Around Here Week 29: 07/14-20

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

photo cred: Jenn Valentine 

Intentional Outdoor Hours:  394+ hours (of 1000)
Up 25 hours this week. We visited the Quemahoming on Sunday night for a little afternoon kayak and swim with Mallory. We worked on the chicken coop this week and I did a little weeding in the garden - we have a zucchini starting to grow! We had a fire on Friday night and then did lots of swimming at Pappy & Gigi's this week too and Rust has almost got swimming with no floaties down! He and Violet both learned to swim at 3 years old! He can now jump off the diving board and swim to the ladder (with a grown up in the pool). We have four little fish, I tell ya!

Reading Miles Morales Spiderman by Jason Reynolds (almost done!) and some Spanish teacher blogs to start digging into ideas for the upcoming year (only a little more than a month away!) I found a great powerpoint about procedures that has my mind spinning with ideas and I am really excited to get caught up on my Book Love Foundation Summer club reading.

Summer Camping for the girls. Our local community arts center holds various week long summer camps, and the girls each attended one this past week. Violet spent 4 mornings participating in a farm-themed art camp. Gemma auditioned (last week) and participated in their theater camp all week. She spent the full day (9:30-4) learning the choreography, songs, and her line (1!) as she played Ms. Greer and danced in the ensemble as an orphan.

Tending to Grey who was the next victim on the Norovirus train. He was down and out for two full days and is still trying to get back into normal eating again. I think it was one part stomach bug and another part of summer worn-down from swimming and baseball. He needed the rest!

Snagging some goodies during Amazon Prime Days. My favorite of all was our Legit Camping double hammock; I'm honestly in love and cannot believe we have not had a hammock before in our life - like what were we doing!? I also purchased this essential oil diffuser, this set of dry-lock kayak supplies, and wool dryer balls.

Supporting our family as they said goodbye to grandfathers. Two sets of cousins laid grandpas to rest this week and we attended their viewings to give our love and support. We always take the kids with us and remind them how we behave and why we come. We remind them that our friends/family are sad because someone they love went to heaven, so what we can do is to be there and give a hug and pray with them.

Staining and painting the chicken coop. B did most of the work (although Gem and I tag-teamed one side) and it looks great!

Registering for some fall races. I signed Grey and I up for the 5K Que Classic for late September and then I succumbed to peer pressure from Loni to register for a half marathon at the end of October! I looked up a half marathon training plan and I'm scheduled to start with 1mile on Monday!

Smiling at Rusty's new favorite phrase, "this is taking a long time!" which he comments about anything and everything that takes more than 30 seconds.

Upgrading to a new phone after three years with my original Google Pixel. My battery was totally shot (dying at 40%!) and it was necessary. Brandon and I upgrade at the same time, so we both got the Google Pixel 3A and are so happy with it - I love it for the unlimited photo storage and camera quality; which is 90% of why I use my phone. We also picked up a "house phone" which is really just a bargain cell phone that we are keeping at the house to use like a landline. But no games or apps or even wifi on that thing - it's strictly for calls and texts.

Feeling proud of Gem for her performance in Annie Jr. on Friday night. After her week of theater camp and practices, she danced and sung her way through the show. Afterwards, she reluctantly came over to hug me and then burst into tears. I asked her why she was crying and she said, "I'm just so happy and proud!" She can hardly wait to go back to theater camp again next summer! She came home each night singing all the songs and even taught a dance to Violet. Violet's eyes were all gleaming with adoration as Gem spun her around and patiently showed her how to do the steps. Gah, sisters.

Getting outside water! We have been without a hose for all of summer after our pipes burst this winter during one of the deep freezes. I didn't even realize what a burden that was until Brandon and my Dad re-piped all the water lines. It is a miracle to have hose water again and make such a difference for watering all our planters and filling up the chicken water. The kids first request was to use the sprinkler (hah). The hugest thank you to our handymen!

Pulling into the drive-ins on Saturday night with our cousins to watch The Lion King/Toy Story 4 double feature. We had no child awake by about 15 minutes into the second movie, so we packed up and headed out before it ended - truthfully, I was starting to doze off half way through the first movie (lol).

Summer sporting with two baseball tourney this week. Grey's all star team came in second place in the West Surburban tournament and then had two games in the ETJ tournament later in the week. Brandon and I had two volleyball matches on Tuesday night and our record has us in the playoffs next week. After our games, we all went to Tollgate for wings as a team and I'm feeling a little sad that our co-ed league season is almost over. Love these cats!

Frugal living by freezing our own picked blueberries for the long winter months to come, choosing to buy the 3A pixel phone ($400 less dollars than the 3 pixel!) and refraining from other in-store purchases (phone cases, head phones, car phone holders) and holding out to see if I can find them cheaper on Amazon. We continued to keep the A/C off and just open and close curtains to keep it cool in the house until the heat wave during the weekend (first time turned on all summer!) I signed up for the lifetime warranty on our new hammock and put our new wool dryer balls to use right away (no more dryer sheets to purchase!) I was inspired to start this note thanks to Ashley after she introduced me to The Prudent Homemaker. 

Making blueberry muffin bread; one to keep and one to gift to a friend. Mallory helped make egg sausage casserole for breakfast on Monday, and Grey is still practicing his grilling skills making hot dogs and hamburgers two different days while swimming at Pappy& Gigi's house. We had kielbasa, turkey burgers, and hot dogs on the grill various times this week, and Rust made some frozen corn treats for the chickens!

Keto'ing with church picnic chicken on the grill, buffalo cauliflower (OMG, yum!), cheese 'bun' sundowner turkey burgers, cheesy chicken fritters, and lots of delicious salads piled high with avocado and sunflower seeds.  Non-scale victory this week was having to use a hair tie to hold my capri leggings up during our volleyball games; they are getting so loose that it is distracting! And a big bonus this week was I was able to donate blood without any issues with low iron. I was denied donating twice this year for low iron and I was totally in the clear this to donate this week- thanks Keto!