the minivan voorsts.: what's up weekly: 'yet more travel' edition.

Whew. Okay, friends. I am back now, and for the foreseeable future. This past stretch of life has just been full, full, full. I wasn't able to blog last week because we were actually in Tennessee... or was it Iowa? My days are all mixed up. We've done a lot recently.

So, starting back at the Friday when I left off last: we had just successfully made it through our first week back to school, and things actually went pretty well. We had Saturday off, and then Sunday we made a daytrip up to my hometown for a big local festival they hold every year. There are antique tractors, craft vendors, steam engine trains and trolleys to ride, 4H animals, concerts, a saloon town, a log village, a steam carousel, antique vendors, heritage artisans, FOOD FOOD AND MORE FOOD, and more. It's huge. It smells like gravel oil and gas engines and cap gun smoke and wood fires and rabbit pelts and grilled elk and kettle corn. Tens of thousands of people flock to it every year. It's kind of a big deal, and it's kind of my exact cup of tea. We hadn't been since 2015, so it seemed like time.

We did more than just ride the trolley all the livelong day, but I'll have to include those photos in a subsequent post - for today, you get to see a lot of "Van Voorsts on the Trolley."

It was a quick trip - we drove the three hours up in the morning, grabbed lunch before we got to the fair grounds, spent a few hours in the afternoon, then ate dinner on the drive home. It was the perfect amount of time to enjoy it without getting burnt out by it. But I will say, after coming home from our LONG road trip just a few weeks before, the car ride part of it was less enjoyable than I usually find it. (Though, driving through Southeast Iowa farm country is never totally lost on me - I just can't get over how beautiful it is.)

The next day was Labor Day, and I was beginning to pack and prepare for yet another road trip later in the week, so we declared popcorn and a movie for lunch (Labor Day Miracle!) so I could get caught up on folding laundry.

Continuing our somewhat-regular tradition of watching the Labor Daybor video.

Also, Finneas is NINE AND A HALF. I repeat, FINNEAS IS NINE AND A HALF.

And Rocco has the cutest little flipflop tan lines in the entire world. I LOVE seeing tan feet.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent procrastinating, eventually planning the itinerary and packing lists, cleaning out the fridge, and then actually packing up our things - we were headed to Franklin, TN for the Fight Laugh Feast conference there. Luckily, this drive wasn't nearly as arduous as our trip to South Dakota/Idaho - on paper, the trip should only take about 7 hours (which in "real-life, traveling-with-kids time" translates to about 9 hours, which is still not the worst). It was a beautiful drive - I love Tennessee - even though all the fields and trees are looking pretty overcooked this time of year. (All of you people who are insisting it's Fall are clearly either located much farther North than we are, or you're delusional. Stuff is still lookin' and feelin' mighty late-summery in these parts.)

This was our main stop for the day, and it was perfect - the weather was beautiful, there was a breeze blowing off the lake, and the vending machines were well stocked.

We got to our AirBnB around 5:00, quickly changed, and headed over to registration and the kick-off evening. The next two days were spent attending talks by Voddie Baucham, Doug Wilson, the Sheologians, and others; meeting other likeminded families; and playing on the bouncy slide. In the afternoons, I hung at the AirBnB and took naps with the younger girls, and Todd and the bigger kids attended more talks.

Also, one of the sponsors was a gun safety school, so they had pretend guns the kids could try out. I think this may have been the ultimate highlight of the whole weekend for the boys.

Look at this kid, aiming with both eyes open. #pro

She will never need to use a gun. She will disarm all evil with her cuteness - and what won't bow to her cuteness will be strong armed into submission by her will. The gun is a just a prop to make her look harmless.

Also, the new baby is never forgotten or left alone. She is well loved and always included in all the festivities.

We headed home on Sunday, but took a three-hour detour to Memphis so I could pick up a few things at Ikea that the Missouri stores don't carry. It is not lost on my how much Todd sacrifices to be married to me and my whims. On the one hand, he gets to listen to me complain about how much time my pregnant self has spent in the car and away from home lately, and on the other hand, he patiently and kindly agrees to take a three-hour detour to pick up bookshelves. Todd Van Voorst, I see you.

Praise the Lord, we finally made it home Sunday night, and we are now HOME for the foreseeable future. I am entering the third trimester of this pregnancy, which means I need time to nest and rest and prep and plan, and it also means that I have a lower bar of tolerance for sitting in the car without complaining about it. So we will all benefit from our time at home.

Monday of this week, we slowly got back into school - we did half days on Monday and Tuesday, and Todd and the kids went to an orthotropics appointment in Kansas City Tuesday afternoon. We have plugged away at full days the rest of this week, and feel we have earned our Friday today. After getting a full week of school under our belts when tired and recovering and establishing new routines... well, I feel like gold stars need to be awarded to all the Van Voorsts. WE DID IT, JOE!

And in other random news, I have decided to pay the kids to forage nuts from our yard. We have three huge hickory trees, which drop more infuriating and constant crap all over our yard than I care to detail right now, so this year I decided we were going to try to keep at least some of the detritus picked up AND learn the valuable skill of harvesting free yard food. So the kids spent an afternoon picking up nuts, and then another afternoon removing the husks. Then I did the 'float test' and discovered about 98% of the nuts were no good, and after all of that I had paid five kids $3 each to harvest what amounted to about thirty edible nuts. That's some expensive free yard food.

In pregnancy news, I'm now 27 weeks. I don't have a photo yet from this week - maybe I'll get to that today - but enjoy this makeupless photo from last week. Things are really starting to fall apart around here.

In CUTEST SIBLINGS IN THE WORLD news, here is Juni 'helping' Atticus with his puzzle. I have tried to piece a puzzle with a toddler 'helping' me before, and it is not easy, nor is it easy to keep your cool. Atticus stayed as cool as a cucumber. They are both just the best.