Week in the Life: Tuesday

photos taken:  59
Woke to much a warmer morning (no frost at least) and we're lucky to get our cousin Lainey for the day to play while her momma attends nursing school.  I burnt the bacon (ugh), but we got the big boy off to school without a hitch and the three girls spent the morning crawling and playing house in our entire collection of pop up tents in the living room.  Violet snuck away several times, per usual, to sneak upstairs and stand up on the bathroom stool to try to brush her own teeth.  That child.

The three girls, sitting on the counter obviously, helped me whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies in part because it's Brandon's birthday week and also in part because I needed a chocolate fix, let's be honest.  I rarely lack cookie-baking helpers because my method of baking cookies includes mixing the ingredients while snacking on loose chocolate chips.  The kids line up to help around here.  HAH!  We turned the cookies into icing stuffed sandwiches, because if we're going to go for a sugar rush over here, we're swinging for the fences, man.

We had lunch and then it was time for Violet's nap.  Gemmi is in a big Mulan phase, so we played it on Netflix (second time this week already!) and Lainey started showing signs of sleepiness.  Hooray for getting to snuggle a toddler to nap today and then I got in some reading and extra snuggles with my Gemmi girl ("but you're MY mom, so snuggle with me too") while she finished Mulan.

After naptime, we headed outside to soak in the beautiful sun and had a visit from the UPS man.  I was hopeful that it was our next book for the Inspired Readers Book Club, All the Light We Cannot See - alas it was the two thanksgiving books I ordered for the kids and a copy of Go Away, Big Green Monster! for our own in-house library, as it was a major hit when we borrowed it from the library.

Cara came to pick up Lainey and after a little more playtime, the girls and I headed down to pick up Grey from the bus stop (after I made sure the truck would start: success!) On Gemma's rush to give Grey a hug from the bus, she bit it pretty good right on the asphalt and so we had some booboos to kiss and cries to soothe before heading back up home.

Grey was happily surprised to find our new home library addition (gah, that smile).  And we spent the rest of the early afternoon with read alouds, homework, and making cards for Dad's birthday tomorrow.  We had chili over bowtie noodles for dinner, don't judge that massive pile of cheese.  #nojudgements

B updated that it'd be another long night before he came home (waaaaah), so out of desperation of not getting my blog done yet, and also chores piled high - the kids got to spend the evening watching the Halloween favorite, Hocus Pocus ("how many more spooky parts though, Mum?!" "That's a good zombie?" "But this is a pretend story, right?") while I blogged, vacuumed, and cleaned the kitchen. I'm happy to report that despite the movie being "kind of spooky," there were no nightmares!

After the movie, I had about forty-five minutes to try to keep the kids awake to see Brandon when he got home, so we all headed up to Violet's room to read books and make believe.  The two big kids toted around a pretend phone and a flashcard pretending they were tech devices explaining to me that they were magical and they could "download pets."  I asked Grey if he knew what download meant it he said yes, that it meant "you get it on your phone then and can play things.  Like games."  Future Tab, good luck.

A little before nine, B came home to the cacophony of kids and dogs celebration that happens daily upon his arrival.  We spent a little while talking and giving Daddy lots of hugs, but Violet was more than ready to sleep so she went down easily and sweetly.

The big kids got a few stories and then laid in bed while I read aloud to them from my own books - this is our little routine that we have been doing for the past few months:  we read them some children's books and then turn out the lights and I lay on the floor, facing the hallway light while I read aloud from my own books (skipping over the curse words or inappropriate parts if necessary.  Wally Lamb!!) But I like the idea that what they hear as they drift off into sleep is my voice reading beautiful writing with big vocabulary words.  I like to pretend it gives them a little culture (hah).

After the kids had fallen to sleep, I met up with Brandon (devouring chili like a maniac and repeating over and over, 'this is some good freaking chili, babe') downstairs and we watched day2 of the Voice (it really seems like we watch a lot of tv, huh? I promise it's just Sunday-Tuesday) and we laughed and cried about it like we do at every single episode.

It was fairly early to bed (yay!) after I tried to give Brandon a summary of my Wally Lamb book so far, which is so funny because that's impossible and a crazy amount of story lines.  He was trying so hard to fall along and kept nodding encouragingly until finally I was like, 'i love you for even attempting to listen to that.'

still going strong on the heavy photos, just intense.