what's up not-exactly-weekly.

Hi there folks!  Sorry to have missed you last week - we were in South Dakota visiting Todd's parents, so we had other things going on.  It was so wonderful, and we all had such a great time.  But let me back up and fill you in on what I haven't covered yet.

So - two weeks back.  I spent the week before our trip trying to get organized - packing, making lists, cleaning, doing laundry, picking up groceries, picking up books from the library and making runs to the Dollar Tree.  Oh, yeah, and trying to get school done and taking Atticus to his mowing jobs.  It was wild, and exhausting, and it made leaving on a long road trip with ten kids feel downright relaxing after all of that.  I would say I had been running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but to cook up a more relevant mental image, I'll tell you I was stumbling through life like a toddler learning to walk.

Knoxy Boy takes a few steps at a time, and Eulalie loves being in the center of the mix.

Eulalie is basically a pro at this point.  Look at that swagger.

On Sunday, Todd drove me and the babies home after church so they could spend naptime at home.  When he tried to start the van to head back over there himself, it was completely dead.  It was so strange, and kind of stressful because we were leaving the next day.  Luckily, some church friends were able to come over and help us troubleshoot, and then help us replace the starter.  (And by "us," I definitely don't mean to imply that I was personally involved in any step of the process.)

The nice thing about driving old vehicles is that a) they occasionally break down and b) there's a chance that they can be fixed at home.  Atticus now knows how to change a starter.

We left the following morning at 6:00 and settled in for a fun day on the road.  We actually look forward to our road days.  We pack the kids' backpacks with surprises - snacks, water bottles, library books, and small activities and toys from the dollar store.  We pack fun music and plan fun stops.  On the way there, we stopped at our favorite park in Sioux City, and then at Pizza Ranch for lunch.  We ate dinner in the Badlands and then drove through the rest of the Badlands loop at sunset.  The babies didn't sleep much, but they also didn't spend the entire time crying either, so I think they did really well.  We arrived at my in-laws' around 9:00 that night, gave the babies baths (because Knox had a diaper blow out right at the end), and then put everyone in bed.

They napped for a little bit once I came back and sat by them.

On Tuesday, the kids headed right outside to play.  They love being up there.  It's beautiful and there's so much to do outside.  We didn't plan any activities away from the house the entire trip; they just played the whole time (and spent some time watching "channel TV," with regular TV commercials and all!  So much better than streaming!  And the generations have come full circle).

I got some quality time with Todd's parents, which is always so nice, and a chance to actually make some headway in a couple books I'm reading, which I was grateful for.  I'd say it was really relaxing for everyone, but I am not sure I can say with confidence that my in-laws would call it relaxing to be overrun with twelve extra people for a week!  But I can say with confidence that we all had a fun time together.

Atticus lent Jacqi his cigar for this killer photo op.  That, friends, is the OG.

We headed home on Saturday, stopping first at the Lewis and Clark museum/Sacagawea statue, then on to Falls Park for lunch, then to eat dinner at the playground rest stop that's only a little way from home (where Eulalie took her turn having a diaper blow out).  We got home about 10:00 that night and got the kids all squared away in bed quickly.  Todd had asked our friend Candace, who is a professional cleaner, to come clean for me while we were gone so I could come home to a clean house and it was wonderful.   I just sat up admiring the clean house for a while.  (After, of course, getting the first of about one thousand loads of laundry started.)

We all made it to church on Sunday, and Todd preached from James.  On Monday, we jumped back into school and tried to get settled back into our routine as best we could, which was kind of a hurdle since Todd left in the morning for a two-day trip to Wichita for the twice-a-year meeting of the elders in our presbytery.  He was gone until Tuesday evening.  It felt long.

In the afternoon on Tuesday, my mom and stepdad came for a short visit to drop off a dining room table that my grandma is handing down to me.  It is gorgeous.  (I haven't had time to swap it out with the old one yet, or I'd share photos.)  It's Amish-made, walnut-stained oak, and it's extendable.  It's so perfect.  Our current table was a gift from my sister and brother-in-law and has held its own for the last ten years, but it doesn't extend and is starting to wear out.  I had been praying the Lord would provide something that would meet our current needs a little better, and the next day my grandma called and asked me if I was ready to take this one because she was ready to pass it along.  She even wrote a little note to me on the underside.  I'm so excited to bring it in and get it settled, but I think I'm stalling because I just want it to stay pristine for a little longer.

Wednesday was the first day since before leaving on our trip that a full day of "normal" life and rhythm was able to take place, and I was so ready for it.  I'm so tired after a long stretch of "abnormal"!  But today we will be doing as much school as we can in between taking Atticus to mowing jobs and getting ready for a bake sale tomorrow morning.  And then maybe, just maybe, next week can run start-to-finish without a hiccup.  (No! I take it back! I don't want to say it out loud and risk jinxing it!)  Please, Lord.  Let there be no hiccups.

what's up weekly. (back to school, back to school, to prove to dad that i'm not a fool.)

Well.

This week has been a doozy.  It has seriously been so wild.

I'm just going to insert some random photos through this post to give you a feel for how school is going.  Here you can see the babies during school time.  I have long felt that the most challenging part of homeschooling is not actually schooling, it's figuring out what to do with the pre-school set.  So far what has been working with the babies is a combination of distracting them with food, letting them tootle around when they're in a nonviolent mood, and incarcerating them in the exersaucers when they're being a menace to civil society (read: as naptime approaches).  Don't worry, they're given Cheerios and milk while they're in the clink, which they mostly just throw everywhere.  It's like the Martha Stewart prison experience for babies.

On Monday, we tried to start off on the right foot and get into our school rhythm, but Penelope had another CLEP test that afternoon.  This time, I took some of the kids with me so we could get some of our read alouds done in the lobby while we waited, which kind of worked except for the fact that the kids were wildly distractible the entire time, and also it felt weird to be reading an Austrian School economics book out loud directly across from the open door of the college recruiting office on the Army base.  It was weirdly subversive without being remotely stealthy.  Like, maybe these young guys in fatigues wanted to hear more about the Federal Reserve and fiat currency? No?

Anyway, all's well that ends well.  We were probably already on some kind of watchlist before this anyway, and also Penelope scored a 90% on her test (College Algebra!) so we went to Culver's for cheese curds.  It turned out to be a pretty good afternoon after all.

Tuesday was nice because I was actually home most of the day to get school done, although I did go to the library over lunch to print some things off and pick out some books for the kids for an upcoming activity, and it took forever and set our afternoon back a bit.  

Oey has a new true love: the wooden train set.  She literally will spend hours sitting by herself, playing trains.  She really grew up a lot just over the summer months.  She is a very different kid now than she was just at the end of last school year.  Such a big little thing.

In the evening on Tuesdsay, Todd and I took the babies to do the milk run and left Atticus in charge of making dinner.  He has done that for us the last two weeks, and has done a really great job and enjoys it, so this may be something we do more often.  It was fun getting to go run an errand with "just" Todd (only having two kids in tow basically feels like having zero kids in tow, comparatively).  After dinner, Todd had an elder session meeting, so the kids and I hung out and I got everyone in bed, and then I watched Gilmore Girls, because it is getting close to Fall, and that is what you do in the fall.

You wouldn't know it from the expression on her face in the above photo, but Juni has been LOVING school.  ADORING school.  BEGGING for more school.  And she's doing so well.  She's catching on to phonics very quickly, and has literally completed six weeks' worth of math worksheets just since we started last week.  This girl is going places.

Wednesday was another weird day.  I woke up with blisters all down my throat and along the side of my tongue, and with a hormone headache.  Penelope had a surprise babysitting job come up, so I dropped her off there in the morning, and came home to find Finneas sprawled on the couch with a fever.  On Wednesdays, our school work is a lot of "together" work at the table (map drills, math drills, memory work, grammar, dictation) or on the couch (geography, Shakespeare, poetry, and family read aloud).  Since we were missing a couple of the kids, and since it hurt to talk or read out loud, we just laid low.  The healthy and at-home kids worked on some independent schoolwork but there was nothing structured about the day.  In the afternoon, after I picked up Penelope, I ran a couple of quick errands.  By bedtime, Finneas was back to himself, so it seemed to be just a quick down-and-up thing.

He's thirteen-and-a-half. SOMEONE TELL ME HOW THIS KEEPS HAPPENING.

Yesterday, we mercifully got through all of the school day without a single errand, a single interruption, a single issue.  Everyone got through their work, I got all my individual time with the kids and we're going into Friday strong.  (Fridays are like Wednesdays - the schedule is quite different from M, T, Th, and it feels like reinventing the wheel each time.  I am not yet in a rhythm for Fridays - we do lots of read alouds, but also two grades worth of lab science, and some Fridays we do Fine Arts, and some Fridays I go grocery shopping... so it's kind of a wild card of a day.)  

Today is an "extra lab science" kind of Friday, so I need to go look over my lab plans to make sure I have everything I need on hand before we get started.  Also... I just now remembered I still need to have the kids take their "first day of school" photos.  Um, oops.  There's always something I'm forgetting!

what's up weekly. (lolo is twelve!)

Hello and happy Friday, y'all!  Last week I was muttering veiled complaints about how it was a boring week to write about because there wasn't any news and I couldn't even remember what all we did that week. 

This week was crammajammed with news.  Funny how that works.

Last Friday was Lolo's birthday.

She had the best day.  She picked cereal for breakfast, grilled cheese and spaghettio's for lunch, and fried chicken for dinner with root beer floats for dessert.  It was the last weekday of summer break, so the kids spent the day playing.  In the evening, all the siblings gave her gifts that she adored.  It was such a fun day, watching her have a fun day.

Finneas got her a large stuffed cheeseburger.  Which makes complete sense, knowing both Finneas and Laurelai.

She is so servant hearted and always quick to help.  She has a funny, silly sense of humor.  She is extremely creative and is always thinking of new things to make, or ways to elevate meals, days or situations to make them more special.  She is best friends with Penelope.  She is beautiful and soft-hearted and we are so glad she's ours.

The day after her birthday, family came down to party with us.

This photo is so cute.  Atticus surprised Lolo by taking the day of her party off of work so he could celebrate with us all.  Flipping through photos, I discovered he was taking his own photos and video of the day.  So sweet.

Monday was Labor Day, but instead of taking a break like normal people do, we jumped into our first full day of school with all the kids.  It was nice that Todd was off work, since it was kind of an all-hands-on-deck day as we tried to get into the new rhythm.  He did spelling placement tests with all the kids for me, which helped out a ton and freed me up to do other things on the list.  I have to say, everything is tightly packed into our days with very little margin, but so far it is going surprisingly smoothly.  Or, at least, not unsmoothly.

Lolo's little reading nook is getting a workout these days.

The hardest part of homeschooling is often figuring out how to entertain the littler ones.  I've been impressed by Oey so far this week - she has matured so much just since the end of last school year.  She has enjoyed joining us sometimes throughout the day.  (Though, I have to admit, she has had her share of forced participation as well so I can keep an eye on her.)

Penelope has been loving the cooler weather and has chosen to do much of her schoolwork out on the deck.

Multitasking: making lunch and reading.

Tuesday should have been another normal school day, but Penelope babysat in the morning, and I had to go back over to the Fort to get my background check done so we could get onto the Army base for Penelope to take her next CLEP test in the afternoon, so I spent my day running around like a maniac and grumbling about it in my head.  Luckily, the test went more smoothly this week than last, but since it was a Composition test and she had to submit a couple of essays, we're not sure yet if she passed it or not.

Wednesday night we were invited to dinner at a friend's house.  They have five kids, so between our two families there were 19 people!  We all had so much fun - Finneas and I were trying to remember if we've done dinner with friends since the babies have been born.  I think we've had people over to our house a few times, but I think this may have been our first time being hosted just for a couple hours in the evening at someone else's house.  It's funny how gradually twin life gets easier, but when I stop to think back over the last year (or two, really, since the pregnancy was so hard, too), it hits me fresh just how wild it has been.  We are gradually making our way out of the fog.

Yesterday was a mercifully normal school day.  I had had to leave the house on Wednesday to run to the grocery store for a few last minute items to bring to dinner, so it has just seemed like this week has not been allowed to settle into a rhythm.  I'm not home much for homeschooling.  Which I hate.  I love my home routine, I love being here and never leaving.  I love days that go from beginning to end at home and on track.  So yesterday was a gift.

Today is scheduled to be another out-and-about day.  Atticus has two mowing jobs, and then his DRIVER'S LICENSE TEST!  Please, Lord.  Please, Lord.  Let him pass.  Then a lot of this running around won't require my presence!  I'm actually pretty confident he will pass - he doesn't have to take the written test since he's taken and passed it within the last year to renew his permit, and the deeply menopausal woman who works at the DMV was apparently in a giving mood the last time we were in there, and she gave Atticus some pointers on what mistakes most people make on the driving portion so he can pay careful attention to those.  

And that brings us up to date!  And just to end on a photojournalistic note, take a gander at our local fauna.

I recently put out a hummingbird feeder and it has been so fun to watch our new little friends through the window!

Here you will see not one but FOUR vultures chilling at the back of the field.  There is likely a hawk skulking around, too.  They spent no less than three full days working on a dead baby racoon.  I should probably take that as some sort of lesson in commitment and work ethic, even when the job at hand is less than a thrill ride.  But really, I'm just glad they're finally gone.  It was kind of a bummer to watch them at it while we were trying to eat dinner.

And on that cheerful note, enjoy your weekend!

what's up weekly. (weekly? is that really all?)

Well, I have just discovered that for me to blog weekly for so long must have involved a lot of making mountains out of molehills because, honestly, what actual news possibly has time to unfold in the tiny, insignificant span of a week? But I am also realizing that remembering all the way back to the beginning of the week is a lot harder than it should be, so maybe a week is all I can handle well.  So.  Let's dust off the old grey matter and see if I can remember what happened this week.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a twin mattress from a friend whose daughter was getting rid of it.  I didn't exactly need a twin mattress at the moment, but it's a nice mattress and around here we're always eventually in need of a mattress, so I went ahead and brought it home.  It was sitting in our entryway for over a week while I noodled on where to put it.  Finally, I decided that it was time for Oey to move out of the pack and play and into a big girl bed.  

But you know how it is - If You Give A Mouse a Cookie and all that.  To fit a twin bed in the little girls' room meant I would need to move the furniture around.  And to move the furniture meant I should probably rotate the rug.  And if I'm rotating the rug, I might as well take it out altogether since it's dirty and ripped and things actually look cute without it.  And then I need to assemble the Jenny Lind bed frame that's been waiting in the basement for its time in the sun, but since there is no box spring with this mattress, I need to go to Home Depot to get a piece of plywood for the bottom of the bed.  (And since the plywood scraps seem to be the exact dimensions I need to fix the chicken run, maybe I should go ahead and fix the chicken run.  But maybe I should paint the plywood first to make it less podunk-looking... and while I'm in the chicken yard, I might as well do some weeding, and I should probably keep my eyes peeled for a tiny fall wreath for the chicken door to replace the little summer wreath that's out there now... you see how this works.)

Once the (filthy. FILTHY.) rug was taken out of the room, I had the boys beat it with brooms to clean it out, and now I'll have to decide what to do with it.

Well, anyway.  We got all the furniture moved around, the bed assembled, (the closet cleaned out, because why not?), and mismatched bedding scrounged up from around the house, and Oey was thrilled.  In fact, I think "thrilled" is too mild a word.  She kept saying, "I have a big girl bed!  I love my big girl bed!"

Everyone else was pretty excited for her as well.

For Christmas, I think I might get the girls matching quilts, and I have picked out paint colors and stencil designs that I will hopefully be able to get done over a school break or next summer.  Decorating is slower than molasses around here because, A) I have no time, B) everything costs money, and C) I am a slow decision maker.  But it will get done eventually, and I think we're on a good track!

Yes, that is a curtain panel nailed to the wall.  They had a curtain rod until one of them pulled on the curtains and yanked the whole thing completely out of the drywall, leaving gaping holes and a damaged rod.  Reason D everything takes a while around here is that I am often having to redo things that have already been done before!

Anyway.  One day the walls will be painted a less garish color, the curtains will not be nailed to the wall, there will be art and cute bedding and possibly a new rug... and then we'll have to rearrange and change things up again because we'll get another mattress.  You see how this works.

On Monday, I took Penelope to take her Math CLEP test.  The way the tests work is they earn actual college credit - so when a college accepts the test results, they would put it on her transcript as having actually taken the course and earned the credits (which is slightly different than placement testing, which simply allows you to skip taking a required course if your score is high enough.)  So for every $25 test that they will accept, she is earning the credits for the entire class AND not having to sit through the class itself, saving time and money.  (We do not dual enroll, so we don't have tuition coverage that the government high school would offer for the courses.) Nine of the required courses in Accounting can be CLEPed out of, which saves a pretty significant amount of money.

ANYWAY.  Back to the story.  I took her to take her test, which was supposed to take about an hour.  About forty minutes in, she came out to tell me that her computer had frozen when she was on Problem 53 of 56, and the test proctor guy was now on the phone with tech support to try to get it figured out.  An hour later, she came out again to say they never got it figured out and her test was voided.  Even though she'd already gotten enough questions right to pass it, and even though I'd already paid for it.  She has to come back to take the entire thing over, and the test center hasn't been able to say for sure whether I'll have to pay again for her to take it a second time.  So frustrating.

So next week we'll go for her scheduled Composition exam and then try again the following week to complete the Math exam.  Eye roll.

Yesterday I took the younger kids to Dollar Tree to buy birthday presents for Lolo's birthday today!  I will post her birthday photos next week, but for now let me just say that I'm so excited to celebrate this sweet girl of mine.  She is one of my very favorite people on the planet.  She has picked out birthday meals for the day, and we will open presents, and then tomorrow she has a birthday party with extended family.  Headed into the weekend strong!

The babies are ready to party.

what's up August (and everything after).

Well, here we are - after this post, I have officially gotten current with all my back blogging from when the computer died!  So, after today's blog, we will back to our regularly scheduled (and occasionally sporadic) weekly updates.

BUT. Not quite yet.  Let me sum up our August-So-Far for you.

I have been trying to get everything in order for back to school, while we've also been plugging away slowly but surely at summer school.  One of my big summer projects has been to get the 'guts' of the house cleaned out and organized - the garage attic, the storage room, the food room, and the garage.  I am getting really close and feeling so good about things.  There's still work to be done, but I think this is the least cluttered our storage spaces have been since we moved in three (three!) years ago, and I feel like I can breathe.  I tackled our closet recently as well, in an effort to make a little reading space for Laurelai.

All my kids are very different in their interest in and proclivity toward school.  Laurelai is a kid who is naturally very good at math and loves stories, but reading has been a slow process for her, and she is easily distracted.  She is creative and imaginative, and her physical senses are highly fine-tuned, so noises and sights and activity just get her brain spinning in a thousand directions.  She has struggled to find a system or routine that has made focusing on her schoolwork easy and smooth.  

And then this tiny Pottery Barn chair showed up on FB Marketplace.  I cleaned out the back of our small-ish closet to give her a calm and quiet place to sit and read, and it has made a HUGE difference in her school time.  Because it has made it much easier for her to get her work done, it has also helped her feel more enthusiastic about and less burdened by reading and school in general.

She still has one more week of summer school before jumping into the full school year, but she's feeling optimistic.  The high school kids started their new school year this past week already and are getting used to the heavier workload.  Penelope is going into tenth, and Atticus is going into eleventh - can you even believe that?!  

This past Monday, Penelope took the first of three CLEP exams she has prepped for, and thankfully passed it.  (Introductory Business Law!  Passed on the first try, as an incoming high school sophomore!)  To say I'm proud of her is an understatement.  She is hoping to get her AAS in Accounting by the time she graduates high school, which seems challenging but achievable.  We're trying to get as many CLEP tests under her belt as possible, since it's essentially free college credit, and nine of the required courses in the Accounting program can be substituted with a passed CLEP exam.  This coming Monday she will take the College Algebra test, and the Monday after that she'll go for College Composition.  Once those are done, she'll start studying for a new test but hasn't decided which one to go for next.

While we were at the test center, I fortuitously met someone who is a teacher at our church's affiliated Christian school, and he was telling me about a program here in town where students can work on tech and trade certifications for free while in high school, so I've started looking into it for Atticus.  There are so, so, so many things I love about homeschooling, but the flexibility/sovereignty at the high school level is quickly moving up the list.  (Though, navigating it all is a new adventure for me, and it's not always easy to sort through, but we're learning as we go.)

The babies are in their own school of hard knocks right now.  They just turned 15 months this week!  Knox just popped two new teeth through on the bottom, bringing his grand total to six.  Eulalie is teething SIX teeth right now - four molars and her upper canines - which will bring her grand total to fourteen teeth.  I'm pretty sure I don't even have that many.  She is just one giant set of teeth with a couple of eyeballs and a few little baby hairs stuck on top.

The babies are down to a once-a-day nursing when they wake up in the morning, and I'm pretty sure I could drop that feeding without too much fuss at this point if I wanted to.  And I might want to, but I'm not sure yet.  Twins change how decisions are made - it's the only time of day when I'm guaranteed one-on-one time with each of them, and their babyhood has been kind of a whirlwind anyway, so am I really ready to close the book on that stage yet?  And anyway, with Knox's food sensitivities, it's nice to know he's getting one big boost of nutrition in the morning that I don't have to put any thought or worry into, etc. etc. etc.  Anyway, we may be getting close to the end of nursing, but we're not there quite yet.  This is the longest I've ever nursed any baby - and it's two babies to boot!  

I'll have to update you more another time on all the things the babies are doing, and all they ways in which they're growing and changing and really coming into "themselves."  There's just so much to say!  I've said it before and I'll say it again - twins are such a strange, wonderful, miraculous phenomenon.  I have loved having twins.  For every hard part (and there are definitely hard parts), there are forty fun, amazing, delightful parts.  Which is true of every baby, but just exponentially more in all directions when there are more babies.

In milestone news, Eulalie started taking steps this week!

And in more milestone news, Knox got his first Big Kid Haircut with the clippers!

One of the most undeniable realities of twin toddlers is that someone is always underfoot.  Even if you've contained one, the other one is all up in your grill making mischief.  And by "the one who's always making mischief," I mean Eulalie.  Always Eulalie.  Never not Eulalie.

In our own milestone news, Todd and I celebrated our eighteenth wedding anniversary this week!  Our marriage is now an adult!

And lastly, we've had some fun adventures already this month.  First, we headed up to Iowa a couple of weeks ago to attend a family reunion on my dad's side.  My dad, many of my aunts and uncles, and many of my cousins were there and it was so wonderful to see everyone.  It has been a long time.  Many of my younger kids had never met anyone on that side, and of the ones who had, most didn't remember many of the family members there because it has been so long.  So it was nice acquainting (or reacquainting) everyone.

We made a day of it, driving there and back in one day.  The twins especially didn't love the drive and were so exhausted by the end of it, and Eulalie had a major poop explosion on the way home, but all's well that ends well, and I'm glad we went.

And our last notable adventure before wrapping up this post: a trip to the kind-of-local pool.  We attempted to go to our city pool, but discovered they were closed on weekdays for the rest of the season.  So we drove to the next town over, which is still really close and the pool is newer and nicer (because everything in that town is newer and nicer), but also more expensive.  I'm not even going to make you nauseous to hear how much we paid to get into a pool.  But the kids had such a blast.  It was so much fun.

It's not obvious in this photo, but Ophelia LOVED the pool.  She was a total water baby.  The problem was, she kept wandering far from me and was a complete submersion risk.  She loved it too much for her own good.

And with that, we are now completely caught up to current!  Here's how Knox feels about it.

Smug.  Real smug.

See you next week!