I couldn’t tell you why, but this stupid little funny really got me when I read it. And it has come up a small handful of times over the last couple of days. Just a random thought, but man, it is SO funny to me.

However.

Growing up going to Waskesiu every summer, watching little outdoor theatre plays about the local animals, and stopping the vehicle for literally and and ALL animals ANYWHERE within our line of vision, it seems like I should know the answer. I think I do know, because home building and whatnot, but it does seem fishy. (HA! Thats probably part of the reason!!! 🤣)

But here we are. And I’m sure there is an intelligent answer out there. And you can share it if you want to. You can. But really, I like the joke so much even without knowing the truth.

This feels like a very reasonable question to me. Why. Are beavers. Such. Weirdos.

🦫

I was able to go OUT this evening with my mom, which has not happened in SO long and felt like a total treat 💜 And with that super lovely outing, my body is POOPED because it so rarely goes out 🤣 The energy I did have left went to trying to make AI type a blog post for me. And it WON’T! Slacker AI is not so I, if you ask me.

Guys. This is why I should always blog in the daytime 😅🥱

Goodnight, all ✌️ Happy weekend!

You guys were so kind and warm to me in regards to yesterdays post 💜 It started kind of challenging and stayed that way, unfortunately, until the end of the day. Still, I am grateful for how the day wrapped up, and I was glad when it did 😅 You guys can understand that, I’m sure. Sometimes, those days come along, and the best you can do is be content with the day until it ends. So I did.

Today was a bit of a recovery day for me, which was SO lovely. It was fairly quiet, and I got to crochet in my chair while the babies slept in, and then later on while they napped. I don’t have any big exciting details to share, but I’ll show you my top three highlights.

☝️ Christmas lights!!!

I bought a couple of boxes when I got my order delivered the other day, and I had meant to get more but apparently those clicked didn’t clack, so my mom went today for herself and snagged a couple more boxes for me. I cannot wait to have lights all over the inside of our house!

✌️ Wavy went up another reading level!

She is a total keener, and always has been, but she resisted reading in kindergarten, which was totally fine. So she started at level A in grade one with most of her classmates, and we celebrate every time she goes up another one! She is super brave about working on sounds out loud, and she always tries before she asks for help. Today’s book had the word “laugh” in it. Thats a hard one!!

🎶 I’m calling this symbol three because emojis are still behind and don’t have the hands holding up all the right numbers. Isn’t that such an obvious miss?? Also, muffins. Where is the muffin emoji at?!

Whoops. Sidetracked.

🎶 I made broccoli cheddar soup!

Ok ok, before you look at it though, it doesn’t look great. I learned. I increased the liquids on the fly but not the thickener, so its a thinner soup than it should be. And the cheese doesn’t look very melty, but it super was. It doesn’t look delicious, but I can assure you it was. Even the kids ate it happily!!! Win win! Oh and the bread was two of the $1 baguettes from Walmart. And we had leftovers!! Win win WIN!

Ok. Those are my highlights. Or perhaps the three things I’m most grateful for. At least the ones I can put on the blog.

I praise the Lord for my beautiful life, even when its struggly. There is really no one else I’d rather struggle alongside.

I’m pretty careful to talk about what triggers my anxiety. Sometimes, I think some people use the term a little too loosely, and its almost become a trend to be “triggered.” Please don’t take what I’m saying to mean that I don’t think triggers are real. They absolutely are. I’m just careful. But I’m going to tell you about one of mine today.

Brady’s spinal surgery was a huge deal. It was an incredibly challenging time for us. You may or may not remember, but we did not know he was going to come out paralyzed. We knew it was a risk, of course, but we literally thought he’d be in the hospital over the weekend, but he stayed for nine long weeks. Many rude awakenings.

Brady had a pulmonary embolism shortly after switching hospitals. He had a blood clot shake loose from his ankle (since he wasn’t able to walk after surgery) travel up his body, pump through his heart, and land in his lung. People absolutely die from this. If the clot lodged in his heart, that would’ve been it.

So as you can imagine, we thought a lot about the possibility of death and dying. I remember pulling over and calculating how long we could stretch our life insurance policy if Brady passed. There was a LOT of fear for a bit there.

The first time I couldn’t open a jar, a trigger was born. The total, irrational fear surrounding such a mundane task as opening a jar that I could not open. I remember sitting on the floor in the kitchen, on the other side of the island, separate from the kids, trying to think of who I would call when I couldn’t open a jar, even with all my grippy things. Tom? What if Tom was at work? I really just didn’t know what I’d do. It felt like something I NEEDED Brady for.

I tried really hard to be really well while Brady was away, so instead of dwelling somewhere scary, I took it upon myself to simply purchase a jar opener. One of these suckers.

And that stupid thing broke the very first time I tried to use it. So I was back to square one.

You might have noticed, but my husband came home 💜 Praise God!!! He still opens my jars. And Dekker is getting older and stronger, and can sometimes help as well.

But today. Ugh. Stupid Costco milk. Do you guys know about this?? They do NOT open!!! After positively reefing on it, and passing it around between the kids, we finally got the stupid thing open. But here I am, with the palm of my hand showing the work put in.

And it just takes me back. And not somewhere nice.

Brady, I am SO happy you lived. And then kept living. And then thriving 💜 We need you here.

We should renew our vows someday so we can include jar opening somehow.

I tried it, guys! Costco grocery delivery via Instacart. I ordered a big list of things, including bakery items, produce, all kinds of milk, and a few convenience and pantry items as well. I stocked up on a lot of lunch stuff for the kids, and some lactose free stuff for our Lemon Drop who we have recently learned needs it. I ordered a lot of produce, some that I plan to chop into lunch sized containers and lots for everything else. A new kind of buns that we haven’t tried yet, wraps, raisin bread. A ridiculous amount of cheese. Milk. All that good stuff. I placed the order, and then I waited.

Within the next hour or so, a shopper was attached to my order. Once she began shopping, I was contacted through text and told I could chat with the shopper along the way if anything was to change, and she would run anything by me that she had questions about. At one point, she sent me a picture of something that I had ordered. I responded that it looked correct to me, and she said she agreed, but that the barcode was different. I confirmed I was happy with it, and she purchased it. The next text I got was that the shop was done and she was on her way!

And then a frustrating thing happened when she could not find my house, and she called and kept me on the phone while she tried to navigate the town. She was in an alley at one point, and then at some houses with numbers in the 700s, and at one point she really strongly communicated that she saw a sign for 1st St, which is not at all where I live. I suggested taking my house number out of her GPS and just looking for my street, and finally, she found me.

She dropped everything off, and Cher helped me bring it into the house and put it away. It was so lovely to have it all brought to me, but I’ll admit, it was pretty irritating that I had to stand in my driveway for quite so long, trying to help her find me.

However, when I told Brady about it, he looked into it and while our address was marked properly, Apple Maps directions were all over the place, and definitely drove her right into the mess. It wasn’t her fault. And it helped to know that.

All in all, I’d absolutely do it again! I’d order from Costco. You are expected to tip the Instacart driver, which is included in your grocery bill, but if you just think of it as a delivery cost, it was definitely still worth it.

However, you better believe Apple Maps will be getting a report from us, lol! We do NOT live in a back alley!

You may remember we moved in January over that absolutely frigid weekend where no one wanted to actually leave their houses. We had a willing group of people jump in to help us get things from the old house to the next house, or, if you will, the new house to the old house, if we’re going for age of house. We had a LOT of stuff, being that we are a LOT of people. So with the frozen weather, and the insane amount of work to do, lots of things made it into the garage that could’ve gone into the house. Not complaining!! It was a TON, and people moved FAST. But the garage was absolutely full to the brim.

Then, you may also remember, Brady had a seizure two weeks after that, and everyone’s energy went out the window. Speaking for myself, all my mental energy was taken up with brain tumours, surgery, Bradys new meds that really really sucked and made him so unhappy, helping the kids process and cope, all the while keeping things rolling as normal as possible.

So those months after a move where everyone putters and ever so slowly gets at least the majority of their boxes unpacked, we spent recovering and struggling under the weight of the impending surgery, and the immense mess that comes with moving, where you don’t know where anything is or how anything works. It was just a lot really close together. It was hard times.

For this entire year, our garage has been filled to the brim. We had friends come help a couple of times, moving tools downstairs and doing some two person stuff that Brady and I can’t manage. And that has helped tremendously! We could actually form a PATH! But as winter approached, Cher and I have been starting to get into the garage with the goal of getting Brady’s work van parked inside. We got the kids their lockers. We got the place heated. We just needed to organize enough to get one half cleared out.

The “before” is kinda wild.

Yup. Thats the best its looked since we moved in. See where my super stroller wagon is? That path is all we had going for us.

Today, Cher, Brady and I spent 2.5 hours this morning working in the garage. We loaded all the recycling into the minivan, as well as some garbage that needed hauling. Cher took a load of things to her place to put out for free on her front lawn. We were able to compress some things. Stack some other things. Move some things into the house into storage or into the shop. Cher did TONS of the legwork of carting things up and down the stairs into the basement, and Brady and I did a lot of organizing. Our garage is well fitted with lots of good storage already, so we put up lots of the camping stuff, Christmas stuff is organized on its own shelf, well within reach, and we tucked Bradys golf clubs up as well. I hate the ladder. Brady knows. So he “helped.” The way a man helps.

And guys, we CRUISED. The three of us worked until we all ached, and we got that whole stinking side cleared out 🥳

It wasn’t even a case of shoving everything to the side, either. We worked! It makes sense in there! Its a bit stacked over on the other side, sure, but things that belong together are grouped together. It is not hard to navigate it at all! And its all a lot more within reach. Of course there is still more to do, but if we didn’t move a single additional piece all winter, I am still totally happy with how it sits today.

Because 🙌 now the van can fit 💜

My family can be warm, and safe, and cared for 💜 Brady doesn’t have to fuss with trying to brush his van off in the mornings from his chair. Mission accomplished.

What a perfect way to spend a morning 💜 Thank you, Cher, for working SO hard this morning and doing most of the heavy lifting. And thank you, Brady, for bending your back for so long, working like a dog on your day off. If not for you guys, this place would still be completely unusable.

Praise the Lord for willing arms to carry loads. For a home that has all we need within it. And even a warm indoor space to provide ease to Brady every single morning. Praise the Lord for achy muscles soothed in a hot bath, and supper in bed 💜

Ok guys, here are some random pictures, giggles, memories, etc. all rolled into one post. Enjoy!

First – A GHOST!

And then some innocent darkness 😅

I took Rowan to parkour last week! It was honestly SO fun!

Wavy likes to practice writing on the boogie board, and the other day when she went to retrieve it, she found – ANOTHER GHOST!

This seems painful, but also, I laughed.

Ok, backstory to this food picture. Rowan doesn’t like chicken. Chicken breasts, specifically, since they’re a bit drier. I’m all for him having preferences but we like to eat chicken. So I’ve made it a bit of a mission to find chicken in a way that he likes. So I tried this the last time.

Boneless chicken thighs, fried in a pan, seasoned with salt, pepper, onion, and garlic. While he still really didn’t want to say he liked it, we agreed that this is a way he dislikes less and would willingly eat in the future. Boom! I’ll take it!

This was a morning where I was gifted a double time back scratch!

And an unrelated time when the kids found swimmies in the back of the bus and blew them up while we were out somewhere.

Out shopping, Laela saw this dish rack and exclaimed “This is all they used for a whole meal of dishes?!”

I sliced and bagged banana bread while I watched a murder show, as I tend to do. Oh and I drank coffee. A GHOST!

Aaaaand last but not least, we watched Despicable Me 4 as a family the other night, and ate corn dogs, lol! I even got a prized Beetlejuice Fanta from Cher 💜 ‘Twas delicious and a great end to the week.

It was a big week, but a good one, I believe. Brady is home tomorrow 💜 Happy long weekend, friends.

*The blog disaster is over for now. Thank you for being so patient and understanding. Onto the next*

Dekker went to his first ever lock-in with his youth group!! Last years lock-in fell on a weekend we couldn’t make, so he was VERY excited to finally get in on the fun!!

He came home this morning once the event was wrapped, insisting he was “not tired.” But it wasn’t long before…..

Note that his book is open to page one. Thats how far he made it into his book.

Its possible we had a little fun with him…..

He wasn’t especially impressed, but he wasn’t upset, so most of us enjoyed a good laugh lol! Dekker reluctantly went to his room to nap a little, but resurfaced soon after, insisting yet again that he was not tired.

Liar.

This all felt very teenagery of him, and I’m not mad at it at all 😍 I am very fond of this boy, and I remember loving those youth events with every fibre of my being. I’m happy he’s in it now, enjoying them as well 💜

Happy first all-nighter, Dekker!! I can’t believe you’re at this point in your life already 💜 I’m SO happy for you.

So far, the day has been pretty productive, but its been busy with fun things!!

After everyone slept in, and Brady and I enjoyed a cup of coffee in bed, we got everyone up and the day started moving.

Brady started by putting some things up that have been in the plans for a good long while now! Guitar hooks….. (just showing one here, but he and I both have our acoustic guitars on either side of the front window)

And some coat hooks we bought from Ikea to put up in kids rooms for hoodies, backpacks, etc. (A ghost!!)

We had a couple extra coat hooks, so we put one by the front door for diaper bags and hats and such…

And one behind my chair, to hang my cuuuuute new bag that holds some of my current crochet projects!! 😍 Thank you again, Sandy!!! 👻

Look at my little MAN!!! Oof! I love him!

Before I show you my new bag, look at what else we did! 😅 Yes. Times are this desperate when your toddlers unpack the entire bookshelf every change they get!

Board books will all be sorted down to the bottom, and the rest CAN be protected when I’m in the kitchen and they’re in the living room, which is when they get into the most trouble, hahaha!

Ta-daaaaa!

For lunch, we all enjoyed some apple crisp!! 🍎 I had made the filling a couple of days ago and its been waiting to be eaten in the fridge. This morning, Dekker volunteered to make some oatmeal but we have run out of eggs. No biggie! I asked if he was willing to try something different, and he absolutely was! I barely helped, and he pieced a beautiful huge apple crisp together for the family. Conveniently, it baked a little longer than anticipated (as tends to happen when one doubles the batch) so the littles were down before it was done. So while it would be lovely to share it with the babies as well, it was more peaceful to eat as a family of seven. We blobbed some ice cream on top and everyone ate in the living room.

Except Rowan, which prefers to sit at the table, but was not AT ALL unhappy or feeling left out!

Lunch was capped off with a few kids heading outside, and this one particular kid offering me a back rub.

Does it really get any better than this?!?! 🥰 Thank you Lord!!!

We had a bit of a sibling spat the other day. They happen always. Thats just life, I’m pretty sure. This particular day, it took a little bit more to come back from it. But when it happened, it was SO worth it. Here is the very quick play by play.

Rowan came to apologize to Solomon, and he gave him a hug, but lingered a little. I wasn’t supervising or anything, beyond just witnessing that Rowan was coming over to make an effort. But when I looked in their direction, I saw that a cuddle had started. Both of those boys are total snuggle bugs, though rarely with each other. But it was SO soft and cute!

It got better still when Rowan went in for the head scratch! 😍

Who doesn’t love a good head scratch??

Everyone LOVES it! Wavy included. So naturally, she inserted herself into the party.

The cuddle got a little bit silly from there on out. Just in the gentle headlock kind of way. You get it.

Aaaaand then it was photobomby.

Aaaaand then we called it. Dekker wasn’t home, otherwise I’m sure he would’ve been sitting across the room, look at me and Brady like “Kids, am I right?”

I loved this resolve so so much. I hope there can be more of these in the future. Soft sorries and loving head scratches 🥰