what's up weekly.

Hello, hello!  It's that time of the week again, and this week you get a twofer.  So let's rewind the tape two weeks and get started!

Juni got some stickers for her birthday, and the girls had fun decorating themselves.

That Sunday, it was Mother's Day!  We all got dressed up for church, and Todd was sweet to think of taking a picture of me with all the kids.  (Seriously, if it wasn't for that man, there would be no photos of our lives at all.)

Sometimes I am just floored by the fact that I made all these people.

Todd surprised me with my very favorite gluten-free pizza for lunch.

Then I took a nap, because Mother's Day or no Mother's Day, you better believe I'm going to be a lazy bum.

The kids got me surprise presents with their own money, bless their little hearts.  They had picked things out at one of the discount stores up at the Amish, and paid for them stealthily so as not to ruin the surprise.  (Unfortunately, Rocco had purchased my gift at the same time that he purchased a gift for Juni's birthday, so he put the Almond Joy he bought me in his pocket to save for later and it melted... he was distraught.)

I am clearly known and loved.

This gift was a little less intuitive but I love it even more for being so random.

A few days earlier in the week, I had called a dirt guy to come and give us a quote for our backyard.  Our yard is on a steep hill and has been eroding away like crazy.  Very little grass grows on it anymore, and all we have is weeds and hardpack.  We needed to level off spots that were becoming mudslides or low points where water would just sit and collect.  But the quote, while not unreasonable, was still higher than we could swing right now, so I prayed that God would help me come up with a different creative solution.

The next morning, my sister texted me, saying she and my brother-in-law had been thinking about our yard situation and thought they might have a creative solution.  They could come down on the following Monday and help us get to work.  Um, okay!

So the day after Mother's Day, we buckled down.  Austin started by thinning the branches in our massive, dirty trees.

Then on Tuesday, we got some dirt delivered.  And by "some" dirt, I mean 10 yards.  20,000 pounds.  A whole dump truck full.

We were able to move it to the back using a loader-thing.

Austin trucked dirt back and forth while the rest of us worked at spreading it out and packing it down.  I was so proud of the kids: they were genuinely helpful, they worked hard, and they lasted most of the day without complaining or wanting to give up.  

We took a break for lunch.

If you can believe it, we got every last bit of that dirt moved and spread, and grass seed laid down, by 5:00 that evening.

Then the heavens opened up and we have been experiencing torrential rain for over a week now, and the forecast for the next ten days has two dry days in it.  It has been somewhat disheartening, as some of the dirt has washed away and I'm not totally sure how much of the grass seed is left back there to sprout.  I am just trying to rest in the knowledge that the God who helped us with a creative solution to a need is the God who is now sending floodwaters, and there must be some kind of logic behind it all.  I'm sure it will all be fine.

This past Wednesday, the county and city finally lifted their mask mandate.  We've been under mandate since last July, so it has been a long stretch.  We wanted to do something to celebrate, so we took the kids out for ice cream.  Granted, it was a drive-through and we brought it home to eat, so it wasn't even a chance to finally walk in somewhere maskless, but the point was to celebrate, and I think we did that pretty well.  (Although, Todd was like, "I feel like someone broke into our house, stole our TV, brought it back a year later, and I'M supposed to act grateful to the thief for its return.  Maybe the thief should have to thank me for his having it for a year.")

Then this past Sunday was Ascension, so you know we partied it up.

My biggest lessons learned in making a decent cheeseboard:
1. at least 3 different kinds each of cheese, meat, fruit and crackers, and avoid letting each 'type' of thing touch another of its kind.

2. nuts, chocolate, and olives are easy single additions to round it out

3. scrunch and squish.  Squash it all in close together. Squash the meat instead of letting it lay down flat.  Pack the board full.  Scrunch and squish.

In other news, I bought a new-to-me coffee table recently.  I've been needing one for a while, as the wicker ottoman we use as a coffee table now has huge holes in the top, and sharp metal points all along the edges where the metal framing has busted through the wicker.  It's just not practical or safe.  But I wasn't wanting some particleboard nonsense from Target; I wanted something solid wood.  But I also am not Daddy Warbucks so I've been biding my time while I've waited for a good, cheap, solid option to make itself known.

So I finally found a decent, small-scale table at a local consignment store, but it was covered in all kinds of layers of chalk paint and spray paint and varnish.  I've been meaning to strip it, but life has just gotten away from me lately and it was just sitting in the garage, unloved.  Finally, Todd decided to take it into his own hands and has been stripping it slowly over the last week or two.  It's slow-going, since the paint is so thick and he typically has 10-15 minute chunks of time to spare to work on it, but I am feeling so excited by what we're finding underneath all those layers!

This is the bare wood, after all the paint and varnish have been stripped, but before the stain has been sanded down.  I am so, so excited by what I see!  The legs are going to be slow going, I think, since there is a lot of detail work on them, but I'm feeling so encouraged to already see the top stripped.

Whew! That is a lot of news to pack into a single post.  Lots of good things happening!  Now just pray for us and our yard to survive the next week and a half of more rainstorms.  Not only is the yard a huge question mark, but the kids are getting so sick of being inside already.  So be praying the sun comes out and stays out!