I reeeaaally don’t like posting anything too controversial on here, so if you’re a fighter, please please keep it to yourself on this one. I know I’m not going to word everything right, and I may mostly just ramble without actually saying anything, but I want to put this out there. I know it probably seems silly to get so worked up about something that doesn’t have a direct effect on me (at least thats usually my rule of thumb for getting worked up) but I’m really sad and I need to get some of it out.

Josh Duggar. I’m sure a lot of you have seen bits and pieces of whats going on. It was recently discovered, through the illegal release of information, that the oldest brother from the show “19 Kids and Counting” was charged with molestation twelve years ago.

Let’s pick that apart before going any further, shall we?

It was discovered through the illegal release of information. Somehow (I can’t even keep it all straight) the Springdale Police Department leaked information relating back to Josh (age 15) and the victims, who were younger than him. ALL of them were minors. That alone covered their privacy. On top of that, the statute of limitations, three years, had passed. Like I said, this was twelve years ago. His record was expunged. Whoever released this information was obviously looking for money and to stir the pot. Well, consider it stirred.

Since this info came out, Josh has stepped down from his job, and their show has been pulled off the air. Talk about their “normal” being turned upside down! Yes, they’re “just people on tv,” but they’re a very real family, and these kind of things coming out of the woodwork must be brutally difficult on them.

Before anyone gets riled up, let me just say this. I AM IN NO WAY SUGGESTING THAT HE IS INNOCENT! He really, really screwed up. Best of all, he knows it! People need to pay for their crappy decisions. Best of all, HE DID. But say what you will about him.

Or rather, don’t. Because everyone else is.

The main reason I wanted to write this post is not so we could all bash him, or go the other way and be for him, or really have much of an opinion at al, I suppose. I found myself feeling incredibly emotional after reading these news reports and the awful, awful comments below them. People want his blood for this! They are using awful names, telling his family to bail on him, and even making very inappropriate comments about how his sister should be careful in their skirts around him. MY GOSH! One of the haters favorites runs along the lines of “Believing in God doesn’t make it ok!” I won’t delve into that one too deep because, as a Christian, I see red. What a STUPID statement. No one is saying that!!!! Yes, in the statement, the family talks about praying for forgiveness, and repenting, and the fact that we are covered with Gods grace. Whether you believe that or not, that is not the only road to recovery he travelled. It is a part that was important to their family. Leave their faith alone!!

Basically, whether you support the family or want them to be burned for their mistakes, I guess I’d just challenge you to look at it a different way. Take your very worst mistake – the reeeaaally awful and embarrassing one you try not to even think about – and imagine it splashed out into the world for everyone to see. A mistake that you have paid for, learned from, and probably will continue to repair all of your life, and have it public all across the world. All of a sudden, everyone hates you. We have all made huge mistakes, and I find it hard to believe that all of the haters out there have pearly white pasts. We have no right to judge each other.

On one last level, consider the girls he hurt. Of course, they are victims in this. While that makes many people even thirstier for blood, I can’t help but think that having to relive this now, day after day, would be horrific for them. I don’t want to speak too much on this, because I get worked up either way. I feel like this media storm is pouring down on both parties.

I love a lot of things about the Duggar family, and still do. I’m very very sad they’ve been pulled off the air.

#teamduggar

Its been over a week since I pulled the pictures off of our camera! I was doing so good at doing it every evening, but I feel behind, and THAT calls for a photo post! As has happened before, this post will contain a ton of pictures that maaaaaybe include captions. Behold! Our life in the last nine days 🙂

The kids waited SO patiently while we signed some forms with our realtor…

Just jokes 🙂 They’re content kids!

My goodness! Do you think thats enough pictures for one day?! I don’t 🙂 I could look at these all day long. They bring me so much joy <3

Speaking of the kids bringing me joy, I’m off to go play with them and eat hot dogs. Because its spring.

After such a fun long weekend with family, and being away from our place, its kind of hard to be back. I flip flop with that, though, because its always nice to come home after being away, right? I love coming home to my comfy bed, and my soaker tub, and its always nice to be in our house and our routine. But this time, coming home felt considerably more like a step backwards.

And I know!! The grass is always greener, right? What makes that stereotype crappy is that sometimes the grass is WAY greener over there, and somehow, saying that phrase is supposed to make us be happy with our dead, brown grass. It doesn’t seem fair!

I understand that we have to accept where we are and try to be happy with it, and I am very happy we bought this house 6.5 years ago. I really am! It was the perfect move for us! But it is our time to move on, and I’m having a lot of trouble with the waiting game. Let’s be honest with ourselves. The waiting game has barely even begun.

Our listing will go live with our realtor on Monday, I believe. On a humorous and ironic note, we had to refinance our mortgage today. Good work, timing! To be completely honest, I’m scared the thing won’t sell. Not because its not a beautiful house and property, but just because I’m feeling grumpy. Before we even list it, though, we have to get it super cleaned and tidied up again, so its appropriately beautiful for showings. And I have NO motivation to do that! Some could say I have the best motivation, but I can’t imagine working myself up to the point of optimism I was at a month or so ago, only to have nothing happen.

I’m sure some of you can relate to me on this. I’m not trying to whine, but just put it out there, that its yucky and vulnerable, and I feel like I’m in one of those situations where I should just give up before we even start trying. I know that obviously isn’t the answer, but I’m feeling like a bit of a bum right now.

On top of that, Brady has had three tires wreck on him in the last few weeks. THREE! He’s been replacing them with older second hand tires until he needs a new set, but that obviously isn’t working for him. He actually had to pull his tires off yesterday and brought them into the city today in our family van. He’ll get new tires put on the rims today, and tomorrow, when he can drive his van again, he’ll get an alignment. Even getting a good deal, its a lot at once.

Goodbye, all of our money. Please come back to us soon in the form of equity off of our house sale.

Goodbye one day, house. Please find a new owner soon. Preferably before the end of the month. I’d so love to wash my hands of you and move on to that lush grassy knoll just a half hour down the highway.

Today was Fake Monday for two reasons.

1. Its Tuesday. In that way, I suppose the majority of days could be considered Fake Mondays, but its nice to start the week off with work and routine, and have it not be Monday! Which leads me into reason #2…

2. Mondays carry a stigma of being crappy days. I’ve spent a lot of time in my life being negative, and while I try much harder to be positive these days, I understand the stigma. Its just the first day back to life after a break. For those Mon-Fri-9-5-ers, anyway. I am not one of those, and rarely know what day of the week it is. Today was Fake Monday because it was actually really lovely. Rowan didn’t sleep through the night but gave me nice long stretches anyway. All of the kids were in great moods and played well together with minimal arguments. Naps were seamless, I got some downtime, and I chatted on the phone with my mom. Brady ran a few errands after work, including picking up an iPhone case that a friend so generously offered to me. I keep thinking I should take a screenshot to show you guys, but I’m pretty sure thats not how that works. Not the brightest bulb, obviously.

All things considered, I really enjoyed Fake Fake Monday. I hope there are many more of these in the future.

Reality struck today when Caity and Stefan left for home this morning. Rowan gave us our third night in a row, which truly feels unbelievable. We are so thrilled, and hopeful that it will continue. However, for whatever reason, Dekker was up quite early and when we asked him through the monitor to please quiet down so as to not wake Laela, he blatantly disobeyed. It was fine to a degree, as we were getting up to see Caity and Stef off anyway, but we know our kids. They were trashed until nap time and pretty difficult through the evening. But thats another story, and a pretty unimportant one.

Once the company had gone, we doddled around my parents place for a bit. We grabbed breakfast and Brady packed us all up and loaded the van. We had a really nice drive home and put the kids to bed almost immediately. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the house in order before we left for the weekend, so the kitchen was full of dishes, our room had some laundry to put away, and a few other things are waiting to be done. We opted out of tidying up and instead chose to lay in bed, have some lunch, and watch a bit of Netflix.

It was SO great to have Jerilee come over for the evening!! In case you’re not all terrible people like us, The Bachelorette premiered tonight 😀 We had so much fun getting together weekly with the last season that we had to relive that this time around. So we ordered some food in (because we didn’t feel like getting organized today) and watched downstairs after the kids were in bed. They had so much fun getting some time in with Auntie Jerry before bed.

Tomorrow will likely be an interesting day. The kids will begin readjusting to normal life where we don’t have company every day. Less exceptions to the general rules, things like that. Also, for me, I’ll have to begin the task of trying to get things back in order around here. I’m not going to push it too hard, but I want to at least get a good start on the dishes. Laundry isn’t emergent just yet, but I have two of my laundry basket FILLED with clothes that don’t fit the kids anymore that need to be put away in tubs. So that all needs to be folded and organized by size, and packed up. Once thats done, I can do our current laundry, but not tomorrow. I think I caught up on that mid last week, so we’re still in good shape for a while.

I’m thinking no one really cares about my list of chores to do for the next day or so, so I’m done writing for the day 🙂 I hope you all had great weekends!! Make this Monday a good one!

Writing the title to today’s post, I realize that I thought yesterday was Friday. It was nice of none of you to point that out 😉 im not very organized. 

Today was equally as nice as the day before. It was louder, as the kids were more comfortable with their auntie and uncle, and it was happier. Rowan slept aaaaall the way thru the night, which was both unexpected and appreciated. Eleven hours. I’m so thankful for that. 

Breakfast was muffins and fruit. Lunch was snacks. Naps were long. Playtime was loud and happy again. Supper was delicious and hot and contained enough barbecue sauce to keep Dekker happy. Cooked carrots are also always a win for the kids.

Rowan is growing like mad this weekend, and slept almost all day. I’m a bit nervous for the night but i can hope for a repeat of last night anyway. When he was awake, he was eating like a horse or sleeping on someone’s shoulder. I have some nice pictures I’ll try to put up on here soon of Rowan getting acquainted and comfortable with his extended family. 

The kids are finally asleep, and it’s now our turn. I’ve had such nice relaxed days but I’m so ready to turn in and get some shut eye. After playing Phase 10 for the last hour, I like to think I’ve earned it. 

As I sit in my parents living room, watching Brady and my brother in law, Stefan, play wii golf, I’m very grateful for this long weekend 🙂 We are lucky enough to see some of my siblings yet again, and are spending the nights here with everyone. 

The kids are tucked away and are finally asleep. While I’m not holding my breath, Rowan slept thru the night last night and I would sooooo love a repeat of that!  We could all use a nice long sleep in, as it is a long weekend. 

No big riveting plans tho. It’s windy and blustery out, but if the weather stills, we have runners, sweaters, and our big stroller along, just waiting to be taken out and walked to the park. 

But first, nighttime. Next, splitting up a bit tomorrow so our siblings can see some of the members from the other side of their family. Tomorrow evening promises delicious food, food company, lots of laughs and tickles with the kids, and likely a bit of Mario Kart.

This is peons it my favourite way to spend long weekends 🙂

I went to Walmart this evening. Brady took the kids to grab a few things on our list while I waited in line at the courtesy desk to return dreaded parcel #1. If you don’t remember, well over half of my order was either damaged or wrong.

It was a crazy day for the location we picked. For some reason, very few tills were open and the lines were long. As in Christmas long. It was pretty brutal, but what can you do, right? Everyone is short staffed once in a while.

I was third in line at customer service. The woman who was currently being helped had brought back a grocery bag full of clothing. The employee was trying to put the return through, and was having some difficulty. She explained to the customer that the codes on the receipt, while similar, were different than the codes on the items. While I would assume that most stores would turn her away, she rather said that she would absolutely put the return through, but the refund would have to be on a gift card rather than cash. Well, the customer was FURIOUS, and LOUD about it. She began chucking stuff back in her bag and saying she’d find someone else who could help her, and saying the employee just wouldn’t help her because there was a lineup. And she stomped off.

The next person in line (the woman before me) went up to put through her return, and I made eye contact with the person behind me. We both rolled our eyes and, no word of a lie, in unison, we said “I guess you can’t please everyone!” We agreed that she would get over it, and that maybe she should be embarrassed by her behaviour.

When I got up to the desk for my turn, I noticed that the employee was crying. She was trying really hard to blow past it, but as she looked at my receipt, her tears were dripping on it. I quietly reassured her that no one else in the line was upset, and she had been unreasonable in her response. She tried to smile at me, but couldn’t even muster it. She finally said “I could have helped her if she hadn’t stormed off like that!” I fully agreed with her, and told her as much. I figured it was actually generous for her to help our someone whose receipt didn’t match her items! Anyway, I returned my stuff and went to find the fam.

The reality of the lines being quite so long was pretty brutal, so we snuck past them and actually went back to customer service to ring our order through. I know, its kind of cheating, but it was already past the kids bedtime so I figured this one time it would be ok. We were maybe second or third in line again, which was so much better than thirtieth. However, we couldn’t line up right away, as a crazed woman had stepped into the customer service area and was waving her arms around, screaming abut how backed up everything was and how they needed to get some supervisors out there. She stormed off after throwing a sufficient amount of curse words at the two customer services reps. I’m sorry, I don’t want to put anyones job down, but did she really think they had any authority to assign anyone to go anywhere? At all?!?! I’m thinking not so much. Once she left, we lined up and Laela charmed the customer who entered the line behind us, as she always does. Moments later, the crazyface woman was back, screaming for their attention. She pushed her cart of dog food and flowers up to the desk and yelled “When you have time, put this away.” Once again, the people in line all looked around at each other and agreed that people were nuts.

So this was the grumpiest Walmart day I’ve ever witnessed. Yes, it was frustratingly backed up, and understaffed, and its right before the long weekend and people are rushing. But that doesn’t make it ok to just humiliate people by screaming at them in public about things they have no control over! The likelihood that it will get you what you want is almost nonexistent, you’ll look ridiculous, and make someone feel really dumb, and really really small.

Don’t be that person. Appreciate people who are solely there to help you with your grievances. Its a really hard job.

Or just appreciate people in general. Be nice to people.

Today is not a day for blogging, I’m just going to say it up front. I’ve had highs and lows. Lots of highs, and lots of lows. So the day was not a loss, but I’m struggling to know what to write about, so I’m going to sort of just leave it alone for the day.

Instead, I’ll leave you with a pretty picture of Rowan. He and I took a bit of a rest together while Brady and the other kids had supper. It was peace and bliss and a tummy ache all rolled into one.

This was the perfect rest. My eyes ache to cry just looking at this picture. Maybe to everyone else, it just looks like a crummy quality picture of a sleeping baby. Not set up nicely, or arranged to look a certain way, but here, I found rest, just for a half hour or so. But it was perfect.

I know everyone has different feelings about the amount of physical affection practiced in a home. As I’ve stated on here before, we’re big on showing affection that way around here. We all kiss on the lips and so lots of hugging and cuddling. I assure you that, if our kids didn’t care for it, that would be fine and we would change stuff up. But they love it too 🙂 Whew! I’d be so sad to stop!

This morning, I brought Rowan into their room while I got them up and ready for the day. I put him over to the side on the carpet so he wouldn’t get trampled, but out broke an argument about who got to lay beside him on the floor. So needless to say, I immediately shuffled him into the middle of the floor and both Dekker and Laela cuddled up next to him. Usually, while I change diapers, the kids and I talk about their night, and the plan for the day. Today, I just watched and listened. Dekker and Laela, as if by instinct, each took one of Rowans arms and kissed his hands. Laela half rolled onto him and rested her head on his tummy. That is how she “hugs” sometimes. Dekker just nuzzled his with his nose and said how sweet and soft he was. Best of all, none of this was for my benefit. No one looked at me for affirmation or praise. They just loved on their brother.

Its laundry day. While I was switching loads out at one point, Laela came and dragged in the next hamper full of clothes. Once it was successfully next to the machine, she came over patted my leg before leaving. When I came back into the main room to be with the kids, it continued. I can’t count how many times Laela lay her head on me, or kissed my arms, legs, or whatever was closest to her at the moment. Dekker went as far as trying to kiss my feet. It was never even the situation where one saw the other giving me a kiss, so they came to do the same. It was all on their own, each time.

So many hugs and kisses and cuddles were shared today between the kids and I. It turns out a person doesn’t have to be told your love language, but if they want to know it, they can just figure it out. Because MY GOODNESS! I certainly feel the love in my home today <3