy, more of the Sarah Wilson book).
THURSDAY |
Another sluggish start to the day. I didn’t feel like I needed more sleep, just more of that familiar “moving through molasses” sensation. Oh well. Things felt better the longer I was up and moving.
Walked the kids to school.
Work calls.
Another short walk.
Work.
I put in some solid effort on those no-set-deadline-“unfun” tasks. I appreciate the flexibility I have working from home, for the most part at my own pace and schedule. I sent a slow of work e-mails last week at 5 am, but can also head to the park with my kids at 3:30 pm and no one cares. That said, it can be tough to stay focused. And I thrive on structure, gold stars, crossing things off. I remembered for the 47,569th time – making a list helps me put everything in focus. I took the time to write down every single item I could think of that needs doing (and gave myself some specific deadlines in the process). They all still need doing, but I have a plan and that disproportionately boosted my mood.
It was rainy, so we invited friends over for a movie afternoon once school was over. The kids watched Luca, and the adults chatted.
Supper.
Bible Club for the kids; while they were occupied, John and I made another visit to the library and a quick stop by Walmart.
NYC Recommendations?
Now let’s make a giant tangent over to our New York City planning. Any hidden gems you think we should check out? This will be the kid’s first time visiting NYC!!
We’re currently planning the following (these aren’t arranged by any sort of itinerary; we’ll organize our days to minimize walking for the kids):
Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, taking the Staten Island Ferry, and going to Broadway (Aladdin is our first choice, because the kids love the movies, but other options include The Lion King or Wicked).
The kids are obsessed with the Night at the Museum movies, so we’re aiming to get to the American Museum of Natural History, Empire State Building (we plan to go to the top), Rockefeller Centre, and the 9/11 Memorial.
We’ll hit a few major sights in Central Park, swing by the Plaza for some pictures (Home Alone is a full-blown obsession), go to a few of the chocolate stores in Times Square…those stops should be self-explanatory.
We’re planning on a chunk of a day at Coney Island (John and I have never been and we’ll plan to get hotdogs). We’ll walk through FAO Schwartz, Macy’s and the LEGO store, and head to Wall Street to see the Bull.
We might do the Bronx Zoo on Wednesday (free). Thanks to Kae we’re also planning to go to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Roosevelt Island Lighthouse.
I have a few playgrounds pinned (namely the Ancient Playground and the Billy Johnson Playground in Central Park).
We might try for the MET (think this would be a stretch for the kids, though I’d love to spend a day here and I’ve still never been to The Cloisters), and we’ll swing by the NYC Public library.
We will skip The High Line (we’ve done this twice and the last thing the kids need will be more walking), and John and I have already done “Top of the Rock”, hence doing the Empire State Building this time.
How was your week – does anyone else adore Fridays? Any NYC recommendations (feel free to leave suggestions in the comments or e-mail them to elisabethfrostblog {at } gmail.com). What do you think about the distinction Sarah Wilson makes between “connection-lite” friendships, and the “full-fat” variety?
Header photo by Christian Ladewig on Unsplash