Day 212: Every which way

I guess this becoming more of the "new normal" which older kids, but everyone seemed to be at different places again today.  Justin and Benaiah went to church with Grandma and Grandpa, while Jared, Keturah, Abishai and I had a slow morning of Minecraft for Jared and Keturah, and figuring out picture transfers on iCloud for me.  Then we made it down to the grandparents' house in time to put Abishai for a nap while Grandma, Benaiah, Jared, and I had dinner there after everyone came home from church.  Grandpa took Keturah on a date, with our friend Karl.  Keturah told Karl all about our family and Karl told Keturah all about the farm he works on.  Karl is a huge guy in his 50's who loves to call Keturah is "sugar bear." It's so cute!  Then Jared took Benaiah to get school supplies (which is another whole story, i.e. if you want to be particular about something, do it yourself) and came back with about half of the list found.  You can tell we've never shopped for school supplies on a specific list before.  Benaiah starts school in two weeks!  Abishai finished up a nap and then Jared, Keturah, Abishai and I came home while Grandpa took the two boys to their swim and study groups.  Justin had been with his friend Bryce all afternoon playing...drumroll....Minecraft! (I see a theme here!)  Are you confused yet?  So am I! And now we are talking about joining groups like Bible Bowl, maybe sports, and of course school and co op.  There's just not enough time in the week!  I'm sure we will figure it out, but we need to be careful to protect family time, too.

Meanwhile, Amazon delivers on Sunday (who knew!) and I found a lovely package of collagen, oat fiber, and gluccamon (sp?) on my doorstep when I got home.  Yeah!  I can make my Trim Healthy Mama copycat backing blend! So I did that, and also made some coconut flour chocolate zucchini muffins.  I've never baked with coconut flour before, and they came out ok, but really gooey.  Hm,...But just doing that has left me exhausted.  So exhausted, that I don't feel like taking pictures of them.  Maybe next time.  I also picked up the house tonight so I can dig into those school books first thing tomorrow.  They don't fly onto the shelves by themselves, right?  Such a huge project for me.  But we can't do school without some organization and room to work.  So, that's the goal this week: books and getting to a water park before they close for the summer next weekend.  Yes, next weekend, in the middle of what I consider summer, because the student lifeguards are already in school because they are on a balanced calendar.  Seems silly, but it's the truth.  Oh well.  I still have 4 weeks or so of summer left, so we are going to do what we can to enjoy it.  Then we'll tackle the bookwork after Labor Day.

Whatcha doin' Dad?

Can I help?

What does this do?

I can clean out the vacuum too!

Working together.

Jared bought two German Bibles at a local monastery in Austria.  Why two? So that he and Benaiah can read them together!  Jared studied German in high school.

Whoops, upside down, but there's a reading plan on the inside covers of the Bibles.

Jared also bought Benaiah a shirt and shorts for a total of $15 Euro, which is about $15!  And wow, these are Jared's size, too!

Different prices based on type of currency.

Old school doctor set at Grandma's house.  Now, who's the patient and who's the doctor?

Day 211: Back to Normal

Ah, it's so nice when life gets back to "normal" after someone has been away.  I'm grateful that we all could pile into our bed (ok, not Benaiah, he's way too big now) for a quick snuggle today.  Those moments don't last, as evidenced by Benaiah being too big.  Side story: Benaiah sometimes had to take his morning nap with Daddy when he was mere months old because Jared worked the 3rd shift at the airport in security (but not TSA or anything, just local traffic type security).  We would put him on a pillow so he wasn't rolled up in our blankets or anything.  So, we'll blame Benaiah for starting all the snuggling in our bed in our house.  It's just amazing that he's as big as an adult now.  Jared bought him some clothes from Austria as a souvenir and Jared could even wear them!  I know I talk about his bigness alot, but it's not about his weight.  I'm just amazed at how my littlest baby is so grown up.  He's no longer a mini Jared, he's a Jared clone!  It's nuts!  And I don't necessarily wish he was smaller, but it's happened so fast over the last year or so.  At least Justin is still 70lbs soaking wet (the same weight at Socks!) and shorter than me, but that won't be for long.  Sigh.

Anyway, Jared did bring a few gifts for us, including some coffee and special drinks for me.  The rest I can show you in the pictures I took.  Then I had a nap because I just haven't slept well for the past few days.  It was interrupted several times, but at least I tried.  Then we decided to go to church this evening, to try a new routine of going to church on Saturday night, having Justin and Benaiah sleepover Grandpa's house so that Benaiah can help with communion prep early on Sunday morning and Justin can go to his middle school class.  It only meets at the 9:15.  And for us, 9:15 would work out better for Abishai's nap schedule, but we just can't make it out the door in time.  And going for 11 has proven difficult for getting Abishai to nap properly.  With us having a long day on Monday at our homeschool co op there's almost a 100% chance Abishai's nap won't go well, so I kind of need Sunday for him to have a good nap.  Anyway, I'm grateful for choices, that's for sure!  And I write all this seemingly boring stuff because well, I will read the blog again someday, and will be interested to know what we do ;-)  So, I'm hoping this new routine works well.  It's all about adjusting.  Adjusting in routines, adjusting how a cupboard or countertop is arranged if it isn't working, adjusting our minds to grasp how the homeschool year is going to go, and yes, adjusting to changes in flights (yesterday).  For a girl who doesn't prefer adjustments and changes, it's a lot.  But I get through it because my family is patient with me.

Church was different as in they used some videotaped testimonies for part of the sermon.  I like elements of the service like that so it isn't the same every week.  It doesn't need to happen often, but it's a great change of pace and makes us think.  We also sang a song between two of the videos, and said a prayer together between others.  Very neat.  Based on Colossians 3:12, and clothing ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Ah yes, something we all need to work on, especially heading into this new routine in the fall.  I'm printing it out and putting it up.

Abishai got a smiley face wooden spoon to bang things with, including his siblings!

Austrian/German coffee for me!

A dress/nightshirt for Keturah.

A soccer shirt for Justin since he likes nylon shirts (and in fact, he has many that are soccer shirts from Europe thanks to Grandpa and Daddy's previous mission trip to Kosova in 2010).

Tea for Jared.  And Benaiah was at a friend's birthday party, so he'll get his treats tomorrow.

Typical day of reading....

....and playing video games.

Babies are ready for church!

Hm,...this outfit looks familiar....oh wait, Benaiah wore this on his 2nd Easter I believe! And/or he had his two year old pictures in it.  Or maybe that was Justin.  Both boys wore it I think.

Changed out my camera lenses so I could get this cute close up.  Baby likes his corn!

New spoon and corn, a winning combination!

P.S. I'm working on getting Jared's pictures downloaded to my computer from his trip.  It's a little difficult with the different devices.  I think I may do a separate post or two about some of the ones I haven't already shared over the past two weeks.  He got some really neat pictures of things!  Until tomorrow!

Day 210: Delayed 4 hrs, 15 minutes and counting...

Well, it's only 6:30pm, but I might as well start writing the blog because oh my goodness, we've been waiting, waiting, waiting to pick up Jared.  He and the rest of us are stir crazy!  So, let's back up....

I got to bed last night at 12:45am.  Jared CALLS me FROM Germany (Facetime audio on wifi) saying there's a lot of uniformed people near his gate, including dogs at 2:45am (all times are Indiana time).  Oh boy, kind of scary.  Nothing came of it, but he called again at 3:45am to say he was about to board.  Then, Abishai randomly wakes up at 4:45am.  Thankfully he went back to bed until 7:45am.  I've been running on adrenaline all day until the original pick up time of 3:15.  I had known that the flight was canceled from Chicago to Indy because it had been since noon.  So we had to wait for Jared to land and figure that out.  He did, and then was getting in about 5pm.  It's now 6:38pm and his flight keeps getting pushed and pushed and pushed.  All due to weather.  Yes, it's good to be safe, but when you have 3 stir crazy kids, and the downstairs neighbor finally had enough and called me about it, you really don't have a good attitude about all these delays when you haven't seen your husband for 12 days and it's your 15th wedding anniversary! Anyway,.....


It's time to leave, and hopefully they won't sit on the tarmac too long....at least we avoided the heavy downpour outside.  I'll explain the rest of the story in pictures, because yes, I took pictures each time I was woken up last night and throughout the day today.  There's some interesting stuff in today's flight pattern!  Here goes.

Austria to Dusseldorf, Germany.

Germany to Chicago.

See the dark and light blue shading again? Yes, the sun had just come up in Germany when he left.

Flying over England, so jealous.

Flying over Greenland.

But then, they took a major diversion to Newfoundland.  They didn't land, but check out the weird pattern.  Not sure if they really did this, or it was a computer mistake.

South, back East, and then back North to the original path.

Queebec

Crossing into the United States!

Michigan and Lake Michigan!

Big turnaround before landing made Jared feel quite ill.

The line of storms that kept getting in our way today.

At least Flight Aware tells us these kinds of things.  American Airlines did show the Chicago to Indy flight was canceled.  However I was unimpressed by the Indianapolis Airport's website and their data was wrong.

I was busy watching the flights and I turn around to find this behind me.  A sleepover!

Where's the Keturah?

Aw, sleepover pals.  Mom, Abishai put his butt in my face!

Mom, Abishai keeps destroying my walls!

Talented gymanst.

Waiting for Daddy to taxi onto the tarmac in Chicago so we could leave to get him at the Indy airport.

Last flight.

"And the heavens opened..." ok, I thought that was Genesis talking about the rainbow after the flood, but I think it's a quote from Jesus' baptism...."And a dove flew down on Jesus' shoulder and a large voice could be heard saying, 'This is my son in whom I'm well pleased.'"  But, point is, it's a pretty picture! 

Kids walking backwards on the moving sidewalk.  Abishai enjoying the lights for the first time.

Airplanes, Mommy, Airplanes

Daddy missed his littlest guy so much!

The joys of the baggage carousel.  Abishai was very impressed with the moving rubber bumper.

Abishai was enthralled with the airplanes.  But I think he was remembering being on one because he wanted me to keep pushing him in the stroller.

Since Jared was gone, I decided to be the one to buy a few things to celebrate 15 years of marriage.  Yeah for a happy balloon that we took to the airport tonight to greet Jared with.

Yes, I bought the 12 roses, too.  Very beautiful.  Plus a card, but I won't share what I wrote, lol.

I love how I captured this picture of Justin.  He's made a ton of progress on his skeleton Velociraptor.  It was a kit made of sand and plaster of paris you dug the plastic bones out of .

Dinosaur bones!  Justin was very careful to pick up and vacuum the dust when he was finished working on it for the day.

At home at last.  Missing one, yes, because he'd rather not take pictures with the family.