Usually, on a day we’re travelling to the lake, we leave pretty early. We gather the last minute stuff before getting the kids up and dressed and out the door. We pick up Tims along the way, and drive the 2.5 ish hours to the lake, all the while listening to music we all like.
This time around, we actually started the day off at the Firefighters Breakfast event here in town! We were welcomed so warmly! Our fire department is loaded with some of the nicest people, one of them living just across the street from us! Remember that time we actually had to call them to help us? They were SO wonderful, taking our situation seriously, but trying to stay quiet for the sake of our sleeping kids, apologizing for wearing their boots in our house, etc. (For those who don’t know and aren’t clicking the link to the past post, we did NOT have a fire. It was a CO scare. And it sucked.) But we owe them a lot of love and support. Rae was at the event, waiting for us by the door. She grabbed hands with a couple of our kids, and we all made our way inside. Rae really helped us get settled, cutting food and serving kids with Brady while I juggled Wavy and did what I could one handed. The kids colored, ate, talked, and high fived Sparky, the fire departments mascot. We all had a blast, and a delicious breakfast. On the way out, the kids toured a couple of fire trucks, which they thoroughly enjoyed. We missed the car seat check, but we had places to go!!
I admit, it felt a bit strange to be waited on by a group of such hard working people, already. To have these men serve us food, clear our dishes, etc. was humbling. To have them take time to visit with our kids individually meant so much to them, and to me, as their mom.
Thank you to our local fire department for keeping SO MANY PEOPLE safe! And thank you, Rae, for making it SO much easier for us to attend!
To very quickly branch off of yesterday’s post, I’ll say that Saturday morning was another one of those times when people loved on my family, and I could loosen the reins a little and just let them. I’m so thankful to have so much love poured out on our kids, specifically. It is a HUGE privilege to have such a beautiful situation to navigate and learn from. How to let so many people love my children. Praise the Lord!
Ok guys, tomorrow will be a Waskesiu post! Promise!
I can’t wait to tell you all about our trip to Waskesiu! While I was very much anticipating it, I was a tad on the nervous side having found out the day before we left that our precious little lake town was completely snowed over. But, spoiler alert, it did NOT disappoint!! I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Or over the course of the next two days, maybe. It depends on how many pictures I have to post. 😉 It can be a real problem.
What I do want to tell you guys about where we stayed. Or rather, who hosted us. And I’m going to go about that in an annoyingly long way, like usual.
We stay at Chateau Park Chalet when we go to Waskesiu. It is a sweet little place, close to everything, with everything we need. There are two bedrooms and a full bathroom upstairs, and a big sleeping couch on the main level. It has a full kitchen, a BBQ on the patio, and a wood burning stove. Its familiar, and its always clean. We love it there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the best reviews online, and they do hold some merit. The wifi does suck. Some of the fixtures are imperfect, and the kitchen isn’t always perfectly stocked. And yes, the owners are hard to get a hold of. They’re not the most organized couple. But they run a handful of local businesses, and run back and forth between them unceasingly, it seems. When we arrived on Saturday, they let us in to our suite, and proceeded to check it over and leave and come back a handful of times, adding extras to the kitchen, showing us how to work the tv, and bringing WAY too many towels for our many children. The lady couldn’t resist our kids, and just gushed at them over and over. She left, and returned for the umpteenth time with a handwritten “gift certificate” for $30 at the convenience store/restaurant they run. She said we could come get breakfast there, or snacks, or candy, or whatever we wanted. She said she really wanted to do something for the kids.
We’ve been staying at this same place for a handful of summers now, and I’ve never seen this side of her! She’s polite, but seems just way too busy for her own good. She still seemed busy this time around, but like she really wanted to give a gift. So I thanked her profusely and promised we’d stop by at some point.
We spent our Saturday and Sunday at our little chalet, loving our time all along the way. We called the owner at one point to confirm when check out time was, and she laughed and told us to “take it easy.” Clearly, things are slow in the off-season, so we took our time.
Brady called when we were about to head out, and asked if we should leave the key. She had said we could, but if we wanted to drop it off at their convenience store, that would be fine, too. We had decided to use their gift to us on travel snacks, so we said we’d drop it off.
We were greeted SO warmly upon arriving at their gas station/convenience store/restaurant/everything store. Brady gave them the key and I wandered the snack aisles with the kids. We didn’t tell them dollar limits or anything, but we figured it would be nice if they each picked a thing. We didn’t need to gut their gift for all it was worth. Our kids are so funny. Rowan chose a Caramilk (don’t ask me why, I don’t think he even knew what it was) but the other three opted for suckers. Weird, right? They each grabbed an oversized Rockets sucker. And that was it! Since I knew the owners would want it, Brady and I each chose a thing, too. I got Mike n Ikes, and Brady got a Snickers. We presented them at the till, but she quickly turned us away.
“No no no, this isn’t close to $30! Go, get more!” She waved us towards the rest of the store. I reassured her, we each had something, and were so grateful, but she would have none of it. “No no no! There’s so much! Go get drinks! Snacks! More more more! For the children!” Pretty sure she would’ve run us down if we’d tried to actually exit.
So we ventured further in. We grabbed a big bag of pink popcorn and everyone got a drink from the cooler. (I could drink those Pure Leaf Iced Teas all day every day!) We brought everything back to the counter and I asked “Did we do it?” She looked skeptical, and threw five kinder surprises into a bag with everything else. That seemed to do the trick.
We all thanked her profusely, and I told her it was all too much. And she caught me off guard with her “why.”
She told me she wanted to, and in summer, she just can’t with all the busyness. She legitimately wouldn’t have time. But she wanted to.
I’ve been learning a lot about letting people love my children – my family – and letting them “inconvenience” themselves for us. I hear a lot of people with larger families say they’re meant to feel like a nuisance, and I am SO blessed to feel so far the other way. People love on my family so often, by choice, on purpose. I should really stop trying to talk people out of it. She knew she was giving a gift to seven people. It would cost her more money than if there were, say, four of us. There would be more people blocking the aisles of her store, and we’d be louder. We might make our suite a bit dirtier than a smaller group, or make more noise through the walls. But she wanted to give us a gift. Its not like she didn’t know there were so many of us. She was happy to have us.
I’m rambling. Sorry, not sorry. I felt really touched by her gift.
For probably the first time ever, we spent our road trip home sugaring our kids up to high heaven! Judge if you must, but this never ever happens! It was SO FUN for the kids!
And Brady and I, too.
Not Laela, apparently.
😆
Don’t worry, she had her own fun.
As you’d expect, no one slept on the drive home. And as you’d expect, there have been some sugar crash moments. But we expected them, and have been able to be super gentle through them. I can confidently say it was well worth it! The kids will remember this the next time we go to Waskesiu. Not only that, but what an amazing, unexpected lesson in generosity, sharing, and loving people just because!
I LOVE knowing that, even in the summer busyness and lack of communication with the chalet owners, our family is welcome there. That they’re genuinely happy to have us. That they don’t cringe when they see us coming. That they like us.
If you read yesterday’s blog, you know it was written by Laela! (Well, dictated. She typed the last sentence though, and signed it off.) She didn’t get into too many specifics, but we had a FULL shopping morning, stocking up on all of our staples, becaaaaause *drumroll please* we’re off to the lake! For a NIGHT!!! So, like, TWO DAYS!!! I am SO excited!
We bought all kinds of fresh things, some good snacks, and everything we needed for two lunches and one supper at Waskesiu. We’ll get bakery goods for breakfast while we’re out there. We also picked up a 10L jug of water for $5. The water at Waskesiu is “safe” to drink, but you reeeaaally shouldn’t, lol! Especially not the kids. Especially not Waverly! So we got a big thing to last us a couple of days of water bottles and bottle bottles.
Of course, as we were on our way out of the city yesterday, Brady’s work called and needed him to do a fix on something before Monday. *sigh* That is one part of his job that I truly hate. So we all drove home and he ripped back into the city for a super dumb few minutes of work. But while he was gone, the three younger ones napped and I put Laela to work. We made our first batch of home made granola bars (wish us luck!) and cleaned off the floor of the van. We don’t do a ton of eating in the van, so it doesn’t get too bad in there, but I noticed today it was covered in french fries and it needed a clean. We put some water bottles in it as well, so its all stocked up for the trip she knew nothing about!
Did I not mentioned that? We didn’t tell the kids about our lake day!
We thought about making it a total surprise, but that always leaves us scrambling hard on the last day. However, we decided this time to tell them a bit in advance! Since its only one day there, none of us need many clothes or toiletries, but we still need playpens, a high chair, a stroller, etc. So while Brady and I packed the big stuff, the kids packed some of their own stuff! Dekker and Rowan packed their stuff in Dekker’s backpack, and Laela and Solly used hers. We had a list of what they all need to bring, and since Dekker and Laela can both read, they helped the younger ones. They packed their clothing and toothbrushes, and Brady and I took care of everything else. It made for an exciting afternoon and evening around here!
I’ll tell you all about Waskesiu tomorrow. Pictures, too. Today, we’re going to soak it ALL in. This trip was a beautiful gift to us, and there’s no way I’m letting any of it go to waste!
Early this morning, we went to the city. I love going to the city!
We bought groceries from Walmart and Costco. At Walmart, I held onto my mom. It was nice. We could smell the brown sugar through the bag.
Me and my mom cleaned the van. The floor was dirty. We picked up french fries and garbage. We put more water bottles in mom and dads doors. We went inside and baked a recipe.
its from laela
***
Don’t you wish I was always this concise? How much do we LOVE Laela’s first blog?? 🧡
Wavy has had a big month!! She’s developing so fast before our eyes! I feel so fortunate to have the chance to watch her grow and change. She’s such a beautiful part of our family. I can’t imagine us without her.
The little miss isn’t so little! According to our home scale, she clocks in at 20 lbs 6 oz! Last month was frustrating because her weight at home vs on the doctors scale was SO different, but keeping consistent with our scale so we at least knows her growth, she’s up about a pound! Thats a lot!
Especially considering the fact that she’s had a cold on and off this month, and hasn’t been drinking her milk well. But she LOVES food so that helps, I’m sure. She’s continuing to thrive and grow and strengthen! Its really awesome to watch. She also popped tooth #7 this month, on April 22nd.
It came in with a vengeance, and she’s been working hard for tooth #8 since then, but to no avail. Pretty confident its in there somewhere.
Waverly is learning so much!! She’s not crawling, but she’s mobile enough that we put our baby gate up just the other day. She’s been able to roll for quite a while, obviously, but now she’ll roll in a line to get somewhere. When she is in on her tummy, she gets her knees up and rocks like crazy to get moving. She goes backwards well, lol! Once or twice, we’ve had her on her tummy and found her sitting up, but only a couple times 😉
Besides movement, she waves pretty well, and sometimes says “hi.” She knows mama and dada well. It still melts me into a puddle every time. I’ve never had a baby say words so early. She also claps SO well! If we ask her to clap, she will, or if we’re all excited about something, she’ll clap. Orrrrr, if we praise her up and say “good girl” or something like that, she’ll clap. Its awesome. She gets SO excited! Sometimes clapping is accompanied by a “yaaay!” Another thing I’ve noticed this month is that Waverly’s dexterity is WAY better than it was! She went from fumbling with toys to being able to pick up a single Cheerio and eat it. This seems small, but it counts! Its an awesome milestone. She went from only being able to pick up things the size of her palm or bigger, to teeny things, in one day! Good job, Waverly! (If she could read, she would clap here.)
Baby girl has totally dropped her schedule. Poor Wavy. Poor Wavy’s parents. With her cold kind of coming and going, and those teeth pushing, she is back to being up at least once in the night. But she is exhausted all day, too!
She used to sleep in a bit and take a good long afternoon nap, and that was it. But these days, she wakes up earlier and needs at least two naps. It doesn’t matter too much how much she sleeps in the day, she is ready for bed at 7:00pm regardless. I guess a change in her general routine has been that she definitely eats table food at every meal. Aaand she drinks water from a cup! Our first kid to ever care about real cups! She can drink from a straw, but she doesn’t want to. We have all kinds of videos of her drinking from a cup, and while its always a bit of a mess, she loves it! And it makes the other kids laugh 🙂 I’ll put on or two on Instagram today for you guys.
It sounds silly to say, because she’s been here in our home for ten months, but she really feels like a full blown family member these days, lol!
She does all the same stuff everyone else does, and comes along super naturally. She fits right in. Its beautiful just watching my children go through different stages of life, and its seeming like babyhood is on the way out for Miss Waverly. Lucky for me, toddlerhood is pretty epic as well. And childhood. And all thats to come.
I have always insisted I would never be a mom who yelled. “I was the perfect parent until I had kids.” Have you seen that joke online? Yup, its so true. I would NEVER yell at my kids!
Honestly, I’ve had a pretty cool head until maybe the last year or so. It seems that these have been some tough stages in all the kids, all at once. I’m not making excuses for my behaviour, but I do see why the struggle has gone up. Anyone I’ve met who has had a similar family to ours (many little ones close together) has said there are some CRAZY years, but its just amazing and they’d never take any of it back. I think we’re in one of those crazy years now 😉
I’ve become a mom who yells. While I think it can sometimes make a solid impact and really get a point across, thats all lost when you do it too much. I know. Its basic knowledge. But sometimes, its really hard, and I just feel desperate.
In the last little while, I’ve been evaluating how I can help my children through some of these hard stages, and I’m noticing they all yell!! Ack! TOTALLY MY FAULT! How do I think I can teach them about respect and being loving if I’m yelling the lesson at them?! I cannot, obviously.
So over the last week or so (I know, not that long) I’ve backed right off of yelling. Its taken some serious restraint sometimes, but I’ve been successful. A couple of the kids have been pushing back hard, as they wait for me to yell before they obey. Or they’ll yell at me, and there’s no way for me to be heard above their voice. All I can do is wait patiently. Its been SO hard. My own adult consequence for my actions.
Rowan has reverted back to toddler-level tantrums in an effort to get a rise out of me. In our house, we quash those tantrums quick. (We can all agree to disagree, but I don’t think tantrums are ever acceptable. A child can express their emotions without whipping themselves down on the floor and kicking and screaming. I think. To each their own. But in our house, when a toddler throws themselves on the floor, we have them stand right back up. They can still cry, and we absolutely talk through it, but it seems WAY less satisfying to freak out while standing up, talking to a calm adult. It works for us.) Now that Rowan has pulled them back out, I’m trying to deal with them well, but if I’m being honest, they make me really angry. Yesterday, Rowan got upset by one tiny thing, and LOST it. He immediately was flat on the floor, kicking and screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Rowan Toby, please stand up. Ro. Rowan, can you hear me?” Of course he couldn’t. What was I even thinking? I went over to him and knelt beside him. He saw me there and kept on going. “Rowan, I need you to stop screaming and stand up.” Nada.
So I admit. I slipped. And I raised my voice up louder than necessary. “Ro! Up!” I was right away disappointed in myself, but then I was relieved, and proud!
I was relieved because he didn’t immediately snap to attention. The “power” of my yelling wasn’t there. It didn’t matter. It was good for me to see that it clearly wasn’t helping anything.
I was proud because yelling felt crappy, physically! My throat was scratchy, and my yell wasn’t very loud at all. It felt unnatural and sounded gross.
My yeller is out of practice!!! Its out of shape!! It doesn’t work as well anymore!!
You can think this is small and silly, if you want. You can judge me for yelling, if you want. But to me, this felt like victory!!! Its only been a few days, and I’m sure I’ll slip again, but it felt like a win to know my yeller doesn’t yell very well anymore.
So now, when my kids push back, and I stand at my island, with my head down, making every effort to keep my cool, I can remind myself that, not only doesn’t my heart want to yell anymore, but neither does my body. I don’t want to yell, and my kids don’t want me to yell, and I don’t want them to yell! So, we’re going to keep trying.
And if you notice I look particularly bedraggled these days, now you know why 😉
I thought I’d share my list with you of projects we have on the go for the spring, and what we’ve already done!
I should put in here first that I know our basement should come first. Finances have that currently on pause, so we’re trying to find things to busy ourselves with that are also productive but not costly. Here they are, in no order whatsoever.
Deck stair railings. We’ve had our deck done for two years now, but have not put railings on the stairs yet. We’ve had our reasons, but haven’t known what to do to resolve the problem we find ourselves with. That being said, I juuuuust about have a heart attack every time my children use the stairs, so we want to install the railings this spring. If our problem can be resolved, and the railings need to come off, so be it. Just a little extra work. This way makes way more sense. We currently have one railing installed, so technically the second stair railing is on the list.
Enclosing the underside of our deck. Now this one will likely have to wait, which is too bad :/ Its not the cheapest project on our list, but its still important and worth noting. The end goal is to close it in completely and use it as a shed! Its not a super tall area but its definitely an effective storage area. We really want to use that space to be able to store some of our outdoor stuff in a shed so it can be out of our garage. Which brings me to our next one. The BIGGEST job.
We want to clean out our garage!! Like a BIG purge! Some of that stuff has been packed since we left Radisson about 3.5 years ago, and we haven’t missed it. Its tricky, because lots of that stuff does have a purpose. Some of it belongs in a shed, some of it belongs in the finished basement, and some of it belongs upstairs once the tv area has moved downstairs. So there is a lot that needs keeping, but a LOT that we could get rid of. I’m hoping to gut that place in the weeks leading up to garage sale day and sell a TON. But first, I hope to empty out ALL our toy boxes that our children have forgotten about, and offer toys out to our close friends and family who want to come peruse. Then, we’ve given what we can, sold what we can, and will happily donate the rest. I can’t wait!!!
We need to buy/build a toy box for our deck to hold the bubbles, pails, trucks, etc. We previous had just a big rubbermaid tub that was destroyed in the hail storm last summer, so we could just buy another one of those, but if we could, we’d rather have something that looked nicer and maybe could double as a bench. We’ll see!
Weeds! Oy. Our poor yard. Its clear that we’re still a little ways off from getting grass, which is fine, except our lot is loaded down with weeds! It looks a mess, we know this, and we don’t want to be the eyesore of the street. I’m hoping we can mow them down or even dig a bunch of them out, and have our property look just that much better soon! One day we’ll have grass. Maybe next year.
Speaking of how our property is coming along, a concrete driveway is still a good ways off as well. We could use a load of gravel added to what we currently have, as our bus is heavy and our driveway sinks every year when the thaw happens. It wouldn’t be a big deal, except our bus is so tall, and the bump driving into our garage brings is dangerously close to scraping the roof. We need to order a load of gravel.
We had some deck chairs gifted to us that need a bit of reinforcing. That’ll be a quick one.
We need to waterproof the underside of our deck. We want it to last as long as possible, so as with the deck at our last house, we treat the wood elements with a waterproofing spray every year. We tried to buy the stuff for it just the other day, but being the season it is, the kind we buy was completely sold out. We’ll have to keep our eyes open! When we find it, we’ll buy enough for my moms deck as well.
Lastly, I want to buy some flowers for the pot on our entrance steps 🙂 Thats a simple one, but hopefully a really pretty one!
Thats all I have on our list this year! There’s lots more I’d LOVE to add, planting a garden being a BIG one. But that will come eventually 🙂 For now, we’ll work with what we’ve got, which is a lot!
After taking Laela to a birthday party yesterday, we spent the evening all together with my mom. It was SO nice. Remember what I said about Dekker wanting to read recipe books? He was insistent that he wanted to show my mom his recipe book.
It was adorable.
After supper and bedtime, I ran to the nearby Coop grocery store to restock a few of our staple items. For a family our size, our staples included four 4L jugs of milk, three 2L jugs of almond milk, three bundles of bananas (would’ve been more but they were ALL bright yellow) and two bags of apples. If you’re localish and you occasionally shop at Coop, did you guys know the milk is cheaper on the bottom shelf?? Its a different brand but still standard dairy milk! Check it out! Its literally the same price as Costco! I’m very excited to have discovered that.
However, when I went into my van to look for my green bins to keep my groceries from flying around, I found our stroller instead. We had put it in the back in preparation for the lake and had clearly forgotten to take it out. So I got creative.
They’re all belted in, if you can’t tell. I think I’m very funny, anyway. Oh, and don’t judge the dirty floor.
I spent this morning with Cher. We went out for breakfast and then she showed me around the university. I saw her classrooms and some of her usual places. Her Tims, her library, etc.
Plus I revisited a few places where Brady and I had wedding pictures taken way back in the day! Was fun to wander around campus, and see what was new and what wasn’t. I liked it.
Brady did some work on the deck while I was gone.
Cher bought Brady and I iced coffee, and we had a quick visit before she headed home for the day. Dekker is now home from school, Wavy is napping, and everyone else is up. I’m going to go join the crew riiiiiiiight…
I’ve been catching glimpse of what Dekker might be like when he’s older, and I’m truly loving it.
On Saturday, Breakfast Man (aka Brady) opted to make a batch of baked oatmeal for the morning. It went over well, as you’d expect. Dekker loved it more than anyone else. His serving was gone in seconds. He told Brady he wanted the recipe for himself. Brady held up the recipe book he had used so he knew where to find it. But that wasn’t enough.
After breakfast, Dekker went and found the recipe book for himself, found the right page, and copied it onto a page. So he had his own. I thought that was the sweetest. He brought it to show me afterwards and while I was looking it over, he said to me “I’m SO excited to make this for my kids!”
Guys. My heart!!
** I always feel the need to clarify that I do NOT teach my children that they have to have kids. Definitely not! That being said, at least Dekker and Laela both have expressed that they really hope to have a spouse and children. Its fun to look forward to that together 🙂 **
Dekker spent a big chunk of yesterday looking through a recipe book he had brought home in grade one, speculating about what would be yummy and what we should try to make. He would comment which meals they would suit, and always pointed out which ones had dairy in them, for Rowan’s sake. He was SO on the ball. And he is again today, perusing that book, wondering if “The Best Waffles” are actually better than our waffles, or if our cookie dough isn’t safe in comparison to the stuff that has “edible” in the title.
Dekker is an old soul, and I love that about him. I remember someone once telling me they were an old soul, and I wasn’t. I felt put down and at a disadvantage. I don’t think that was their goal, and I’ve realized since that its not bad to have different personalities. But I am very happy to have the opportunity to raise such a soul as Dekker’s, and while we’re different people, I’m positive God will equip me with all the tools I need to do him justice. These conversations with him about wanting to care for people have me thinking more about how I can teach him about these things. I’m excited to see where we end up.
Don’t tell the kids. But we were going to go to Waskesiu today. But we didn’t.
I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed. It was a pretty discouraging decision :/ But we’re just not well enough. Brady is still sick, and so is Wavy. Wavy had an awful night. Like, newborn night status. It was rough. When she has a rough night, no one sleeps as deep, which means all the kids tend to be in worse shape. We didn’t want our first trip to Waskesiu to be a short-lived, tear-filled, regretful experience. So we called it this time.
Hopefully next weekend! But again, don’t tell the kids.
We’re making the best of it here at home! The kids have been playing outside, and Brady is working on his van out there with them. I duck out once in a while, but I’ve been enjoying some quiet inside. I’m exploring a new craft that I’m SO excited about, so I’m puttering with that while I watch some YouTube and listen for Miss Wavy, who slept all morning. In fact she woke up just in time for lunch.
Me and the girlies!
Kids are rocking some pb&j for lunch, and I’m looking forward to leftover tacos once nap time has kicked off. And hopefully an afternoon that is basically a do-over of the morning! Lots of playing outside, and lots of happy kids.
