what's up weekly.

Is it weird to anyone else that it's full-on Advent already?  Having Thanksgiving so late this year has really thrown me off.  We have done a few little Adventy things, but I still am not mentally in the game!  As my mom would say, I need to get my poop in a group.

Well, that's about to change, as today is St. Nicholas Day and I was given the push to actually pull out our wooden shoes to set out for Sinterklaas.  (Who, spoiler alert, IS ME!)  So today the kids will be waking up to shoes full of decked out Santa chocolates (they have bishop hats! And little staffs!) and gold coins and Dutch letters, and Sinterklaas is leaving Yours Truly a big bag of Dutch coffee.

I am so very, very glad I married Dutch so that Christmas can start early.

Rocco fashioned this gas mask so he didn't have to smell Callista's poop.  Resourceful.  Also, I want one.

Since I've already started with today, how about I continue to work my way backwards through the week?  Unconventional, I know, and potentially more confusing than it's worth, but what the heck.  Let's give it a go.

Yesterday was Atticus' eleventh birthday!  We celebrated by eating his requested meals through the day: blackberry oatmeal for breakfast, brats and bbq potato chips for lunch, and Mexican restaurant tacos for dinner.

Yesterday also marked the day Callista started potty training, and she did so incredibly well.  No accidents, and a couple of successes.  She's still not super comfortable peeing in the potty, so she was basically holding it all morning, but still - that's a sure sign of pending success.  While it went very smoothly, all things considered (nothing like when I tried training Penelope for the first time and slipped in puddled urine and bruised my tailbone and called my friend Kristy while crying and covered in pee), it was still exhausting keeping her corralled near the bathroom all day, especially while trying to do extra daytime cooking for Atticus.  By last night, I was completely spent.  I was inexpressibly grateful to a friend who sent a coffee over!

He was there to lend her moral support.  He also lent her his weirdest facial expression.

I continued to work on painting the shiplap yesterday.  I had no idea when I started this "project" that shiplapping is less of a project than it is a permanent lifestyle choice.  It is taking for. stinking. ever.  It doesn't help that I typically have only an hour or two to work with each afternoon when the little kids are down for nap, and I have to pull all my tools and supplies out and put them all away within that time frame as well, so progress is made in only small windows of time.  It has been two weeks of daily work, and I still feel so far from done.  The goal is to get it done by tomorrow, though - and then Sunday's rest will be so, so appreciated!

...Okay, Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday is where this whole "reverse news" thing breaks down.  Whoops.  But I'm too far in to totally overhaul the system now, so we're just going to make things more confusing and do those days in their actual order.  (Just go with me.)  Monday was the night Rocco made his fated jump from the top bunk and hurt his arm.  Callista also fell and gashed her head on the coffee table.  It was a rough night for everyone.

Tuesday morning, Callista just wanted to lay on the ice pack for a while, so she hunkered down for some couchside meal service.

My friend Rachel came in the afternoon to watch the other kids so I could take Rocco in for X-rays.  Wednesday, Meghan and Josiah watched them all so that I could take him to get it casted.  He did an amazing job of staying his cheerful self through all of it.

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Tiny Brudder did so well getting his cast on today!

A post shared by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Dec 4, 2019 at 5:56pm PST

Wednesday night, we headed out to pick up pizza, get panties for Callista so she could start potty training the next day, and pick out our Christmas tree.  We got two of those three things done.  WHY ARE THERE NO CHRISTMAS TREES ANYWHERE NORMAL?  I know for a fact HyVee used to have them, as did Walmart, if I remember correctly.  Not anymore, and we didn't have time to drive across town to Lowes.  Now that Lissy is housebound with potty training for the next few days, the plan is to go on Monday.  See?  Advent is being super weird.  Hopefully they still have trees by then.

Feeling better, but appalled there were no trees to be had.

Okay, now back to our previously attempted reverse countdown: Sunday, we drove home from Iowa, as we had spent Thanksgiving up there.

Saturday, Atticus had his birthday party.  He got a drone from my sister and her husband, and about three minutes into flying it outside, he lost control of it, and he and my mom spent the next hour looking for it!  We like to keep things memorable.  (And yes, they did find it!)

AND THAT BRINGS US TO FRIDAY!  The kids did some crafty projects with my mom, and Todd and I braved the mall on Black Friday to get Juniper's ears pierced!

Whew.  How's that for tons and tons of news?  I'll admit, this whole week has felt like a race to the finish.  I am worn out, beat down, and just plain exhausted.  On Monday, we will be jumping back in to two weeks of school before Christmas break.  I hope to have learned my lesson from overscheduling this break, and will allow the upcoming stretch of downtime to be actually restful.  But it looks like I will probably still be shiplapping my basement by then, and forevermore, so probably not.

During Advent, we forego most TV watching, except for Christmas movies together in the evening.  I was glad to snuggle in with everyone last night, after a long, exhausting week!