Around Here Week 5: 01/30-02/05

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

Groundhog Phil says 6 more weeks of winter!

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 4+ hours (of 1000)
Another cold week and lots of farm chores that got me at least in the fresh air for a few minutes a day. I am very very bad at dressing appropriately for cold weather, so it is not my favorite. Someday when I don't have tiny non-walking babies, I am going to do better about cold weather outdoor time. Luckily though, the kids are blasting past my outdoor hours - so at least that's a win. 

Reading Free to Learn by Peter Gray and We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez. 

Celebrating mini winter holidays. We ate Chinese food and talked about our individual animal zodiac based off the years we were born for Chinese New Year on February 1st. We watched the groundhog predict the weather (six more weeks of winter!) and we had got a snow/ice day called off of school on Friday! Plus, it was our cousin Brookie's 6th birthday, so we got to celebrate at her house! 

Checking in with our financial advisor for our annual call.

Dipping my toe back into social media after my January self-proclaimed moratorium. But honestly, I don't think I'm ready to cannonball back into the madness. It is really overwhelming and obviously distracting and I'm just not finding it that fun anymore. bleh. 

Nerding out over the 1000 Hours Outside FREE kick off packet that my sister printed off for me because we both have a little bit of an obsession over it. It's so so good and I strongly implore you to print one out for you and family immediately and get yo butts outside this year! hahaha. but for real. 

Taking winter as a time to rest and recupe, just like nature! I'm really focusing on trying to get my nighttime and morning routines consistent. I know that sleep has been a struggle for the last two years (since I've been pregnant or caring for an infant), but now that Liv is sleeping through the night - I want to get my sleep habits cleaned up because I know that will effect all other things positively (motivation, mood, energy, weightloss, etc) I seem to feel best when I can get into bed by 10:30p, read for 15-30 minutes, and I'm asleep by 11p, then up around 5a to get started with my day a full hour and half before anyone else. It doesn't work that way everyday, but I'm trying to stick to that schedule as best as I can. 

Trying to shush that terrible voice in my head, you know the one - that tries to convince us that we aren't special, or worthy, or good enough. I liked this TEDX talk from from Catherine Reitman. It helped on a day that I was feeling particularly low in confidence this week. 

Rage cleaning two areas that have been driving me nuts. I tackled the laundry room coat rack because all through winter, everyone hangs their coats, hoodies, and sledding gear on the hooks until they are barely balancing and the room is so packed with stuff. So I pulled everything off the hooks and re-organized and put things back in places that they actually go. Whew! What a relief it is to be able to just find coats in the morning for school! Then I pulled everything out of the girls' closet because sneaky Violet had just been tossing her clean clothes in there and shutting the door when she was supposed to be putting them away properly. And sneaky Gemma hasn't hung up clothes on hangers in weeks and has just been throwing them over the bars in there. And plus I needed to flip Olive's clothes to the next size up (9 months!) So, I held the girls hostage in the room until we were able to get the whole thing was cleared out. 

Patching up Olive after she sliced her finger open. In a house of six kids, half of which are boys - it's not uncommon to randomly find tools hiding in places they don't belong. Well one of our boys had found the box cutter knife and must have been in a hurry to hide it and decided to throw it under a dresser. Olive found it while crawling around when I was folding clothes and sliced her pointer finger. She cried for maybe 1 minute and then literally didn't care despite bleeding all over everything she touched. I called our cousin who is a nurse and honestly debated whether to go get her stitched up. But Liv was calm and happy. So, imagining the trauma of sitting in a waiting room for possibly hours followed by holding her down for them to put one or two stitches in it, only for her to probably chew on and rip them out....that just was too much. So we made sure it was clean, put Neosporin on it, wrapped it up, socked her hand so she could keep crawling, and she was happy as a clam. The boy responsible for the tool was devastated and cried and hugged her a million times. We had a good long talk (for the tenth time) about not playing with things that aren't yours - and definitely keeping dangerous things out of reach of the babies. #bigfamlife 

Sporting with one basketball game for Violet, two games and one practice for Gemma, two games and a practice for Grey and one night of weightlifting. I got all the baseball sponsorship letters shipped out too! 

Making meatball sub sammies, honey chicken and lo mein noodles, ground turkey taco pasta, and broccoli & rice soup with garlic knots. On our snow day, I made homemade biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast. I also made banana drop cookies for dessert one day.