what's up weekly.

And just like that, we already have two weeks of school in the books.  Wild.  In some ways, it has been more challenging than the first week - on Monday, Laurelai was feeling sick, so we adjusted her schedule to accommodate lots of naps and rest.  

On Tuesday, the twins started a days-long run-in with a weird tummy bug, so I started the rest of the mornings this week with changing barfy sheets and running baths and sitting with sick babies.  I cancelled school altogether on Tuesday, thinking it would be a 24-hour thing and we'd jump back in the next day.  But on Wednesday and yesterday, we just attempted to do what we could, when we could. 

The sickness seems limited exclusively to the morning, which is strange, so they're fine once naptime comes around and into the evening, but then they wake up the next day covered in puke again and spend the morning with unpredictable bellies, so as of now I'm not sure what to expect today.  They were fine last night, but that information hasn't helped much in predicting our morning experience, so we'll see how today goes.

Finneas celebrated his half birthday.

Knox boasts the headgear and laundry-sorting knowhow of a much older man.

Our wildlife livestream (aka, our dining room window) has been abuzz lately with all kinds of new content.  A couple of hummingbirds visit our feeder each day (though not at the same time - one always chases the other off, like a tiny little chump), and we often have a praying mantis hanging out at the feeder as well, eating all the ants that drown in the hummingbird nectar.  And an orb weaver spider has adopted our back doorway as his new home - each night he weaves a new web, and each morning he folds it all up and puts it away.  It's fun to watch him working.  The kids have named him Miguel.

Keeping the babies contained and accessible while they're sick.

We also had a big thunderstorm and a power outage Sunday night, so we whatfired up all the emergency lanterns and candles.  Luckily the storm brought some slightly lower temperatures than we've been having, or it would have been sweltering without the air conditioning.  But everyone went to bed fine, and the power came back on around 1:00 a.m., and we didn't lose anything from the fridges or freezers, so all's well that ends well.  It was kind of an adventure to get to live by lantern light for a few hours!

And the last item of note is that we travelled to Iowa last Saturday for a family reunion on my dad's side. (At least, most of us did.  Atticus and Penelope stayed home with the babies.)  It was fun seeing so many people I don't get to see very often, and the icing on the cake was that my aunt brought me some genealogy/family tree information that I was wanting to look through.  She passed it on to me, along with an old photo album, and I've been having a wonderful time reading through it all and trying to connect the faces in the photo album with the information I'm discovering in the reading.  I am loving learning my family history.

And that pretty much sums up the week!  Today, I'm hoping to get fully caught up on the schoolwork we haven't gotten to yet from earlier this week, and hopefully pop out to pick up a gift for a party we are going to tomorrow.  I'm hoping it's a calm, sickness-free day.  Wish me luck!

what's up weekly. (back to school!)

Oh man, you guys.  So much has happened these last couple of weeks!  Buckle up.

First of all, my fourth-born is now a teenager.  I have four teenagers.  Luckily for me, teenagers are fantastic, so it's fun to have another one join the ranks.  (Even if she is pocket-sized and still looks like she's like nine.)

She is sweet-natured and kind and so very creative.  She is often the first one to run to help when she finds something needs to be done, and is always asking if there is anything she can help with.  She is fantastic with babies (though she's too soft for the preschool set - her after-lunch job last year was tucking in Oey at naptime, and Oey had her wrapped around her finger.  It always took like twenty minutes to finally meet all of Oey's demands before finally getting to close the door and come out.  She just doesn't have a taskmaster bone in her body, which makes her vulnerable to exploitation by the underlings.)

She elevates everything she puts her hand to.  She loves making things special - turning a normal lunch into a picnic, setting a table nicely for a weeknight meal, starting handmade Christmas Eve gifts in April so she has time to make them exactly how she wants them.  She loves doing her hair and accessorizing her outfits.  She seems to give everything she does a little extra thought.  I'm so excited to see how the Lord uses that particular gift in her life as she grows.

For her birthday, she chose apple cake and bacon for breakfast (cooked by her pajama-clad mother, looking her finest); grilled cheese and spaghettios for lunch; fried chicken and sweet potato fries for dinner; and a trip to Sonic after dinner for ice cream and time with friends.

  

Bacon in the shape of a claw because it got stuck together in the oven.

Her birthday was the icing on the cake of the last day of summer break.  I had spent the week leading up to it running around town, getting planners bound at the UPS store, picking up holds from the library, stocking up on school supplies, and placing last-minute book orders.

Atticus spent the week working full-time for a guy at our church who owns a construction business.  He learned to frame walls and hang and tape sheetrock.  He loved it, and got along really well with the guys he was working with.  He thinks maybe this will be the path he explores as he gets closer to graduating. (This is his last year of high school! How?!)

And in other growing-up news, we finally got around to piercing Eulalie's ears!  All the other girls had theirs done before they turned a year, and I think that is still the way to go.  But even with her being older, she handled it like a champ.

Todd, marking where he wanted the earring holes to end up.

Knox, never to be left out, marking his own ears.  

The last smile we saw for a few minutes.

Luckily, she cheered up pretty quickly, AND her hair is finally long enough for piggies, so it was a win-win.

This Monday, we started school.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect and I was braced for exhaustion.  While we still have some wrinkles to work out, I actually feel like the week went pretty smoothly.  I still have the same number of grades to teach as last year, so we didn't need to mess too much with the schedule and I've already adapted to the pace of it (unlike in years past when we've added a grade and had to move everything around to fit it all in).  Penelope is taking Oey under her wing and doing some early reading practice with her, so we technically have eight kids doing school each day.

I've started doing morning school in the babies' room (which I obviously need to clean).  It's quieter, and easy to close the door.  Plus, the babies' training potties are in there still, so I can help them when they need me without running all over the house.  In the afternoon, I do readings on the living room couch.

Play-doh has held the attention of the littler ones during school this week.

We waited on jumping into table time this week, and instead left Wednesday morning free to use as flex-time for anyone who was struggling to keep up with the workload or had other issues that might arise that needed attention.  Fortunately everyone seemed to not really need the extra buffer, so we took back-to-school photos and then went out for donuts.

They did this pose without any prompting.  They saw what the big kids were doing and were like, "We've got this."

As of this afternoon, we will have a whole week of school under our belt, and hoping to not jinx anything by saying so, it was relatively smooth and painless.  Tiring, yes. Full, yes.  Baseline overwhelming? No.  It was good.  And dare I say it, it was even a little nice to be back in the routine.  (Do not hear me say I'd rather be doing school work than rotting by the side of the pool, but also... maybe there's a time and place for everything.  I feel like I've read that somewhere important.)

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.

what's up weekly. (what we did on summer vacation)

A few weeks ago when I sat down to write out the weekly blog post, there was not one single photo on the camera from the previous week.  Not that we did nothing that week, but we just apparently didn't take any photos of what we did.  Probably because it was Same Old Summer: some school, some pool, some dinking around at baseball club.  Glorious stuff, but not exactly headliner news.  Plus, we were in the middle of a few other things, like celebrating Jenny Geddes Day...

Todd made this drawing of a Bishop and the kids all threw water balloons at him.

Knox has been loving this luchador mask.

... and packing to go on vacation.  

That's right.  Since you've seen me last, I've been jet setting.  Globetrotting.  Perambulating.  And by all that, I mean "riding shotgun as Todd obeys the speed limit across South Dakota's I-90."  We spent last week at Todd's parents' house in the Black Hills, which is also why I didn't post last week.

And now you're up to speed on my wandering ways and negligent blogging.  So let's show you some slides of our travels. 

We began by stopping at our regular park pitstop in Sioux City, Iowa.  It was... a letdown.  Not only was it about as hot as the surface of the sun, but the local YMCA had dropped off like a thousand daycampers to play in the devil's spittle that was the park's pathetic """"splashpad"""".  We waited in line for the only available bathroom for like eighty hours just to finally get in there and have to avoid piles of sopping wet toilet paper everywhere.  

Not a choice favorite.

At least we got our traditional family photo in front of the park's weird baseball mascot.

We got back in the car and headed for Pizza Ranch in Mitchell, SD.  Luckily, that did not disappoint.  Pizza Ranch was its old, wonderful, staggeringly-expensive self.  (I should have just bought us plane tickets with what we spent on the buffet, and then we could have avoided Toilet Paper Park altogether.  Hindsight is 20/20.)

Shhh.  Here you see two toddlers actually napping in the car, a rare sight in these parts.

We were going to stop in the Badlands for a picnic dinner, but as we got near to our exit, a really crazy storm rose up out of nowhere - blinding rain and 100 mile-an-hour-winds.  Multiple semis were blown over on their sides in the ditch.  We kept moving forward slowly, and skipped the Badlands loop in favor of just getting out of the storm.  What that meant for us was that we arrived at Todd's parents' hours earlier than we had anticipated!  So we ate our picnic dinner at an actual table like actual civilized people.  Not the world's worst ending to an eventful road trip.

We spent four days up there, visiting with Todd's parents, digging in the flower beds, and riding the four wheelers.  Todd's aunts, and a distant cousin, stopped by while we were there and we got to know them better.  It was so relaxing and fun.

Atticus and Finneas were both a huge help in getting some landscaping work done.

These babies have been so cute and affectionate lately.

Needed to take a little break to drive some sisters around.

 Callista learned to drive the ATV this year.

They would drive buckets of weeds up to the burn pile for us - which came in handy later in the week because they were all so antsy to have more weeds to drive up there that they were super motivated to actually pull weeds with which to fill the bucket.  I felt like Tom Sawyer convincing all the neighborhood kids to beg me for the privilege of doing manual labor.

Atticus cut his foot pretty badly on some metal roof shingles.  It probably could have stood to get some stitches, but we got it cleaned out and glued shut and it has been healing well.

The kids played this little keyboard all week.

The kids loved sitting around singing songs with Grandma Jacqi and Papa Tony.

Look how fast we're filling that bucket.  So many ATV rides into the forest were necessary when so many people were working together.

For a while it was just me and the boys, and I have to say I just love having teenage sons.  They're funny, and fun to be around.

Callista helped me make breakfast most mornings.  Oey was just there for moral support.

Howdy, ladies.

Knox, living his best life.

Juni and Lalie.

Callista and Oey dancing on the porch.

He's powering up in his Dutch shoes and fireman's hat.  Enemies of the King, beware.

After four days of family and fun, we hopped back in the car and headed homeward. 

No sleep for these babies this time.

Our first stop was the rest area at Chamberlain, where we checked out the Lewis and Clark exhibit and the Dignity statue.  We had planned to try the Badlands loop on the way home, but in the interest of making good time, Todd decided to skip it, which ended up being propitious.

After Chamberlain, we got back on the road.  About 15 miles from Mitchell, we heard a big bang, and then the van started driving funny and pouring smoke from the rear wheel well.  We had blown a tire.  And I do mean blown.  It was in shreds.

Luckily, the right lane had been coned off for construction that hadn't started yet, so we were able to get over to the shoulder easily, and had an entire lane of buffer between us and the traffic.  Plus, since it was a construction zone, traffic was going slower than the typical 80 mph speed limit.  So we were about as safe as we could have been, given the circumstances.

Todd and the older boys got out and got the spare put on.

 

Once the spare was on, we headed into Mitchell.  First we stopped at Pizza Ranch again to get everyone fed, watered, and morale-boosted.  Then we headed to the Walmart tire center.  It took a couple of hours for them to get new rear tires put on, so we wandered around Walmart to wait.  When we got back on the road, the van was steering so crazy that we had to turn around and go back.  Long explanation short, we needed new front tires as well, so we got to wait another couple of hours for that.  We ate dinner at the Subway in the Walmart while we waited.

Finally, six hours after the tire officially blew, we were back on the road and completely exhausted.  Since everyone had been fed recently, and we were already on track to get home super late, we decided to just power through the six hours of driving from Mitchell to home without stopping.  We got home around 1:30 in the morning and were glad to get all that behind us.

This week, we've just been trying to recover from the trip.  Luckily we had left the house in decent shape when we left, so it didn't take long to get things put away and have the house feeling pretty normal.  But I have been so tired this week!  A friend of mine with a lot of kids told me that she feels like it takes twice as long to recover from a trip with kids as the trip itself lasts.  I'm starting to think she's right.  Looks like I'm going to need another week to recover yet.  

We have gotten back into our routine of spending most afternoons at the pool.  The last day of open swim is next Wednesday, and we're trying to maximize these last few days.  

Tuesday night was the Elder session meeting, so Todd hosted that on the deck.  While that was happening, Penelope had a couple of her friends over for a movie night, one of whom is leaving for college this upcoming weekend, so it was kind of a farewell sendoff.  While the teen girls were all watching Signs downstairs, the rest of the kids and I cuddled up in my room to watch Tom and Huck.  I'm starting to notice that the best movies for Movies with Mom are from the 90's, so that might become the official theme of our movie nights.  We'll have another one tonight during Men's Beer and Books - what should we watch?