Hi, OP. Are you past me?
I have a couple of suggestions:
Be mildly "hyper". If I don't exercise about every day, I get bitchy and every person in my house starts urging me to go out for a run. If I do exercise every day (more or less...) I can focus and get tons done. This is not a subtle thing...
Be open to variation. There's probably no one perfect exercise that you can do from now until forever without getting injured or bored. Also, some days you'll have more time, and some days you'll have less -- same thing with energy. Have a stack of choices for yourself, so you can vary what you're doing. If I haven't done something else earlier, I'll often go for a walk in the afternoon (and, yeah, frequently think about work problems I'm trying to solve: walking is great for that). The point is to do SOMETHING, as close to every day as possible. (I keep a jump rope handy, for the same reason.)
Try out new activities and sports! Take lessons! And also, find things you enjoy, rather than trying to force yourself to do something that's not fun day after day. You may also find there are things you enjoy that are seasonal, so paddle boarding in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter. It's all cross-training and smart for injury prevention!
You will want/need to do some work using the muscles of your core and back to prevent injuries (from picking up your kids and generally living your life). At various times, I've done pilates (my advice is find a group class, but with a very strict teacher), 12-minute workouts (
https://www.12minuteathlete.com, although it looks like more of it has gone behind a paywall), various combinations of plyometrics, the 10-minute (or less) workouts from the New York Times, group step classes at our local recreation centers (winter weather here can be kinda grim, and the advantage of a group class is that you only have to have the motivation to get there, because a good teacher will bring the music and the mo), ... look, I'm old, the list goes on. The point is that I try to be consistent, rather than doing the same thing over and over. (At the moment, every Thursday I do the "Combat Abs 500" workout, usually at the 300 or 400 level. Huaah, and stuff :^). )
All that said, I run, walk, hike (we have hills here, within easy striking distance of the house), and bike. I try to run twice a week, but it doesn't always happen: I do get in about 10,000 steps/day (or equivalent), more on weekends. I've been working with a personal trainer for the past three years, partly at the suggestion of the physical therapist who kept fixing my various strains and sprains. The therapist said "you should start lifting heavy", and I looked at some older women I know who were having upper back issues, and went to a trainer who had experience with older women. (Also, younger men.) And teaching Olympic lifting, because I decided that I'm going to aim for two goals here: 1. I want to move forward into advanced old age with a body that will, as much as I can control it, be able to do the stuff I'd like to do, and 2. learning new skills will make this much more fun and less of a grind. I try to keep it somewhat "Mustachian" by only occasionally paying her for actual personal training: mostly I pay her for an hour or two a month to write me a training program, and then I do it (and log it, on my phone: the software allows her to see what I've put in). My trainer is quite strict about me having the mobility to do the things I want: at one point I asked why I'm still not doing snatchs and she gave me an unweighted flexibility exercise to do that .... yeah, hardest exercise ever, and it involved a piece of PVC.
If you're finding the prospect of a "gym" unappealing, I'd suggest trying every place in town, and finding one that feels comfortable: they're no longer all full of macho jerks! Ask the employees about their training. Take a class! plenty of YMCA's and local recreation centers teach classes that include some high-intensity exercise (possible to do on your own, but much more fun to do with a group) and some strength training. Being in a social environment makes that stuff way more fun, in general.
Sorry to write an encyclopedia here! TDLR: Olympic weight lifting oddly resembles real life (ie, is "functional"), because you're actually be using momentum to swing heavy things up into a position where you can carry them (in fact, I'd bet you already do that with your kids!). Find a good trainer, though, and don't rush it. And learning is fun!
