How do they do it?

Today my eldest has a pupil free day.
I should be taking this opportunity to get a LOT done, as he keeps the little tacker completely occupied. Instead I have spent the entire morning in bed, reading blogs and being generally lazy.

I have in my reader some amazing blogs of amazing mothers who seem to get everything achieved every day. They write about the 10 loads of laundry they did, the four course meal they whipped up with organic produce and truffle oil, their amazing outings with their kids, and the 400 craft projects they did while their perfect children coloured next to them.

They simultaneously inspire me to be better, make me jealous as all get out, and cause me to throw my hands in the air and exclaim "who does that?"

Let me give you a little insight into how my day generally goes:
6am - Rocket and Lou get up, have breakfast.
7am - Lou goes to work
7:30am - My alarm goes off. I snooze it.
7:45am - My alarm goes off. I snooze it.
8am - I start thinking "dammit I should really get up now". My alarm goes off. I snooze it.
8:15am - I roll out of bed and get dressed.
8:20am - I wake Manny up (he is so not a morning person...takes after me!) and get him dressed. Ok so in honesty sometimes on work days he goes to daycare in his jammies.
8:30am - I am yelling at Rocket that it's time to go get in the car we have to leave NOW!
8:45am - drop the big kid at school.

This is where it varies:

Work days - drive the 45 minutes to work, drop off Manny and proceed to be bored to tears for roughly 8 hours. Then pick up the Manny, drive home, collapse on the couch under a blanket and observe while Manny runs around shrieking and Rocket rolls around on the floor or wrestles the baby.

Home days - after dropping Rocket at school there is generally a mess of doctors appointments, dentist appointments, meetings with tradesmen and errands to be run. Little man is dragged from one point to another. When we get home he is exhausted and has a good long nap. I take this opportunity to try and get the house into some semblance of order - a task I never seem to complete.
Before I know it it's 2:30pm and I have to go and get Rocket from school. His best friend tends to come over a lot, and when he is here I get nothing done. My time is occupied by trying to keep Manny away from the big kids who, while they think he is cute, do not appreciate the way he manages to simultaneously get in their way and destroy whatever it is they are doing.
BFF goes home at about 5:30, (or on the days where Rocket is at his house, I go pick him up about 5:30, get caught up in conversation and don't leave till after 6)
Lou gets home at about 5:30ish and we have about 3 minutes to chat before it is time for dinner/baths/showers/bedtime routine/the adults collapsing in front of the heater watching tv/bed.

I just can't see at what point I could ever get anything else done? Perhaps I just need to try harder.

And perhaps on these days off I should be prepared with fun things to do and oh, yes, not lie in bed until 10:30! Ok time to get up now...