what's up weekly. (weekly? is that really all?)

Well, I have just discovered that for me to blog weekly for so long must have involved a lot of making mountains out of molehills because, honestly, what actual news possibly has time to unfold in the tiny, insignificant span of a week? But I am also realizing that remembering all the way back to the beginning of the week is a lot harder than it should be, so maybe a week is all I can handle well.  So.  Let's dust off the old grey matter and see if I can remember what happened this week.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a twin mattress from a friend whose daughter was getting rid of it.  I didn't exactly need a twin mattress at the moment, but it's a nice mattress and around here we're always eventually in need of a mattress, so I went ahead and brought it home.  It was sitting in our entryway for over a week while I noodled on where to put it.  Finally, I decided that it was time for Oey to move out of the pack and play and into a big girl bed.  

But you know how it is - If You Give A Mouse a Cookie and all that.  To fit a twin bed in the little girls' room meant I would need to move the furniture around.  And to move the furniture meant I should probably rotate the rug.  And if I'm rotating the rug, I might as well take it out altogether since it's dirty and ripped and things actually look cute without it.  And then I need to assemble the Jenny Lind bed frame that's been waiting in the basement for its time in the sun, but since there is no box spring with this mattress, I need to go to Home Depot to get a piece of plywood for the bottom of the bed.  (And since the plywood scraps seem to be the exact dimensions I need to fix the chicken run, maybe I should go ahead and fix the chicken run.  But maybe I should paint the plywood first to make it less podunk-looking... and while I'm in the chicken yard, I might as well do some weeding, and I should probably keep my eyes peeled for a tiny fall wreath for the chicken door to replace the little summer wreath that's out there now... you see how this works.)

Once the (filthy. FILTHY.) rug was taken out of the room, I had the boys beat it with brooms to clean it out, and now I'll have to decide what to do with it.

Well, anyway.  We got all the furniture moved around, the bed assembled, (the closet cleaned out, because why not?), and mismatched bedding scrounged up from around the house, and Oey was thrilled.  In fact, I think "thrilled" is too mild a word.  She kept saying, "I have a big girl bed!  I love my big girl bed!"

Everyone else was pretty excited for her as well.

For Christmas, I think I might get the girls matching quilts, and I have picked out paint colors and stencil designs that I will hopefully be able to get done over a school break or next summer.  Decorating is slower than molasses around here because, A) I have no time, B) everything costs money, and C) I am a slow decision maker.  But it will get done eventually, and I think we're on a good track!

Yes, that is a curtain panel nailed to the wall.  They had a curtain rod until one of them pulled on the curtains and yanked the whole thing completely out of the drywall, leaving gaping holes and a damaged rod.  Reason D everything takes a while around here is that I am often having to redo things that have already been done before!

Anyway.  One day the walls will be painted a less garish color, the curtains will not be nailed to the wall, there will be art and cute bedding and possibly a new rug... and then we'll have to rearrange and change things up again because we'll get another mattress.  You see how this works.

On Monday, I took Penelope to take her Math CLEP test.  The way the tests work is they earn actual college credit - so when a college accepts the test results, they would put it on her transcript as having actually taken the course and earned the credits (which is slightly different than placement testing, which simply allows you to skip taking a required course if your score is high enough.)  So for every $25 test that they will accept, she is earning the credits for the entire class AND not having to sit through the class itself, saving time and money.  (We do not dual enroll, so we don't have tuition coverage that the government high school would offer for the courses.) Nine of the required courses in Accounting can be CLEPed out of, which saves a pretty significant amount of money.

ANYWAY.  Back to the story.  I took her to take her test, which was supposed to take about an hour.  About forty minutes in, she came out to tell me that her computer had frozen when she was on Problem 53 of 56, and the test proctor guy was now on the phone with tech support to try to get it figured out.  An hour later, she came out again to say they never got it figured out and her test was voided.  Even though she'd already gotten enough questions right to pass it, and even though I'd already paid for it.  She has to come back to take the entire thing over, and the test center hasn't been able to say for sure whether I'll have to pay again for her to take it a second time.  So frustrating.

So next week we'll go for her scheduled Composition exam and then try again the following week to complete the Math exam.  Eye roll.

Yesterday I took the younger kids to Dollar Tree to buy birthday presents for Lolo's birthday today!  I will post her birthday photos next week, but for now let me just say that I'm so excited to celebrate this sweet girl of mine.  She is one of my very favorite people on the planet.  She has picked out birthday meals for the day, and we will open presents, and then tomorrow she has a birthday party with extended family.  Headed into the weekend strong!

The babies are ready to party.

what's up August (and everything after).

Well, here we are - after this post, I have officially gotten current with all my back blogging from when the computer died!  So, after today's blog, we will back to our regularly scheduled (and occasionally sporadic) weekly updates.

BUT. Not quite yet.  Let me sum up our August-So-Far for you.

I have been trying to get everything in order for back to school, while we've also been plugging away slowly but surely at summer school.  One of my big summer projects has been to get the 'guts' of the house cleaned out and organized - the garage attic, the storage room, the food room, and the garage.  I am getting really close and feeling so good about things.  There's still work to be done, but I think this is the least cluttered our storage spaces have been since we moved in three (three!) years ago, and I feel like I can breathe.  I tackled our closet recently as well, in an effort to make a little reading space for Laurelai.

All my kids are very different in their interest in and proclivity toward school.  Laurelai is a kid who is naturally very good at math and loves stories, but reading has been a slow process for her, and she is easily distracted.  She is creative and imaginative, and her physical senses are highly fine-tuned, so noises and sights and activity just get her brain spinning in a thousand directions.  She has struggled to find a system or routine that has made focusing on her schoolwork easy and smooth.  

And then this tiny Pottery Barn chair showed up on FB Marketplace.  I cleaned out the back of our small-ish closet to give her a calm and quiet place to sit and read, and it has made a HUGE difference in her school time.  Because it has made it much easier for her to get her work done, it has also helped her feel more enthusiastic about and less burdened by reading and school in general.

She still has one more week of summer school before jumping into the full school year, but she's feeling optimistic.  The high school kids started their new school year this past week already and are getting used to the heavier workload.  Penelope is going into tenth, and Atticus is going into eleventh - can you even believe that?!  

This past Monday, Penelope took the first of three CLEP exams she has prepped for, and thankfully passed it.  (Introductory Business Law!  Passed on the first try, as an incoming high school sophomore!)  To say I'm proud of her is an understatement.  She is hoping to get her AAS in Accounting by the time she graduates high school, which seems challenging but achievable.  We're trying to get as many CLEP tests under her belt as possible, since it's essentially free college credit, and nine of the required courses in the Accounting program can be substituted with a passed CLEP exam.  This coming Monday she will take the College Algebra test, and the Monday after that she'll go for College Composition.  Once those are done, she'll start studying for a new test but hasn't decided which one to go for next.

While we were at the test center, I fortuitously met someone who is a teacher at our church's affiliated Christian school, and he was telling me about a program here in town where students can work on tech and trade certifications for free while in high school, so I've started looking into it for Atticus.  There are so, so, so many things I love about homeschooling, but the flexibility/sovereignty at the high school level is quickly moving up the list.  (Though, navigating it all is a new adventure for me, and it's not always easy to sort through, but we're learning as we go.)

The babies are in their own school of hard knocks right now.  They just turned 15 months this week!  Knox just popped two new teeth through on the bottom, bringing his grand total to six.  Eulalie is teething SIX teeth right now - four molars and her upper canines - which will bring her grand total to fourteen teeth.  I'm pretty sure I don't even have that many.  She is just one giant set of teeth with a couple of eyeballs and a few little baby hairs stuck on top.

The babies are down to a once-a-day nursing when they wake up in the morning, and I'm pretty sure I could drop that feeding without too much fuss at this point if I wanted to.  And I might want to, but I'm not sure yet.  Twins change how decisions are made - it's the only time of day when I'm guaranteed one-on-one time with each of them, and their babyhood has been kind of a whirlwind anyway, so am I really ready to close the book on that stage yet?  And anyway, with Knox's food sensitivities, it's nice to know he's getting one big boost of nutrition in the morning that I don't have to put any thought or worry into, etc. etc. etc.  Anyway, we may be getting close to the end of nursing, but we're not there quite yet.  This is the longest I've ever nursed any baby - and it's two babies to boot!  

I'll have to update you more another time on all the things the babies are doing, and all they ways in which they're growing and changing and really coming into "themselves."  There's just so much to say!  I've said it before and I'll say it again - twins are such a strange, wonderful, miraculous phenomenon.  I have loved having twins.  For every hard part (and there are definitely hard parts), there are forty fun, amazing, delightful parts.  Which is true of every baby, but just exponentially more in all directions when there are more babies.

In milestone news, Eulalie started taking steps this week!

And in more milestone news, Knox got his first Big Kid Haircut with the clippers!

One of the most undeniable realities of twin toddlers is that someone is always underfoot.  Even if you've contained one, the other one is all up in your grill making mischief.  And by "the one who's always making mischief," I mean Eulalie.  Always Eulalie.  Never not Eulalie.

In our own milestone news, Todd and I celebrated our eighteenth wedding anniversary this week!  Our marriage is now an adult!

And lastly, we've had some fun adventures already this month.  First, we headed up to Iowa a couple of weeks ago to attend a family reunion on my dad's side.  My dad, many of my aunts and uncles, and many of my cousins were there and it was so wonderful to see everyone.  It has been a long time.  Many of my younger kids had never met anyone on that side, and of the ones who had, most didn't remember many of the family members there because it has been so long.  So it was nice acquainting (or reacquainting) everyone.

We made a day of it, driving there and back in one day.  The twins especially didn't love the drive and were so exhausted by the end of it, and Eulalie had a major poop explosion on the way home, but all's well that ends well, and I'm glad we went.

And our last notable adventure before wrapping up this post: a trip to the kind-of-local pool.  We attempted to go to our city pool, but discovered they were closed on weekdays for the rest of the season.  So we drove to the next town over, which is still really close and the pool is newer and nicer (because everything in that town is newer and nicer), but also more expensive.  I'm not even going to make you nauseous to hear how much we paid to get into a pool.  But the kids had such a blast.  It was so much fun.

It's not obvious in this photo, but Ophelia LOVED the pool.  She was a total water baby.  The problem was, she kept wandering far from me and was a complete submersion risk.  She loved it too much for her own good.

And with that, we are now completely caught up to current!  Here's how Knox feels about it.

Smug.  Real smug.

See you next week!

what's up july.

As I get older, I really have learned to appreciate the different seasons of the year more than I used to, but I will never stop considering July the Month of Months.  I love the heat and d the sunshine and the devil-may-care daily schedule.  I love going outside barefoot and eating early tomatoes from the garden and wearing shorts.  I love that everything is still green and hasn't gotten that "baked bread" look, or that sharp light, or that thin cicada sound yet.  Everything is just full and lush and verdant.  Long live High Summer, my first and truest seasonal love.

So, with that, let me share a quick rundown of our July.  It was wonderful, even for a July.

We really did up the Fourth this year.  Todd took the kids to buy fireworks, and they spent the evening lighting them off.  Callista was not convinced by the bottle rockets at first...

...nor was she fully convinced when we pulled out the sparklers later in the evening.  

She eventually came around.

The next day, we did a cookout theme for Sabbath Dinner, to keep the party going.

The rest of our July was just so very July-y.  

Lots of mowing jobs for Atticus, which was great for him, but I'm starting to really wear thin from having to drive him to every job.  He started the summer with three jobs a week; now he's up to seven some weeks, each taking at least an hour.  Most houses are far enough away from home that I just sit and wait for him or run errands nearby while he mows, so it makes for a lot of time away from home for me, which is difficult and I don't love it.  He has a driving test scheduled for September 5, and I am really, really hoping he passes it.

Finneas has taken over the responsibility of mowing our yard, and Rocco follows behind him with the toy mower.  They really are inseparable. 

The babies enjoy watching the free mowing show.

Penelope also started working in June or July, babysitting for a family at church a few days a month.  It has been really fun for her, and she's enjoyed making money and getting out on her own.  But it's another commitment out of the house that I need to drive to.  I just took her to retake her permit test yesterday (it expired before she was able to log all her required hours to get her license), and she passed.  Hopefully we can get those hours logged so she can also get her license in a few months when she turns 16.

In this regard, it's been a really busy summer.  Lots of driving the big kids around, and then coming home long enough to see the babies and hopefully eat something, just to duck back out again.  (Not every day, just on the kids' busy work days.)  This season of parenting is proving to be complicated!  Having young babies and old babies at the same time really feels like being stretched in very different directions.  They all have such different needs.

Moving on to kid news, they made some kind of DIY beach situation.  I still don't understand exactly what they were doing with this set up, even though I've asked for a clear explanation multiple times.  

Penelope painted the younger girls' nails, and they were so excited!

I had been continuing to feel some of the low-level stress and anxiety that I'd been dealing with since the twins were born, and it was really coming out when I felt like things were dirty or messy.  I think I've already told you that I started vacuuming and mopping the floors each night, which has also grown to incorporate bleaching the bathroom a few nights a week and wiping down the appliances and main floor windows as well.  It has helped so much with my jumbled up feelings.  (Todd said, "Here you thought you might be entering perimenopause, but all you needed was cleaner floors.  Who knew?")  The kids like it, too, because I pay them to help me.  (I figure it's cheaper than a house cleaner!)  They're actually getting really proficient at it.

And last, we finished up the Hobbit, which was our summer read aloud.

I don't remember what we were looking at on my phone in this photo, but it looks like we were enjoying it, so I'll just leave this here as a send-off into the weekend.

Happy Friday!

what's up June.

Man, I am having a hard time getting back into the swing of blogging.  I had kind of mentally given up over that few-month stretch without photos, and now I'm out of the habit and it slips my mind.  This week has been full of driving Atticus around to about one million mowing jobs, which has been great for him but challenging for me.  (He's currently studying to take the test for his license next week - I am really hoping he passes so he can start driving himself to all of his jobs.)  Last week I had ordered all of our homeschool stuff, so this week I'm reaping the harvest of daily book deliveries, which I'm loving.  And we went to a friend's house yesterday morning for a water balloon fight.  The babies weighed in at 15.5 and 16.5 pounds, respectively, so they're still just tiny guys.  And now, let's jump back to cover June!

I spent most of the month doing a round of Whole 30, in an effort to feel a little better, physically and mentally, than I had for a while.  It literally did nothing - I just spent the month even more annoyed than usual because I was now annoyed and on stupid Whole 30.  I got through it, but it was a major mental fight this time, and I saw very little payoff.

In better news, the big kids got photos with all the books they each read over the course of the year, and it was pretty impressive to see!

We celebrated half-birthdays for our December babies

I experienced, yet again, the joy of having many males in our house.  Todd replaced the kitchen faucet for me, for which I am eternally grateful.  The handle on the old one had lost a screw, so it was always falling off, and the seal around the stem of the faucet broke so the whole thing was loose in the hole and would just clunk back and forth when I would use it, and water would get under the sink through the unsealed hole and pour everywhere, and the sprayer nozzle wouldn't shut off when it was supposed to, so sometimes when I'd turn on the sink, the sprayer hose would shoot water right at my shirt.  I was thrilled when Todd decided to replace it for me, even though installing it took way longer than it should have.  (Why are house projects always like that?!)  Who knew how happy a working faucet could make a person?  I don't know if Todd feels like it was a net gain, but I (not having been the one who had to put any sweat equity into it) feel like it definitely has been.

That same Saturday, Finneas powerwashed the patio while Rocco practiced project supervision...

...and Atticus scaled a ladder to kill a wasp.  See?  Having men around really makes my life so much better.

This summer, the kids have been working their way through the New Testament.  So they listen on Hoopla and eat goldfish crackers together.  It's a sweet time.  

Our biggest celebration of the month was Callista's birthday!

Rocco found a little doll at the Dollar Tree who is wearing Callista's exact same (favorite) outfit - her red tshirt and overall shorts.  She loved it!

She saw this wooden horse barn at Goodwill a few months back, and so I went back later and bought it, and had been hiding it for her birthday.  It was so fun to give it to her.

Here she is in her favorite outfit - she bought these shorts with her own money because she desperately wanted a pair of "trousers" (bib overalls), and she wears them all the time.  She is so spunky and fashionable and girly.  I just love her so much.

The weekend of Callista's birthday, we went up to Iowa for a memorial gathering for my grandpa, who passed away a few months back.  We got to see family we hadn't seen in years, and it was a really wonderful weekend getting to catch up with them and remember Grandpa.  I wish I had gotten photos on the camera.  

And lastly, this happened?  I still don't know what exactly was happening here.

Happy June from this crew of weirdos.