what's up weekly. (kind of.)

Long time no chat!  I realize it's been radio silence around here for a bit, but I have a good excuse: last week, instead of spending my time posting a blog like a chump, we were all in South Dakota, enjoying the weather, and time with family, and a conference, and the freedom to breathe oxygen whenever we darn well felt like it (which, at that elevation, was quite the head rush).  It was glorious!

But what do vacations mean, besides no posting?  Photos.  Lots of photos.  (693, to be exact.)  Which are a precious gift!  But also... it means I spent all my allotted blogging time just sorting through and culling them (down to 162, to be exact), so I ran out of time to actually post any of them.  But not to fear!  I am still focused on filling you in on our adventures... we might just have to consider an alternative timeline.  Hope that's okay.

In the meantime, enjoy the smiling mugs of these hooligans to tide you over.

what's up weekly.

This week has been a good balance of social and restful, which I think I needed after such an intense stretch of social engagements last week.  It means that this week's news swings pretty wildly from mundane to unusual and back again, but that's fine by me!  Just enough unusual to make it interesting, just enough mundane to keep it sustainable.

I mentioned last week that Rocco took a metal bar to the face in an ill-chosen game of "bat the snugglies" with a sibling.  A day or two later, he took a toy truck to the eyebrow in an accidental around-the-corner collision with the same sibling.  Same eye and everything.  Poor, poor kid.

On Friday night, my sister and her family came down to help celebrate Juni's birthday the next day, so the kids all bunked in the boys' room and gave the cousins the girls' room.

The next morning, my parents also arrived for the party, and we all celebrated Baby June.  (Correction, she is no longer a baby.  Except that she's my BAYBEEEEEEEEEEE and I just can't get over the fact that she is TWO YEARS OLD.  She is the sweetest-slash-surliest, chunkiest, cuddliest, most agreeable thing on the planet.  I could just squoosh her all the livelong day.)

She's seen a few birthday parties in her day, and knew exactly what to do when the candles arrived.

After cupcakes, she opened presents.  The kids had all bought her treats at the ding-and-dent store, so she's been having a grand time snacking all week on expired animal crackers and fruit snacks.  Atticus made her an awesome set of wooden blocks - he sawed them to length from a 2x4, enlisted Finneas to help sand the rough edges, and asked Penelope to help him paint letters and pictures on them.  They are so cute, and all the kids have logged tons of time playing with them this week.  What a sweet gift.

Juni's on the move, on the move, hallelujah

After we laid Juni down for nap, Penelope got to open a few gifts as well, as her birthday is in a couple of weeks but we won't be able to have everyone come down for it then.  So we celebrated a bit early!

I spent some time getting some flowers in the ground, just in time for it to randomly drop below zero and snow all day on Tuesday.  We'll see if my flowers survived.  (I obviously still need to mulch.)

One of the gifts Penelope got for her birthday was a Harry Potter cookbook, so she decided to make dinner and dessert for us on Tuesday.  She made French onion soup with homemade croutons for dinner, and blueberry muffins for dessert, and they were so good.  She was so proud of herself.

Kids just keep getting better and better with time.

Other than all that, it was kind of a lowkey week.  I got the kids' winter clothes stored away, and their summer clothes out and organized, which is always a major job.  And then I got to hunt back through the winter clothes again when we had a cold snap.

We watched Tudor Farm while I attempted to get caught up on laundry (ha).  I finally got my room picked up a little bit - it has been a dumping ground for way too long, and it's still not CLEAN, but there's at least a bit of visual improvement.  I attempted to clean up the garage.  I ordered the kids' summer shoes.  (Both Penelope and Atticus are now in adult sizes.  Whoa.)  We attended a going away party for our friend Christy, who had the audacity to leave us for greener pastures.  (Oh, and also a great job and living closer to her actual non-Van Voorst family, but those are small excuses and we rescind our acceptance of reality.)  And I'm still right on the cusp of finishing The Order of the Phoenix-  that book is so long, you spend dayzzzzz in what appears to be the "almost done" zone.  So I'm still "almost done."

And that was our week!  I plan on doing as little as possible this weekend - all this "daily life" stuff really takes it out of a person.

what's up weekly.

Well, whoopsie daisy.  I didn't manage to post last week, so this is going to be a two-weeker!

So, last time I filled you in, we were all taking turns with the stomach flu.  Todd had fallen sick the day before, and I was hoping we would all be healthy by Easter.  Unfortunately, I'm not that lucky, and neither is Penelope - she came down with the crud early Saturday morning and spent the day sprawled out.

Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you, just paddling my (clean, unused) barf bucket up the wide Missouri.

The girls took the first chance they got to copy Penelope and pretend to be sick themselves.

So on Easter, we cancelled our plans and we hunkered down.  Luckily Penelope was feeling somewhat better by then, so she was able to join in the festivities to a limited extent.  I made mimosas and bagels and lox for breakfast, because nothing says spring and new life like brightly colored food!

After breakfast, we gathered downstairs in the family room for church time,  then we headed upstairs again for cheeseboard.  (I was starting to have PTSD flashbacks to last year, when Covid stole Easter from everyone and I made up for it by cooking all the livelong day.  I channeled my anger at the world into my delicious ham, and it seemed to work.  Righteous indignation is the best mustard.)

Little tip from me to you:  How do I get stains out of my vintage tablecloths?  Blue Dawn dish soap, and lots of it.  I use so much Dawn in my laundry in general - usually a big squirt per load, and extra if it's a stinky load - but it is seriously the best pre-treater in the whole world.  (I have a high efficiency top loader and have never had issues with too much sudsing, and I honestly use a LOT of this.)

After cheeseboard, everyone napped for a bit, and Penelope put together Easter baskets she had schemed up as a surprise.  I threw dinner in the oven (this year, instead of righteous indignation, I seasoned the ham with brown sugar and actual mustard, and it still turned out okay) and set the table.  I'm convinced Easter is the prettiest feast day of the whole year. 

All through Monday, Penelope was still really low-energy, but everyone else was feeling fine.  I was hoping we were out of the woods and that Atticus, Callista and Juni just wouldn't end up getting the stomach bug.  But then Monday night Atticus started throwing up (after I made the amateur decision to make taco soup for dinner), and he was sick through the day on Tuesday.  Penelope still wasn't feeling great, so they spent a lot of time resting together, Penelope reading to Atticus, or both of them sitting outside in the sunshine.

By Wednesday, no one was sick at the moment, so we headed up to the Amish.  I'm not going to lie, I still am having a hard time driving.  It didn't help that it was raining, either, which has always been a driving stressor for me anyway.  But we got there and back safely - the more uneventful trips I can get under my belt, the sooner I think I'll mentally get past the accident, but in the meantime I'm still struggling.

I spent Thursday packing and doing a final test-run of hair and makeup for a wedding I was going to be in over the weekend, and then in the evening my friend Christy watched the kids so Todd and I could go on a date.  (Then we stayed up way too late talking, which is why I didn't blog last week.  No regrets.)  By the end of the night on Thursday, no one had gotten freshly sick in over three days, so I cautiously considered us out of the woods.  The littlest girls never got it.  So weird.

On Friday of last week, I headed out of town with a couple of friends for a wedding in Iowa.  (Actually, funnily enough, it was in my hometown of Mt. Pleasant, even though the friend getting married isn't a friend from high school and actually only picked it because it was halfway between her family in northern Iowa and his family in central Missouri.  It was strange but really sweet to be back "home" for the first time in years.)

While I was gone, Todd took the kids on some adventures.

The wedding was a success, but I was so glad to arrive home late Saturday night.  I am not ever away overnight without my people - I don't think I've spent a night without another Van Voorst with me since Atticus was born.  Hopefully it's another twelve years - or more - before I have to do that again.  I like my life, so it was hard to leave it, and it was nice coming back.  Todd and the kids had picked up the house and made me a Welcome Home banner.  

This week has been full of dinners with friends, since we were kind of on social hiatus there for a couple of weeks.  Our Easter dinner with our friends Josh and Megan was changed to a taco dinner and rescheduled for Monday, then a missed date night from a few weeks back was rescheduled for Tuesday, so Todd and I went up to Moberly for Mexican again while Christy watched the kids.  (Yes, if you're counting, that's twice in the span of a week - we're the 1%.)  Then on Wednesday, some friends from our Candeo days came over and brought dinner.

Then yesterday was Juni's birthday!  SHE IS TWO!  My littlest baby is two!  We celebrated by pulling out the 2T clothing.  I think that's a record: pulling out the new size the literal DAY she turned 2.  I'm killing it at being a mom.

Other items of note:

Juni's favorite game last week was "playing sick," where she would get a book and a blanket, and cuddle on the couch making pathetic noises.

Rocco took a metal pole to the eyelid this week, and I'm thankful he has fast reflexes or that would have been the end of the eyeball.  The perpetrator of this violence was apprehended and duly sentenced.

And here's a gift from Callista as you head into your weekend.