what's up weekly. (We have a house! Again!)

Oopsie daisy - I got immersed in homeschool planning and completely forgot to post last week!  Hope you'll forgive me for the deliquency.

I have quite the couple of weeks to report.  Let me start at the beginning.

Two Saturdays ago, we pulled yet another all day car ride.  Headed to the Amish in the morning, then back home to unload, then out to Leavenworth to house hunt.  We looked at seven houses, some of which were okay and some of which were just awful.  (Remember that trend at the beginning of Pinterest where everyone was making homemade signs for their homes, and then 'distressing' them by hitting them with nails and chains and stuff?  One house looked like someone had done that to every surface in the house - bathroom cabinets, trim, walls.  AND THEY WERE ASKING ALMOST A QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS FOR IT.  Good gravy, the audacity.)  

Unrelated to my house story, but these two girls love coffee.  Juni especially is a 'beverage girl.'  She never met a drink she didn't like.  She even takes drinks of my water and then smacks her lips and says, "I LOOOOOOOVE waddow (water)!"

After all of that, Todd got a terrrrrible migraine, so we weren't able to talk through our thoughts about any of the houses on the way home.  Then the next day was Sunday, so we just tabled it and focused on resting and being present in our Sabbath worship and celebrations.  Sunday night, we finally discussed our thoughts about the houses, and we decided we would put in an offer on a cute but small one we'd seen first thing in the day.  Todd would call our realtor in the morning and have her write up the offer.

But then our plumbing started leaking water into the basement (more on that later), so we spent the first part of Monday calling the plumber and cordoning off the upstairs bathroom and cleaning up water and refereeing fights over who was the rightful next occupant of the single useable bathroom.  By the time Todd got the realtor called, the house was already under contract.

This is the hole the plumber had to cut into our ceiling.

This is the Door of Doom.  Enter at your own risk, children of men.  (I mean, children of Todd.)  Should you flush that toilet, great doom will descend upon you and there will be great weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I kind of broke down at that point.  This house hunt has been so very hard at times.  There isn't much on the market, and what is for sale is either in terrible shape or isn't a good fit for our family.  The few gems that do go up for sale get snatched up right away, and it is hard to compete in a fast-moving market when you live three hours away.  I have rested in knowing the Lord is sovereign and will take care of us, but there have been moments of uncertainty and stress that have gotten on top of me, and Monday was one of those moments.  I told Todd not to even show me anymore listings for a while because they were all just so depressing.  (One fresh listing had a kitchen island that was just a plywood box with a sink in it.)

AND THEN.  (You knew there had to be an "And Then," right?)

Todd had trouble sleeping on Tuesday night of that week, so he got up to read.  He happened to refresh Zillow at like 2 a.m. and a new house had gone on the market.  One that had everything we were looking for and was cute to boot.  

When I got up the next morning and saw him checking Zillow, I cynically told him to just not even look at it today because there wouldn't be anything!  He finally got up enough nerve to poke the bear and asked me if I'd look at just one more listing.  I braced myself to see something terrible... and then discovered that the house wasn't just not terrible, but it was really fantastic.  I mean, really perfect for everything we need.  Oh, how God does love to make me the butt of a good joke.  And I'm so glad. 

We decided to offer on the house right away without seeing it in person.  We didn't want to wait and have someone buy it first.  So we are now FINALLY under contract and actually have a place to live!  I am so happy and relieved, I could cry.  We are headed to Leavenworth today to be there at inspection, and to see the house in person for the first time.  I can share more about it next week!

Okay, so other than major house news, there were other big things going on.  This little nugget turned seven months old!  

She has moved out of our room and into the nursery overnight, and is sleeping for much longer stretches.  She goes to bed at 6:45 most nights, wakes up once around 3:30 or 4:00 a.m., and is awake for the day around 7:00.  

She has also sprouted two teeth this month, and LEARNED TO WAVE last week!  Oh my goodness, I could just DIIIIIIIIIIE.  She melts me into a giant puddle every time she smiles her funny chompers at me, or waves at me, or really just exists.  It melts me that she exists.  

She refuses to retire the SnuggleMe, and I refuse to make her, so this is how she sleeps.  Not sure how she could possibly be comfortable like this, but I MEAN, COME ON.  LOOK AT HER.

This week, she is working on getting her knees up under her in preparation of eventual crawling.  She is growing so fast.  I worry that life is so busy in this season that it will all be a blur in my memory later on.  I really don't want to forget her sweet baby days.  Please Lord, help me remember!

Meanwhile, while Ophelia gained teeth, Rocco keeps losing teeth.  He pulled one out by himself the other day.  

Callista is a ham.  A ham with a ukulele.  And that's why we call her Miss Hawaiian Pizza.  Ba-dum-bum. 

We had a tummy bug in our house for a day or two - Atticus got hit the hardest, and Penelope was down for a bit as well.  No one else got anything.  Weird.

This image from this week had me feeling strongly reminiscent about this image from seven-and-a-half years ago, back when both the boy and the couch were much younger...

All of us girls got haircuts.  The little girls knew it was coming, so they spent a lot of preparatory time playing "Salon."

When it came down to it, though, Juni was initially less thrilled with her very first haircut than she'd anticipated she'd be.

She didn't fight it or freak out at all, she just quietly cried as big, big tears spilled down her cheeks. It seemed to be overwhelming rather than scary.  Poor, poor, brave girl.

But eventually she came around, and Lissy loved her own first haircut. 

Ophelia had fun playing with her friend Jethro while his mom Jen cut our hair. 

Jethro's hair puts Ophelia to shame.  It will be a long while before she needs a haircut.

Whew.  Other than that, I've spent a lot of time school-planning.  This is my first year juggling three grade levels. (Rocco is officially starting first grade this year; kindergarten is very casual in these parts so it doesn't really require any special planning or allotment of individual time.)  Plus, the big kids are entering into a more intensive level this year, complete with lab sciences, which are a whole other level of Whoa.  Planning is a little more complicated this year as a result, and even further complicated by the fact that I don't really know when to start us... should we do a little tiny bit before the move, even though many of our books and materials are already packed?  Wait until after the move, but then start much later into the year than I was hoping?  I just don't know.  Moving is making everything so much weirder and harder than it already was.  I don't know the best course of action.

And lastly, it has been rainy here this week (PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!), so we have spent many afternoons curled up watching movies together.  (Matilda and Anne of Green Gables were the featured films of the week.)  

I also actually READ SOME BOOKS for the first time in about a million years.  And you guys, you HAVE to read "The Daughter of Time" by Josephine Tey.  It is detective mystery and factual history and fiction all rolled into one, and unlike anything I have ever read before.  It makes up its own genre.  It was fantastic.  It also took me less than twenty-four hours to read, so it isn't a slog or anything.  It's short and sweet and so, so good.

And on that note of recommendation, I bid you farewell until next week!

what's up weekly. (no news is good news? or, no news is... still no news.)

Well, friends, I wish I had more to report.  Last weekend we went to Leavenworth to house hunt.  It was quite the ordeal - we headed up to the Amish first thing Saturday morning, then drove back home and put all our milk away in the fridge.  Then we had all the kids go potty and we loaded right back into the van to drive the three hours to Leavenworth.  (Google Maps says it's 2.5 hours from here, but Google Maps doesn't have toddlers in the car with it, and also didn't give us the heads-up that a semi-trailer would have CAUGHT FIRE ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD and we'd be in stand-still traffic on the interstate for half an hour.  Moral of the story: ALWAYS budget extra time.)

When we got into town, we met up with our realtor and looked at a bunch of houses.  The housing market is just nuts right now - everything is crazy expensive, and even then there isn't much to choose from.  There was one house that we saw that seemed to at least be a contender, but it was still on the small side and needs a lot of updating so we've hesitated to put in an offer.  The other four houses we saw were just not right for our needs, and a couple of them were just downright shocking.

So, after all of that, we met up with some Leavenworth friends at a playground for a bit, then headed home.  It was such a full day, with so much car time, but the kids did amazingly well.  Which is good, because we're going to have to do it again this weekend.  Please be praying we find something!

We learned to clip the chicken's wings so they stop flying over the fence.

Since then, this week has not held much of major note.  Lots of hanging out at home and playing, and continuing to enjoy summer break.  Because I've done so much packing already and we aren't moving until September now, I have very little going on.  So I did some canning.  Todd found a killer deal on organic raspberries - $1/pint, so I had him buy 30 pints and I canned up some whole raspberries and some jam.

We saved $119.  NBD.

Penelope washed them while I got my canner set up and my jars washed.

I also did some quarts of ham broth, and I'm going to be trying my hand at some applesauce later today.  I am really enjoying canning - it feels like a creative outlet that has an actual practical purpose for me.  Hobbies that don't meet an actual need are so hard for me to sustain.

Ophelia loves it when Penelope serenades her.

I also got our school books ordered this week and started planning our schedule.  I was going to wait to do all of this until we get to the new house - primarily so we don't have to pack and move all of the new books - but now that we're going to be here much longer than we'd originally thought, I figured I'd get on it now rather than waiting to even do any planning until we get settled in the new house.  So I ordered all of next year's stuff... and then our bank account got flagged for fraud because apparently that is too much money for a normal human person to spend on books in one night.

In Kidland news, Atticus and Ophelia are thick as thieves.

Also, Juni could not be any cuter.

Juni found some painter's tape and made herself a mustache.  She is a huge ham.

 I have a personal stylist.  Now, if she would just double as a house cleaner, my life would be on track.

It's hard to see, but she asked me to tie her blankie around her neck and back, and she put her snuggly penguin in it like it was an Ergo.  We were twin moms.

And that was pretty much it for the week.  Books should start rolling into the mailbox today, so I'm hoping to get started on scheduling next week.  I'm excited to see what next school year holds for us - and where we'll end up!

what's up weekly. (plot twist: house edition.)

Well, apparently as a reward for actually chronicling all the stuff that's been going on around here, life decided to throw me a light week.  Well, I guess what I mean to say is that there were only a few items of note.  That doesn't mean they were small items, just few in number.  

(I'm going to just add Fourth of July photos, because that's all I have from this week.)

First, we went to Leavenworth last Friday for the inspection on the house we were buying.  We made a day of it - we ate breakfast on the road, we met my sister and brother-in-law there to start making plans... and then, long story short, the inspection went poorly so we backed out of the contract.  It was really the right choice - the house was in much worse condition than we expected - but it was hard to feel like we were starting back at Square One.  We spent the weekend feeling very overwhelmed by the unknowns.

Saturday morning, we got a flat tire on our way up to the Amish.  It didn't end up being a huge deal, but it was quite the spectacle for a while as Todd and our Amish friend Eli tried to troubleshoot things while seven Van Voorsts and eight Amish kids ("Am-lettes", as Todd calls them) ran around underfoot watching and "helping."  I wish I had photos to share... but obviously not.

It made us take longer in getting home than normal, though, and I had made arrangements through FB marketplace for someone to come pick up our basement piano.  (We're keeping our living room piano, but didn't want to move the basement piano with us.)  The gal had a kind of middle-aged haircut and showed up with a bunch of teenagers, so I asked if they were all her kids... to which she replied, "No, um, I'm only eighteen."  Whoopsie.  I shouldn't be allowed to talk to human people.  They did get the piano wrestled out onto their truck bed, but it was only by the grace of God and the Herculean strength of one Todd Van Voorst.  That thing seriously weighs a million pounds and they somehow lifted it up there.

Monday was the Fourth of July, so Todd picked up some sparklers and we had a celebration in the front yard.  (The first year we lived here, we forgot to pick up sparklers and didn't realize you buy them at specific tents around town, rather than just at Walmart like it was in Iowa, so some friends stopped by with sparklers and saved the day!  Our Fourth of July traditions are a work in progress.)

The rest of the week was spent packing and staying in from the heat.  We had heat indices of up to 110 degrees, and it was HUMID.

We are headed to Leavenworth again tomorrow to do some house hunting.  By the grace and blessing of God, and the kindness and incredible generosity of family who loves us, we have been able to expand our budget and I am feeling so much more optimistic.  I feel so much more hopeful that we will all actually fit in the new home we find.  Seriously, the houses in our previous price range were primarily three-bedroom, one-bath homes, many of which didn't have any space for storage or even a garage.  Imagine trying to street-park the Kraken all the time!  So we are going to look at a few houses tomorrow and hopefully will have some more good news to share next week.  

Penelope is not what you would call "intrepid."

And that was our week!  I'm continuing to try to clear out the house and get everything boxed up, but I'm in that weird lull where all the unnecessary stuff has already been packed, and everything that is still out is all stuff we still use on a regular basis, or things I'm waiting to pack until I know the layout of the new house.  So not much going on with it right now, but I'm sure once it picks up it will be pretty consuming!  So I'm going to enjoy these more restful days while I have them.

Happy weekend!

what's up weekly. (celebrating two weeks' worth of news, and a house update!)

Okay, well, whoopsie daisy.  I never got back around to blogging again last week, and I left you hanging, so I owe you two posts in one today.  I will do my best to deliver.

So let's back up - we have had a LOT to celebrate over the last couple weeks, so let's make "Celebrate" the official word of this post, shall we?  When I left off last time, Ophelia just had two teeth, so let's start there.  She has popped through two more!  Her top two little chompers.  And good gravy is she cute (and much happier now that they're through.)  She has also moved to her own room overnight and we are both getting more sleep.  Let's celebrate!

Ophelia has been sleeping in the room where Juni was, and Juni has moved to the bedroom with the big girls.  Everyone is growing up so fast!

We celebrated Father's Day with our very, very favorite father on the planet.  The kids had all cooked up gift ideas, and Penelope and Laurelai literally cooked up Dutch spice cookies for him.  He opened presents, and we had popcorn party for dinner while we watched Courageous.

Look at all the lucky kids who get to call him Dad.  They are privileged.

"Hape Fothrs Day i Love Yuo Dad love Rocco"

The deep freeze came unplugged somehow (let's not celebrate that), but I didn't lose anything (let's definitely celebrate that).  I had already started a pressure canning project, so I just expanded the work to include what was in the freezer that needed to get processed to be saved from spoilage.  I ended up making 21 quarts of broth, 5 quarts of cooked chicken, and 12 pints of canned strawberries.  Let's celebrate!

The "Sold" sign finally went up in our yard, which just makes it feel all the more official. Yay! (Although, it's really starting to hit some of the kids that we're moving and they are having a hard time.  Callista is particularly sad about leaving our house - it is the only house she's ever known.  I don't blame her for being sad - a lot of great memories have been made here.  Ophelia was literally born here.  There are lots of feelings swirling.)

Look how terrible our grass looks.  Between the heat and the moles, and the fact that I really can't get grass to grow where the tree used to be, our yard is looking sad.  Luckily, all our neighbors still have worse yards than us, so if you can believe it, this is still the best lawn on the block.

DeeVee got a new home.  I think he's celebrating.  We were a little sad to see him go, but we took him to an Amish friend's farm and he was put in with quite the harem of hens.  I imagine he has not given us a second thought.

CALLISTA TURNED FIVE!  

This girl is sugar and spice and everything nice.  She is smart and sassy.  She runs HOT.  She loves playing with her dollhouse and putting on 'shows' for me where she just basically makes up a storyline with multiple characters, and songs, and debacles, and acts it out for as long as she can before I need to go do something else.  She has so much imagination.  She loves intensely - Ophelia and the chickens will never have to wonder how she feels about them.  As soon as she gets up in the morning, she is out searching for Ophelia, and she loves to smother her in kisses and doesn't like to wander far from her for the first stretch of the day.

She is a fantastic eater, a deep sleeper, and is learning quickly how to sit still and quiet at church.  (Spoiler: it's because we bribe her.)  She is heat and light and beauty and I just love her to bits and bits.  Callista Janelle, we would be lost without you!

My parents came down Saturday afternoon to celebrate her birthday with us.  She loved being the center of attention - not in an annoying or selfish way, just in a way that let you know that she felt very loved by everyone showering their affection on her the way that she so naturally showers her own affection on others every day.  I'm so glad she had such a special day.

I have about seventy million photos of her with her cupcakes, and I can't get rid of any of them because her face is SO JOYFUL in all of them.  She was so sweet and so happy!

The rest of this week was filled with playtime for the kids.  With the move, my plans to keep a modicum of school going throughout the weeks has been almost completely chucked - the big kids still have to read for an hour a day, but that is all we're doing at the moment.  The boys have been working hard on their stop motion movies, and they ordered a mixed lot of classic G.I. Joes off of ebay with their allowance money, and have been having a blast setting up scenes and planning storylines.

The girls have had a fun week too.  Callista got a tea set for her birthday, so many cookies have been baked and cups of sugar water poured.  They have started a club called "Teacups and Tiaras," where they drink tea and wear crowns.  It's basically The Finer Things Club, without having to invite Toby.

One other random, weird thing to celebrate is that all the kids seem to have caught and recovered from chicken pox!  It was extremely mild for most of them.  I thought it was poison ivy or something for like a week before I finally put two and two together.  Ophelia didn't catch it, and most of the rest of them only had a couple spots.  Callista and Penelope had bouts of feeling under the weather.  I weirdly caught it again, even though I had it as a child, but it wasn't bad.  It was itchy like chicken pox, but only showed up on one side of my body and has made a couple of my joints flare up, which seems more like shingles.  But either way, it really has been no biggie.  We're all through it now and feeling fine.  And now the kids are immune, without ever having to get them the shot.  Win/win.

This beautiful, talented girl is MINE! How did I get so lucky?

And other than that, I have been mostly spending the week packing and running back and forth to Schnucks for more empty boxes because WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!  That is cause for a huge celebration!

Shortly after I blogged last time, we had come to the decision to put in an offer on a house we'd been eyeing for a while.  It had been on the market for months because it needed a lot of important (expensive) updates, both structural and aesthetic, but the bones of the house were good and it was in a nice neighborhood.  Since nothing better had come up, we finally decided to risk it and offer really low to see if we could get it for a price that would allow us to make all the changes it needed.  It didn't feel like "The House," but it was honestly the best one out there.

And then literally the next morning, barely twelve hours after we put our offer in and while we were waiting to hear back, "The House" - the perfect-for-us house - did come on the market.  And while it's old, which we love, it doesn't need work. Which we also love.  So, long story short, the first house came back with a counteroffer that was WAY too high, so we were free to pursue the second house.  Our realtor FaceTimed me as she walked through it, and then we put in an offer.  With the way the market is right now, it wasn't going to be available long, so we just jumped on it (and by the next day, they had another offer, so we know we wouldn't have gotten it if we'd waited).

I'll show you pictures once we own it.  It feels weird posting someone else's house, you know?  But here are the details: it is pink (for now), so we call it The Pink Palace.  It is 120 years old, with a big wraparound porch and a huge attic up some stairs off of one of the bedrooms, which will be a perfect place for the kids to go wild.  It has a screen porch off the back of the kitchen.  It's on a very large lot, and even has an old carriage house where the kids will be able to keep bikes.  (Right now, they don't have bikes because we have nowhere to keep them, and the ones they had just rusted out in the yard.  They are SO excited for bikes!)  While it's not as grand as our Story City house was, it definitely has the same feel (and even much of the same floorplan), so we know we will love it.

We're headed to Leavenworth soon to be there for the inspection, so we can see the house in person and I can start planning where I want everything to go when it comes off the moving truck.

We close August 1 - exactly one month from today.  So I anticipate the next few weeks will be a crazy whirlwind, but now that we know where we will be living, I feel so much more excited.  I was feeling mostly sad before, so this has really helped me start anticipating this transition with joy.

So, WHEW!  THERE IT IS!  I am all caught up on updates!  I never thought it would happen, but it's true that you really can reach your dreams with a little bit of grit and perseverance.