what's up weekly. (now you know what I did this summer.)

Whew.  It has been a hot minute.  Do you remember me at all?  Do I need to reintroduce myself?

Hi.  I'm Paige.  I'm the gal with the one thousand kids, and the one who has been watching summer zoom by at hypersonic speed, which is why I haven't been around much to blog.  Does any of that ring a bell?

Let's back wayyyy up to the beginning of summer - as marked by graduation.  Not for any of our kids (that won't be until next year - please, Father Time, slow this train way down!), but for the local Christian academy and Penelope's best friend, Lydia, who was the valedictorian by default (she was the first and only graduate of St. Giles).

The morning before the graduation ceremony, Rocco helped me plant a new flower bed.

Then in the afternoon, Todd took the bigger kids to the graduation ceremony.  Afterwards there was a reception and folk dancing.

While everyone was gone, I tinkered around with a few decorating endeavors, including hanging this painting over the piano.  It hung in my mom's grandparents' house, then it hung in her childhood home, and then it hung in my childhood home, and now it lives here.  So special, and I just love it.  The colors are perfect.  Now I want to paint the living room to match.  Anyone want to come over and help me paint twelve-foot-high walls?  

The Monday after graduation, these tiny people turned two!  The twins are two!!

My mom got them a water table and they spent so much time out there getting soaked and having a blast.

These babies are such a joy to me.  They are so different from one another - Lalie is just full of energy and life and noise and oomph.  She's always off somewhere, doing something independently.  Knox is laidback and snuggly and a huge mama's boy.  He loves giving hugs and kisses, and has a tiny silicone baby that he carries everywhere with him.  Neither one of them like wearing pants (as you can see above).  They look out for each other, making sure the other one is provided with toys and snacks, and comforting one another when they're upset.  It is really special to witness.   

It's hard to believe it's been two years since that wild day when TWO babies were born instead of just one!

They really enjoyed the whole experience of getting presents.  10/10

For Memorial Day, we planned a cookout (except is it still considered a cookout if you technically cook everything inside and just take it outside to eat?) and Lolo helped me prepare the food.

Todd built us a firepit.  The kids built the babies a minipit for minifires.

Todd spent his Memorial Day vacation digging us a retaining wall to stop the chicken yard from flooding every time it rains (which is all the time.  This has been such a wet spring/summer, and I'm more than grateful for it, but the chicken yard was a complete swamp, so I'm also grateful that the water is getting redirected.)

Our chickens keep growing, which is a euphemistic way of saying they are growing increasingly rank.  They spent as much time outside as we could manage, to keep them from stinking up the garage.  We don't really have a great run setup for really small chicks, so we kind of makeshifted this weird little pen out of some of the layers of our compost bin, an old shelf, some doormats, and a toboggan.  White trash much?

Anyway, here is the culmination of our Memorial Day celebration:

This kid loves Cheetos.  He adores Cheetos.  He cherishes Cheetos.

This kid thinks Cheetos are fine.

S'mores on Mes'morial Day is a longstanding Van Voorst tradition, and this year we finally have a nice place to do it.  Don't mind the bald yard; maybe someday we'll make that nicer, too.

The babies fight over who gets to sit in my lap.  They somehow always manage to forget that they both still fit and they don't have to fight.

The kids have continued to help with garden tasks.

We've been plugging away at some summer school, which has been a lot more to manage than I anticipated.  Most of the kids are doing reading, math, typing and piano lessons.  The bigger kids are working on some palate expansion, Penelope is doing some Home Ec, Atticus is hoping to get some manual labor on the schedule. We also got a pool pass and will start trying to get to the pool a few days a week to improve their swimming skills.  And all that is before I even attempt to get anything done with Oey, or things done around the house.  The days have been so much crazier than I expected coming into summer break.

*Chickens to the left of me, unfinished flower bed on the right; here I am, stuck on the sorely-in-need-of-new-paint deck stairs with you.*  Catchy.

Piano lessons.  We started the summer with four working laptops that the kids would take turns using to do their math, piano and typing lessons.  We are now down to one laptop that reliably works, two that can't access piano lessons, and one that has an outrageously glitchy screen.  It has made for a challenging situation.

The biggest three kids and I are working on expanding our palates.  We all have extremely narrow palates, and I'm hoping that working to expand them will help with headaches, crowded teeth, speech difficulties, breathing restrictions, TMJ pain, and more.  It's a functional alternative to braces and wisdom teeth removal.

I have stopped wearing my orthodontic retainer for the first time in twenty-six years.  It makes me nervous to not use it!  Be praying my palate expands well so my teeth don't go wonky.

Well, now the flower bed is at least looking pulled together.  A friend gave me a lilac bush for my 40th birthday, and I got some pretty purple and pink daylilies in there, so hopefully as the years go by it will all fill in.  The kids' fairy gardens are in those pots along the wall.

The babies' learning goals for the summer are to learn to use the potty, and to be blanket trained.  I'm still way too nervous to jump into the first one (HOW DOES ONE POTTY TRAIN TWO BABIES?!), so we've started with the second.  Essentially, they learn to sit quietly on the blankets/towels for increasing periods of time so that by the school year I can reasonably expect them to be able to sit and play in one spot for reasonably lengthy periods of time.

So far, we've worked our way up to three minutes at a time.  They get a Smartie if they stay cheerfully on their blanket for that whole time.  Knox has decided that a Smartie is not adequate incentive anymore, so we're navigating that hurdle.

The kids started attending a baseball club put on by a friend at church.  Every other week, fifteen or twenty kids from church get together and learn the fundamentals of the game.  Casual but structured, and inclusive of all ages.  It has been so great, and they've loved it.  They like to spend time at home practicing throwing and catching.

The first day we attended, my mom drove down to bring a bunch of ball gloves in various sizes that she had on hand from when I was younger.  She surprised the kids and got to attend their first practice!

Atticus is now on the downhill slide toward 18.  FATHER TIME, WHAT DID I JUST SAY?!

And finally, Callista said to Todd what we're all thinking:

And that brings us up to date... prior to last week.  After all of that, I am still a week behind in news coverage!  I will do my best to scrounge up some minutes here and there to fill you in soon!

what's up weekly.

I think I've officially decided to rename the blog to, "The Pile of Laundry, With A Few Antecdotes About the People Who Generated, and Now Live Smothered Under, It."  That's all the news seems to entail anymore.

Last week I told you about the raging case of impetigo we had going through the house.  The truly monstrous amount of laundry we produced through all of that was staggering.  I spent three hours on Saturday folding it and putting it away and getting caught up.  We seemed to finally move beyond the worst of it, so laundry maintenance faded back into its usual place for a few days.  But apparently it had gotten used to the attention, loved the coddling and care it received, and begged for an opportunity to shine once more.  The stomach flu seemed more than happy to grant it, and so here I am again, drowning in sheets and towels and blankets and underpants that are demanding my current attention. 

Unfortunately it all started after Taco Night.

Callista started complaining of a stomachache around dinner time, and before bed Oey told me that her tummy felt "busted."  I figured they'd sleep it off, but before Todd and I turned in for the night, Callista came in to tell me she had puked in her bed.  Taco barf on their new bedding and on her bedfellow Juni.  (Juni stayed asleep the entire time I stripped the sheets out from under her, sponge bathed her, and changed her jammies.  She woke up wondering where her other jammies had gone.)  So I put Callista on a mattress on the floor of our room to sleep.  Overnight, Oey came in and said she'd puked in HER bed, so onto a floor mattress she went as well.

They spent the entire night rotating gastric events every twenty minutes.

Started out somewhat contained. 

Things kept devolving.

Juni got sick the next day, and all three of them have been sick ever since.  It has been brutal.  Today is the fourth calendar day of running fevers, changing clothes and sheets, bleaching the bathroom, and caring for kids who want to eat and drink and also decidedly don't.  Callista is currently being fueled by the ghosts of about eight raspberries.  Oey is tenuously held on this side of eternity by some swallows of watered-down orange juice.  (The watered-down grape juice was a failed experiment, and now my living room rug is marbled purple.  When someone tells you grape juice stops vomiting, report them and have them jailed.)

Literal piles of bodies.

Two nights ago, all three sick girls shared two floor mattresses between them.  Yesterday there were far fewer hazmat incidents, so we are cautiously attempting to have them sleep in their own room.  I'll report back on how that goes.

The girls fell asleep to the soothing sounds of Fried Green Tomatoes while I folded laundry nearby.  Does it not look soothing?

As I write this, my stomach feels a little off, but I'm telling myself that the flu is just a social construct.  Mind over splatter, as the saying goes.  I'll be fine, otherwise who will fold the towels?

One of the benefits of all this laundry was that I got the girls' beds made up nicely after washing everything, and then the girls didn't sleep in their beds for a couple of nights, so they stayed looking nice.  So here's a little better glimpse into the progress I've made in their room over the last week or two.

Remember how it looked before?

Here's a little closer look at the bedding - isn't it so cute?

There have been a few events this week that haven't involved the Gemino-Cursed laundry.  (I've taken to grimly calling it the Spawndry.)  But don't forget about it too long while I fill you in, or it will do something attention-seeking and I'll be back at square one.

First, Finneas had a birthday - he's fourteen!  I am in shock.

He is funny.  I mean, really funny.  He is a natural leader - he knows deep in his bones who he is.  He seems to be impervious to social pressure, and he's charming about it, in the way fourteen-year-old boys can be charming.  He is still thick-as-thieves with Rocco but is also starting to branch out and join Todd and Atticus in some of their "older" activities, like participating in Men's Beer and Books.  He takes school in stride and does well.  He likes working out and often goes for runs on Sunday mornings.  He stands out as his own person in any group he's in.

Lolo made him a scavenger hunt for his birthday and buried his present in the yard!

The rest of us lazy chumps just wrapped ours like normal.  Finneas was genuinely excited about the fart putty Ophelia got him.

Knox thought all the presents were for him.

He was disappointed to be informed otherwise.

For his birthday meals, he requested cereal for breakfast, hot dogs for lunch, and Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner.  So easy and good.  My favorite kind of birthday meals.  In between meals I went grocery shopping.  

While I was shopping, the kids pushed the babies around the house in strollers to keep them occupied.  They loved it.

In the afternoon Atticus drove Finneas to the military surplus store to pick out a birthday present. 

Trying on all their gear - they wear this stuff to airsoft wars.

"Is everything a joke to you?!"  Yes.  Yes it is.

Atticus worked on Saturday, and Penelope worked on Monday.  Monday was our first day back to school after break and it went pretty well.  On Monday night after dinner, we met some friends at the Sonic playground and the kids ran off some steam with their friends.

Penelope got a new outfit and looked so cute.

On Tuesday, Todd and I took the babies with us to pick up milk while the kids prepped dinner at home.  (I still marvel that we have arrived at this stage of life!)  Our milk farmer also raises goats, and all the goats had been kidding recently, so she took me up to the barn to see the new babies.  So many twins!  I have such a soft spot in my heart now for twins - any twins!  all twins!  Some of the baby goats were just hours old and they were so sweet and little.  We got home, ate together, then got the house picked up before the elder session meeting we were hosting after dinner. 

We don't have great indoor space for hosting those monthly meetings, but we've discovered that our garage table is a great place in inclement weather, and our back deck is great during nice weather.  The elders met on the deck, and after I got the little kids in bed, the older kids and I started the Order of the Phoenix.  Unfortunately, it started pouring down rain partway toward the end of Todd's meeting, and Callista started puking while I was watching the movie, so both our evenings didn't end exactly as we'd planned!

Men are so easy to host.  Sit them in a metal chair outside in the rain, but give them cigars and whiskey and homemade cookies, and they'll be perfectly happy.

And from then on, the week took on a decidedly different tone.  We didn't do any school on Wednesday, since the girls were really sick and I got almost no sleep the night before, so we all napped in my room all afternoon.  Thursday I was able to keep up with the bare minimum of school activities with the healthy kids while the sickies were still strung out.  And that brings us to today.  I'm hoping that everyone wakes up feeling better and that no one else falls sick.  Here's to hoping!  So, to that end, here are some photos of the babies being adorable to put us in the right frame of mind.

Since the couches were taken up with sick kids, the boys brought up their beanbag chairs for extra seating.  The babies thought they were so funny.  I call this photo, "Beans Bag."

Butters, sharing toys to help Callista feel better.

Beans, making mischief.

Just a potato in a sack.

Happy (and hopefully healthy!) weekend!