Sitting quietly, watching a bit of tv, feeding Rowan on my lap…

Dekker: I’m not going to have a rest today?
Me: Yes, you’ll need a rest.
Dekker: Why I need to have a rest for?
Me: You feel so much better in the evening when you have a rest.
Dekker: When I’m going to have a rest?
Me: Once this show is over.
Dekker: (nods) Ok. I won’t whine.
Me: Wow! I would love that sooo much!
Dekker: Why you don’t like it when I whine?
Me: Do you like it when I whine?
Dekker: No.
Me: Thats why. Its not very nice, is it?
Dekker, Nope, its not.
Laela: *places bowls precariously on Rowans stomach*
Me: Laela, could you please put those bowls back on the table?
Laela: Nooo…
(show ends)
Me: I think we’ll watch just a little bit longer while Ro finishes his bottle.
Dekker: No rest?
Me: You will have a rest, just once Rowan finishes his bottle.
Dekker: That makes me happy! I won’t even whine!
Me: That would be great! Great attitude, bud.
Dekker: You like my happytude?
Me: I really do.
(Ro finishes his bottle)
Me: Laela, could you please take these bowls?
Laela: Ya. (takes bowls)
Me: Ok then, thats it, guys! Let’s go upstairs!
Dekker: Ok, mommy! Mommy, did you hear me say “ok?” I didn’t whine!
Me: I did, yes! Great job, Deks! (heading up the stairs) Where’s Laela?
Laela: Mommy!
Me: Where are you, Laela?
Laela: (tipping the bowls into the kitchen sink) Hi, mommy!
Me: Wow, great job, Laela! Thank you so much for putting those away!
Dekker: Good job, Laela! (claps madly) Laela is so sweet.
Me: You both are. I’m so proud of your attitudes.
Dekker: (Climbing into his bed) I took my glasses off already, mommy.
Me: (getting Laela tucked in) Thats great!
Dekker: Snuggle me?
Me: Definitely! (lay my head on Dekker’s chest for a few seconds)
Dekker: Ok mommy, good night!
Me: Haha! Ok Dekker. Good night. I love you. I’m so proud of you for being so agreeable!
Dekker: Iloveyousomuchgoodnightmommy!
Me: Sleep well, kids.
Dekker: You too, mommy.
Me: (walking out the door)
Dekker: I didn’t even whine!!

Can anyone guess what we’ve been working on recently with Dekker? 😉

I want to say an enormous thank you to all of the people who reached out to me and my family after yesterdays post. I was feeling incredibly down, and as I’m sure you can imagine, I posted, unplugged, bathed, and went to bed. I woke up to an oversized outpouring of love and support. I had a handful of texts offering to watch my kids so I could have a break, a number of people sharing verses and encouraging words, offers to pray, and friends and loved ones inquiring about what was going on and if they could be of any sort of help. The messages alone helped 🙂 It didn’t specifically solve anything that we’re struggling with, but the support was unexpected and appreciated more than anyone can probably understand.

I worked at a camp the summer after I graduated, and had the most epic experiences of my life. I found myself there, thank the Lord. I wasn’t me before that summer. But I remember a specific time there that I was really struggling, and people around me were reminding me to pray. It was the first time in my life that I was honest and just blurted that I couldn’t anymore!!! I was too weak. No one in my presence judged me or seemed taken aback at all. They just nodded and said “Well, we’re strong enough, so we’ll just do it for you.” I feel that way now. My problem isn’t gone, and I feel like I’ve fallen a bit, but I feel like I’m being held up by my God, and my loved ones and friends are helping me and holding me up. I thank you all, and please, don’t stop. I was discouraged yesterday, and sadly, I’m still quite discouraged today, but I’m trying so hard to power through and trust in God’s perfect will!

It has helped that I’ve been distracted in the best way possible today 😀 The kids and I spent the day at my parents with some of my siblings. Together, we put together a big birthday dinner for my parents, as my dad’s birthday was yesterday, and my moms birthday is tomorrow. Once Brady and dad got home from work, we got to actually putting the whole thing together, and it was delicious. It was a burger feast, complete with homemade crunchy onions, bacon, shrimp skewers, broccoli salad, chips, pop, and all of the fixings. I was in charge of dessert, which was a massive flop yesterday, so I made up this hilarious (in my opinion) “cake” made of popcorn, marshmallows, m&ms, pretzels, and chocolate chips. It’s a super long story actually, but its unimportant. I was pretty happy though, because I thought it was delicious!

Somehow, after supper and dishes were done, Dekker said “Let’s go.” It was a tiny bit sooner than we were planning on leaving, but it was PERFECT. When he says that, we jump, because then he’s ready! So goodbyes are loving, and filled with hugs and kisses instead of crying and whining. Dekker and Laela passed around their affection and got into the van willingly. We listened to good music on the way home and everyone seemed happy upon arrival. Its nice when even the kids know its time to wind down.

Now its time for bed for the kids, and we’ll do a few little things to prepare for my Jessica to come out tomorrow! I wish I was more prepared and planned out for the visit, but hopefully she still loves us 😉 Its been a big few weeks. GREAT, but big. Let the fun continue!!!

It hasn’t been our best day, but I’ve been working pretty hard to keep my head up. The kids struggled their way through church, and fussed all the way through lunch with my parents. We did order pizza in, however, from Pizza Hut as a belated little birthday lunch for me, so I thoroughly enjoyed that. The kids napped for an incredibly short time, but it was ok, because they go to bed better when they’re completely trashed. After their nap, we realized some plans for the evening were changing, so instead of staying for supper, we headed home for the evening. Not a problem at all.

As we drove away from town, I got this awful sickly thought in my head that I think I’m going to keep in my family for the time being, but it made me almost physically ill. I spoke to Brady about it and we both felt gross afterwards. Big decisions coming up, all of a sudden. Anyway, we were feeling pretty discouraged on the drive home, but again, tried pretty hard to get it together and just keep moving. It was 6:00 by the time we got home and the kids go to bed around 7:00-7:30, so we only needed to wear brave faces for a little while.

That last hour was incredibly difficult. As hard as we tried, I’m sure the kids could tell something was up, and in turn, acted out like crazy. It was an exhausting, tear filled evening for me. Once everyone was down, I tried to bake something to relax, and burnt the heck out of it. So Brady and I sat on the couch and made a new plan.

That plan is a bath and nachos.

Rowan, however, wants to change our plans. He woke up from his dead sleep and just can’t even. He will not stop crying. WILL. NOT. STOP. We have nights like this sometimes, and thats ok, but today is just not the day for it. We feel tired and discouraged, and we haven’t even had supper yet. That will probably help, I suppose. But we both felt just gross at supper time.

I feel at such a loss…..

We had a nice long list of things to do today, and while they were all doable, we decided in the morning to just do the top priority things. We never have just quiet down days anymore, it seems, so we opted out of the things we could do and just did the things we needed to.

I’ve chopped like I’ve never chopped before. I made the first chunk of a two-chunk dessert. We did some cleaning. Brady hauled some furniture upstairs. We separated and froze some meat. Our list was long, but it was all very little stuff. Little stuff that is easy to forget. But we did a lot of it, which was nice.

This evening, I was scanning Pinterest and I saw a crafty project that I couldn’t resist giving it a try. It was a long and stupid start, haha, but I’m super intrigued now, so the second chunk of the dessert I’m making will have to wait until tomorrow. Something creative is calling my name!! And if you know me, you know that creativity and projects almost always beat everything else out. It goes 1. God 2. Brady 3. Kids 4. Music 5. Artsy fartsy things.

With emphasis on the “fartsy.”
Sigh.
It needed to be said.

I have about a thousand things rushing around my head today so its going to be a short post, but I want to just quickly talk about anticipation. I don’t know how everyone else operates, but I LOVE having something to look forward to. Whether it be a big event, a little date, life changes for those around you, or a good cup of coffee in the morning, I really love knowing something good is coming.

I am so blessed to have so many good things coming up in my near future 🙂 Dekker’s birthday is in TWO WEEKS! So thats nuts, haha! Laela’s is six weeks after that, and Brady’s is two weeks after that! Lots of fun to be had just in those events alone. Plus some family visits, friends visits, parties, and Lord willing, the sale of our house and the beginning of our build. So many positives 😀 Keep happy things in mind, even when you’re overwhelmed otherwise. It sure helps me keep my head on straight!

I was making plans today about a few meals I’m planning to make for a group of family I’ll be seeing soon. It seemed a little bit ominous at first, because I have a few different things that need to get done and I was listing very very haphazardly, just writing down was popped into my head, rather than dish by dish. Anyway, I finally got my head on straight and I feel very organized in that one small way.

Getting that all written down and organized made me feel really excited about my meal planning plan. I’ve mentioned a little bit here and there, I think, that I want to start meal planning, and if you remember very specific details, I said I was going to make a plan for September. I never did find that perfect template, but I just made a big list of all of the meals that are our usual go-to meals/suppers. I made sure the majority of them included meat and veggies, which should go without saying, but I’m not great at always having perfectly balanced meals. Anyway, I was surprised to easily come up with 15 over the course of maybe two minutes. There are many, many more, but these were just the ones off the top of my head. That was encouraging already. So I listed my suppers, then I wrote lunches down as salads and then all of Bradys usual stuff, and then I made a breakfast list. The kids currently have cereal and toast every day but I think I’d like to make muffins in there too and mix it up a bit once in a while. So this is my rough rough plan.

5 planned suppers per week. 1 leftover supper. 1 free supper (ie going out, Pinteresting, macaroni, etc.)
Brunches on Saturdays
Meals planned every other Sunday. We usually spend the day with my parents every Sunday, so this way, we’ll alternate.
The first 2-3 months, we’re using our well-known recipe. We’ll branch out with new foods once the habit is formed.

As you can see, this is a pretty lame plan, or “plan” rather. And its wildly imperfect. We may need two leftover days per week, or maybe Brady will take the majority of the leftovers for lunch, and then I’ll have bought him too much lunch stuff. I dont know, it will definitely be trial and error at first, but this makes it seem easier I think. I’ll order all of the non-perishables online before the month begins, and then we’ll shop for fresh stuff each week or two, depending on how fast we go thru it all. I think thats our plan?? Hahaha! I dont know, if its a total flop, just laugh at me. At least I’m trying! I’d love to be organized enough to make this happen 🙂

Maybe I’ll post the menu once I get it all together, and then I’ll let you know if I succeed or crash and burn.

Does anyone else consistently forget to empty the lint trap in their dryer?? I think I heard that the HE ones don’t have a lint trap, so if thats true (and even if it isn’t) that will likely be the way we’ll go with our next set of machines. Because I ALWAYS forget to empty that stupid thing!

Today was laundry day. I used to despise laundry, and now I truly enjoy it. Its low key, it really does its own thing, and I’m just there is hang it up at the end. I had a decent amount of laundry to do today. After two consecutive holidays, it had really built up. I always say that, after a holiday, I basically dump out the suitcases and just wash everything. After our lake holiday, however, I had one evening to do laundry before leaving in the morning, so I saved the things that were still folded up relatively nicely at the bottom, and just washed what absolutely had to be washed. But now, after our Winnipeg trip, I have all of our dirty laundry, the folded stuff thats been folded for way too long, the towels from the lake, other laundry that I didn’t do before Waskesiu, and an unreasonable amount of blankets that travel with us for kids bedding. Oh, and all of the towels that we switched out for the prettier ones for the new listing pictures. SO MUCH!!

Why I am peeved about this whole lint trap thing is that I lost HOURS to my first stupid load of laundry. I was trying to chuck all the kids stuff in at once, which was obviously not the smartest idea. After chucking in over half of it, I realized it was definitely two loads worth, and I just quit and ran the washer. I switched it to the dryer and threw in the rest of the kids stuff, which was just a few pieces of clothing and about thirteen receiving blankets. I know, its a ton. Dekker sleeps with one (kind of in lieu of of a teddy bear?), Laela still sleeps with one, and Rowan obviously still uses them. But we wipe up barf with them, we hang them on playpens so babies can’t see out as easily, we lay kids on top of them, etc etc etc. Then, the kids and I played while I listened for the dryer to buzz. It took forever, but as soon as it buzzed, I rushed over. I felt like it had gone forever, and I had a lot of loads to do. Aaand everything was still soaked. I ran it again. It ran for probably a half hour, and was STILL WET! I started it again and texted Brady that I was so angry at our crappy dryer. He responded with a gentle “Maybe the lint trap is full?” I cleaned it, and a very short cycle later, everything was dry.

So. That happened. Turns out that, if you remember, that thing fills up every load or two! But I stayed on top of it and finished every single load today!!! Brady is currently folding the last dryer load, and the last load from the washer is hanging. Did I mention there was a load of delicates in there? There was. But its all done now, and I will FINALLY let down a bit. Tomorrow will be another big day of actually putting everything away from our trips, reorganizing a few things about the house, getting certain parts of it back to showing readiness (no, no showings booked, just trying to stay on top of it) and maybe even making up the guest room a little early for our company next week!!!!!

But first, a bath, and sleep. Its always good to sleep in between days, I hear.

I opted out of laundry and grocery shopping today to hang out with Kim and her boys. They came out in the late morning bearing lunch and a beautiful personalized birthday gift for me. It was really the ideal gathering. We had some tv on the in background, and the kids played pretty well while we drank coffee and snuggled the babies.

Everyone ate lunch and we watched a movie before they headed on home for supper. Neither of us had made any plans for supper for our families, haha, whoops!!

After they left, my kids began (or continued) their throwdown, and cried practically until Brady came home. Not our best evening. Brady has been lovely and has given me a bit of time off, so I’m able to blog right now, listening to YouTube in the background. Thank you, hubs. LOVE YOU.

Our evening plans changed, and we’re staying in after all. We’re hoping to still rock a bit of a date, though we’re not sure of the details yet. We’re eating once the kids go to bed (definitely earlier than usual!) and who knows. Maybe a movie night downstairs? Maybe drinky drinks on the deck? I haven’t decided yet, but hopefully just a little bit of something even slightly out of the ordinary. Or, truth be told, it might be really really nice to do our normal evening routine, restfully, and just make more of an effort to hold hands and be close.

Sure sounds like a lovely day to me <3 Tomorrow will have to be somewhat back to normal in the day. Laundry laundry laundry!!!

Ok, whew! Its official. We’re home, all three kids are asleep, everything is carried in from the van. No unpacked, but inside nonetheless. A bathtub is running (how we’ve missed our tub!) and I’m laying in my bed, writing this out to you guys. It feels SO nice to be home!

We had a long but great day of travel. We ducked in to a Value Village along the way and found a PERFECT dress for me for this gala-type event I’m attending at the end of the month. I’ll show you when I have the rest of the outfit, but I’m attempting to assemble the look solely out of thrift stores or borrowing/reusing/recycling items. Could be interesting, but the dress alone is beautiful, and would likely speak for itself if I couldn’t find anything to accessorize it with.

As we drove, Brady and I continued to dream about the house we want to build. It was so exciting to spitball ideas back and forth, and see what things we felt really strongly about and what things we figured didn’t matter as much. Lots of discussion and of course, lots of decisions still to be made. But it was fun to dream together.

Once we got home, the kids were super giggly and funny, which was a lovely surprise! We tickled and wrestled and enjoyed our time getting them ready for bed, and there was little to no fuss at all. Those kids were at the perfect point of being ready, and not quite overdone. It was perfect.

Brady unloaded the van while I put at least some of the stuff where it belonged. At least in part. Toiletries bags are in the bathroom but not unpacked, things like that. It was so fun to unpack some of my fun new purchases! I didn’t do anything too overkill, but I did come out of our trip with some fun new stuff. Treats!

Our usual evening includes, blogging, Brady making his lunch for the next day, him playing some games on his iPad, myself watching a bit of YouTube, and then a soak in the tub. Today, I counted back, and I am behind 60 VIDEOS!!!!! I don’t even subscribe to that many YouTube channels, but a number of them video daily, and I have not been watching! While I’m thinking I’ll never catch up, I’m actually quite pleased that I was able to let that slide and just vacation without it 🙂 I don’t feel like YouTube is an addiction for me, I don’t have to watch it everyday, but when I get behind, it bugs me, and I really want to catch up. But this is much too much, and I actually feel fine about that. I’ll go back and watch the ones I really want to see, but certainly not even close to all of them! I’m happy that I don’t care, haha! Our last week and a half has been WAY too much fun, and I have not missed that guilty pleasure at all!

But now, I am missing the guilty pleasure of relaxing in a bubble bath with my husband. Here’s hoping its not hot enough to tick my sunburn off again!!

We had another lovely day here, visiting my sister and brother in law. The plan was for a home day, and for the most part, thats what we did. We played outside on the deck, ate a delicious brunch that seemed to go all morning, and kept very busy having fun. When the kids went down for their nap, the four of us got some snacks and drinks together and we sat out on the deck for a while. Caity and I stayed out for quite some time, but the boys wound up going inside for some brother bonding time of video games. I got a sunburn. It is incredibly evident where my shorts ended. Ouchy!

When the kids woke up, Brady and Stefan took Dekker and Laela to his parents farm for a bit of a tour and a ride on the tractor. The kids had a great time there, or at least thats the impression I’m under.

Ok, just kidding. The uploads are taking way too long. Maybe more farm pictures tomorrow.

Caity and I stayed back with Rowan, who napped most of the time, so we actually just grabbed some snacks and watched a bit of tv. She and I both appreciate a bit of down time when we can get it, so it actually really hit the spot.

We had a super yummy meal of barbecued chicken and mashed potatoes for supper, in honour of my recent birthday, and spent the last chunk of the day out on the deck. Or at least that was the plan, until this happened.

Laela was going down the deck stairs and, from what we can mostly assume happened, she tripped on the bottom step, bowled over, and cranked her forehead on the concrete pad at the bottom. This picture doesn’t do it justice even, but it is easily the biggest goose egg we’ve ever had in this house. But, back in the day, I spoke to our doctor about head bonks, and she gave me a bit of a criteria to follow. But those standards, Laela was more than fine, but I was a bit concerned with putting her to bed immediately after such a big head bonk, so we got everyone ready for bed and turned a show on tv. She seemed to get more upset when we wanted her to sit still, but suddenly, she was just crying and crying and was SO sad. It was then that we discovered that we had no Childrens Tylenol on hand. We had stuff for Rowan but nothing for Laela. So Stefan rushed out to a nearby gas station and bought some. I can’t imagine how much her head must have hurt but Tylenol was really out best option at that point, to at least take the edge off.

It took the kids a while to fall asleep, but that actually did my heart good. The rest of us pulled out a game and played a few rounds before we decided to have one last fire outside. We put together some delicious snacks (seems that snacks were the theme of the day) and spent close to two hours outside around a fire. It was so lovely!!

However, I am now quite chilly, and I have that sunburn chill going as well, so I’m all cuddled up in bed, ready to snuggle in with my husband and freeze him with my feet. Its been a really wonderful day, but home will be good tomorrow too. Pray for good travelling weather!!