I always start these posts by saying I'm sorry for having been delinquent and offering all the reasons why I just can't seem to get my crap together lately to update regularly.  Well, today I'm turning over a new leaf.  So without further ado, here's my apologyless delinquent post.

I didn't post four weeks ago because we were getting ready to head out on a trip to Nashville, and by "we," I mean Todd and I.  That's kind of a major deal because I haven't spent the night away from the kids since Juni was born (and you'll see later in the post that she's seven and a half), with the exception of one night I was gone to be in a friend's wedding.  But I only half-count that one because Todd was still with them.  But this time we were getting ready to both be gone for five days.  So it meant getting the house cleaned up and ready for my parents to come stay, and grocery shopping, and packing, and girding my mental loins for the separation.  

Also, I thought it would be a good idea to schedule a bunch of stuff the weekend before we left, just to keep things interesting.  So that Saturday, Penelope and I shared a table at our church's Maker's Market.  I sold fire cider, the younger kids sold a few baked goods, and Penelope did face painting.

The twins were there as my emotional support babies.

In the afternoon, we went to our neighborhood block party.  Our street is only a couple of blocks long, and it's kind of closed off; it's not a through street on either end.  So it's a small group of neighbors who are all pretty familiar with each other, which is really nice.  Some of the families down the block have organized a block party a couple of times since we've lived here, and it's so fun to get together with everyone.

The boys came late because they had been to an airsoft battle earlier in the day.

You can tell from here that she's a mischief maker, but just to prove it, let's zoom in...

what a spicy little pepper.

Speaking of mischief-making, she is far from alone.  Look at these two, up to no good:

They're pretty cute when they're not fighting.

My parents arrived the next day to get settled in and ready to watch the kids while we were gone to Nashville.  We left Monday morning and were gone until Friday evening.  For all the dread I'd felt at leaving everyone, it was actually a really fun and restful trip.  We went for a Council meeting for our church denomination (CREC).  Every year, the elders of our local-ish churches meet to discuss their churchy responsibilities lately, but every third year, elders from ALL the churches - domestic and international - get together.  This was one of those years.

It was great.  The conference was in the same hotel we were staying in, and all the food was catered, so it was kind of like going to an all-inclusive resort, only for like 800 Presbyterians.  A lot more neckties than you'd typically see in other all-inclusive situations, but other than that, it was basically the same.  

Todd and I would get up early to exercise, then head to breakfast.  After breakfast, there would be a talk from one of the more prominent pastors and a short hymn/psalm sing, and then the men would break off to go to meetings.  There were talks that the wives could go to if they felt so inclined - I did go to the first morning's talk from Nancy Wilson, but skipped the rest.  Then lunch and another whole-group talk and psalm sing, and then another time slot for meetings.  Most afternoons while Todd was in meetings, I just went up to our room and talked on the phone to a friend, read a book and then took a nap.  It was glorious.  Then in the evening there was dinner, and then usually some kind of meet-up after dinner.  (One night, it was cigars and whiskey outside.  One night, there was dancing.  Another night, there was a church service.  Another night, the guys from our church were invited to the home of a local guy who is a pretty well-known graphic novelist for business networking.  The last evening we were there, we went to the Fight Laugh Feast kickoff, where there were so many people singing psalms and hyms that the volume kept setting off the car alarms!)

Todd's schedule was kind of "one-thing-after-another", but mine included a lot of rest in between activities, and it was honestly amazing.  I also went with the other Leavenworth wives and their kids to see the Nashville Parthenon, which I didn't even know was a thing before.  It's a full-scale replica of the Temple of Athena in Athens, including a huge gilded statue of Athena.  It was a really strange and thought-provoking experience.

On Thursday, the last meeting of the day got cancelled, leaving the afternoon free before dinner with the other Leavenworth families and then Fight Laugh Feast.  So Todd and I went to the Hermitage, the house of Andrew Jackson.  I love presidential houses, but this is the first one I've ever actually gotten to see in person and it was beautiful.  I loved the layout, the scale, the family cemetery in the side yard (many of the tombstones said, "Born at the Hermitage" or "Died at the Hermitage," and I found that so amazing), the family church built on the property (Presbyterian!), and I'm even thinking about contacting the preservation society and asking for the names of their exterior paint colors (kidding not kidding).

We left Friday morning to come home, and I could not have been happier to be back with everyone that evening.  One thing that was clear to me on the trip: I was so grateful to have the rest and space, and also, it wasn't as great as you'd think.  I'm not really cut out for uninterrupted adulting anymore.  Listening to a sermon from beginning to end without interruption, eating a meal without holding a toddler on my lap, having time to take a nap in the afternoon... it was all amazing.  And yet, honestly less glittery than my real life.  I missed the inconveniences.  

Because seriously, look at this kid.  He couldn't shut up during a sermon if his life depended on it.  He gives a nonstop running commentary.  And listening to his chatter is so much better than not listening to it.  (Though the goal is definitely to curb it at some point.  Please, Lord.)

"Mommy dwah Piduhman? Knoxie dwah Piduhman?"  Spiderman constitutes about 80% of all his artwork lately, which is itself a large body of work.

After getting back, I was hoping to jump back into the routine and kind of right the ship a little bit after a weird week.  No such luck.  The first few days, many of the kids were really sick.  Once they started feeling better, we hosted the Elder session meeting, and then then next night some friends came over for dinner.  Then we hosted a larger group gathering on Saturday.  Lolo and Juni had eye doctor appointments in there.  I think I went grocery shopping?  It is all kind of a blur.

Setting up for our group gathering.

Also, the Saturday we were expecting extra guests, Todd got a text from Atticus, who was out working on the farm.  Todd came running in and asked me to help him gather first aid supplies, because Atticus cut himself at work and was alone and needed help.  I asked him how he cut himself, and Todd responded, "I don't want to tell you."  Um, that's never comforting to hear.  So we gathered up peroxide and superglue and gauze.

I found out later that Atticus had cut his hand with a chainsaw.  He was sawing a log, and once the saw got through it, it ricocheted off another log underneath and bounced back toward him.  He took his finger off the trigger, so it wasn't still propelled, but it was still moving and one of the saw teeth caught his glove and cut him pretty deeply.  He took his sock off to tourniquet his wrist, then he clenched the other end of the sock in his fist to staunch the bleeding, and held his arm over his head until Todd got there.  I was so proud of him for thinking so well in an emergency.

Luckily, it seems like it's going to heal just fine.  No loss of feeling or function, no infection, just a nasty deep cut through the fatty part at the butt of his thumb.  And I think my own adrenaline is finally coming down now, a week later.

After that, no news is going to be exciting, but our week was particularly nondescript.  A few of the kids caught a different illness than the one last week, so there were a few days of kids melting into the horizontal surfaces and drinking all the tea, but we seem to be on the upswing at this point.  Tonight, we're headed to a friend's house for dinner.  They live in the country, and the kids are very excited to go gigging for frogs.

The lovely Juni on her half birthday.

I was trying to fill out health information for Penelope (which is why the scowl of concentration), and the babies decided they wanted to help.  Any time I hold both of them at the same time, one or both announces, "Two babies!"

Tomorrow we're going to try to assemble some bunk beds for the girls' room in the basement and do some bedroom rearranging, and Atticus is headed back to the farm.  Prayers for us all would be appreciated.

what's up weekly. (this is the week that doesn't end, yes it goes on and on my friend.)

This was the week that wouldn't quit.  There was just a ton going on.  

Last Friday night was the Psalm Sing, but since it was out of town, I stayed home with the babies, Oey, and Penelope.  We had nachos for dinner, and then after the littler kids went to bed, Penelope and I stayed up watching You've Got Mail while I ironed what felt like all the world's laundry.

On Saturday, Todd took the kids to a swim party for one of their friends.  Again, I stayed home with the babies and Penelope (and Atticus this time).  It ended up raining while they were in the pool, so they all came home frozen.

Monday, our school day was cut short because Penelope had an appointment in Kansas City in the afternoon.  Maybe you remember that a couple of weeks back she needed a follow-up with a specialist after her most recent eye appointment.  Our family eye doctor thought she saw some swelling behind Penelope's eye that concerned her and she wanted a second opinion.  So we went to Lawrence to get some further scans done, and that doctor said she was potentially concerned as well, so she referred us to Children's Mercy to get an MRI of her brain, just to make sure there wasn't a tumor or anything growing back behind the eye.  We prayed about it and thought about it for a couple of weeks, and ended up deciding to move forward with the MRI.

After the scan, the nurse-lady told us that her results would be posted to our online medical chart by the end of that day or sometime the next day.

Unfortunately, the next day the medical portal wasn't working, and I also woke up to discover my phone had no cell service, so I couldn't call tech support.  So I first navigated tech support with my phone to get it back up and running, and then I spent the afternoon trying to navigate tech support with the medical portal.  (Who kept saying I didn't HAVE a medical chart account, which was patently false, and also infuriating when you're trying to double check that your kid doesn't actually have brain cancer.) 

Luckily, in the middle of all that, the eye specialist called me (on my phone that now was willing to receive calls) to give me the rundown of what the next plans are now that the tests came back looking good, which allowed me to deduce that the tests, in fact, came back looking good.

That was Tuesday.

Wednesday, the air conditioner "froze up" (the technical term from the HVAC guy) so we spent many hours with no air conditioning waiting for it to thaw.  It's back up and running for now, but we're waiting to see if it becomes a recurring pattern in need of fixing.

Thursday, for the second morning in a row, I ran out of hot water in the shower, which tells me our tankless water heater is potentially on the fritz.

In between all of the items of note, we've tried trucking ahead with school.  A couple of the kids are a little behind with their read alouds because of the time I was away with Penelope, and the time spent on the phone with tech support.  But we did our Wednesday school for the first time since the school year started - math drills, maps, memory work (including our new Bible memory system), composition and geography in the morning; Shakespeare, poetry and Family Read Alouds in the afternoon.

Last Friday we had our first art class of the year as well.  We're studying Norman Rockwell this term.

Wednesday Table Time.

Wednesday afternoon read alouds.  We're reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Swallows and Amazons.

Today will hopefully be the day we're able to get caught back up on what we've missed.  Friday afternoons are reserved for science lab every other week, which is probably my least favorite part of homeschooling, so wish me luck.

what's up weekly.

And just like that, we already have two weeks of school in the books.  Wild.  In some ways, it has been more challenging than the first week - on Monday, Laurelai was feeling sick, so we adjusted her schedule to accommodate lots of naps and rest.  

On Tuesday, the twins started a days-long run-in with a weird tummy bug, so I started the rest of the mornings this week with changing barfy sheets and running baths and sitting with sick babies.  I cancelled school altogether on Tuesday, thinking it would be a 24-hour thing and we'd jump back in the next day.  But on Wednesday and yesterday, we just attempted to do what we could, when we could. 

The sickness seems limited exclusively to the morning, which is strange, so they're fine once naptime comes around and into the evening, but then they wake up the next day covered in puke again and spend the morning with unpredictable bellies, so as of now I'm not sure what to expect today.  They were fine last night, but that information hasn't helped much in predicting our morning experience, so we'll see how today goes.

Finneas celebrated his half birthday.

Knox boasts the headgear and laundry-sorting knowhow of a much older man.

Our wildlife livestream (aka, our dining room window) has been abuzz lately with all kinds of new content.  A couple of hummingbirds visit our feeder each day (though not at the same time - one always chases the other off, like a tiny little chump), and we often have a praying mantis hanging out at the feeder as well, eating all the ants that drown in the hummingbird nectar.  And an orb weaver spider has adopted our back doorway as his new home - each night he weaves a new web, and each morning he folds it all up and puts it away.  It's fun to watch him working.  The kids have named him Miguel.

Keeping the babies contained and accessible while they're sick.

We also had a big thunderstorm and a power outage Sunday night, so we whatfired up all the emergency lanterns and candles.  Luckily the storm brought some slightly lower temperatures than we've been having, or it would have been sweltering without the air conditioning.  But everyone went to bed fine, and the power came back on around 1:00 a.m., and we didn't lose anything from the fridges or freezers, so all's well that ends well.  It was kind of an adventure to get to live by lantern light for a few hours!

And the last item of note is that we travelled to Iowa last Saturday for a family reunion on my dad's side. (At least, most of us did.  Atticus and Penelope stayed home with the babies.)  It was fun seeing so many people I don't get to see very often, and the icing on the cake was that my aunt brought me some genealogy/family tree information that I was wanting to look through.  She passed it on to me, along with an old photo album, and I've been having a wonderful time reading through it all and trying to connect the faces in the photo album with the information I'm discovering in the reading.  I am loving learning my family history.

And that pretty much sums up the week!  Today, I'm hoping to get fully caught up on the schoolwork we haven't gotten to yet from earlier this week, and hopefully pop out to pick up a gift for a party we are going to tomorrow.  I'm hoping it's a calm, sickness-free day.  Wish me luck!

what's up weekly. (back to school!)

Oh man, you guys.  So much has happened these last couple of weeks!  Buckle up.

First of all, my fourth-born is now a teenager.  I have four teenagers.  Luckily for me, teenagers are fantastic, so it's fun to have another one join the ranks.  (Even if she is pocket-sized and still looks like she's like nine.)

She is sweet-natured and kind and so very creative.  She is often the first one to run to help when she finds something needs to be done, and is always asking if there is anything she can help with.  She is fantastic with babies (though she's too soft for the preschool set - her after-lunch job last year was tucking in Oey at naptime, and Oey had her wrapped around her finger.  It always took like twenty minutes to finally meet all of Oey's demands before finally getting to close the door and come out.  She just doesn't have a taskmaster bone in her body, which makes her vulnerable to exploitation by the underlings.)

She elevates everything she puts her hand to.  She loves making things special - turning a normal lunch into a picnic, setting a table nicely for a weeknight meal, starting handmade Christmas Eve gifts in April so she has time to make them exactly how she wants them.  She loves doing her hair and accessorizing her outfits.  She seems to give everything she does a little extra thought.  I'm so excited to see how the Lord uses that particular gift in her life as she grows.

For her birthday, she chose apple cake and bacon for breakfast (cooked by her pajama-clad mother, looking her finest); grilled cheese and spaghettios for lunch; fried chicken and sweet potato fries for dinner; and a trip to Sonic after dinner for ice cream and time with friends.

  

Bacon in the shape of a claw because it got stuck together in the oven.

Her birthday was the icing on the cake of the last day of summer break.  I had spent the week leading up to it running around town, getting planners bound at the UPS store, picking up holds from the library, stocking up on school supplies, and placing last-minute book orders.

Atticus spent the week working full-time for a guy at our church who owns a construction business.  He learned to frame walls and hang and tape sheetrock.  He loved it, and got along really well with the guys he was working with.  He thinks maybe this will be the path he explores as he gets closer to graduating. (This is his last year of high school! How?!)

And in other growing-up news, we finally got around to piercing Eulalie's ears!  All the other girls had theirs done before they turned a year, and I think that is still the way to go.  But even with her being older, she handled it like a champ.

Todd, marking where he wanted the earring holes to end up.

Knox, never to be left out, marking his own ears.  

The last smile we saw for a few minutes.

Luckily, she cheered up pretty quickly, AND her hair is finally long enough for piggies, so it was a win-win.

This Monday, we started school.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect and I was braced for exhaustion.  While we still have some wrinkles to work out, I actually feel like the week went pretty smoothly.  I still have the same number of grades to teach as last year, so we didn't need to mess too much with the schedule and I've already adapted to the pace of it (unlike in years past when we've added a grade and had to move everything around to fit it all in).  Penelope is taking Oey under her wing and doing some early reading practice with her, so we technically have eight kids doing school each day.

I've started doing morning school in the babies' room (which I obviously need to clean).  It's quieter, and easy to close the door.  Plus, the babies' training potties are in there still, so I can help them when they need me without running all over the house.  In the afternoon, I do readings on the living room couch.

Play-doh has held the attention of the littler ones during school this week.

We waited on jumping into table time this week, and instead left Wednesday morning free to use as flex-time for anyone who was struggling to keep up with the workload or had other issues that might arise that needed attention.  Fortunately everyone seemed to not really need the extra buffer, so we took back-to-school photos and then went out for donuts.

They did this pose without any prompting.  They saw what the big kids were doing and were like, "We've got this."

As of this afternoon, we will have a whole week of school under our belt, and hoping to not jinx anything by saying so, it was relatively smooth and painless.  Tiring, yes. Full, yes.  Baseline overwhelming? No.  It was good.  And dare I say it, it was even a little nice to be back in the routine.  (Do not hear me say I'd rather be doing school work than rotting by the side of the pool, but also... maybe there's a time and place for everything.  I feel like I've read that somewhere important.)

what's up weekly. (so long, miss hawaiian tropic. why does summer have to end?)

I really do have the best of intentions to blog every week.  Every week, there's at least a thirty-second window where I think, "Blogging is right and good and do-able.  I will do it, and do it well."  And then Thursday night rolls around, and it is time to write, but also I've just lived through the entire week, and I have laundry to fold and homeschool to plan and Gilmore Girls to listen to in the background, and I just don't always have it in me.  

And that's my excuse for why I didn't show up last week, but now it is THIS week, and here I am!  The laundry is folded, Gilmore Girls is on pause, and other than being driven to homicidal rage by an incessant housefly (which I am convinced is taunting me on purpose), I have nothing competing for my attention!  Except bedtime... sweet, sweet bedtime...

Okay, I'm going to need to make this snappy so that I can go to bed.  (Well, so that I can smash the daylights out of this psychopathic fly and THEN go to bed, I mean.)

The kids have set up a roadside produce stand a couple of times this summer and have made a decent amount of money selling tomatoes and watermelons.

Last week we were focusing all of our energy on spending as much time at the pool as we could before it closed.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were full of Just Pool, Only Pool.  My tan really ended on a high note, I'll tell you that.

And then: Thursday.  Thursday rolled around and reality came crashing down around me: summer is about to end.  School is about to start.  I need to clean.  I need to plan.  I need to get my head in the game.  So the rest of the time between then and now has just been spent ordering books, printing Every Piece of Paper, typing all the documents, running errands, cleaning, and acting like the grasshopper from the parable.  (Can you really fault him for wanting to play his fiddle all summer, when playing his fiddle was how he got so incredibly relaxed and tan for the first time in years?)

This toad judges my choices.

I'm getting close to having things ready for school, which is good because we start in a little over a week.  (The 31st is our first day.)  I'm not getting all that close to having things around the house as orderly as I'd like.  We cleaned the garage and the chicken coop, but I still have quite a few projects I'm hoping to tackle next week so I don't have mess hanging over my head when the school year starts and I no longer have the time or energy to get stuff like that done as easily.  So we'll see.

In other news, we're attempting to potty train the twins again.  It is slow going, and it makes me want to die.  (I hate potty training so much.)  But it needs to get done, and it is easier to do it now than during the school year.  The babies are doing well, it's just going slowly.  But I think we'll be at the point soon when I can consider them day-trained.  (I don't worry about night training until later.)

We set up camp in the babies' room and it has been working pretty well, other than the fact that everywhere we go becomes a high traffic area and it gets distracting.  But they've been doing well.

And to top off the craziness of the times, I have recently given up Diet Coke.  This might not sound like a biggie, but to know me is to know I love Diet Coke.  But I've been having some really bad joint pain that I was hoping could be alleviated by cutting it out, so I got to the point where it felt worth it to try.  Unfortunately, it has had no effect whatsoever on that issue, but once you've done the thing, it seems silly to move in reverse.  So I'm going to keep on keeping on with it.  I guess I'm just a water-and-cold-coffee gal now.  Does it get worse than that?  If it does, don't tell me about it; I don't want to know.  It would make me too sad.

Last week, the kids all had eye doctor appointments, so they'll all be getting new glasses any day now! (Well, not all.  No one new needed glasses again this year!  Five kids have them, five kids don't need them. So weird.)  There were some things that the doctor noticed in Penelope's eye that needed to be looked at more closely, so we also spent time this week driving to Lawrence to see a specialist.  Nothing super conclusive, so we're having to think about what to do next.

Wrasslemania!

And lastly, Todd and I celebrated our nineteenth wedding anniversary on Monday!  We tried a new restaurant, I ate entirely too much, and then we went to Target and bought a kiddie pool on clearance so I can sit in the driveway with the babies and pretend we're at the real pool.  It was honestly a really fun evening.  I just like hanging out together.  Todd is my favorite person in the entire world, and I'm so glad he picked me.  We have built a really wonderful life, and I'm so grateful for these years together.  I pray for many more.  No ragrets.