Like any working mother, NFL Network Senior VP/Marketing LOREY ZLOTNICK spends the majority of her time juggling responsibilities. Zlotnick likes to get in as much quality time as possible with her two little boys, JONAH (5) and ASHER (7). Luckily for Zlotnick, her family’s home in Beverlywood, Calif., is a short three miles from the NFL Network’s HQs in Culver City, allowing her to start her weekends without having to waste an hour or more stuck in traffic.
FULL HOUSE: The weekends for me are about preparing for the week and just spending quality time with my family and friends. My hours tend to be lengthy, so on Fridays it’s pizza day in our house. My kids get pizza, and then my husband and I will either go out or order something in or I’ll just barbecue. We barbecue a ton and eat home as a family a lot. But we also order in a lot because our schedules are so hectic. We often go to other people’s homes or have family over or friends over. Our house is a real full house, and always has an open door for whoever wants to come for dinner or a barbecue.
MAMA’S BOYS: Me and the boys, we have a whole routine on Saturdays from swimming to car washes to running errands. And then they get to pick out one thing that they really look forward to doing all week. So last weekend we went to go see a couple movies and they wanted to go bowling. Whatever they want to do, it’s up to them, and that surrounds all of the other stuff we have to get done. This weekend we actually are starting karate classes. That’s big on the agenda. They’re five and seven so they try a lot of things and stop a lot of things very quickly. We’re trying karate this weekend, they’ve done soccer, and my little one loves basketball. But they've been in swimming every weekend from the time they were little bubs.
HALL OF A TIME: This weekend is an exciting weekend for us here at NFL Net because we have the Hall of Fame enshrinement, so on Saturday we will all be glued to the television set to watch the coverage from “TOTAL ACCESS.” It’s a good lesson for the kids too, that if you work really hard and you’re good at what you do, then you get great honors and things that come with it. We watch a lot of NFL at my house of course, but my kids also love to watch “WIPE OUT,” or “AMERICA’S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS.” They get a big kick out of that. So I’m watching by default, not because it’s a destination for me but because they get a great laugh out of it.
START YOUR ENGINES: My kids don’t really know the difference between a Wednesday and a Sunday, so their little body clocks are up no matter what, and I think if I sleep in until 7:00am that’s a good thing. On Sunday, I’m always thinking about what has to be done during the week and how I can compartmentalize my time in order to strike that good balance between family and work. I’ll start packing the bags for (the kids’ day) camp or I’ll pay all of the household bills and make sure that we’re all set for the week. ... All the planning though, my kids are right there with me. We make fun out of everything that we do. If we’re going to the grocery store, they’re with me. It’s about learning colors and counting and let’s put a bunch of stuff on the scale and see what happens. So we try to take the mundane errands and make them either learning experiences or make them kind of fun. We’ve been known to race grocery carts down aisle six.
