what's up weekly. (so long, miss hawaiian tropic. why does summer have to end?)

I really do have the best of intentions to blog every week.  Every week, there's at least a thirty-second window where I think, "Blogging is right and good and do-able.  I will do it, and do it well."  And then Thursday night rolls around, and it is time to write, but also I've just lived through the entire week, and I have laundry to fold and homeschool to plan and Gilmore Girls to listen to in the background, and I just don't always have it in me.  

And that's my excuse for why I didn't show up last week, but now it is THIS week, and here I am!  The laundry is folded, Gilmore Girls is on pause, and other than being driven to homicidal rage by an incessant housefly (which I am convinced is taunting me on purpose), I have nothing competing for my attention!  Except bedtime... sweet, sweet bedtime...

Okay, I'm going to need to make this snappy so that I can go to bed.  (Well, so that I can smash the daylights out of this psychopathic fly and THEN go to bed, I mean.)

The kids have set up a roadside produce stand a couple of times this summer and have made a decent amount of money selling tomatoes and watermelons.

Last week we were focusing all of our energy on spending as much time at the pool as we could before it closed.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were full of Just Pool, Only Pool.  My tan really ended on a high note, I'll tell you that.

And then: Thursday.  Thursday rolled around and reality came crashing down around me: summer is about to end.  School is about to start.  I need to clean.  I need to plan.  I need to get my head in the game.  So the rest of the time between then and now has just been spent ordering books, printing Every Piece of Paper, typing all the documents, running errands, cleaning, and acting like the grasshopper from the parable.  (Can you really fault him for wanting to play his fiddle all summer, when playing his fiddle was how he got so incredibly relaxed and tan for the first time in years?)

This toad judges my choices.

I'm getting close to having things ready for school, which is good because we start in a little over a week.  (The 31st is our first day.)  I'm not getting all that close to having things around the house as orderly as I'd like.  We cleaned the garage and the chicken coop, but I still have quite a few projects I'm hoping to tackle next week so I don't have mess hanging over my head when the school year starts and I no longer have the time or energy to get stuff like that done as easily.  So we'll see.

In other news, we're attempting to potty train the twins again.  It is slow going, and it makes me want to die.  (I hate potty training so much.)  But it needs to get done, and it is easier to do it now than during the school year.  The babies are doing well, it's just going slowly.  But I think we'll be at the point soon when I can consider them day-trained.  (I don't worry about night training until later.)

We set up camp in the babies' room and it has been working pretty well, other than the fact that everywhere we go becomes a high traffic area and it gets distracting.  But they've been doing well.

And to top off the craziness of the times, I have recently given up Diet Coke.  This might not sound like a biggie, but to know me is to know I love Diet Coke.  But I've been having some really bad joint pain that I was hoping could be alleviated by cutting it out, so I got to the point where it felt worth it to try.  Unfortunately, it has had no effect whatsoever on that issue, but once you've done the thing, it seems silly to move in reverse.  So I'm going to keep on keeping on with it.  I guess I'm just a water-and-cold-coffee gal now.  Does it get worse than that?  If it does, don't tell me about it; I don't want to know.  It would make me too sad.

Last week, the kids all had eye doctor appointments, so they'll all be getting new glasses any day now! (Well, not all.  No one new needed glasses again this year!  Five kids have them, five kids don't need them. So weird.)  There were some things that the doctor noticed in Penelope's eye that needed to be looked at more closely, so we also spent time this week driving to Lawrence to see a specialist.  Nothing super conclusive, so we're having to think about what to do next.

Wrasslemania!

And lastly, Todd and I celebrated our nineteenth wedding anniversary on Monday!  We tried a new restaurant, I ate entirely too much, and then we went to Target and bought a kiddie pool on clearance so I can sit in the driveway with the babies and pretend we're at the real pool.  It was honestly a really fun evening.  I just like hanging out together.  Todd is my favorite person in the entire world, and I'm so glad he picked me.  We have built a really wonderful life, and I'm so grateful for these years together.  I pray for many more.  No ragrets.