With the weather being SO back and forth between blizzards and blazing sun, it seems we’ve mixed up our smallest crew member. And the result is VERY cute.
Todays outfit includes a tank top watermelon dress, fleece lined Christmas leggings, a hoodie, and bare feet.
This girl has quite a style in general, and she LOVES to change her outfit multiple times a day. I know many others have kids who do that, but she is our first. She has recently discovered a basket of headbands that lives in her closet, so she has aaaaall the options to accessorize, hahaha! On any given day, she’ll have a pullover sweater over a dress, thick winter socks, sunglasses, and whatever else she can get her hands on.
She brings a lot of laughter these days 💜 I’m very grateful for her free spirit.
Every once in a while, you get what I call a pic dump here on the blog. It tends to be just a handful of things that didn’t really warrant their own post, but are still cute, and still things I’d like to share! Unfortunately I don’t have recent pictures of ALL the kids to share in this one, but I have most of them. I promise I love them all equally!
So we begin.
First off, I’ll show you Brady after he vacuumed his hair before coming into the house after he was working on the lathe. Ya. I’m not kidding. He took a shop vac to his hair. He looks a little insane, but also, look at how that bright grey tuft of hair in the front has all become ONE CURL! Cool hey?!
He’s been sprouting greys for a good few years now, but that grey streak only showed up when his back and legs started to act up. Crazy what a tumour can do! (Feels important to note that I accidentally typed the word “humour” instead of tumour.”)
Miss Laela and I have grown SO CLOSE over the last year. She has always been nurturing and warm, and just itches to help and work and be responsible for things. I regularly pray over her that she can remain young for as long as possible, because she is just desperate to be grown up 💜 My dear Laela. If I ever seem at all distressed or tired, she will come intentionally to lay a hand or face on me, and reassure me.
She is really really soft.
My kids were really fortunate to get to spend quality time with their grandmas this weekend!
They spent a whole day across the street. Grandma Rae took this pic of Wavy helping plant her starters 💜 There was some good bonding to be had over that bowl of dirt.
And then Sunday, we had the pleasure of having my mom over ALL day!! Stories and cards were out all the live long day!
Today, Laela has taken the time to make name signs for every single bedroom door in our house, and then she put up a sign in our dining room. She said she just picked a verse from the bible at random to add to the sign. I think she did pretty well 💜
We all ate a big lunch, and now comes quiet time. Our cold is over, but my voice doesn’t feel 100% so I’m getting a cup of tea and heading to my crocheting. I always want to love tea. Its so pretty and smells so good, but I just cant get into it. I hope this doesn’t end my friendship with the Kennedys 😬 You guys good? I have to say, though, Costco got in Cold 911 from Davids Tea, and it really hits the spot for me. My kids have coined the name “sickness tea.” Lol!
Stay well, friends. The school week starts again tomorrow, but its absolutely beautiful out today!! Soak it up!
Thank you so much, friends, for celebrating Telemiracle with us this year! I know some of you saw our story played out on the air a couple of different times, and many of you tuned in for our quick little live visit. It was really, really fun for us, as a family, to be part of it!
For those who missed it and asked for a recording, we don’t have one! Hahaha! Sorryyyyy! When the final video is posted, we’ll look for our timestamp and share it with you 🙂
We are so proud to say that Kinsmen Telemiracle pulled in over 8 MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!
This is the BIGGEST total they’ve ever seen, and we are SO happy for them, and ALL of the people they will help in this coming year. If not for these donations, we would not have all that we have. The Batec is an incredible thing, but Kinsmen also funded Brady’s wheelchair! We needed that, and would not have it without the generous donors that put into the charity.
So thank you, friends and family, who followed along, prayed, supported, or donated. We are so fortunate to be connected to so many beautiful people 💜
The kids weren’t around these parts today, so Brady and I had the place to ourselves! We could see the kids hard at work…
So we did the same!
First, coffee. Then work.
Brady was out in the garage almost all day. He is putting together an inventory of items, so his work was a bit repetitive, though gratifying. In the afternoon, we discovered he needed a different item to continue his work, so he drove to Martensville to locate the material, plus a couple burgers to make for a quick lunch and back to work!
By the time he got home, we were both feeling like the clock was already ticking, so I grabbed one burger and left him in the garage to eat it while he worked. Meanwhile I went back upstairs to my crocheting haven. You guys really left me feeling confident and encouraged after yesterday’s post about the blankets. Thank you 💜 It means a lot to me to have so many of you in my corner.
Cher came and joined our quiet house for the afternoon and evening in order to get some schoolwork done.
All three of us worked in our respective locations and got lots done 💜 All three of us felt pretty productive, I think!
Grilled cheese sandwiches and clam chowder have filled my belly up to the brim. What a lovely way to wrap up the evening! I hope your supper was equally as delicious as mine!
Lastly, if you’re at all interested, its Telemiracle weekend!! I admit that I don’t have real tv and have NO clue how or where to watch it, but you can tune in right to the Telemiracle website and watch the livestream 🙂 We’ll be on LIVE tomorrow, early afternoon! Yikes yikes yikes. Who doesn’t want to go on live tv with five children during naptime??
I haven’t talked crocheting in a while. Here’s why. I got this AWESOME order for baskets a while back, and the longer it takes for me to get them out, the more embarrassed I’ve felt. They’ve been crocheted for a while already, but I’ve been working to acquire some little extras, like leather tags, rivets, etc. We’ve tried a few things that have failed, and its taken some time to get our ducks in a row. Meanwhile, a couple baskets were different from my usual, so they took extra figuring and need some additional reinforcement. So there’s been some waiting on that homefront, too, to figure out the best options and what will finally work. The official FINAL missing piece of these things will be walking through our door this evening, and ALL baskets will be ready for either delivery or mail by tomorrow! Thank you to those who have paid in advance!! 💜 That REALLY helped me get things going!
With ALL of that going on, I have still been working on other projects, and I’d love to show you, finally!
First, I made this baby blanket for a friend of ours!
They had a baby boy recently, and I’d been itching to try out this honeycomb type of design for a while now. It gave me a good excuse to go buy this beautiful dusty blue yarn that I’ve had my eye on, as well! Its not your traditional baby blue. Its called “ice blue” and I really, really like it. I think the blanket turned out really well! Just waiting to actually drop it off, which takes a lot longer when a baby is involved and our household has a cold. Sigh.
Second of all, I want to show you what I’m MOST excited about!!! Eek!
I present…
I started this blanket earlier in the year, and its been on hold as Michaels sold out of the yarn I needed and it just wasn’t getting restocked!! Ack! This pattern ate up more yarn than I anticipated, so I was ill prepared, and I got really nervous I was going to be stuck pulling it out and making the whole thing narrower, or just somehow having to jimmy rig it back into a blanket that was a reasonable size. But thank goodness, Michaels came to the rescue, with the same dye lot of yarn and everything!
This blanket was unavoidable when I saw that beautiful creamsicle coloured yarn! I made the pattern up, and I actually hope to write it out and officially produce it as my first ever original pattern! I feel really excited about this 🙂 I hope you can be excited with me!
Did any of you finish any cool projects this week? Care to share with the class?
A lesser known fact about Dekker is that he absolutely cannot sit still. I don’t even mean that he’s always hyper or rowdy, but in general, he just has ants in his pants. When given the opportunity at school, he always opted for a standing desk. He can hardly sit at the table without gradually moving into a squat on his chair. He just wiggles and wiggles.
Back in winter, I took some pictures to document it. It is the most prominent when he reads. Its like he can’t find a comfy spot. I assure you NONE of these poses were coached by me. He is either unaware of me taking his picture, or I walked in on him in these positions.
Some are much more common than others, but things like sitting upside down on the chair was not a one time thing. He just does it. I don’t know why, but I am not mad at it in the slightest. I think he’s adorable.
Its not for show or for attention. If I poke fun at him, he’ll definitely smirk and giggle back, but he immediately dips back to his book and is instantly lost back in dreamland, completely oblivious to the world around him.
I love that he is such a reader. Never saw it coming.
First, a couple of you asked for the chicken spaghetti recipe! The actual link that I started with is here, but I’ve changed it. Here is how I make it.
I fry up hunks of chicken breasts. Fewer than you’d think you need. I use four.
I mix up one can of cream of chicken coup, one can cream of mushroom soup, and two big cans of tomatoes in a bowl with a giant blob (about a cup-ish) of sour cream. You don’t NEED the sour cream, but its better with it. If you don’t have it, I’d eliminate one tin of tomatoes, because its too watery without the cream.
Boil up a bunch of noodle. Yes, a bunch. A handful? Half a bag? I don’t know what to tell you. A normal amount that you would normally make. What I can tell you is, for some reason, this is better with long noodles, and weird with things like rotini or shells. Its not just my opinion. Its the facts. Go spaghetti or vermicelli. Something like that.
Mix it all together and put in a GREASED pan. Foil wrap it and bake it for about 45 on 350. When its bubbly, lose the foil, add cheese, and let ‘er melt. And you’re done!
I always try to serve it in pieces and its always comes out sloppy and messy, but it tastes great. You’re welcome.
Thing two!
I thought this was pretty cute. Solly hadn’t been to school in a while and brought home some Piggy and Gerald books for everyone to read. They are pretty young books but the kids LOVE them. Brady does a great Piggy and Gerald.
Solly also came home with this.
The spelling of his name is just SO cute. He’s terribly sweet, this boy. He and his penguin both have giant eyes, hahaha!
Last thing is a Facebook memory I couldn’t resist sharing 🙂
Little baby Rowan 💜
I would say that Rowan looks the least like his baby pictures of all of the kids, but his little features are just SO beautiful, and SO himself. His lips! His little nose! And ALL that hair!! I love his little old man wrinkles too. Goodness. He was SUCH a sweet little baby 💜
I hope you enjoyed this SUPER low stress, light on the information post! Have a great rest of your day, friends!
I made one of our favorite suppers the other day. Our baked chicken spaghetti. It is loved by almost all. Some kids don’t prefer certain parts of it, but I assure you, everyone lives and no one goes hungry.
I had the plan to make a whole post about my recipe, because its completely delicious and easy, which are two key factors in what I cook/bake/prepare/do in the kitchen. As soon as I took pictures, though, I started to think I already blogged about this before… and I couldn’t be sure. The search I ran didn’t result in any posts, but I still feel like maybe I did 🤔
Sooooo I didn’t make a recipe post. I made the spaghetti over two days, because I got lazy on the first day. I fried up the chicken and mixed the whole sauce together, and then the next day I boiled the noodles and baked it all up. The end.
Aaaaand all I’m left with is this pictures of raw chicken being fried, because that is step one.
Forgive me, because now you won’t be able to unsee it, but ALL I see looking at this are those gummy candies we all ate years ago that had that white bottom layer. Like, the big whales. You know that thick white layer I’m talkjing about. Ya. Thats all I see. Can you imagine these as candies? Ran chicken breast gummies? Gag me. You’re welcome.
Anyway. I don’t want to post stuff twice. But if you want a killer baked chicken spaghetti recipe that isn’t tomato sauce heavy, I’m your girl!
Cher and I closed off February – a very heavy month – with an outing to some happy places for happy errands, and just some general perusing.
We hit Dollarama for some summer stuff, as well as a craft thing or two that I was really needing to finish a project.
We hit Cabelas, just to listen to the waterfall, look at the outdoorsy stuff, and feel like we were at the lake. It was really really relaxing.
We hit Walmart for yarn, as we do.
We hit Michaels for rivets.
On the way to our next house, we saw our bus!!! Hahahaha! Have you seen our bus?
“Just like Brady.” We laugh EVERY time.
You have now! It was a good giggle.
Then we hit up *gasp* a greenhouse!!! That actually had PLANTS! OUTSIDE!!!
It was SO refreshing and light walking around the plants, seeing summery things. It was bizarre being in a green house in a parka, but I wasn’t put off AT ALL. Just walking through there felt restful and healing somehow.
We hit up Lawson Mall shortly thereafter for some food court asian, which is pretty much always delicious! I don’t know what it is about it, but it rarely ever disappoints. Naturally, on the way there, we found our faces again 😆
Its pretty funny, I’ve gotta say. The Telemiracle people definitely told us we’d see our faces somewhere or other. They said posters or pamphlets. We did NOT expect to be the face of Telemiracle here in Saskatoon. Its so crazy!
Cher and I grabbed some gas, filled up with coffee, and headed on home. It was a REALLY nice way to break up the day for both of us 💜 Definitely a nice break from home, and it didn’t hurt that the weather was nice today, too!
Now, we’re both back at our respective homes. She has school to do. I have a couple of things to try and work out. I am literal moments away from getting these baskets out the door. I hope I can tell you all about this order really soon. I know there’s been a holdup. It will not always take quite this long to get things out the door. I hope its worth the wait. We’ll know soon!
I woke up to a gross face. You know what I mean. When there are colds in your house, and you’re already hyper aware about getting sick, and then the weather changes and your mouth is so gross and smutchy and dehydrated and gross some more? I know, I’m really selling it. Well. We’re there.
As I lay here at 5am, my mind is wandering.
I wonder if we’ll be given next steps when bradys chemo is over.
I wonder when we last traded the sheets out on our bed. They are so wrinkled underneath my body.
I wonder if my most recent, very off putting dream will come true. I really hope not. Though I hope I have as many kids as I saw in my dream.
I’m continually drinking water from the Bethany cup that lives beside my bed. No dice. Still smutchy.
This is the absolute only time I ever notice the smoke alarm in our bedroom lightly blinks. Huh.
Brady is sleeping peacefully. I know he’ll tell me I should’ve woken him so I wouldn’t be awake alone, but he’s had enough choppy night recently, so I will be more than fine.
I’m working hard to keep my brain at bay. I know I’m not supposed to use my phone when I’m trying to sleep but it’s been over an hour now and I choose distracted wakeful time over anxious idle time.
