I cannot promise this blog will go up today. It’s still early, but it’s really acting up today. Loading about half the time. Differently on different devices. Then the “new post” page will load but not the dashboard. Yesterday, I had to go down a ridiculous rabbit hole just to add one picture. I don’t know, guys. Sometimes I am SO frustrated with this thing. Let’s see if it works today.
Aaaaanyway. I’m a little annoyed, and I have a lot to talk about, but I don’t want to put a mountain of work into a post that won’t be visible to anyone. Feels risky. So let’s see if this one works, and I’ll work on tomorrow’s post on a Pages document today.
I don’t know if its a big family thing or just a thing, but we have a pretty rough case of disappearing cutlery around here. We have for years.
I’m confident part of it is psychological, and not actually happening. As the kids have aged, we’ve given up on plastic ikea dishes altogether, and all the kids use the real cutlery now. So there is just generally less in the drawer. This makes sense. But also, it just goes missing. I have definitely found a lot on the top of the garbage bin after kids unpack their lunches. Under the picnic table at camp. I saw some go down heating vents back in the day. I don’t know where the rest of it goes. It just goes.
I recently was given my grandmothers cutlery set, and I was so excited! More cutlery!!!!
I was thinking I could split it up a bit between home and camp, and we would have no shortage!!
But man. Washing it up, it was really cool to have my grandmas cutlery. It may seem super standard or old fashioned, but it is very much my grandparents. Very much their home. Very memorable. There is no way this stuff is going to camp.
So right now, it all lives at home in our beautifully full cutlery drawer. It’ll get sorted out, and our worst, weakest stuff will come to camp with us. And grandma’s stuff will live here 💜 And I’m really happy about that.
After more than two weeks off, the kids headed back to school today! Most of them were a little grumbly about it, which I can understand, but once they were up, they were good to go! They had energy, they were in good moods, and they got right into the routine of things. Breakfast, getting dressed and brushed, backpacks, dishes done, etc.
Dekker wanted to stay in bed. Rowan wanted to stay at home. Solly wanted to stay in jammies. All different angles of the same desire, really.
Meanwhile, Laela is dressed in all her brightest colors, scratching at the door to get to school.
This is a pretty common dynamic over here, lol!
I’m grateful, though, that my kids are all excited to see their friends! Whether they agree or not, its going to be really good for them to get out of the house, see some different people, get some time away from one another, and burn off different energy.
As for the rest of us girlies, Waverly and I are at home today! She is reading while I blog. Music is going. The sun is still coming up. We’ll get into some work eventually, but not just yet. After a very productive last week or so, I’m happy to enjoy some peace and put my feet up.
Happy Monday, friends! Whether today feels like kicking off a new thing or not, I hope its a beautiful day 💜
We had yet another work day yesterday, though not a crazy one. The kids worked on their closets, and ran around, helping out with errands here and there. Running things to different levels of the house or out to the garage. Got skates worked out for back to school. Got some papers filed. Got some purging done, tidying done, cleaning done, and laundry done. It was busy and full and productive.
Dekker’s closet has always been a tough one to manage. It is FULL of his stuff. Most of our kids stuff migrates to the basement shelves for everyone to use, but Dekker has some more fragile things that he is afraid the young ones will break. I can trust him a bit more in certain areas than the other kids, so he has a bit more of his own things tucked away in his room. Which is no problem until I go down there once in a while and see what a wreck his space is. So yesterday, he went ham, and really got things going!!
For several hours in the day, he was downstairs, making trips up and down, bringing stuff out to our garbage or recycling bins. Adding his books to the bookshelves. Passing shirts off to Rowan. He just worked. Happily!! It was awesome!
At one point, he brought up some school stuff from the year before and asked if it was ok with me if he recycled it. My general feeling is that if he’s not attached to it, neither am I, because believe me when I say we have enough paper saved. But I could see what he was holding was a booklet of papers that had never even been opened. The corner wasn’t even folded. Apparently it came home one day last year and he just chucked it in his closet and moved on. I asked him what it was. Poetry, he said. Original poetry. So I asked him to leave it on the island for me to read first, but then we could probably recycle it.
There is no way that bundle went into recycling. It is SO funny. And he is good at poetry!!
This one was my favorite for sure.
He is such a goof, and so weirdly quiet about sharing this stuff. Writing is not his jam. Except on the days when it absolutely is, and he gets really into it.
It is just SO fun watching the kids grow and change and become themselves and find their things. This was a fun window into Dekker that I knew some of you might appreciate as well 💜
I don’t know about your kids, but ours are absolutely ready to go back to school. They don’t think so, but I know so. Its getting really scrappy up in here, and its time for them to get a bit more space from one another. They do spread out around the house and do their own thing, but they tend to get possessive of that space, then, and SO much arguing stems from that.
Don’t watch me play lego.
Don’t read beside me.
I need to sit on both of these chairs.
🙄
It kind of just never ends. So sometimes, we ask them all to go outside! But it hasn’t been exactly balmy on those days, and they end in a TON of tears.
Aaaaanyway. Yesterday, I planned to stop by my moms briefly around supper time, and rather than waiting for Brady to get home and then run out, I made the kids walk with me! My mom is a little under the weather, so I gave the kids the heads up that they’d be playing in the backyard while I dropped in on grandma, and they accepted it pretty easily 🙂
The walk was really cute.
Dekker even got super silly! And super strong!!
It was all good until Solly walked straight into a car mirror. He was sad.
Its possible I laughed a little, but I hugged him and he rallied! Didn’t even leave a mark on either party!
The walk back was even smoother, though much colder.
It was really nice to be out and about. I wish Brady’s batec was better in snow, and we could more easily go for walks!
THIS!!! is the dream right here!! On sand or snow, Brady would be GOLDEN with this attachment!!!
Maybe someday! We are incredibly grateful for everything we have!
The work around here is still far from done, but I made a LOT of progress yesterday!
I didn’t have the nerve to take a before picture, but I can show you that this was ALL on the floor beside my bed 😳
I know. Impressive, right? And not in the way you want it to be. I had a lot of projects going on the last little while, and as soon as I have one project in a basket (or not in a basket) beside the bed, its hard to open up my cabinet doors to put things away properly. Most of the time, I have this space pretty under control, but it gets away from me at busy times like Christmas. Aaaaanyway. Order is restored. As restored as it ever is.
Had I told you guys I got a third yarn cabinet in fall? Part of me felt guilty about it, but the other part of me was happy to also store some books and other things in there. Plus – bonus! These are SO beautiful, and if I ever don’t use them for yarn, they will fit beautifully just about anywhere in our home! They are not oversized or bulky, and they don’t take up crazy amounts of space. They’re beautiful, and I am SO fortunate to have them!
Still work to do, but the big stuff is done, and I am giving myself some grace today 🙂 I still have hopes and intentions, but they are lower pressure and can be done anytime. I’ve been SO spent at the end of these last few days, I hope today I can do a little bit more resting.
Yesterday was a really full day of getting things done! You may remember my frustration about the SaskTel guy coming “sometime today” and the not knowing when or what he needed. We wanted a wifi extender put in on the upper level of the house so we’d get better wifi in our living room as well as in our room above the garage. As I was madly cleaning our room in case the repairman needed to come into our room to hardwire it into our jack upstairs. I tidied all around that area first, and I took out all the garbage before Brady let me know he had called SaskTel and confirmed it didn’t need to be hardwired. What a relief! I abandoned our room at that point, because we had a different ideal area to plug it in, and I I wanted to do a bit more tidying in the main area of the house. I didn’t get deep into that before it was time to lunch the kids.
About halfway through the kids lunch, the repair guy showed up. And lo and behold, he did need to hardwire it in. So I had the pleasure of traipsing him into our very messy bedroom that definitely looks like it was hit by a hurricane Christmas. And trust me, I know he has mostly likely seen MUCH worse, but I was bummed that I hadn’t tidied a bit more in there :/
I chatted with him about where we want our wifi better, and he made himself comfortable with all the spaces. Then he got to it, and he moved quickly. He was actually super polite and very comfortable to have around. The kids finished lunch up pretty quick, and I put the nappers down for quiet time. Thats usually my time, then, to have a bit of a rest myself, but I didn’t feel especially inclined to tuck into bed while he was in and out of our room, haha! So instead, I food prepped like a boss for school next week!
Two batches of granola bars…
And three batches of pizza/cheese buns.
I admit, I felt pretty accomplished, but I did entirely forget to eat lunch because I was so preoccupied. So I most definitely sampled the cheese buns and can confirm that they did indeed turn out. Yum!
Dekker was very invested in the pizza buns as I was making them, so he drew it. But it most definitely looked a little murdery, and we both had a good giggle over it, lol!
A little arm sever-y, don’t you think?
The day felt really full, not because it actually was, but because I’m out of practice, and I did a lot more than usual. I was absolutely spent long before it was suppertime, but we got through the day, and I actually slept through the night, which says a LOT.
Today holds more work, but again – deadline-free! I would like to work to tidy up a bit more. I’m feeling purgey. Also, there is yarn ALL over my floor that seems really daunting to me, but would be easily cleaned up in less than a half hour. I need to cut and bag the granola bars. I’d like to make more of those, actually, but I’m out of quick oats! Lol! And flaxseed. And bran. Those will have to wait. So will muffins or anything else I hoped to get in order for lunches. I have lunch goals, if you hadn’t noticed. I also want to make mini quiche in tart shells. Do any of you make those? Hit me with fun breakfast or lunch things that I can prep ahead of time! Fresh fruit is always on the list, and/or cold veggies that I can pre-chop at the beginning of the week.
This has taken a turn, so I’m going to sign off now and get to some of my work. I think a tidy room feels important today, so as long as I get to that, I’ll feel somewhat accomplished again today! That and organizing my kitchen freezer so all my lunch stuff can fit in there! Oh and cutting the bars up…
Yup. I made up a word. Unproductivity. It describes the scenario of needing to be productive when you feel so grossly unproductive. Or unmotivated, perhaps.
I have a pretty big daunting list of things I really want to get done. It will definitely take more than a day, and I’m ok with that. Yesterday, I did not get a single thing done from that list, and thats ok, because MUCH more important things came up! ZERO regrets. But today is the day to get into it!
However, we have a SaskTel guy coming at some point today. Between 8am-5pm, I’m told. In this past, that means he actually won’t come until tomorrow or the next day. But who actually knows. Having him here is our absolute last ditch effort to improve our internet before switching providers altogether. SaskTel offers higher speeds and such for comparable prices to Access, but the locals seem to like Access better, so we’ll have to see.
With the SaskTel guy hypothetically coming today, I feel a bit stagnant. Its like the stereotypical cable guy all tied up together with Murphys Law, where if I duck out at all or get into something bigger or busier, thats when the repair man shows up.
I also know that, if he comes, I need to have a couple of spaces tidied up so he can more easily move around. And both of those spaces are absolute disasters post-Christmas, one being the furnace room, where the breakers and modem are right by the mess of wrapping stuff. Also, he may have to hard wire something to a phone line, which means our bedroom, which is currently the WORST room in the house, and would be SO embarrassing to have a stranger trying to find his way around in there. I could go do a big tidy, which is the absolute top of my list, but its a bit of a situation where its going to get worse before it gets better, so if I start, and then he comes, it’ll be so much worse.
I should stop overthinking this and just get into it. The list is LONG and the days are not! 😅
Sound appealing, don’t they? 😆 I’m just kidding. They totally are.
I was very lovingly gifted a dehydrator in December! It was not part of Christmas gifts, but rather a neighbour who caught wind of my curiosity with them. She very lovingly dropped one off on my doorstep, freshly washed, with a little note and some silicone sheets she added to the bundle. What an incredible gift!!
I will admit the top reason for wanting one was to dehydrate marshmallows! Don’t ask me why. Fascination, perhaps. The upcoming hot chocolate season. Who knows. But I was so curious. So within a day or two, I was locked and loaded with a stack of mini marshmallows, and the process began.
Don’t judge me. Apparently people let their stuff touch in the dehydrator all the time, but I read not to, so I was persnickety about it this time. I kind of secretly enjoyed it, lol! Five trays later, I started the thing up!
As you can see, they didnt shrink up into lucky charm style mallows, but they puffed up even bigger and rounder!! It was an unexpected treat!
It was also a pleasant surprise that it was toasty warm when I was chilly.
I made two full batches of these things, and I can proudly say my children opted to bring these to school for their class movie parties rather than chips, hahaha! They are super delicious and really fun to eat too! The novelty definitely hasn’t worn off, and these will continue to exist in our home for a while, I’m sure!
If you like meringues but don’t care to make them, this is a solid second, according to the kids!
I am once again SO grateful for our people who want to put into our lives any way possible 💜
I don’t know what to tell you, but Dekker was SO snuggly yesterday! He loves to be hugged, but he’s gotten more forward about it and I really love that! I’ll be moving around the house, and he will stop me, and purposefully turn me to face him, and just borrow in for a hug. I will never ever turn that down!
After a very huggy day, the evening was much the same. It happened a handful of times where Dekker would forego whatever he was busy with and come ask for a hug. And the hug would linger into a nice long snuggle.
I will just never ever get tired of holding my children. Absolutely as long as they’ll let me!!
