what's up weekly.

HEY Y'ALL.  Wkka-wkka-wkka-what's up?  Well, I'll tell you.

This week has just sped by.  We started the school year, which is the primary reason for that.  (This is the spot in the post where I'd insert First Day of School photos, if I had taken them yet, but I haven't.  I'm hoping to get that done today.)

I'm attempting a 'soft launch' for school this year.  This week, I'm just trying to get the big kids up and running with their new schedules and responsibilities, and then next week I'll be freed up to get the ball rolling with the younger schoolies.  Then the week after that, we should be at a good place to figure out how to best fit things like foreign language and piano lessons into our days.

So far, so good.  Things are humming along pretty well at this point.  We've added a couple new things into each day, but the kids have taken it all in stride.  They've started doing Latin with Todd in the afternoon, and they seem to be liking it.

In addition to our school routine, we've had a few other items of note this week.  On Saturday, we spent the evening in our favorite neighboring town, eating pizza and playing at a playground with DOUBLE TWISTY SLIDES. #bestlifenow

Rocky totally owned this rock wall.

Then we picked up our grocery order and headed home.

On Sunday, Todd preached, and I stayed home with the kids to listen from afar.  It was a fantastic address of "Judge not, lest you be judged."  You should take a listen here!

I got a batch of second-ferment kombucha going in the afternoon.  I've been getting 'kitcheny' lately - my kombucha is revitalized, I'm still making yogurt, I started a sourdough starter and some milk kefir this week, and I've begun to "Julie and Julia" my way through The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. 

I have wanted to try making cheese for a while, since I have access to so much cheap, high quality raw milk.  But all the extra tools and cultures that are necessary to modern cheesemaking was making me feel overwhelmed, and the cost investment seemed less-than-worth it since the whole point was to use cheap milk in the first place.  (And, shocker, I don't always have great follow-through on projects, so I settle for cheap hobbies so I don't feel too bad when I inevitably drop them.)  But I stumbled on this book that teaches traditional cheesemaking with raw milk - no DVI cultures, no expensive cheese presses; just raw milk, calf rennet, and some basic kitchen tools.  

I have already made yogurt cheese, which is basically just the best cream cheese I've ever had in my life, and the kids couldn't stop raving over it when I served it.  So that recipe is a hit.  I'm currently working on clabber cheese and kefir cheese, which are basically variations of the same thing, just leveraging different probiotic cultures in the milk, just to compare the outcome of each and decide which we like best.  So far, I have tried no rennet cheeses, but I do have rennet on hand, ready for the moment I get up the nerve.  I'll be getting to that part of the book soon - my goal is to attempt most of the recipes in the book, and thankfully they start out simple and get increasingly more complicated.  Wish me luck!

On Monday, we jumped in to school in the morning, but our afternoon was cut short by a dentist appointment I had out of town.  I had to leave around lunch time, so for the first time, I asked the big kids to babysit all the little kids while I was gone.  (Todd was home, to be clear, but he was working, so the big kids were fully responsible for everyone's care, but with the anchoring presence of a grownup nearby in case of emergency.)  They made lunch, cleaned up, and got the little kids down for nap (with a little help from Todd).  And then, while they waited for me to get home, they cleaned the house - upstairs AND downstairs.  It was GLORY.

I have officially entered a new phase of parenting, one in which I left the house in the middle of the day.  One in which I left the house by myself.  One in which my big kids were an actual, adequate, responsible, adult-like presence in my home without me there.  One in which my husband works from home to allow this to be possible.  I just... I can't even explain the tectonic scale of the shift.  I could get used to this.

On Tuesday, I had scheduled a meetup with a friend in the morning - we're going through The Fruit of Her Hands, and have been getting together on a weekly basis to discuss it while our kids play together.  I told the big kids they could come with us, or stay home and work on schoolwork, and they chose to stay home and work.  Again - new phase of life.

On Tuesday night, a sweet friend watched the kids so Todd and I could go on a date, and she brought a couple of Andy Griffith board games she had saved from the imminent threat of a friend's burn pile.  Guess what the kids have spent all their free time doing this week?

Wednesday we headed to the Amish and had some friends over for dinner.

Yesterday, we did school and went to another friend's house to swim in the afternoon.

These are "V"s.  For Van Voorst, if you didn't get that.

ANNNNNNNND I think you can see why this week sped by so quickly - we've had a lot going on!  It didn't keep me from getting some reading done, though, and I'm in the middle of a couple of really fantastic books: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen (who is quickly becoming a go-to author in my bookstacks), and Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, in keeping with the genre of World War II accounts/memoirs that I've been into lately, though it is a re-read from a few years ago.  

And that has been our week!

Heads up: the book links are affiliate links.  No shame here.  I have to fund my book addiction somehow, and selling my blood has become more difficult because of COVID.  This is a socially responsible, yet mask-free way to help a sister out.  So click away, my friends.