Man alive, its already been a really big morning! Mostly good, some tricky, and just really FULL in general! Here’s the breakdown!

Kids got up and had breakfast. Sad broken granola bar cereal was still a win!

Got kids out the door, with appropriate skates and helmets for whoever needed. No one cried, even.

Invited Cher over for coffee while the layer of ice melted off her car in the garage.

Cher left for S’toon, and I tried (unsuccessfully) to move the bus into the garage so it could melt off as well. Couldn’t see out the window, therefore couldn’t make it happen.

Ran van forever.

Loaded Wavy into the van, wiping out on the ice in the process.

Drove to Warman and picked Brady up. Wiped out on the ice yet again.

We picked up our glasses finally and got them fitted and tweaked to perfection.

Got blood drawn. Picked up coffee and took Brady back to work.

Got home and got Wavy inside without wiping out. Heyooo! Got inside and out of jackets just in time to get a call from the school.

Loaded Wavy back up in the van, and retrieved a very pale Dekker from school.

Got home, unloaded, unbundled, and got Wavy some food while Dekker got into cozy clothes.

Made Dekker a teeny lunch before he abandoned us for a rest.

Medicated, humidified, and tucked Dekker in.

Tucked Wavy in.

Aaaaand then it was noon!

Wrote a few more important emails to organize some things, and had a phone interview.

Is it bedtime yet orrrrr…? 🥱

Being a not especially confident cook, its hard for me when food doesn’t work out. I’ve gotten better at that in the past few years, thankfully, and my family is pretty forgiving. The only person who is mad at me when food flops is me.

I had a bit of a rough morning the other day, and rather than sit idly and pick my fingers to shreds, I made a couple batches of granola bars. Simple enough. I make them pretty regularly now so I’m quite familiar with them. I still use my recipe but I know the gist. I made up two pans of them and put them in the fridge to set.

I went on to neglect them for a couple of days before cutting them apart. This is not uncommon, and is completely acceptable. When I went to cut up the first pan, everything just crumbled.

Ugh. It was SO discouraging. I’d pick up each bar and it would just fall apart in my hands. It was SO maddening. So I hacked it up.

And I decided it would be cereal. Boom.

Yes, I was as unimpressed as I looked. Thankfully, the kids ate it for breakfast this morning and LOVED it. So there is no loss. My ego took a small hit, but it was a very small hit, and it was rectified quickly.

I’m very grateful for my family who so smoothly rolls with the punches. And if they punches are delicious homemade granola, it seems like a win after all.

Mmmmm! Doesn’t that sound SO nice?? I cannot wait for the treats and crocheting to happen outside in the sun when spring finally shows itself! Until then, however, I will be grateful for them wherever I can get them!

Yesterday carried some challenges, but my dear bestie brought me some yummy treats, and I enjoyed them in my bed with some true crime on in the background and my hook in hand.

Still have to find an outlet to sell these beautiful, luxurious blankets! Did I ever even show you guys my camping one??

Anyway. I have not lost the crocheting bug, if you were wondering.

After rest time, I got to blast this cute thing with sunshine. As if she isn’t sunshine enough already ☀️

Doesn’t she look so much like Brady here?! Man she’s cute!

While yesterday was quite challenging, I have much to be grateful for. Thank you, Lord, for all you’ve given me.

I’m sorry if this feels like a repeat from just the other day, but some things just feel important to record here, after the fact. Going through past photos and videos is stirring up a lot inside of me. You may or may not realize, but we are very close to the two year anniversary of Brady’s surgery. If the exterior is doing its job, I probably look like I have things decently together, but the insides are screaming.

Anyway…

The other day I shared a picture of Brady setting up the Christmas tree in 2020, where his foot was twisted and up on its side. The one I’m posting today hits me even harder in the feels.

This was from our very last family walk before everything changed.

It was from December 20th, 2020. Wavy was two, and insisted on walking rather than being in a sled. She walked so slow, because she was SO little. And that was perfect, because that was as fast as Brady could go. He moved SO slowly and was SO unstable. Maybe a person wouldn’t notice, but from this picture, we can see he’s already kind of swinging that right leg out to the side when he walked, because he couldn’t lift it effectively. His toe would drag and he would fall. It was absolutely awful. I hated this time so much. There was no calm before this storm. Or maybe this part was the storm, and the surgery was the resolve. That can’t be right. I don’t know. But I do know that this part was brutal. It was hard to watch.

Family walks have certainly changed.

But there is a lot less physical pain involved. Thank you Lord for getting us through All of these things.

I can’t wait for spring to come when we can MUCH more easily go for family walks again 💜

Apparently today is groundhog day. I won’t lie. I entirely missed the memo on that this year. Anyone else?? No one came home from school talking about it, so I just missed it. Until this morning, when I was educated. It went like this.

Me: Morning, Sol.
Sol: GROUNDHOG DAY.

So. That was that. Today is groundhog day. I’m going to be straight up with you and tell you I have no idea what the groundhog saw or didn’t see. One thing I read said he saw his shadow. Then I did the same google search with the word “Canada” in it, and it said it didn’t see its shadow. Come to find out, one fo the groundhogs that people keep an eye on actually died today. So who even knows. We know where we live. There is more winter to come. Is there ever not??

Wavy made a groundhog at preschool today. That was pretty cute.

That’s really all I can tell you about groundhog day. The entire month is positively slammed, and this particular event wasn’t even on my radar. What I can tell you about February so far is that yesterday, I drove the kids to school, remembered Laela’s show and tell, got Brady to a doctors appointment, got results, heard from his surgeon, got some important emails out of the way, got some paperwork in hand, got Laela to and from an audition, fed and watered everyone, and we fit in a few rounds of tile rummy with Cher 💜 It was a very productive, positive day, and there are so many more like it to come. February is a marathon for me. And once its done, the groundhog can do what it wants, because the days will be longer. The sun will be out more. Things will inevitably start to melt. Spring will be on its way.

I am ready.

Brady’s been working on some computer stuff recently. Its backlogged back before his surgery, and its a gigantic job. Sorting through pictures. Thousands upon thousands of pictures. However, its a little bit fun to go back over all the memories. Last nights batch of pictures were full of her as a bald little two year old, somehow rocking that buzzed look better than any other girl could.

Aaaaanyway. Brady found himself in December 2020, setting up for Christmas. We knew something was wrong at that point, but didn’t know what. He could hardly walk, but life had to keep moving forward! In this picture, he’s setting up our Christmas tree 🙂

And that looks great! Until you look a liiiiittle bit closer.

See that left foot, all curled up and weird? We never even noticed stuff like that at this point. But where normal people can feel when to shift their feet or just naturally how to gain more stability in how they stand, he couldn’t tell, and his feet would just roll. It was stuff like this that left him falling on the stairs or off the bumper of his work van.

I’m not sure what I’m getting at beyond the fact that it is just so bananas to look back at this stuff sometimes and see where we were and where we are now. Now, Brady wears shoes and a brace in the house absolutely at ALL times. Otherwise, he would still have stuff like this going on, only worse.

I am incredibly thankful for where we are now, and that we know what we know, and that Brady is will and thriving 💜 Thank you Lord for carrying us through one million miles of the darkest waters. We needed it, and we still do.

It’s so strange to have the kids home for one day in the middle of the week. Seriously. I understand its a teacher’s prep day, which I have nothing but respect for, but I think most of us home with our kids think its super funny timing, haha!

Brady is still working today, because normal people have jobs, so its me and the kids at home today! And the lucky punks that they are, I’m making them work! Ha! Ok, but not actually that much, because I, too, don’t want to work. Dekker and Laela sorted laundry and started it going, and Rowan did breakfast dishes. But thats it! In fact as I write this, Wavy is dancing very sweetly in circles around the island to the Frozen soundtrack that we have pumping. Rowan and Solly have lego going. Laela is doing Sudoku beside Dekker while he is planning out a wheelchair accessible home for Minecraft. So. Its busy, and really, it’s the best.

As for myself, so far today, I’ve helped Laela with some prep for her *gasp* audition tomorrow! She’s trying out for the school play, which is a first in our home 🙂 So we did some reading, and some singing, and we’ll do more later. But we probably put about a cool 45 into that. I also put a good chunk of time into writing out our February calendar. I’m not very good at that, even though I vastly prefer paper to phone calendars. However, Brady prefers phone calendars, so its simpler to do most of it on the phone. But these days, there are things that are specifically the kids things, and putting them on the calendar, whether I’m artistic or its super crudely done in a messy, half dead sharpie, means they can keep track of some of those things themselves. Things like school spirit days. Skating and curling days. Show and tell. So. Hopefully the colourful sharpies and stickers really pays off this month, hahaha! I need some bonus sanity in the coming weeks!

I hope today, we can get through the bulk of the laundry, so some more audition prep, and I’d really like to declutter a few small areas of the house. Conveniently, the decluttering has no deadline on it, so if I decide not to, I will just leave it, hahaha! That is something I can most definitely do here and there while the kids are at school, too 🙂 Maybe today I leave decluttering and replace it with crocheting and enjoy all my singing kids!

Hey, check me out! Just sent an important email before even finishing this post! Another thing done!

So. Its cold. Its winter, so thats not surprising, but its been so beautifully deceptively springy outside that the cold is just hitting harder. Brrrrr!!

Rowan had a birthday party yesterday afternoon, so while Solly and Wavy took rests, Dekker and Laela ASKED to go for a walk!!! They’re nuts, but they loved it! They were even a little late getting back. Over an hour out in the bitter cold!

I was surprised at Dekker, as he HATES being outside in the cold, but Laela loves it 🙂 So it was a pretty cute scene.

The day wrapped up with everyone home, eating an enormous pot of soup that I made. I tried a new recipe and absolutely everyone ate it and liked it. Which was convenient because when I say I made an enormous pot of it, it was truly that much. My largest pot was so full, when I stirred with any oomph, it spilled over. So. Good thing everyone liked it.

Bedtime was cute. I snuggled with the fuzzy one.

He loves being fuzzy. He keeps presenting his head to be rubbed. Maybe it’ll bring good luck.

And now, today, it is once again freezing outside. Rides to school. No recess. No skating. But lots of cozy inside time, which I cannot complain about 💜 Thank you, Lord, for the roof over our heads.

Solomon and I have had a deal.

He has insisted on keeping his long hair, and I have LOVED it. But when he started making a fuss over brushing it, I told him it would have to go. I said we had to brush it every single day, or we’d have to cut it, because its something we need to keep nice. So he chose brushing, and tolerated it WAY better each day. So the hair stayed. Until it was just so stinking long that I started to need to tie it back. That was a bit of a tougher sell. After just a few times of my tying it back, it became an issue. But he HATED the idea of having it cut.

The other day I mentioned it again, in an effort to slowly get him used to the idea. And he surprised me by saying “… well how about a home buzz?”

A home buzz it is!!!

So this morning, before church, I unceremoniously snagged him from his lego and told him it was time! He immediately froze up, but Rowan sidled up to him and said confidently “Solly!! YOU 🙌 can do this!” It was so stinking adorable, and Solly was officially talked into it.

Before I show you anything, I know its not a perfect cut. Far from. But it was his first go, and he was pretty wiggly. And nervous. Rowan diligently sat in front of Sol and moved his toys around to where I was asking Solly to look, in an effort to help him know where to look. He was SO helpful, and SO caring!

Towards the end, we had a few tears when I wanted to clean Sol’s neck up without a guard on the trimmer. He was physically shaking. He watched all of us touch the trimmer, and he even finally touched it, but he still wasn’t ok with it. He cried big tears and said “PLEASE put a guard on!” So I did. Guard 1. We’ll get him there in time 💜 Today was just the first crack at it.

It was over seconds later, and Rowan loudly announced “WOW! Solly, you look SO handsome!!”

He was not wrong! 😍

His little tummy is my favorite thing about these pictures, though. Oof. He is SO cute.

Solly was quick to throw his shirt on and get back to playing. Rowan was just so excited for him, and started him “fuzzy head.” It became a very cute contest to see who was fuzziest, lol!

It was a successful cute morning, and Solly feels so fresh! Feels even more so like spring!!

I made tacos yesterday. The kids really like tacos, so its an easy sell for the kids. They all eat tacos really well. I, on the other hand, have to make a stack of them in advance because most of the kids are a little too little to assemble them, judge amounts, or fold them up. So its a very “up and down” meal while we make the next one for one kid, and by the time we’re done that one, there’s another one asking. Its busy, but they all eat without complaining, so I’ll take it!

Rowan helped me open cans for the meat. I can’t believe I never considered that can openers are for right handed people! Hahaha! Man alive! We found a way for him to hold it from behind and crank it with his left hand, but it took some figuring, lol! Who knew!

I chopped up a mountain of lettuce, peppers, and cucumbers. We had salsa and sour cream. Cheese. A ton of taco meat. And I believe we went through about 20 wraps.

I overshot, and couldn’t quite finish my second taco. Brady generously offered to take it off my hands when he was done his, but it was too drippy to set down. So he just went for it.

I win’t lie, it was a very delicious supper. I’m still thinking about it. I think we’ll rock leftovers for tonight. I’ve missed lettuce. I hope one day its a little easier to come by and/or afford. Vegetables should not be SO expensive.

Anyway. Taco night. Yaaaaay!