what's up - and who's down - weekly.

this has just been a blah week, guys.  i just feel... blah.  the weather is nicer, i'm supposed to be in 'tiger blood' mode at this point in the whole30, and yet... blah blah blah. 

well, let's just jump right in, shall we?  my house currently smells like a head shop, so there's that.  a friend gifted me an oil diffuser recently, and 'stress relief blend' has been the oil of choice now that the sickness seems to have left the building and more medicinal oils aren't as necessary.  as it turns out, patchouli seems to be a major ingredient in 'stress relief,' and while it does seem to be helping with the mood issues, it also makes me feel like my house constantly smells slightly illegal.  my eyes have gotten shiftier as a result.  so if you see me, i'll probably look more relaxed than usual, but somehow simultaneously more jittery because i feel like everyone thinks i smell like a criminal.  

and now i appear to be paranoid.  excellent.  i'm really building a pretty good case for laying off the oils for a while.

in other news, it has been beautiful here.  i'm talking everyday in the thirties and forties.  i feel like i should start putting sunblock on the kids when they head outside.  the sun has been shining, the snow has been melting, and the yard has been looking, well, pretty tragic, if i'm being honest.  the kids went outside to 'play in the snow,' which was pretty limited in its scope, as it turns out.

hahahaha, i literally belly laughed when i first discovered that second picture on the camera card.  the fact that he's full-on scooping a pile of snow that's roughly the size of a pie just kills me.

annnnnd last but not least, the whole30 report.  i wish i had happier news on this front.  we're all staying strong, although the kids are getting totally and completely disillusioned with the whole thing and ask every day how many days we have left before we can 'stop eating healthy food.'  and, you know what?  i kind of agree with them.  (today is day twenty-five, as though i'm counting or something.)

i bought a package of salted chocolate-covered caramels at trader joe's a couple of weeks ago, to save as a treat for after this whole thing (ha. ha.) is over, and knowing those things are lurking around in my basement makes me feel about as desperate as, um, a desperado?  are those guys desperate?  it sounds like they might be based on the name alone, and they're probably at least desperately thirsty for love.  and also literally thirsty for water, from what i can tell, since they're always depicted as being covered in sand and running away from the law, which both seem like dehydrating activities.  well, anyway, i'm thirsty for chocolate.  any and all kinds.  and i'm getting a little bitter at the fact that raisins are expected to scratch that itch for me, because hello, i'm not new: it's pretty obvious a raisin is just a grape that got left out overnight.  

i'm pretty sure this chocolate withdrawal is half my blahdom explained.  it also probably indicates that, twenty-five days in, my sugar addiction is still not under control, and that i should keep going beyond thirty days.  but guys, i'm just not sure that i'm strong enough.  i think those caramels from trader jose's have got my goat and really it's a modern day miracle that i haven't caved and eaten them before now.  i'm starting to talk to myself in the third person like a hippie therapist, being all, 'you're stronger than this, paige,'  and 'independent, confident women don't have to binge eat in their basements to feel satisfied with their lives, paige,' and 'it's just food, it's not love, tiny flower.'

that's probably just a result of the patchouli as well, though.  i think it's becoming clear that i really should lay off it for a while.

video vednesday: (YES RICE)

aaaaaaaagh, i forgot!

i love you. i like you. your hair looks pretty.

happy monday from one mister finneas van voorst.

to quote finneas' highest and most frequently-given compliment:  "i love you.  i like you.  your hair looks pretty."

now, if you don't think that's a great way to start off a monday, then you have unreasonable expectations for this life.

what's been up? (weekly.)

as i've mentioned, and as you may have seen on my instagram or facebook, we've had a nasty bug bouncing around this past week.  three of the kids each had a 24-hour stint with a really high fever, followed on subsequent days with lots of tiredness, meltdowns, and massive naps, as well as deep coughs and congestion.  it has not been pleasant for them.  we're past the one-week mark, and they're still trying to kick this thing for good.  so it's been a low-key week.  other than having some friends stay with us last weekend, we haven't really seen anyone, as we had to miss church as well.  yesterday seemed to be better, with most kids feeling on the up-and-up, and with warm enough weather for the older two to play outside for a while.  whew.  this virus ain't no joke.

penelope's been hit the hardest, with multiple non-consecutive days on the couch.  it just keeps coming back to bite her.

lucky for us, this one held out for quite a while before being defeated by the crud, and at least attempted to charm the kids back to relative health with her cutie patootie face.

here's to hoping for a healthy upcoming week!

coming to you in 2D!

for a christmas gift to todd, i asked a friend of ours to do a fun drawing of our family.  isn't it so great?!  i love how even the kids' glasses are exactly right.

the only difficulty i'm having is finding a good spot for it.  we don't have a ton of wall space in our house, and what we do have is mostly all taken with ginormo pieces of art, etc.  there's one larger empty space to the left of the piano, but as per usual, i feel the need to fill it with something larger-scale than this.  (it's hard to tell in the picture, but the drawing is 8x10 in an 11x16 frame).  i'm finding in this tiny house that bigger art makes the house itself feel bigger, which seems counter-intuitive, but also seems to work out okay in the end.  additionally, i submit with conviction that some larger art tends to make a house look more pulled together than lots of smaller art.  worth the investment in my book, but that is clearly a really substantial tangent.

anyway, i'd put this sweet drawing in our bedroom, but our bedroom is a whole sack of sad-looking, and would then only be a sad sack with a single pretty picture on the wall.  (one of these days we're going to live somewhere long enough for me to finally get around to decorating our bedroom, as it is invariably the last space i ever get to.  or, so i assume, since i've never actually lived anywhere that long to have gotten that far.)  plus, as is my reasoning for never decorating our bedroom with anything in the first place:  no one but us will ever see it, and that's a bummer.

oh, the dilemma.  where should i hang it, guys?!

video vednesday: salt. salt. salt.

turns out we're good-looking people.

or, actually, austin is a really good photographer.

i mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my sister's boyfriend took some family photos for us right after christmas.  (wow, it seems like a lifetime ago that it was reasonable to expect the kids to sit outside without coats on.  at least, without having DHS sicced on us, and rightfully so.)  also?  i love the photos.  i want to marry the photos.  i want to hug them and dress them in warm scarves and cute mittens.  because i'm a weirdo, but also, because they're so good and i'm so grateful.

like, he totally captured the kids' personalities.

  

and he got some great ones of each kiddo individually:

and some good ones of me and todd together (we have very few photos of the two of us since myspace selfies stopped being a thing.)

and - gasp, shock, amazement! - some of all six of us!

and some of our relatively normal, day-to-day lives:

austin let atticus try his hand at shooting a photo, and this is what he took.  not too bad for his first try!

oh man, i'm just so happy with these i could smooch my screen and then order entirely too many prints and then have to wallpaper my house in them.  but it really wouldn't be so bad, would it?  a house wallpapered in these faces?  nope, it wouldn't, i agree.

the van voorsts battle the crud.

well, i got cocky.  i was all, 'we've made it all the way to january without getting sick!'  and then, bammo.  we were struck by the great equalizer: the dastardly Upper Respiratory Virus.

so far, atticus and penelope have been hit the hardest, though finneas' immune system seems to be waffling about whether to stand and fight or crumble under the pressure.  it's really a day-to-day drama.  who needs tv when finneas has own immunological soap opera going on?  will it stand strong?  will it not?  WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN?!

i feel bad even saying it, since the big kids have been hit so hard, but it really hasn't been all that bad, caretakingly speaking.  there is no barf, which is always a major determinant of how difficult an illness will be for me to deal with, and the kids are basically just really sleepy, really cuddly, really sweaty lumps that hang out on the couch on their respective sick days (the fever seems to be on-again, off-again, and they've basically alternated days on the couch).

a lot of families at church seem to have been struck with something similar, and say it tends to last up to two weeks, so i may be scarce around these parts for a bit.  it really just depends on if barf ends up rearing its ugly head, which would be a total game changer for yours truly, or if the laptop's waking hours are primarily allocated to kids' shows on netflix.  we shall see.

weekly 'what's up.'

here's what went down this week:

.. we went to a wedding in des moines, and actually made it on time!  not being late to just one out of the last four is a terrible record, but i guess the silver lining is that we seem to be on the upswing?

.. we went to trader joe's, which is always the very very best, but i was wearing four-inch heeled boots at the time and also dying of hunger, which kind of put a damper on things and also made the whole ordeal more expensive.  (because of the hunger, not the heels.  i'm pretty sure the heels didn't have anything to do with the cost.)

.. i got my ankle dry-needled, which is a thing.  i sprained my ankle (twice, actually) over the summer, and it is still giving me serious issues.  (probably not at all helped by the above mentioned boots.)  there's a girl in our connection group who is a physical therapist, and she was willing to help me out.  it was super crazy - it's kind of like acupuncture, but instead of being based on energy points, it's based on nerve locations (or so i think... i'm actually not really sure).  so there i was at church with all these crazy needles sticking out of my foot, and all of a sudden my whole foot got really hot and tingly, and it has felt a ton better for much of this week.  voodoo.

.. atticus spent all of yesterday totally flattened by some upper respiratory virus.  no fun.  but he's been a trooper and has spent his time sleeping or reading books quietly, like the magic miracle child that he is.

.. in whole30 news, we're still going.  it really hasn't been nearly as bad as i had anticipated, for me at least.  i've had a couple of grouchy days, and a couple of really crave-y days, but nothing unbearable.  the kids have been powering through, though i think they were really feeling it there for a while.  lots of meltdowns and fighting, and they've been heavier sleepers than normal.  but they're on the upswing, and finneas especially seems to be feeling really good.  and i've been proud of them:  they once turned down ice cream on the basis that 'it has sugar, and we're not eating sugar right now,' and atticus was so confused when he saw todd eating frozen pizza because 'there are grains in that.'  we've had a lot of good discussions about food groups, and the effects of food on our bodies and our feelings.

as for meals, breakfasts still consist of rando fruits, veggies, nuts, nut butters, bacon, etc.  (also? these prosciutto-wrapped fritatta muffins, which are pretty good but a bit too coconutty for my taste.)

lunches have consisted of this lime chicken soup, which makes a double batch and is not good.

dinners have included a sausage/onion/red pepper skillet meal i threw together, this scampi recipe using ghee instead of butter and served over broccoli and mushrooms, this paleo chicken curry stir fry, and burgers.  somewhat less exciting than last week's meals, but not horrible.

aaaaaaaand... that was our week. huzzah!

video vednesday: she calls it a mayonegg.

whole30 snack inspiration.