It was fifteen years ago when a couple of young things got married.
I’m not totally sure whether that feels like ages ago, or like it was just the other day. I have had the privilege of having Brady by my side for my entire adult life, so its hard to say. What a gift he has been to me, and to our family.
There is simply no one else I would rather go through thick and thin with.
These days, there are many challenges. Different levels of learning. New territory, for sure. Few things are simple. But between you and I, there is ease and comfort. I truly am HAPPY to wake up to you every single day. Sometimes I feel guilt about how beautiful our relationship is, but I turn it around to gratefulness to God.
This year, we have the honour the share this special day with our morsel! 🥰 The first birthday we get to celebrate with one of our bonus babes!!
Today we celebrate another day of clapping, waving, high fives, crawling, babbling, squawking, drooling, and making cheese faces, not knowing how many more we’ll get to share together 💜 Brutal and beautiful all rolled into one. How we LOVE this child.
And to you, Brady, today we celebrate the tip of our iceberg 💜 I love you, dear, and I miss you. See you after work 💜 Be safe in this weather.
Can we talk a little bit more about the kitchen? And the dreams I have for it? K thanks.
So I showed you most of this yesterday, but we’re going to go into a bit more detail on a few things.
The sink is first. The sink that doesn’t plug on the one side. So the left side of this sink plugs. It also has a garburator, which is awesome! We didn’t have one in the other place, and its a really nice little feature. However, thats all this sink has to offer. The faucet is very very old, and the sink is very shallow. So in my perusing online, I found a great sink that is virtually the same size, two basins, about 3″ deeper, with a pull down faucet and a little soap guy in the corner. For a really nice price! Thanks, Costco! So we ordered it, and its sitting on the floor in the middle of the house, waiting to be installed. I hope we can transfer the garburator over. I’m sure we can. Can’t we? Regardless, that sink can’t be installed soon enough, hahaha!
You may or may not have noticed this empty patch in our cabinets. We had to take some cabinets out, and move some cabinets over, to make room for our superfridge, and the cabinet boxes weren’t exactly the same on the wall as well as the base, which is totally normal, but a bummer when you’re just trying to shift things, lol! It left us with this little empty zone. My hopes for this little space is that it’ll hold my spices and seasonings. See this kitchen has lots of cupboard space, but everything is a little on the smaller side, and most of our things (in this case, spices) are large. I don’t have a crazy variety, but what I do have is in big containers. And now that I spend a lot more time in the kitchen, I use them a lot more. The box on the counter below this little space is holding all my spices, and while its a system that works, I would just LOVE to get this box off my counter 😅 So. Shelves in here. As well as in the supply closet. And in the laundry room… I digress. Shelves.
Right beside that little space is my oven/microwave area. Now, I like this space. I raved a bit about how great my oven was yesterday, and I stand by that. It is a GREAT convection oven. I fit six big muffin pans in there at once yesterday! I still do have to shuffle them around a bit, but not too much at all. It did the BEST job on my banana bread. Like, it turned out PERFECTLY. I was THRILLED. My single beef with this oven is that its a bit narrow. While I can fit two muffin trays side by side, I can’t fit two cookie sheets side by side unless they’re the fairly small ones. Like, my smallest sized ones. And I got rid of most of those long ago for obvious reasons. So I wish that were a bit different. In my IDEAL world, I would love to ditch the microwave, and use this space up with a double wall oven 😍 Thats the dream! But in the meantime, I’m VERY grateful 💜 Don’t get me wrong, please! But. Someday. Wall oven.
There is still much to do in this place, but we are so happy to be here 💜 Our stack of projects is tall, but very few of them are BIG projects. Just a BIG list of SMALL projects, hahaha! And a handful of dreams that we’ll hem and haw over for the years to come.
I have yet to bake since moving into our new home. I baked a LOT before we moved in order to not run out too fast. And then I ran out too fast anyway, but I had lovely people in my life step in and make us some meals, as well as some baked good! With that, we’ve been able to keep up with similar foods along the way! But this morning, the kids informed me that they had finished off the end of the baking, and I knew that today needed to be the day. I had to make some big batches of things to get us back on track!
So today feels like as good a time as any to show you whats all going on with our kitchen! This is what were working with!
So while there is a decent amount of counter space, there are fewer surfaces than I’ve used to dealing with. The island is quite a bit smaller in general, plus the stovetop is sharing it as well. Note the EPIC fridges (yes, those are both fridges) and the teeny toes in the bottom left corner. Someone can (and does) get into my ziploc container drawer.
If and when we redo our kitchen, this island will be much larger.
A fun development was learning that one of our sink basins just does not plug. Nope nope nope. We even bought new ones. Nothing doing. So foolishly, I took out pumpkin to defrost it for baking, and put it in a sink of water. And then I couldn’t do dishes, because that sink doesn’t plug. Like. Not at all. It doesn’t even leak. It flows.
What I can tell you is that the oven is amazing. I had a fake convection oven in the old house, so it was basically just an oven with a fan in the back. It was better than some, but it was nothing like the real thing, which I have now 😍
So. I made about twelve dozen muffins and four banana bread loafs. With crumble!
While I can’t say these are the best items I’ve ever baked, I got LOTS done and its all going to be delicious and get us back in our groove of breakfasts and lunches! I see some flaws in what I baked, but it appears they passed the taste test!
One day, this space will be more organized. I’ll have random stuff off my counter. My island top will be bigger. But I am SO unbelievably grateful for everything I have. All the ingredients I have to make yummy things. A great oven with huge fridges. Thank you Lord for providing for us, always! 💜
I haven’t been at church in a good while! My family has made it a few more times than I have, as I tend to stick home with the sickies, or the babies, whenever that is needed. And it has been. A handful of times recently! So today, after a quick drive in to Saskatoon, I made it home back and into the church with less than a minute before the service began 😅 Whew!
Of course I was barely in the service, as our morsel was particularly active this morning. Sunday mornings are hard with babies, thats just the facts. So the morsel and I hung around in the foyer, sipping the coffee of the church and eating the Cheerios of others. We visited with friends and neighbours as they came in and out of the service, and when it all wrapped up, we brought our loud selves back into the sanctuary to join our family and reconnect with some friends 💜 It was really, really nice to be back.
We lingered at church until we were among the last handful of people to leave. We are so often those people, haha! We finally made it home and had a glamorous late lunch of leftovers before heading back into the city. For two days of freezing rain, the roads were not as bad as I anticipated. It was a smooth outing, and we made it back just in time for a normally timed light supper, hahaha! My mom and I whipped up a quick batch of Big Mac salad for the group, and very shortly after supper came bedtime.
It was a funny day today. It felt like we just ran and ran, but I know we didn’t. I’ll do a bit more sitting tomorrow, I think. Or I’ll find myself crazy busy instead, haha! Who knows! But it should be a bit more relaxed. My body is asking for a bit more rest than its getting these days, and I’d like to stay afloat. So wish me luck, friends! Tomorrow 🙌 we rest!
Today was a day of training for Brady and I! We haven’t had a long, full, training Saturday in a while, but today was that day! We were expecting to take this particular session in November, but happened to receive a placement the day before, and we decided that settling the spoonful in to the new digs was more important. So today was the day to finally get into it.
And we did! Tom and Rae willingly took the kids for the day, which was a HUGE ask, and they were very generous to accept! They only had five for the first bit, as the two older ones got into some deep cleaning at the old house with Cher 💜 By mid-afternoon, it was time for the kids to retire to Tom and Raes, so they were at two against seven. Plus a dog. I cannot tell you how much I appreciated the care and time and effort you guys all put into us today. Thank you Cher, Rae, and Tom 💜 What a gigantic help!
Brady and I trained from 9am until just shy of 4pm. We had a lunch break and two short coffee breaks, so there was some breathing room in there. On one hand, it was a very peaceful, restful day! No parenting. No diapers. No real worky work. But you can relate, I’m sure, to being run fairly dry of mental energy. And that was us.
And how beautiful of a gift was it when Rae offered to keep the kids for supper so we could go out for supper! Man alive it was SO nice. So we did it! We hit the Caesar Mill in Martensville, and the food did not disappoint! The company wasn’t half bad either.
Ya baby. It was SO delicious. Brady said its remarkably quieter at lunch, but it was still delicious, and we were SO grateful for the time away to get our training on, and then get our bellies fed. All kid free! There’s really no one else I’d rather spend the day with, or watch pick their teeth with a kabob stick.
We drove back to town and went straight to pick up the children. All seven of them. Reading in their entrance. Hanging out peacefully. They came home happy, and went to bed well.
Aaaaand now we SLEEP! Because today was huge, and good, and a lot, and I’m so ready to rest my body and brain!
Happy February, guys 💜 I hope you stood outside and listened to the birds chirp today. What a bizarre season in which we find ourselves!
They may not be mighty oaks, but we have moved into a home with a mature yard, and that means TREES. I’m all for planting trees. People actually came to our last house and criticized us for not planting any trees, and not planning to plant any trees. Our yard was just too small there. And here, its not! And there are treeeees! That they can CLIMB!
Laela figured this glorious opportunity first.
But she wasn’t alone for long!!
They had SO MUCH FUN!!! And its not even summer yet!!
Its only going to get better and better 💜 I am so thrilled! I remember, when we were telling the kids all about the house and the yard, they asked kind of abruptly “Does it have apple trees??” And how cool it was to be able to say yes! Not even crab apple trees. APPLE apple trees!!!
The morning was pretty much a flop 😅 Don’t worry, I’m not mad about it. But its worth noting that it was a pretty solid mess, one event after the other, with a few miniature wins thrown in there. #miniwins
When I woke up, my plan for the day was two appointments at JPCH, one after the other. While the kids were eating breakfast, I received a call saying the second of those appointments was cancelled due to a therapist calling in sick. I was a bit disappointed, because I was kind of anticipating that appointment, but it was out of my control. We rebooked for a couple of weeks down the road and I kept the day going as expected.
The time started to get away from me, and I rushed like a maniac to get babies ready and packed into the van in time. It got a little hairy, with construction causing detours right before the bridge, and then parkade entries being blocked off. However, as I was about to go waaay down and do some loops, a nice close spot opened up for me! I raced into it, got babies into a stroller, and literally ran across the parking lot.
I made it to the appointment with two minutes to spare, no joke.
Two minutes, and a month.
🙄
Sooooo after all that, we actually had NO appointments that morning. I didn’t need to go in at all. But, aiming to be positive, I decided to make a quick run over to Carters. The internet keeps showing me a sleeper that just emulates Spoonfuls mom, so I’ve been meaning to get there and buy it.
Upon arrival, I realized I didn’t have my wallet. Because that would’ve been too easy.
🙄🙄
Ended up finding an emergency $20 in the van!
The sleeper did not exist.
🙄🙄🙄
I opened my van window and drove home with good music going and completely peaceful babies in the back. But goodness what an ordeal! Not my best morning, but I’m thankful that the weather was unseasonably warm, and that I hadn’t missed anything else important in the place of these non-appointments.
At least tomorrow, I know where I belong and when 😅 Or do I? 🤔
Today was a day off of school, and to make it even a bit more out of the ordinary, at home was just me and the boys!
It was oddly peaceful for being boy heavy. However, after a quick jaunt to the city, we invited grandma over to play/work/eat with us. She lovingly loaded ALL of our linens into our linen closets, which is a job I’ve had a hard time getting into since we got here. And yes, I did say closetsssss. We have two, which is kind of amazing. I use one for towels and one for sheets. And now they even have those things inside of them! Heyooo!
Meanwhile, I was pretty motivated after a friend came over yesterday evening and helped get some heavy things moved around and slung some boxes. So I got back into that today and got some of the main area looking better. Now that our storage room is a bit more organized, I feel better about putting some things in there, even if its just temporary, so I can make sense of what we all have and what we need to put in what room. Even just that is helpful! So the stack of boxes that has been living just off our dining room now is dispersed into places that make more sense. There is still a table that is holding jobs that still need doing. New light fixtures. Some kitchen pullouts. Some keypads. Some cameras. You get it. Otherwise, the upstairs makes more sense now, for sure.
After a day of working, two trips to the city, and times where I was down to only one kid, its felt like theres been enough variety that it hasn’t really felt too worky at all. Its been a pretty nice day! And while I feel restful, I also feel accomplished. And SO tired. Whew!
I bathed a baby after the younger kids went to bed and that may have officially done me in. I’m good for bed now!
There are things people do that make me wonder how they got their Idea, how they attained the confidence to do it, and furthermore, how they got the self assurance to take photograph evidence and post it on the internet.
First, is this deer. Let’s call this one: “Oh Deer”
But you still can’t get me to drive the same speed. I will always slow down! Even if it’s butt is full of snow.
Second, You’ve probably seen this, but I will never stop laughing. Can you imagine being the person who happens to have balloons and see this dead trash panda? And tie the strings down… to… something?
I will call this one “Party Animal”
And Finally, this one sorta makes me mad, but it also shows what we all know and don’t say: How lazy people are!
So as tends to happen in moves, I have been on a pretty active hunt for some of our things. Strangely, we are missing a bunch of clothing. Specifically, for our Spoonful. So many of those clothes *poof* gone! Go figure! I even (mostly) caught up on laundry, but these items were nowhere to be found!! I realized at one point that there was probably laundry at the house when we left, and it got me wondering if the huge hamper that lived under our laundry chute actually made it over here. So a couple of nights ago, I made my way over to the other house. Our dream home, once upon a time. Our custom built lovely bi-level with the tall basement windows, the french door pantry, and everything to our liking. Man. Going back there was kind of wild. It echoed. It is littered with some little trash. Dust bunnies. Some cleaning products and a few things still on the walls. It is a beautiful home. But its not our home anymore. Indisputably.
I checked for the clothing downstairs. No dice. I walked through every room to see if they happened to be in a box of something in some unexpected place. Nothing. I didn’t find anything that needed to come home in that moment, though there are still things to move. And things to clean. We are definitely not quite done over there, lol! But it’ll come.
I came back home empty handed, and since then, have found a couple of black garbage bags of dirty laundry tucked amidst the many things we still have to unpack. So there may or may not be more. Some of the things have been located. Others are still missing.
So the hunt continues. Where have all the jammies gone?
