what's up weekly. (i used a pressure canner!)

Another week, another 'what's up.'  This one was kind of full, so buckle your seatbelt.

We kicked off the weekend with a box of gifts sent to the kids (and us!) by our dear friends Meghan and Josiah.  The kids were giddy - the entire time we were pulling presents out of the box, Juni kept yelling, "CWISSMISS? PWESENTS? CWISSMISS!!"  Every present was so perfect for every kid - Ophelia got an adorable little outfit, Juni got a set of repositionable stickers, and Callista got face paints.  (She immediately went and put on her princess dress and tiara, and then I painted her face with "princess makeup."  Someone call Princess Kate; I think I've found my calling.)

Rocco got a dinosaur mask that actually opens its mouth when he talks.

Lolo the Girly got necklaces, Finneas got a model plane, Penelope got a crochet taco kit, and Atticus got a real KA-BAR knife.  (Which was promptly put somewhere safe, for our faint-of-heart readers.  And is also still ready at-hand, for any potential housebreakers in our audience.)

On Saturday, we headed up to the Amish in the morning (check out the raw milk highlight section on my Instagram if you want to take a peek at the trip with us!).  After we got home and the little girls went down for nap, the boys got busy working on a stop motion movie they're making, and Penelope read some of her original stories to Laurelai.

I took advantage of an unusually long naptime stretch from Ophelia to make some chicken broth and sourdough einkorn flatbreads.

I feel the need to address how bulbous I look here.  I was wearing a scarf around my kidneys but it kind of didn't just stay around my kidneys, hence the weird bulkiness.

All the broth, ready to be canned up later in the week.

We were hoping to go to church Sunday morning, but I spiked a fever overnight and spent all of Sunday sick.  Go figure.  Todd came to the rescue as usual, and took care of breakfast and lunch for everyone.  I spent the morning sleeping, and Penelope was kind enough to watch Ophelia for me for a couple of hours so I could sleep soundly.  (I have been really sore from sleeping in weird positions since she was born, so it was nice to have the whole bed to myself to move around in, and to be able to go into a deep sleep without needing to keep one ear open for the next feeding time.)

We got these hilarious bacon-and-egg candies from the Amish store this week.  Todd served them with breakfast because that is the only good and right thing to do.

I felt mostly better by Monday, but then Todd was feeling the crud coming on.  His bout with this bug lasted until yesterday.

The rest of the week was full of random stuff: 

1.  We got a clog in our kitchen pipes and had to call in a plumber.

2.  I tried pressure canning for the first time ever this week.  There were some hiccups along the way, but luckily I have a friend who has done some pressure canning that I was able to call and troubleshoot with, and I ended up not blowing up my stove, and with seven quarts of chicken broth concentrate to boot!  (I had told my Amish friend Irene that I had never pressure canned before, and she said, "So, do you just use a water bath canner for everything?", and I said, no, I just don't really ever can, and she looked at me like I was speaking French.)

Two free range chickens from Natural Grocers: $18

These jars of concentrated broth will make 14+ quarts of chicken broth, which is nearly $4 per quart at the store.  Cha-ching, my friends.  If chicken broth was money, I'd be Scrooge McDuck.  Plus, I'd have an easier time swimming through my wealth than he did.

3.  On January 31st, I realized my (live) Christmas tree was still up in the basement!  It had totally slipped my mind, and I asked Todd to take it out that night.  He asked what all the urgency was about, and I said I could NOT be a person who still had their Christmas tree up in February!  So right before bed that night, he kindly hauled it out to the backyard.  Does it still count as January if it technically happened after midnight?

4.  We got a significant amount of snow here this week, so we took advantage of our day off of school (we don't do school on Wednesdays) to play in the snow.  We don't get much accumulation down here, so we pulled out all the gear, just in case this would end up being the only chance the kids had for snow play this winter.  I am glad I don't have to deal with all the gear more than this - it is overwhelming to keep track of hats, scarves, mittens, boots, coats and snowpants for this many kids!

5.  Penelope is really branching out with independent baking endeavors, and is doing great.  She and Laurelai made cookies this week, and needed zero help from me.  AND, to top it off, the rule is that she can bake if she leaves the kitchen cleaner than she found it, so by the time they were done, our house smelled like cookies, dessert was made, and the whole kitchen had been cleaned up and mopped.  That was a good day!

6.  Todd surprised me with flowers and a card on Tuesday, since February is a hard month for me (and everyone else on the planet) and he is wanting to help me start to look forward to it each year.  So sweet!

7.  Everyone is still head-over-heels in love with Ophelia.  Callista says, "We're lucky God gave her to us before someone else got her."

SuperJune to the rescue!

Ophelia does not look adequately convinced that this is a good idea.

Look at my pretty girls!

Sister time has been upgraded to a chill hang.

And lastly, Todd got a couple of photos of us in the wild, just living our normal lives:

Me, dressing how I dress and doing what I do.

These three brothers- (and sister-) in-arms, dressing how they dress and doing what they do.  Gird your loins, World.  The Van Voorsts are here.

Whew!  We packed a lot in this week.  The upcoming week will be our last school week before a break, and then we'll jump into our third trimester.  Time is moving so quickly!  But it's because it's full of good things, and I'm here for it.

what's up weekly. (we officially made it through the first forty days!)

This week was strange - very little happened worth reporting, and the days kind of went by in a haze.  We got school done (and even made a little headway in getting caught up with what we missed before).  We had friends over for the first time since Ophelia was born.  We had a few run-ins with gastrotechnics.  You know.

We wanted to go to church together for the first time since before Ophelia was born.  I try to give myself six full weeks of self-enforced, homebound rest and recovery, and we were just shy of six weeks.  I haven't been to church in so long - even before she was born, I was in a lot of pain in the third trimester and sitting in the folding chairs at church was really difficult, and then I got Covid, and then I had her... it's been a long stretch, and I was feeling (mostly) ready to attempt it with a nursing newborn.  

But God had other plans, and Atticus vomited a few times Saturday night.  He was fine by Sunday, but we're sticklers about the 24-hour rule, so we stayed home again.  Then Penelope caught it Monday.  Everyone was fine by Tuesday.  So random and weird.  Hopefully we'll get to attend church this weekend.

Other than that, our items of note this week were mild.  I took most of the kids on a run into Natural Grocers, which was my first time getting out and about with them on my own.  (Last week, I needed to run to the post office and to pick up a meat order, but I chickened out at the last minute and Todd was kind enough to drive us around on his lunch break.)  I also went out by myself to pick up a Walmart order.

Todd let Callista pick out the flowers for the table this week - I love the ones she picked!

It sounds small, but I have really avoided going out and about if I can help it lately, since it's so cold right now and body warmth is so important for healing.  But I'm getting to the point where I feel ready to do more.  I do try to keep myself warm by wrapping my abdomen with a cashmere scarf under my clothes to keep my kidneys warm, and covering up with a wool blanket while I drive.  One thing that has developed over the course of having a million kids is learning to take care of myself better, and it seems to be working.  This postpartum season has been so sweet and gentle, and (dare I say it?) easy.  I'm healing well, we're bonding well, and I don't feel strung out or exhausted.  I'm not in pain, I'm not emotionally unstable.  This is how it should be.

And now we've reached the six-week mark. I've made it the first forty+ days already!  (Though, as Todd points out, the Old Testament declared the postpartum season to be eighty days after a girl - so I still have a lot to look forward to in the remaining forty days!)  We are gently easing into a new rhythm, and there are things that still need to get ironed out, like where Ophelia is going to nap when she gets too big to nap on the end of the couch throughout the day.  All the bedrooms are taken, and all the rest of the house is loud.  But there are always creative solutions; I just need a lightbulb moment.

And other than that, our week didn't hold much besides getting back into the swing of cooking (I'm working on a sourdough starter and learning to bake with einkorn), and Penelope baked some cookies.

I also finally got my hands on some whole chickens at Natural Grocers (that is one thing that has been hard for them to stock with the supply chain stuff), so I will be trying my hand at pressure canning chicken broth soon.  Pray for me that I don't blow up my kitchen.

And that's that!  Off to snuggle my sweet girl.

what's up bi-weekly. (second christmas, and ophelia is already one month old!)

Hello, friends!  Hands-free time is scarce around these parts lately, and finding time to type is a challenge.  So I'm going to let photos do most of the talking this week.

The table Todd stripped and refinished for me.  ISN'T IT GORGEOUS?!  It had been covered in dirty   gritty, flat-white paint when I bought it.  This is probably a foretaste of what it will feel like when I get to see resurrected human bodies someday.

Home office these days: busy, messy, chaotic, joyful.  (Not pictured: also smelly.)

My biggest girl and my littlest girl, already forming a lifelong bond.  I have to take a second to brag on Penelope here.  She is so affectionate and in love with Ophelia.  She is so helpful to and considerate of me.  She is a large part of why this postpartum season is going so well - she has taken such good care of us.

Second Christmas!  Two weekends ago, my family came down for Cousin Christmas, and it was the best kind of madhouse.

My mom, meeting Ophelia.  (Well, technically, they met earlier in the day, but I failed to get a photo then, so just pretend.)

A rare eyeball sighting.  And here is where I take a second to brag on Atticus.  He is so, so good with Ophelia, and often says how excited he is to be a dad someday.  He is more shy about asking to hold her, so I have to think to offer him the chance, but when I do, he jumps on it.  The other day, he asked if I would start relying on him more when I need help with Baby Things.  Gosh, he's sweet.

Rocco, marching to the beat of his own drum, as usual.

Lolo, cute as a button, as usual.  Also, she turned eight-and-a-half.  Also, she is still in clothes made for five-year-olds.  She is literally the size of a button.

Homeschool has continued to keep us trucking along - we are back in the Ancients again this term, and reading the story of the Iliad.  We're also diving more into science topics than we have in previous years - a biography of Archimedes, the history of the discovery of the elements and the periodic table, a Rachel Carson book on the ocean, and a worldview book examining the merits (and the overwhelming lack thereof) of evolutionary theory.  We just finished reading the Hobbit as our literature pick.  Not a single boring book this term.

I love our homeschool method - it's primarily a lot of cuddling on the couch and reading together, which is so conducive to a lifestyle of Constant Newborn-ing.  Our life feels very organic, like it all fits together so naturally.

Rocco, rocking another signature look and being just the best big brother.  It's hard to believe he has three younger sisters - he still seems so little!  But he already looks out for them so well - they're lucky girls.

Finneas got a stop motion movie kit for Christmas, and after my mom was able to help us set it up on my laptop (she's a whiz with computers, whereas I am very tech-stupid), the boys were off and running.  And they've already produced a couple of genuinely good shorts.  I'm very impressed.

I pulled out the Magic Bouncer and Ophelia immediately took to it.  If you've been around the blog long, you've heard me sing the Bouncer's praises before.  Keep your baby swings and your high-tech doo-dads.  This is the best baby item ever.

I discovered a few fortune cookie inserts Laurelia made: "You will be robd (robbed)."  "You will love somone and they will love you backe."  "You will hav a bad fochin (fortune)."  "Covid will end."

Girlfriend continued to be THE CUTEST IN THE WORLD.  Like I always say about the Van Voorst children: "Not an uggo in the bunch."

Our living room has progressed from "home office" to "hoarder lair/fallout bunker."

THIS TINY NUGGET IS ONE MONTH OLD ALREADY!  She has grown SO MUCH over the last week, I really can't even believe it.  She hit a rocky patch around three weeks, where she spent a couple nights awake for stretches at a time, but other than that, she continues to be a rockstar sleeper.  So she is eating well, sleeping well, and generally just the easiest baby the world has ever known.

Special Sunday breakfast, courtesy of Todd, who is still taking such great care of us.  I haven't folded a load of laundry or loaded the dishwasher in five weeks.  He has juggled so much - his own work, my work, sleep disruptions, and sickness (he has had a couple days of headaches so terrible that he vomits) - that I can't really adequate express my thankfulness, or even fully understand how he has done it all, and with cheerfulness to boot.  Todd Van Voorst, you are out of my league.

AND HE BROUGHT ME FLOWERS.  What a gosh darn catch.

Atticus continues to hone his artistic skills.

Rocco continues to hone his fashion sense.

My other right-hand gal, who is always cheerfully looking for ways to serve and take care of us.  What a blessing she is.

Rocco is in love with both his sister and his gloves.

SEESTERS!

Assertion: Cutest baby in the world.  Evidence? Exhibit Y.

Wait.  I think all the Van Voorst babies are tied for Cutest Baby in the World, as evidenced by Exhibit Z.  Like I said, not an uggo in the bunch.

And now, I must leave you here so I can go cuddle and smell my newborn before she's no longer a newborn.  (I'm not even a little sorry - I love you to pieces, but you don't hold a candle to Ophelia when it comes to how I want to log my hours.)  Have a great weekend!