It is a strange season being back to having a needy little bitty baby on my hands. I am eager to get Christmas baking going, but having a newb like QP over here makes it a challenge. However, I had an opportunity today. QP hurled absolutely everywhere (effectively being renamed as the Quarter Pounder with cheese! Ewwww 🤮) and then settled beautifully in the swing, so I made my way to the kitchen and worked on peppernuts!

I made a giant batch of dough last week and made up a good chunk of it to bring to the advent retreat. It was shared around and then a container was sent with the Dahlsjos.

Today, as QP+C dozed in and out, I made pan after pan of peppernuts. Being the total dork that I am, I’ve kept track, and I crossed the 1200 cookie mark today! 🥳

They’re not perfect, but they taste GREAT! If you like that kind of thing, anyway. I sure do. As does my family. Still many loose ends to tie up, but we are on our way over here 💜

I’m pretty grateful we had a home day today. Not only to rest. Bathe. Unpack. Drink water. But because we had some unknowns that needed to work themselves out this morning. So the first hour or two were pretty messy, but once we got through some of the fuss, the day could move forward.

I felt pretty off today. Its hard. My mind is a little bit elsewhere. But God is bigger than our trials and unknowns. And thank goodness for that because MAN stuff would be so stinking hard without faith! Whew! Thank you, Lord, for your continued goodness and mercy!

Tomorrow, the kids will go back to school. Hopefully life at home will be a little slow. Maybe, maybe not. No big activities for the kids on Tuesdays. We’ll eat something yummy for supper. Something low pressure. I really need to tie up some loose ends with Christmas shopping. But beyond that, things should be low pressure from here on out 💜

I hope very much that you all have a restful night and a joyful kickoff to the morning.

After one of the worst nights we’ve had since the Quarter Pounder joined our family, we had a really beautiful morning at Kinasao before we packed up and said our goodbyes to our dear Dahlsjos 💜 We wont see them again until the new year, but we will all be busy doing all kinds of things that I imagine time will pass quickly. Still. We love you guys 💜 Travel safe!

We drove home in a fairly quiet van full of tired children after a really nice weekend. The vibe was good.

And then something kind of hilarious happened!

As we drove, we started catching a vehicle. A super basic, nondescript white old passenger van. Brady got a little nostalgic, talking about his big beast of a white van that he used in his last stretch as a contractor. He had some good vehicles and some really bad vehicles for work in the past, but that van was the BEST. He felt professional in it. Like he officially fit the bill. Like people would take him seriously in a different way. He LOVED that van. It was sad to get rid of it, but when he was ready to list it, it was snapped up by a man with a large family who was so excited to use it for travelling! So it softened the blow pretty significantly.

And wouldn’t you know. This van was THAT van.

Ok, give me a break. I’m not super creepy, but it was so unbelievable! The same worn strip down the side. Same hubcaps that were spray painted. And once we were in front of it, the same wrinkle int he bumper. It was the SAME VAN! And Brady excitedly pointed out that it was loaded with kids!

And he wasn’t sad 💜

It was like… seeing an old friend. Reminiscing for a second. But not getting too stuck or hung up back there. Honey, correct me if I’m wrong here. But it seemed like such a nice memory that wasn’t riddled with regret or grief, really. Brady had wanted a good, big passenger van for work for years, and he had finally gotten it. It would’ve been nice to have it sooner, definitely, but it was a really amazing thing for him while he had it. A truly perfect setup. And it was so bizarre to see it out there today, still going strong.

Anyway. Maybe this is a strange post, but it felt like a warm thing and I wanted to share it on here so we remember it 💜 An homage to Bradys contractor days, perhaps 😘