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. (all the reasons to celebrate!)

Welcome to the rundown of the past couple of weeks, which always seem full as we're living them, but when it comes time to document what we've been up to, I never really know what to write.  Let me go back and see what all we've been up to.

A couple weeks ago, Finneas spent the morning helping the neighbor assemble her new greenhouse.  Atticus was working, and Todd spent the morning at a meeting, so it was down to Finneas to step up to the plate to help out, and he did an amazing job.  I was really impressed with how helpful he was, how long he worked, and how cheerful he was about it.  Right around the time he was done around 2:00, not having had lunch yet, Todd got a text from someone at church asking for some help moving a piece of furniture, so they hopped in the van and headed over there to help.  When they got back, Finneas grabbed a quick bite to eat and then went back over to the neighbors to use the power tools to wash and vacuum the van.  He was a work horse, and he actually really enjoyed himself!

That same day, I got a call from some other neighbors who were holding an estate sale - they had saved a bunch of stuff back for me and wondered if I'd like to come pick it up.  I took some of the kids over to help me carry it, and while we were there, the folks kept giving the kids stuff for free.  I tried to buy some things myself, but they wouldn't take my money, so we are the proud owners of some new treasures, some new junk, and this awesome back door dinner bell.

The next week, we put our heads down and worked.  Many of the kids ended up finishing their schoolwork by the end of the week, so we started snowballing our way toward summer break.  First Rocco finished, then Juni, then Callista.  I tried really hard to get Lolo, Finneas and the big kids finished with read alouds, but things kept interrupting our routine - the babies were not in the mood to play quietly or leave my side, and the neighbors were getting their garden in and welcomed/needed the kids' help, so we spent many hours out there.

They planted so much - tons of radishes, beans, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, watermelon, okra.  They're going to have their work cut out for them this summer!

Last Saturday was full of fun adventures, so it was a nice way to mark the end of the school year (and give the kids with some remaining work a little breather)!  My parents came down to celebrate the kids with spring birthdays - Juni, Penelope and the babies.  They opened their presents, we had a fun lunch, and in the afternoon they all went to Home Depot to pick out flowers for their fairy gardens.  Once the fairy gardens were planted, my parents took Penelope out for dinner and a movie for her sixteenth birthday.  She had a great time.

Birthday girls

Oey didn't have a fairy garden last year because she was too little - she was so excited to get to plant one this time!

Sunday was Mother's Day, and my parents came to church with us before heading home.  After church, Todd picked up Thai food and we had a Porch Date.  I had asked for an outdoor umbrella for Mother's Day, so it was so nice to sit out there and enjoy it.  In the evening, the kids gave me presents and we watched Home for family movie night.

Porch Date with the kids.  I've been spending a lot of time out here with the babies now that the weather is nice.  They're in much better spirits when they're outside.  Aren't we all?

Opening gifts from the kids. 

On Monday and Tuesday we hit school hard, and now everyone is finished with read alouds!  Which means I am personally done with teaching for the school year!  Lolo, Penelope and Atticus are still working on wrapping up their independent work, but the rest of us are free as birds. 

Atticus worked all day, stopped at Casey's to get himself a soda, came home, and promptly let all his siblings drink it.  He is so selfless.

Finneas planted a climbing rose for me, and the babies "helped."

Walmart had the most adorable toddler-sized Adirondack chairs, and I just couldn't resist getting them for the babies so they have their own porch seating.

We celebrated our freedom yesterday by going out for donuts, then heading to Tractor Supply to pick out new chicks.  The chicks are all very cute now, but a couple of them are Turkens (chickens with turkey necks) so I'm feeling a little cringey as I anticipate them getting bigger.  But the babies and Oey especially are enthralled, and the chicks are doing well.

In the evening, we celebrated Ascension.

And that's the news of the week.  I've still been exercising and trying to watch what I eat.  I've been growing my nails out and using night cream and taking my vitamins consistently.  Look at me, I'm forty and I'm finally acting like an adult.  It's about time.