why things have been a bit erratic around here (if you hadn't already deduced).

As a few of you have already guessed, one of the reasons the blog has been more sporadic over the last few months is that, with morning sickness, I haven't been feeling 100%.  While I will say this has been my easiest pregnancy by faaarrrrrr (I'll share more soon about what has helped!), it has still taken its toll.

Even without the nonstop vomiting to contend with this time, my brain was still very much in 'first trimester' mode.  I am only now coming out of the near-primal mental state to which I revert in early pregnancy; it has been all I am capable of to simply keep the kids alive and keep myself fed and rested.  (Even this far into the pregnancy, I'm still requiring two naps some days, and I'm still dealing with frequent nausea.)

So that's my way of saying two things:  First, I have been pretty out of touch with most of the world for the last couple of months (which has been helped/exacerbated by the fact that my phone is completely on the fritz).  I haven't been calling, texting, or emailing much.  I'm okay with that, but I apologize if it's felt personal or inconvenient to not be easily able to get ahold of me!  Second, while I'm definitely on the upswing, I'm still not at full functioning capacity, and will likely take a little while yet to be fully back into the land of the living.  Bear with me until I can be back up to snuff with a normal pace of life!

Thanks for understanding!

the weekly 'what's up.'

This week was SO crazy, though I have very few pictures to show for it.  Sorry in advance.  So I'm going to start off the post with a seemingly random photo, to offer up the illusion that this is a photo-heavy post.

Todd started teaching the kids the Bridge Model of evangelism this week - this is Penelope's first attempt at doing the entire thing from memory.  Pretty impressive, I'd say!

We jumpstarted the weekend by driving up to my mom's Friday night, which was an eventful trip in itself as Atticus gets car sick.  This was the worst case he's ever had, and none of my typical go-to remedies were helping - Ginger Rescue, Altoids, peppermint oil, nux vomica, sea bands, Motion Ease, even Dramamine.  All options were exhausted, with no relief.  We stopped multiple times to clean up (and bag up) the mess, and he was still vomiting by the time we arrived.  It was so bad we wondered if it was a full-blown virus, but he woke up absolutely fine the next morning.  Just extreme car sickness. Poor child.

The next morning we attended a baby shower for my sister, who's due in just four weeks!  Of course, no photos, but trust me, it was an adorable shower for an adorable pregnant lady.

We headed for home early Sunday morning to hopefully make it home in time for naps.  Traveling really wears everyone out, and it's nice to have the whole afternoon to sleep and recalibrate before the new week begins.  We grabbed pizza for dinner and hunkered down for Family Movie Night.  Sundays are my favorite!

Unfortunately, between the drive up and the drive home, it became apparent that some of the issues that the van has been having lately were going to need to be dealt with immediately.  Perhaps the shaking and rattling was what set Atticus' car sickness off so badly, now that I think about it.  We stayed home all day Monday, but on a quick drive to the store on Tuesday, it was clear it was no longer safe to drive.  Combined with the fact that Todd's car has been completely dead for a while, that left us as a no-car family of eight.

The Kristy Chrysler has been gunning for an early retirement for most of the time she's been under our care, but we refuse to submit to her frequent requests.

To complicate our lives, I got in the bathtub later that morning (because I'm pregnant, and I always have a difficult time controlling my body temperature when I'm pregnant*, and baths temporarily relieve this problem).  Laurelai came busting up the stairs to tell me that there was water pouring from the ceiling in the basement.  When I went down to check, the carpet was all wet, and there was water dripping from the pipes under the tub.  EXCELLENT.  (When Todd went down to check later, he discovered that the ceiling drywall was absolute mush - his thumb accidentally went right through it and we now have a thumb-sized hole in our ceiling.)

THEN! On Wednesday, our beloved Todd Henry Van Voorst turned 40 YEARS OLD!  I think it was very anticlimactic for him, as he spent the day getting in touch with mechanics and plumbers and the like.  But we tried to spice things up a little bit once he was home - all the kids had made him presents throughout the week, and the four oldest even wrote and performed a Martin Luther play in his honor!

We'll continue our celebrations tomorrow, with pumpkin painting (a friend of mine drove up to the Amish in my stead this week, and was kind enough to bring home all the pumpkins we'll need for our annual tradition), and a birthday dinner, and a bonus Movie Night.

To top off all of the pure adrenaline from the week, I will tell you that God has proven himself faithful, yet again.  The plumbing problem was fixed easily (by a great friend! for free! with materials we already had on hand!) and the van... well, the repair costs so far have added up to nearly $900, which is a chunk of change in any situation, but it's especially hard to swallow considering the van itself is only worth $1500.  However, someone, somewhere, is miraculously responsible for the fact that the mechanic didn't charge us a dime of that.  We are still really confused, and really grateful, and kind of manic over the miracle of it all.  There is still work to be done next week, work that could potentially add up to much more (two cylinders are still in need of repair, which we've heard is not cheap to address), but we cannot believe that we're somehow absolved of paying $900 of the overall costs.

I will tell you, God proves himself.  He really does.  EVERY SINGLE TIME, he has proven himself faithful to meet our needs.

We are heading into the weekend with so much joy!

*I'm sure you saw yesterday's big announcement?!  We're fifteen weeks pregnant with the most adorable little peanut and could not be more excited!  More details to come!

we have an exciting announcement!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

There is a new Van Voorst in the making, due to arrive in mid-April!  We are currently fifteen weeks along.

At the ultrasound a few weeks ago, this little nugget was shaped kind of like a big toe with arms and legs, and we could NOT BE MORE IN LOOOOOOOVE!  Oh my gosh, how cute, right?

At the appointment, I was just amazed as I stared at the screen.  Somewhere hidden deep inside me is this whole little person - a person whose story has already begun, whose potential is still unknown, whose personality is all their own, whose calling is already known by God.  This is an eternal soul, an immortal being.  As I watched this little thing kicking and punching and wiggling around, all completely undetected by my own sensations, I was just in awe - yet again - that God would choose to give us such an extraordinary gift.

I know there are arguments out there against having kids, or more kids, or lots of kids.  But staring at that screen, I'm sorry, but it was evident none of those arguments hold a candle to the single argument in favor of inviting new life to dwell with us: it's a miracle.  That's all.  A miracle that we're invited to participate in, that we're invited to be blessed by: the opportunity to invest in something unique and awe-striking and eternal.  I don't care what it costs me; I unashamedly, unabashedly, unhesitatingly want to be part of that.  I do.

This is baby #7 for us as parents.  But this is the first time we will have the blessing of knowing this baby - of hearing their first words, of hearing them laugh, of discovering their passions and talents, of guiding them through their areas of weakness, of teaching them by example to need Jesus, of watching them change the world and display the Gospel in their own specific way.  It's all a gift unique to this child.  We would not have the chance to know this child if we had limited our family size before now.  And staring at that screen, I realized just what I'd be missing out on, how impoverished I would be, without this specific little one.  I'm so grateful for my riches.

SO - all that to say, please congratulate us!  Please enter into our joy with us!  Please join us in anticipating the arrival of this new, precious human person that God has uniquely, purposely created for this exact time and this exact place.  You are witnessing a miracle!

needles highway, toddler poop, and a few ways in which I'm not like Thoreau.

Because I refuse to let vacation die, because we're nearing the end of Daylight Savings Time and I desperately need to remember happier times, I bring you yet another installment of "What We Did on Summer Vacation: The Black Hills, 2018."

Have you seen Needles Highway?!  This year was the first time Todd and I decided to check it out, and man, were we glad we did!  It was beautiful!

It was amazing, but after a while, I was forced to admit to Todd that I just couldn't get past the fact that the rock formations looked uncannily like bundles of turds.  What can I say?  I've been a mom of successive Under-Fives for the last decade; I look at a lot of turds every day as a matter of course.

See?  You other moms of preschoolers can't not see it, right?

This is the liberated smile of a mother who finds herself in the midst of hundreds of truly massive poops, and not responsible to clean up a single one.  There is no smile more genuine.

The kids were duly impressed:

We drove past Sylvan Lake on the way home, which was beautiful as well.  I like to pretend that someday, when the kids are older, I will be the kind of person who kayaks and hikes and things like that.  A real Thoreau, traversing the land with a sense of purpose and fulfillment.  I like to pretend that my deep commitment to mothering the tiny set is the only thing keeping me from this.

In order to keep pretending these things, I have to conveniently forget the fact that I am not outdoorsy in the least, and never have been, even long before I had kids.

Almost every instance in which I have tried doing something adventurous outdoors has ended with a very embarrassing take-home story.  Once, I went swimming in a quarry, and a fish bit off part of my belly button, leaving a bloody wound, and I was pretty sure I was going to contract giardia.  Another time, I was 'strongly encouraged' (read: forced as a part of a group exercise) to climb a rock face, got about ten feet up, and then would not come back down because I was too scared to rappel backwards, and too scared to climb higher.  I have a bum ankle from once gracelessly sliding off an innertube into three-foot-deep waters and hitting my foot on the bottom of the lake, and the resulting sprain never fully healed and has plagued me ever since.  I later rolled the same ankle while on a hike, stepping off a 6-inch-high rock.  (Ironically, we were in South Dakota at that time, too, and I started screaming bloody murder and would just not quit, and Todd was whispering at me to shut up because I would attract mountain lions.  Todd is also not outdoorsy.)

These kind of things never happened to Thoreau, I am certain.

These are the realities of my life, but luckily do not get in the way of the reading of books, or the watching of Amazon Prime, so I don't feel the daily chronic sting of all my missed nature-y opportunities until we drive past places like Sylvan Lake and I start pretending again... sigh.  Wouldn't it be glorious to kayak here?  It would be such a beautiful place to sprain an ankle or catch giardia.

Ah, well.  We viewed it from the comfort of the leather seats of the Kristy Chrysler, which is my kind of outdoor experience, anyway.  So, in that way, I can in good conscience say we almost kayaked here.  We basically kayaked here.  I think Thoreau would be almost, basically proud of me.

gleaning the last bits from our garden.

With nighttime temperatures starting to dip into the thirties, I figured it was time to gather what we could from the remnants of the garden before an actual freeze came.  I'm personally very lazy about gardening, but luckily, I have some really enthusiastic helpers who were more than willing to be sent outside with some bowls and some vague instructions about salvaging what was still out there. 

Scouting for tomatoes.

Gathering jalapenos.

Digging for potatoes.

To be honest, I really have no idea how my plants did this year.  I got everything in the ground, and then just kind of forgot about things.  It was a drought year, and after a while, daily (and even weekly) watering just kind of wore me out, so I gave up.  Which meant things stalled out.  But then in September, we got enormous amounts of rain, so everything seemed to catch a second wind.

But more than that, I really don't know how the plants did because the kids ate literally everything they could find, raw and directly from the garden.  Every time I'd call them in from the yard, they'd come inside with breath just reeking of jalapenos and green onions.  The carrots were demolished.  All the peas and green beans were consumed.  Every cherry tomato - ripe or otherwise - that bid itself unlucky enough to be found was promptly scarfed down.  Therefore, I really have no idea how much was produced this season.

I'm really not complaining.  For the small effort of sticking a few seeds in the ground, I kept my hungry varmints fed through the summer, with no freezing or canning required.

We did end up with a few odds and ends coming inside after our gleaning day: some green tomatoes, a few potatoes, some onions.

Oh, yeah.  And a five gallon bucket full of zinnias.  Not that I really have any use for them inside, but it seemed like such a waste to let them freeze overnight.  So I brought them in, I guess so I could watch them die close-up, from the warmth and comfort of the couch.

And with that, we've gotten closure on the garden for this year.  Now, to find the time and ambition to go rip all the plants out and winterize the beds...

'what's up' weekly.

Happy, happy Friday!  Not sure why I'm in such a good mood, as I'm currently contorted around two ice packs for a back spasm while I type this, but it hasn't really put a damper on my disposition.  I'm not going to jinx it by questioning it, though, because the weather is turning colder, and the days are getting shorter, so good moods are a bit of a fickle thing to come by lately.

No fickle moods here: just Atticus' pure joy at finding this somewhat sizable snake skin IN OUR YARD.  I'm all chill about it, too, like, oh, you know.  NBD. Ain't no thang.  Whatever.  OH MY WORD IT'S FROM A BASILISK AND WE'RE ALL ABOUT TO DIIIIIE.

Semi-relatedly, I'd love to hear your suggestions for making it through the winter with grace, dignity, and generally intact relationships with those who live in your general proximity.  I have checked out a couple of books on hygge from the library, which I'm hoping to dig into soon (once I've finished the John Adams biography, Harry Potter installment, Louisa May Alcott novel, deceptively ambitious cookbook, and Eric Metaxas discourse on American liberty that are all lying around here in varying degrees of completion... it's Fall.  This is what I do in the Fall).  But I'd love to hear if you've found any way to boost your overall outlook during the cold weather months.

I will say, Missouri has been good for me.  Spring comes decidedly in mid-March (instead of April, or May, or...), and warm temperatures hold out until mid-November (my tomato plants are still going strong at the moment), so winter doesn't seem interminable.  And even during cold months, the temperatures aren't too bad, seeming to rarely dip much below 20 for more than a day or two at a time, and while we do get snow, it often only lasts 24 hours or so and then melts away.  It really has been a blessing to me and my overall outlook!  But I do feel my lingering anxieties hanging on from a lifetime in Iowa: as the days get shorter, I often can't shake the fear of falling into that depressive sense of entrapment caused by the painful cold and unrelenting snow for six long months.  I still can't yet convince myself that I'm now living in the land of the free!

Anyway.  That's enough blah blah blah.  What were we up to this week?

Well, first and foremost on the priority list was Atticus' baptism!  We had family down for the weekend - my parents, Todd's parents, and our nephew David were all able to come celebrate with us!  Unfortunately, David started vomiting Saturday night, left early Sunday morning with Todd's parents, and by Monday was having his appendix out!  Certainly not the way he'd hoped the weekend would go!  Poor kiddo.

As for the rest of us, we immediately changed into pajamas after church, as is our Sunday ritual, and Atticus got to carry on the baptism celebrations with tacos, gifts, and cake.

Laurelai made him a card, and gifted him some cookie mix.

A brass compass from Todd and me.  Baptism gifts for boys are really hard to think of when they already possess a nice Bible!

A sketch book from Finneas.

And a sweet, homemade card from Penelope, to go along with a DVD copy of Ice Age.  Not too shabby!

As always, Atticus processed things out on paper.

I ordered a cake online with my Walmart grocery pickup, and I will tell you that the single display photo provided on the site was... inadequate.  Yes, in Walmart's defense it was called a 'rainbow blast' cake, so I can't accuse them of deception.  But in my defense, the picture resembled a white cake with tons of rainbow sprinkles on it.  Instead, this is what we found when we cut into it:

Holy All The Food Dyes, Batman.  Beating all odds, no one ended up having a seizure after eating this. Whew.

On Sunday night, we attended a Connection Group leaders' meeting-slash-chili supper, at which I only let the kids eat corn bread because I still didn't know the cause of David's vomiting.  If it was something contagious, I was not about to put chili in the stomachs of the vulnerable.  (I, on the other hand, partook freely of chili - with added jalapeno sauce! - because I can at least trust myself to vomit over a toilet should the need arise.  The kids offer me no such assurance.)

The rest of our week was relatively normal, with an exception made for Laurelai: one of our babysitters and good friends offered to take her out for a "girls' day out" - they got hot chocolate, went shopping (for groceries, but it's all thrilling to a five-year-old), and made cookies. Laurelai narrowly escaped saying something offensive to a guy with a ponytail, and she even met another little girl named Lorelei, who goes by Lolo!  To say she had a great time was an understatement.

Yesterday, we made one of our very infrequent trips to pick up an Azure Standard order.  I haven't ordered from them in nearly a year, as they seem to have had some kind of corporate meltdown and have stocked almost no inventory for a long time.  But I ran out of laundry soap, and I usually get it from them when I can since it's really cost-effective, and often on sale to boot.  And, lo! They had it in stock!  (Well, sort of - I had to go for the 'free and clear' kind instead of the kind with grapefruit EO in it like I usually do.  Hopefully it's basically the same otherwise, or I'm now the proud owner of 1280 loads of uselessness...)

And that brings us to today!  We have highs in the sixties, the sun is shining, and I'm ready for the weekend!

in which i clearly care too much about my plant babies. (or, at least, one in particular.)

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know I love houseplants.  I just love them.  They satisfy my need to nurture something non-human, without signing me on for a pet.  Not that I don't like animals, I just already feel like I deal with enough 'feeding and poop' issues on a day-to-day basis, and if we're going to add more of that nonsense into our lives, I'd rather just invest in another human.

But, plants!  Plants barely need any attention at all.  They never poop.  They purify the air instead of stinking it up.  They only need water about once a week (or, if you're a plant living at my house, about once every two weeks, or once you start banging on death's door, whichever comes second).  They don't make noise.  They don't barf on the rug.  They don't chew on the furniture.  They are nothing but respectful, quiet and nonobtrusive.  Plus, they're pretty.

Anyway.  Enough about my undying love for the flora of the world.  Brace yourself for some truly mediocre photos; my camera was acting like a turd, and I can barely be bothered lately to take photos of even my own children, much less plants while I'm in the middle of a project.  But whatever; here's what I was facing: a key lime plant striving to live up to its full potential, and a giant basket that forced me out of my complacency about it.

I've had this key lime plant for about seven years now.  I bought it for $5 at a moving sale, and it was root-bound in its pot at the time I bought it.  So I've known for years that it's needed a bigger pot, but I've been too skittish (and broke) to transplant it.  So I just squirreled away the ugly plastic pot inside a cotton basket and ignored the problem.

The ugly old pot was also getting brittle, so every time I picked it up to move it, huge shards of plastic would crack off.  This pot used to have a wide lip around the top, but no more.

I would like to tell you that I finally had enough compassion on this plant to declare that enough was enough, and that was what motivated me to finally transplant it, but sadly, no.  I simply needed the pretty cotton basket elsewhere, and I didn't like looking at the vulnerable nakedness of this pathetic little guy.  So, I bought an ambitious new basket, and spray painted (and added drainage holes to) an old laundry soap bucket.  (Yes, we buy our laundry soap in five-gallon buckets.  You can't possibly be surprised.)

I'm stingy with my spray paint, since it's not free and I'm not a McDuck.  So I only sprayed the parts that might possibly be seen from the top of the basket.

Transplant surgery was messy, but the little guy seems to have pulled through okay.  (Though only time can tell with transplanting, and I really should have done this in the spring rather than the fall in order to give the plant the highest odds, but I really only do things when I feel like it, and I didn't feel like doing it in the spring.)  Please be praying he makes a full recovery; I'm really rather partial to him, mostly because he only cost me five bucks, but partly because he sometimes actually grows me microscopic key limes.  Adorable.

See how brittle the pot was?  I literally just ripped it off the root ball in sheets.

I can hear his sigh of relief from here, can't you?

I always take most of my houseplants outside over the summer to revive them and attempt to give them a running start at surviving our dark, dark house through the winter time.  This plant was outside from early April until just this week, so I'm hoping he'll be happy back in his old home next to the window, but in his new bucket-pot.  

In "We're Real People, Raising Six Kids" news, check out the monstrous hole in my couch!  Also, the stain on the cushion!

Oh, don't mind me.  I only went through the effort of taking photos, but refused to put forth the effort to make sure the blankets were straight, or to pick up anything off the floor.  Because I like to keep things real.  (Or, because I'm lazy.)

I'll give you a full plant tour soon, because you can't possibly think I'd stop at just one plant post when all my plants are now back inside!  It will also partly double as a tiny-glimpses-of-our-house tour, since I almost never post about our house anymore.  So look forward to that in the coming day

atticus got baptized!

Atticus decided a few weeks ago that he wanted to get baptized, so when it was announced that baptisms were being held this past weekend, he was quick to want to sign up.  We invited family down, and spent the weekend celebrating this major milestone in his life!

He spent weeks working on the outline for what he wanted to say, and it was incredible.  It was also especially exciting that Todd got the privilege of being the one to baptize him.

He was so excited.  Todd said that afterward, while Atticus was getting changed into dry clothes, he just kept saying, "I can't believe it!  I'm baptized!  I'm so excited!  I'm so happy, I feel like crying!"  It was so sweet.  I am so very happy for him, and proud of him.

Congratulations, Buddy!

rocco the robot.

Atticus wrote and illustrated a book for Rocco, and it is AMAZING.

Rocco the Robot
By Atticus V.V.
To Rocco V.V.

Hi, I'm Rocco.

I like to play.

I like my cars.

I like to go down (sp) the slide.

I like to dance.

And I like you.

His drawings impress me so much (I love the one of Rocco the Robot throwing his cars, and I love that on the "I like to dance" page, the robot is actually doing The Robot).  But what I love most about this is that he spent so much time making something meaningful for his brother - and then he sat down and read it to him.  MELT ME.