Today felt like an extra special ballet day. Both of the girls missed it last week, thanks to a gross virus and a fever. I didn’t know for sure if ballet would go forward today, because there was no school, but it was confirmed this morning. Both girls took a bath and I did their hair. I don’t do much for hair, and they don’t want me to, but the ballet teacher has requested their hair in buns this year, so I went for it and while nothing is perfect, the girls hair was up off their necks and out of their faces. Put all that together with new tights (thanks, Amazon) and new little onesies (just from Walmart) and they looked so fresh and ready!
Aaaaand a little dorky, because thats who we are, lol!
It is SO funny having ballet here 💜 I never thought I’d be able to have kids in dance, and it is SUCH a pleasant surprise that we CAN!!!
I really like having the kids in stuff. In their stuff. What a beautiful opportunity.
It was a two drink kind of drive home 🤣 Sounds like drinky drinks. Not that kind. This kind.
McDonalds has a feature milkshake that claims to taste like orange and cream, and I REALLY wanted to try it to see if it was as creamsiclish as it sounded. And it was!!! YUM! Like. Its total trash, I don’t deny that, but it is a really fun delicious treat that our entire family was able to enjoy!!
There is a weird part of me that almost feels shameful when I buy all of my children a treat. Like, I shouldn’t, because its just too much. If we had two kids, I wouldn’t bat an eye. No one would. But when I’m buying nine milkshakes, it seems frivolous and inappropriate. I don’t know. I’m not looking for validation. Its just something I’ve noticed about myself, and I think I need to switch my mindset a little. Because its great that I can buy them treats like that sometimes! Its awesome, in fact! And they shouldn’t be without special things because there are a lot of them. Our family size wasn’t their choice.
So anyway. I ordered a schwack ton of milkshakes through the drive-thru today. Even for the bit babies, who care about that stuff now. Conveniently, snack size milkshakes exist for only $2! Cool, hey?
Anyway. I downed that thing super quickly, as expected, and chased it with a big coffee. Considering the nights we’ve been having, the coffee was necessary to survive to the end of the day 😅
And we DID!!! 🥳 Its definitely bedtime, thought. For all of us.
I’ve made some posts in the past about things that have given me a giggle. My humour is pretty dry and rough, and also a lot darker now, thanks to you know who.
☝️ This guy and all his fun trauma. Anyway.
I scanned through my phone pictures to see what funny things I’ve saved recently and let me tell you 😅 my sense of humour has TANKED, hahahahaha! Its SO dull and dumb. But. Here you have it. The latest and greatest things I’ve laughed at that aren’t actually funny.
First one is a little shocking but MAN did I laugh when I read it.
I think this next one has changed the lyrics to this song forever for me 🎶
This one 🤣 I don’t know, I can’t place it, but I just want to laugh at that cat.
I can feel with this man, 100% 😅 But also, if I just saw that, I’d super think he was dead…
Aaaaand I completely fell for this one. Hook line and sinker.
Well there you have it. Things that have brought a smile to my face in the recent weeks. I concur, they’re not the funniest things out there, but in my current state, they are completely hysterical.
Thanks for going on that ridiculous journey with me!! Happy Friday! I hope you all slept a bit more than I did!
It has begun. Pumpkin cooking season has started! And I am DETERMINED to get more in my freezer than I did last year. Buying canned pumpkin is fine. The muffins turn out taller and prettier. But goodness, it is SO expensive, and more painful now that I know how much it actually costs to process a pumpkin.
Yesterday, I cooked up my first pumpkin of the season. It went a bit different from last year. Not in a huge way, but my oven is different! Its not as deep! So if I want to put two pans in, side my side, they need to be little pans. I don’t love this about my oven, but the convection works great so I haven’t really taken issue with it, but that’s irrelevant when your pumpkin is massive. So, I used the little pans, and things just spilled over a little.
I ended up cooking two pumpkins that day, and I removed one of the racks so it wasn’t such a tight squeeze.
It cooked forever because it was just huge, and once it had cooled completely, I scooped out its guts and pureed them in my ninja. This was my first pumpkin!
Two pumpkins later, I had 27 CUPS of pumpkin puree!!! This whole haul cost a whopping $8.
Isn’t that BONKERS?! A can of pumpkin from the grocery store shelves is roughly 3 cups, and cost $6.50.
I’m so grateful that canned pumpkin exists but I will ALWAYS jump at mine first.
Once all the kids were down, I washed up ALL the pumpkin stuff in preparation for day two of pumpkinning.
It is absolutely worth the work. There is no question.
The biggest point of disorganization in my regular daily life is the baby clothes. The three babies have TONS of clothes, but they’ve grown out of so many of them and I haven’t put them away. So the mess is on me. I’ll own it! Lol! But, as the season has started to change I’ve gotten even sloppier with it because I expect to soon switch out tank tops for long sleeves, and cotton jammies for fleece! However, as the babies grow, they need new stuff, and I’m bringing it in as I come across the right things.
Yesterday, while one baby was at a visit, I popped into the Gap outlet. They have these great little onesies that are made out of sweatpants material. So they’re warmer than sleepers but nothing too crazy. I like them for babies in buckets in colder weather. They’re not very easy to find, however, because the outlet has funny things at different times, so its hit and miss. But yesterday, my search was a success, and I bought the next TWO sizes up for the lemon drop! I debated buying all the sizes in all the colors, just to have for future babies, haha! But even at great discounts, they’re still a decent price, so I didn’t feel I could justify it. We’ll have to see. Even just buying all the sizes in grey would be ok….. we’ll see. Anyway. I bought two for the lemon drop, and then I accidentally bought a bunch of jeans for the babies. All they all have right now are shorts and some leggings. So, six pairs of jeans later, plus a pair of leggings and a pair of sweats, I had spent more than enough money there and hauled out.
*after writing this out, I’m KICKING myself for not buying the grey ones also. Ugh.*
I did some more pop-ins while we waited for the Spoonful’s visit to be done. Walmart didn’t provide the shirts I was hoping for, but it did provide some fun Halloween stuff 🙂 Beetlejuice fanta. Peeps. and PUMPKINS!! You know I’m ready and waiting to cook the heck out of as many pumpkins as possible to keep me afloat for the next YEAR 🤣 And baby formula, of course, because that is ALWAYS on the list.
Aaaaand a last stop at Value Village provided me with some cozy things also 💜 Because after fall comes winter. Behold 🙌 this cozy thing…
…that I would not have justified if it wasn’t only $5!!!
And another beautiful hand sewn quilt 😍
This one is at least a double size, and its SO nice and heavy! I LOVE it. Value Village doesn’t recognize the value of these quilts but I certainly do! A few little stained moments can be resolved, and do not take away the quality I so appreciate!
Separate from the shopping yesterday, I also had a small Temu order arrive, as well as a few Christmas presents from Amazon. Whew! Its time to get rid of some things around here, I think. Too. Much. Stuff.
Ok. I have put a cup of coffee into me while typing this out, and I can hear the babies are waking up. Time for the day to begin!! Happy hump day, everyone!
I ended up going for a drive this morning. I have to go out again today, and I planned to errand stack that outing, but it turned out I needed to go out for something a bit more time sensitive. So I did. I ran some errands in some surrounding towns and brought Brady a coffee. It was busy but also it wasn’t.
As I drove home, I was loving the clouds. The sky was SO light and the clouds were gorgeous and aplenty. A quick glance out my side mirror, however, showed a DARK grey sky! I LOVED that contrast. It was unmistakable.
I hope it rains. I HOPE it rains. It is SO gloomy outside. Gloomy in a nice way. We will be going back out this evening, and I really want it to be grey and cozy. It will also be productive, but mostly comfy and grey and rainy. I hope.
Welp. I’m home with the three babies and two other sickies. We left the house on Friday in quite a tizzy, in the midst of sickness, frustration, and a total lack of time. So as it happens, the mess we left was exactly the mess we came home to 😅
We came home late yesterday evening, thanks to the poutine community supper I mentioned in the last blog, so we came home, dumped everything in roughly the room it belonged in at least, and went to bed. So we made the mess worse. As we do.
This morning, I sent the well ones to school and the sickies went downstairs to read in their beds and be all cozy. I’ll admit, while I’m definitely mending, I also still feel pretty gross, and the idea of cleaning up the house felt huge and daunting. Moment of truth, guys.
These pictures leave out the mountain of diapers on the floor, and all the stuff we brought in from camp stacked up on the dining table. It was baaaaad in there.
So I decided to recruit my sickies, just in a small capacity, to help me. I called them up and asked if they would do a super low pressure, slow motion tidy of the main area with me. They made sure to let me know they didn’t feel well 😅 which I acknowledged, and I reassured them I would do the huge haul of dishes. They agreed, and got to it.
And they did even more than I asked 💜 Laela swept the living room and dining room, and Wavy did laps to bring things to the laundry room and the garbage.
While they worked, Cher poked her head in with soup and juice for the sickies, which was SO thoughtful! Lunch will be served up easily, with virtually no work for me! Thank you, dear sister 💜
Now, the girls have settled in upstairs to continue their cuddly hang out. Laela is reading Wavy her library books from school. The morsel is unpacking the bookshelf in solidarity.
And I’m puttering in the kitchen. Dishes are large, but I have no time crunch. Two of the babies are up, and one is still asleep. It works, though, because the sick one is the sleeping one. Win! I have a stack of bottles and syringes soaking in the sink right now. Dishes will be stacked up nicely but not loudly unloaded and loaded while we still have someone sleeping. That baby is high stakes, lol, so we can’t risk it.
But come the afternoon, we have to duck out. The kids are coming along, but they won’t leave the van. I’m quite determined that it will be a good day, regardless of whether its perfect or not. We can’t wait for perfect to be content! We were never promised perfect. Ever. So we’ll just keep on trucking 🙂
Ok. The bottles have soaked long enough. Back to it!
We have aimed for extra ease this summer. Many things have not been easy this summer, both expected and unexpected things, so where we can make things a little easier, we have.
One of those things has meant we have used paper dishes at camp almost exclusively. We still use real cutlery, and sometimes cups. Bottles, of course. Sometimes pots or pans, but those tend to be disposable, too. Its just so much easier.
Another lovely helpful thing that has brought ease to our summer is our dear Dahlsjos taking on our group for supper every single Saturday. If you look at our weekend realistically, we only eat ONE supper at camp on a standard weekend, as we come a little too late on Friday, and leave before supper on Sunday. This has left us with VERY easy eating this summer!! Thank you, dear Dahlsjos, for such a gift.
So. Just a quick breakdown of the highlights of food this weekend!
Saturday supper a la Dahlsjo was breakfast for supper, which we LOVE. Cheesy eggs, hashbrowns, sausage, and bacon. This was also a great meal to feed the babies. Was an easy sell!
Lunch this summer has been sandwiches or snacky things. This particular lunch just looked SO good to me. I can’t pinpoint why, but I can assure you, ’twas delicious.
Aaaaand supper was a community supper of poutine!! I won’t lie. I found most of the topping options a bit weird for my liking, but I’ll never turn down bacon bits!
I did turn down the salad 🤣 I said yes to the ice cream, though, so 🤷🏼♀️ no regrets!
And can we all agree that eating outside just makes everything taste better?? 🥰 I’ll sure miss that when the season ends. Still a couple more weeks to go, we hope 🤞
