Around Here Twenty: 05/13-05/19

Friday, May 20, 2016

A glimpse into what it is like to live in our home just this minute.
















Intentional Hours Outside:  (155 hours of 1000)
Up only 17 hours this week...It was a weird weather week here in western PA.  We had snow on Sunday, SNOW!  No accumulation obviously, but you could see it laying on the ground....in the middle of May.  insanity.  Then it was mostly gloomy and chilly, if not raining, for every other day this week except for yesterday when the sun finally remembered where we live! We did get a chance to head out to Greenhouse park when Caleb was over for a playdate so that the kids could run their energy out on the playground and near the creek.  And did I try to literally 'walk my baby' out on Monday by taking two walks and getting over 10,000 steps on my fitbit?  I'm not going to say that didn't happen, hahhaa, but it also didn't work, so boo.  Two baseball games also had us outside in the evenings and yesterday the girls and I spent the whole afternoon lounging (literally on a blanket) in the sunshine.  Violet even got a little sunburn on her shoulders (!)

Reading and finished Brad Street Gate by Robin Kirman and Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv.  Started reading our second book from the Inspired Readers Book Club summer reading challenge for May: When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Mowing the grass.  Hallelujah!  The kids were even making 'big foot nests' in the tallest parts of the yard before we were able to get to it!  The grass is mowed after Uncle Dave and Brandon finally got the mower deck all fixed up.  We are so very grateful to have it back and working (especially Violet who waves hello to 'Dadda's Tracker' every morning).  fi.na.lly!!!

Celebrating friends and family at our cousin Morgan's confirmation and our friend Bryn at her bridal shower last weekend.  Summer is always filled with so much shared happiness and reasons to come together for good food and happy memories.  Grey and I also celebrated the last day of CCD for the year and I said farewell to my sweet fifth graders that I will miss but am so glad we got to spend the year together.

Calling off Violet's afternoon nap twice this week.  It has been such a struggle to get her to sleep at bedtime recently.  She was up fighting us until after 11:30pm one night!  Brandon and I were both falling asleep pleading with her while she ran circles around us laughing.  So I cancelled her nap on Wednesday and Thursday and she was asleep (for 13 hours, until morning) both days by 7:00p.  I don't think this is the end of naps, but maybe it will have to be every two days instead of every day from here on out.

Finding all the ways to distract myself from the last three weeks of pregnancy.  I do not do well with waiting, you guys.  Plus I'm feeling particularly sluggish and bad and angry that I can't be the Mum I strive to be to my other three gremlins when I'm so exhausted and miserable.  It's a very frustrating time for me; these last few week (hahha, remember this blog post from Violet's last few week's of pregnancy! Still applies, friends!) and so I've been trying my best to distract myself by digging into projects.  At her request, I put Gemma's hair in rags on Saturday night, just like my grandma taught me to do and she loved it (also #59 on my 100 small things list!)  My sis and I have been busy planning the celebrations leading up to our baby sister's wedding later this fall, I'm working on setting up an alumni intramural kickball league with a fellow awesome CV alum, and I started the plans for our Disney vacation next year!

Introducing Gemma to the movie Bring It On when I was feeling particularly crummy and tired one afternoon.  She's officially obsessed (even more!) with all things cheerleading now.  She is my girliest of girls daughter and has me laughing all day everyday at all the ways she reminds me of me (only times 100) during my ultragirly childhood and tweenhood.  She has been carrying around her babydolls even more than usual too, dressing them up, stealing Violet's diapers to put on them, and shushing them to sleep.  There's three main ones on rotation (sometimes they're her triplets!) but one favorite that she calls "Calissa" and she goes everywhere, even gets buckled up in Sheila (our van) when we leave the house.

Releasing our beautiful Painted Lady butterflies yesterday and sending them off with wishes and kisses.  Grey named the one that was last to 'hatch' Little Joe because he seemed like the runt and he was the last one we took out of the habitat to let fly away after he hung out in Grey's hands for a little while.  One of them (Grey named her 'beautiful') sat contentedly on Gemma's nose for about thirty seconds which made her feel so special.  It is such a fun spring tradition in our house and the kids are already asking when we can get more caterpillars.

Enjoying Shaffer's ice cream last night after Grey's baseball game because he caught a fly ball!  We told him at the beginning of the season that if he hit it to the fence while batting OR he caught a fly ball in the game, we all get to go for ice cream.  After he caught the ball, he turned around to Brandon standing behind second base as an assistant coach, pointed to him, and mouthed, 'ice cream, baby.'

Making just a little. I threw one of our favorites three envelope roast in the crockpot this week and I made broccoli and wild rice soup another night.  I tried a brand new meal this week: chicken sausage and spinach pasta.  I was the only one that really liked it, but the kids did eat...because I blindfolded them first, hah.  Sometimes they whine about eating it before they even taste it because they don't like how it looks - which I knew would be the case with this meal, so we threw blindfolds on them and let them take a few bites ("yum, it tastes good") before removing the blindfolds.

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