Around Here Week 23: 06/05 - 06/11

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

cousins! Olive, Wells, and Gracie

photo cred: Grey (for my phone lock screen)

photo cred: uch

how I coach U6 soccer (lol) photo cred: Uch

"orange, orange, orange! Oooooh!" photo cred: uch

Gemma & her friend Evelyn goofing around with the camera - cool shot!

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 277+ hours (of 1000
Summertime and the outdoor hours are easy. Trampoline gets used probably minimum of six hours a day (LOL). Violet cut some of my gorgeous peonies to put on the kitchen table and they look beautiful - my poor plant was so weighted down by so many blooms! I'm glad to have some to display! 

Reading How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong and finding so many important nuggets of information. 

Blessed to celebrate the baptism of our sweet baby cousin Gracie. She lives in Montana with her parents, Morgan and Nick and this is our first time getting to meet that little darling. It was a beautiful baptism at our former church and then a picnic celebration at my Aunt Lisa and Uncle Matt's house (Gracie's grandparents!) The kids had a a great time swimming and there was so much catching up to do while eating so much delicious food. 

Enjoying time with friends. Gem attended a birthday party for her friend Peyton at 814 Lanes and Violet had a playdate at our house with her friend Giada. So many good memories and laughter at baseball games, soccer games, and the soccer tournaments this year. We are so lucky to have people who share, laugh, and chase after our kids with us! The kids' friends are all so patient and sweet with the babies; it is truly a whole village who helps us raise our babies (thank you!!) 

Finding out that we are getting a....nephew! Uch finally spilled the beans to let us know that her next sweet little babe (due in October) will be another boy! Love him too much already! 

Adjusting to the summer work schedule. B started his 10-hour work days, but then gets Fridays off which is so awesome in the summer. Makes for a very long day for him but a good trade off for the extra weekend time. How grateful I am to have this man of mine.

Pulling every single kids' clothes bin from the attic and dumping them all out in the boys room to reorganize, donate, switch seasons, and silently cry (LOL). Gosh, biggest job ever, but for the past two years of pregnancy and newborns, I have literally just be doing the bare minimum on switching kids' clothes; like throwing boys, girls, any season, any size into any box I could find and shoving them in the attic for now. So it was really back to square one. I took four huge bags to our local thrift store (St Francis Sharing & Caring), organized boxes to send off to younger cousins, donated four big bags of baby girl clothes to a local mom (thanks local facebook page), and really felt such a relief to just check that terrible task off the list!

Shocked when Reddy pulled a dead bird out of his outdoorsman pouch the other day. After the initial shock, he showed me where he found it (under a tree in the pasture). So we placed it to rest under a big pine tree, scrubbed our hands with soap and then hand sanitizer on top of that, and then cleaned out the pouch. Good grief! 

Finding ways to beat the heat! We pulled out a little slip n' slide, use the sprinkler under the trampoline, simply spray each other with hose (this never turns out well), play on our water table, and spend a lot of time in the shade (back porch, under trees, or on the swing at Agnes). So many people comment to us how tan we all are - especially my little sun-whitened hair children - but honestly we are just outside so much and many times in the shade! 

Having a great first week of free play at Studerbabies farm! We had four different families visit us this first week with a total of six kids between them. We fed the animals, played in the 'spooky forest,' made new friends, and learned a little too how to make it work smoothly. Abba painted me a big sign and Chum helped hang it up! (thank you!!) 

Happy for Grey to get a day fishing at Shawnee with cousins Caleb and Albert. Grey had a sleepover then spent the whole day on the fishing boat doing his favorite thing with one of his favorite people! Thank you Albert and Heather!!

Taking the two babies for their well checks. Both got good marks and look healthy and strong. Liv had to get some vaccines (eek, 12 month old shots are a'plenty!) but she took it like a champ and Red was sweet and comforting to her. 

Confirming a summer job for Grey - he is mowing grass for a local family once a week. It was hard work, but he is grateful to be making some money. What a lesson in the value of a dollar for him too, all the sweat and time it takes to make the money, it's a little harder to spend it. 

Another soccer tourney Saturday at Richland where Gemma's team did an amazing job making it to the championship game again before earning second place! Our girl was an iron wall again on defense and really stands her ground no matter what the opposing team sends her way - boy, girl, faster, stronger - Gem will not back down. We love watching her fearlessness out there! One more tournament to go and she is determined to beat the Richland team this next time! Heather and I organized our food for the day - we had walking tacos with all the fixins', monster cookies, and plenty of snackies. 

Grateful to send the meatballs (Violet & Rusty) to one of our family reunions with my parents. They attended the Adams family reunion while we were at the soccer tournament. I am always thankful that we have family reunions so our kids can trace their jawlines back through the family tree of ancestors. (thank you for taking them Abba & Chum!)

Sporting with the last week of regular season AYSO soccer. Rusty had his last two games and we had a little post-season snack celebration with the team after our final game (thank you to all the parents for bringing snacks and for letting me coach your kiddos. We had a great bunch of kids, I loved being part of our team!) Violet had her last two games and finished the season undefeated! Gemma had her last two regular season games and an all star practice. On Saturday, we spent the day at Richland at Gem's soccer tourney. Grey had three baseball games and two practices for his sanction team. He also had two summer league basketball games and watched the city team to meet the coach and players to help him make decisions about next year. B and I had our co-ed volleyball game at Roxbury and thank goodness as always to Miss Hannah who met us at the soccer field to watch two games and then came down to Roxbury to watch the kids while B and I played. (we are so blessed by you Miss Hannah!!)

Making turkey taco pasta, sheet pan kielbasa and veggies, sloppy joes and mac & cheese. I also put into a place a plan to deal with the summer all day eating frenzy of a house full of kids. I made a big batch of something in the day that the kids could eat/snack on when they said they were hungry all the live long day instead of having them eat 18 bowls of cereal or 20 packs of fruit snacks. For example, on Monday I made haluski (cabbage & noodles) and left it on warm in the electric skillet and on Wednesday we had buffalo chicken dip in the crockpot all day. Some other things I tried this with was chicken nuggets (already cooked, just need microwaved for a few seconds), chocolate chip cookies, and mac & cheese. 

Keto check in: down a total of 13.4 lbs since we started in the beginning of April. Trying to not weigh myself every single day because it can be discouraging - a hard habit to break being a teen in the 90's (hah!) We had taco "nachos" (over green/red/yellow peppers) and ground beef with broccoli and alfredo sauce. Lots of salads, lunchmeat roll-ups, and tuna too!