Our new hire, Productive Hailey, is still floating around on a part-time basis, checking things off the list of to-dos. She took the trees down from above the cabinets, even though they usually stay up all winter. Productive Hailey is a go-getter, apparently.
After that, she also finally took down the paper chains from Brady’s chemo party last year, and the Happy Birthday sign from Jaxon’s birthday in November. I want it cleaned up in here. And conveniently, Productive Hailey takes coffee for payment! My counselling appointment for this afternoon was rescheduled, so that leaves even more time for some healthy balance between rest and readiness.
Readiness for….. 🤷🏼♀️ Who the heck knows.
I tend to hire Productive Hailey on and off, but only part time. Honestly, she’s more of a casual worker. She’s a temp. There it is. A temp. I hire her usually in January. I hire her when my anxiety is high, or I’m more worried than usual. I hire her when there are big changes, such as with Brady’s health, or maybe the house.
This time around, Productive Hailey is mostly on the clock because of the impending month ahead, and I don’t want to struggle harder than necessary. Regarding the food prep, anyway. I also have a LOT of house stuff on my mind. Ask anyone who is close to me. If moving starts to actually feel possible, or close, or even this year, I want to be purging and cleaning and ready to sell this house at a moments notice! So I think the tidying and purging comes from that. Aaaaand all the underlying weight we carry off of the blog.
Today holds actually packing up the trees that came down, as well as chopping up a bunch of veggies for the week, making pizza buns, and doing laundry. And someday soon, I need to gut my big freezer. So. Many. Empty. Boxes. Its such a mess. Aaaaanyway.
Good thing we have Productive Hailey on payroll.
And her cute sidekick, Ready for Whatever Wavy!
Though, let’s be real. While I’ve been blogging, Productive Hailey doesn’t done a single thing. Slacker.
This Christmas, our tree ornaments were SO awesome. Very few Christmas balls were on the tree that didn’t have some kind of crafty component. Brady expressed how excited he is for the day that ALL of our ornaments are special, either bought from special places, made by special people, or carrying special associations. I feel exactly the same way. And today, as I take some of our decorations down, I am really enjoying see them all for myself. When everyone decorates the tree together, the kids are excited to hang the ornaments they made, and therefore, I don’t necessarily see them all. Then we have some sneaky kids who brought home ornaments they made at school and just hung them up without really telling anyone. There were a few surprised on the tree that I almost missed! I even found one that one of Solly’s friends made for him. It was all just SO cute.
ALL the popsicle stick snowmen.
ALL the trees and wreaths made out of puzzle pieces.
ALL the salt dough shapes.
ALL the handprint Christmas balls.
ALL the paper. My goodness. I don’t know about you, but I subtly chuck all the paper stuff at the end of the season. I always get new the next time, lol!
And ALL the candy cane reindeer. You know what I’m talking about. Anyone else?
Someone sneaky has been eating my reindeer…
I love Christmas, but its feeling cluttered in here, and I’m ready for that to be done now.
Ornaments are down. ✅ Trinkety decor is down. ✅
Gotta lunch Waverly, and then see what I’m jazzed about next. I might keep going. Take down the lights from the tree, or the railings, or above the cabinets. Or take down the trees from above the cabinets. Or I might rest. I’m not sure.
Its going to get worse before it gets better, but at least its started!
As is part of my need to prepare for 🤷🏼♀️ who even knows, I’m eager to also take down Christmas. I usually drag that out pretty long. Especially last year. Putting Christmas up last year was just brutally difficult, and it only happened right before the actual holiday. And then it stayed up forever. This year, I just want it down. It feels like a huge job, but I’d prefer to do it sooner rather than later, just in case February is indeed really hard, and I don’t have the headspace for it until March.
Thats on the list this week. Once Brady is back at work, I can get the boxes down out of the garage a bit more easily, and start putting things away. I need to be better at doing jobs that won’t necessarily get done at once, and letting them stretch out a little. I really hate those big tasks. I hate having the mess for days. But if I wait for the weekend, and then I am so pooped, then it waits another whole week. So I have to get to it this week. Its just necessary. I feel SO much better when things are organized in my head and my house.
There are a good handful of things to accomplish this week, but I’m hopeful that I will get it all done 🙂 I will feel better during the days, and I will sleep better at night.
Enjoy your Sunday, friends! 💜 Do you have your Christmas stuff down already? It feels early, but maybe we’re late…
I’m feeling preppy these days. Not the standard preppy, but like, preparationy. You get it.
I feel very much the same as I did two years ago. Its so bizarre. Two years ago, we didn’t even know Brady had a tumour. We didn’t know he would have surgery. We didn’t know he would live at the hospital for nine weeks. But instinct told me to prepare. And while nothing could have prepared us for what was to come, I did everything I could to quash that feeling. In my case, this mostly meant meal prepping.
I don’t know if its just the new year or if its straight up body memory preparing for the month ahead. February is a hard month. Its a full month, and it was a really traumatizing month two years ago.
Anyway. I’m feeling the need to prep some of the hard things ahead of time. And one of my biggest frustrations is packing lunches. It may in fact be the death of me. So I’m feeling eager to get things in order for that. So I’ve been getting into the swing of grab and go lunches, starting with granola bars that the kids love and that freeze well. Wavy is a very cute kitchen helper, which makes things easier.
Next will be the mini pizza buns and cheese buns. Hopefully I can do muffins too. I need to grab a few more boxes of cheese strings, and I’ll maintain fresh stuff as always. I should get some boost for me, also. But I’m on my way to having at least one small thing prepared.
This seems small, but I’m trying to go with my gut, and my gut says to prepare. So I’m gonna.
Aaaaand if anyone else has any cool ideas of lunch things that I can make a mountain of in advance just to make my life easier, they would be greatly appreciated! 💜
Behold 🙌 The smallest, least significant kid updates known to man!
Dekker looks like a teenager these days. Still soft and young but also just so grown up. He is a kindergarten helper again, and he LOVES it. He loves that they all want to wrestle with him and chase him around. I really love his face when I get to see the whole thing 💜 He has great dots. And great eyebrows. And huge eyes. And his skin is still crazy soft.
The girlies are terribly cute. They fight more than ever these days, specifically once they’re both in bed. But the morning is fresh, and it shows 💜 Waverly will unceremoniously flip the lights on, come dive onto Laela, steal her stuffed bunny, Chester, and lay on her. And Laela doesn’t flinch beyond a “Good morning, Wavy.” She just hacks it! Wavy likes to harass her, and Laela takes it like a champ. A very tolerant big sister. In the morning. Lol! They have good love no matter what 💜
The middle boys are doing really, really well these days. Solly has had an awesome shift this school year, but even since Christmas, he is different. He is more awake. Brighter. He reads and tries to write words as they sound. He comprehends better and seems to listen better. He makes jokes and can take them, as well. Its wonderful.
Meanwhile, Rowan is a whole different boy. I want to talk more about that soon. This morning, he dropped a bowl in the kitchen, and it broke. And he cried. He didn’t scream or panic, but he cried. I hugged him. He apologized. I reassured him over and over, but he was reeling. So I told him I forgave him. He grabbed my face and smooched me, and we moved on. Not long ago, that would have destroyed him, and his entire morning. And frankly, everyone else’s morning. But he was able to be soft, and sort his emotions out rather than just being angry. He is entirely different. Its hard to do a Reader’s Digest edition on Rowan. He needs more. But we’ll do that soon.
We had a pretty peaceful morning, save for the one snag with the bowl. The kids got the garbage out on their way to school. It is SO full from Christmas catch-up. SO heavy. I liked the teamwork though 💜
I sure love these kids. Thank you, Lord, for making me their mom.
It’s been a while since we talked about our housing situation out loud. When we first broached the subject publicly, it was actually very freeing and relieving. While I was worried that people would think we were just looking to milk Brady’s paraplegia for an upgraded home, your feedback left us feeling validated and understood.
There are many reasons why our house is not a sustainable home for Brady. I know many of you will remember most of them, but I’ll do a very speedy recap.
We have three staircases. A small entrance. Our bedroom is the highest point in the house. Brady can hardly enter our main floor bathroom. All door frames and entrances are too narrow for him to actually wheel through without beating up his knuckles. He cannot reach the microwave without standing. He cannot get into the pantry. Laundry is downstairs. The breaker box is downstairs. Much of our food is stored in the garage or the basement. The stairs off the deck are too tall to get Brady into the backyard safely that way, but going around is a very long route. Brady cannot answer his front door himself.
All of these things can be managed. For now. But likely not forever. And waiting until he cannot actually live his life well is not the ideal. We are really hopeful to be in a different housing situation before we reach that point.
The last time we investigated housing, we didn’t have an income. Understandably, we were a big risk. We tried every avenue possible, but it just wasn’t going to happen. And we understood. We thanked the Lord that Brady was still strong enough to get around in our house, and waited. Since then, Brady has picked up a full time job that he truly loves. Another very clear gift from God! He went from part time to full time to a salaried employee. Our first salary situation! With that guaranteed number, we took to the internet for mortgage calculators!
And YIKES. It looked awfully hopeless! We have a good chunk of projected equity in our home currently, and even throwing ALL of that at a new home, the calculators were approving us for about 250K. Which, if you know the market, you know is nothing. I won’t go into all of our financial information on here, obviously, but while our numbers aren’t perfect, they certainly are better than it seemed the internet believed! So we went to our broker.
I can tell you she gave us a LOT more hope! We were quickly pre-approved for a much higher number than the internet had suggested.
So. Some of the details.
Firstly, we pretty much cannot get a builders mortgage. Those are harder to get in general, so while it may be possible, it would be really really hard and probably cost a lot more up front than we are willing to fork over. We could buy a house that already exists, which is definitely something we would happily consider if anything that suited came on the market. And we have yet to find such a home. There are a lot of bi-levels and two storeys! So we are ideally looking at building a home through a builder like last time, where we would give them a deposit, and then they would carry the mortgage through the build, and we would take it on upon completion.
Fun fact about building houses these days! The cost of materials is SO MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE than it was when we built our current home.
You may have heard mortgages are a lot different these days, and a lot harder to get. So there are loopholes. The biggest one beiiiiing…
We would have to sell our house BEFORE we could begin our build.
😅
So that would be a hurdle to jump/plow through before we could really lock anything in place.
Which will, ironically, leave us displaced!
With five kids.
And a wheelchair.
Could be verrrrry interesting! *finger tenting*
Even with this detail glaring us in the face, and some decent odds stacked against us, I’ll admit, Brady and I are feeling more hopeful, and like this build is inevitable down the road. How soon, we don’t know, but it feels more possible.
We are actually allowing ourselves to talk about it. To think about it. To dream about it! I have began a list of details that are important to change about the next house. Doorways widened, with clear swing hinges. Flooring that won’t warp. Recessed cabinets under countertops so Brady can get closer. Backing for future grab bars and railings down the road. Higher outlets. A shower that isn’t hard to step into. A wall oven with side swing door. Fewer stairs. Main floor laundry. Main floor freezer. A larger pantry that Brady can roll into. A mud room for the wheelchair to drip off its water and muck. A second main floor bathroom, offering some security. The entire property being landscaped to flow smoothly, barrier free, from the front walk, through the garage, into the house, and out into the backyard. A front door that is accessible to all 💜 These are just a few of the things on my list.
The goal to build our absolute forever home is on. God knows what we need, and He always takes care of us. We trust it will come together when its meant to! In the meantime, if you have some great idea of where we could lurk during a home build, please throw ALL your ideas at me! I’m confident things are going to have to get creative to make it all happen!
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 💜
