Around Here Week 24: 06/12-18

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

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 314+ hours (of 1000)
Up over 37 hours this week: snagged at the baseball field, Rusty's party, and plenty of time hiking and enjoying the outdoors at our getaway weekend in Ohiopyle. 

Reading How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong and The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Celebrating Rusty's birthday with a Spiderman/bouncy house party at our house. We rented a bounce house/water slide from Flood City Rentals and it was a huge hit! I made cupcakes and then DIY'ed some chocolate webs for them (thanks Pinterest!) We had hamburgers and hot dogs, the grandmas brought sides, and Rusty was so happy to have his friends join us for the day. (thank you all who came and helped our Rustman feel special!)

Catching up with the Vorndrans! So grateful they made the trip in from Pittsburgh for Rust's party (they are his godparents and our dear friends). They stayed after the party and the kids got extra time to play and I was so grateful to have time to chat and hang out together - it's so hard with growing kids, activities, and life to squeeze in the time with good friends. (thank you guys!!)

Loving Reddy's progression in speaking. He is really getting it now and saying all kinds of things more clearly. After two years of not hearing actual words come out of his mouth, it's startled me multiple times this week to understand him exactly. "Lay with me." "I like beans." "Hit the ball, Mom!" Granted, we still have plenty ways to go yet (lots of initial sounds missing, some letter sound struggles, still baby gibberish rants, etc) but it feels miraculous to be able to two-way communicate with him now.

Catching the NBA finals on the projector outside on the back porch. Go Warriors! 

Swimming at Pappy & Gigi's one afternoon. I took all the kids plus Wells - to their house and Gigi made us spaghetti lunch! Perfect summer afternoon!

Having another great week at Studerbabies Farm & Free Play. We had a bunch of families on Monday and they got a surprise of being able to use our bounce house from Rusty's party - but even still the chickens and goats were a bigger draw (yes! nature for the win always!) Rusty even put on his Spiderman suit and surprised the little kids - they gave him hugs and high fives. It was the sweetest thing. Very grateful for Gem's help each Free Play session as she helps facilitate so much - from feeding the animals to helping kids play. She is such a helping blessing to me always. 

Packing and planning for our getaway weekend. Uch is so good about sending out a big family email giving us lots of packing suggestions and making sure everything we need is delegated between the family members (thank you!) I was in charge of meal planning the weekend and then we all took parts of the grocery list (thank you Walmart Pick up) and we were able to cover the whole weekend for food! 

Ordering our tshirts for Beer Olympics!

Finally finishing the clothes bins project and getting all the bins back up into the attic (well, almost all - I have two bins of boys' clothes that still need figured out). When I put them away, of course it was a super hot day - so it was probably over 100 degrees in the attic. Holy sweating -but whatever, it's done and I am so relieved.

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Ohiopyle Getaway with our Adams family

We spent the weekend away at Ohiopyle State Park in a VRBO with my parents, sisters & fellas, and all the kiddos. It was such a beautiful place - right on the Youghiogheny river, so the boys were all overjoyed to get in some fly fishing time. The kids were obsessed with wading in the river and made some serious core childhood memories perched on rocks with the river pulling them from all sides; laughing and pretending to float away. There were train tracks right across the driveway - so the kids loved running to the window to watch the train go by and Grey may or may not have left a few coins on the tracks to be smashed by the train over the weekend. 

We took a day trip over to Cucumber Falls and Meadow Run Natural Waterslides. I know I've said it too many times before - but nature is so amazing and humbling. It was a beautiful perfect day hiking and I am so grateful that we have family that can still hike even in their 60's and are interested in hiking with us (even pregnant or with babies strapped to them). All the best memories happen outside - I believe that to my guts. 

My favorite part of extended family vacations though are all the moments in between of togetherness; everyone sharing meals around a big table, laughing and telling memories around the fire, playing games like cornhole and volleyball with mix-matched teams and forming random alliances. Such a great weekend and so very thankful to be all together. We also got to celebrate Father's Day and have a toast to Chum's last week of work before retirement! Kitty and Abba put together a scavenger hunt with treasure box together for the kids and Uch had a splash pad delivered for the babies right to the cabin! We had yummy food, refreshing drinks, deep belly laughs, three-babies-in-the-tub photo shoots, coffee on the back deck in the early sunlight, and very little personal space with all the kids all over everyone all the time (sharing couches, chairs, hammocks, laps, and holding hands). 

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Sporting with basketball open gym for Violet and Gemma for one hour on Tuesday mornings. The high school coach holds the one day/one hour a week event for girls in grades 2-6 and it is such a great opportunity to build on and encourage the youth basketball program for girls! Thankful for it and very thankful that it is free! Grey had a basketball summer league game on Tuesday and B and I had to unfortunately miss our volleyball game that night due to sick kids and a school board meeting (big bummer). Grey had his last regular season youth baseball league game on Monday (bittersweet!) and then two playoff games with his CT team to clinch the championship 3 game series for next week!

Making pulled pork and baked French fry potatoes, Asian flavored ground turkey rice bowls, and leftovers from the birthday party. At our Getaway trip we had - spaghetti & meatballs, church picnic chicken with haluski, tacos and homemade guacamole (YUM, kitty!), sheet pan kielbasa & veggies, homemade pizza, and lots of snackies including funfetti muffins and chocolate chip cookies. 

Keto Check in: still going strong(ish) because we just feel better to be low carb, honestly. Down a total of 14.2 lbs since the beginning of April. We had air-fryer cauliflower, ground turkey with broccoli and alfredo. I also made our favorite snackie: Keto no bakes (shredded coconut, cocoa powder, and peanut butter!)