Finally! We got done our schoolwork early enough to spend the whole entire afternoon outside! I had an early morning appointment, so Jared actually was the one to get everyone going this morning. Leah was able to take Benaiah to school and so forth. For a "quiet" week, we've managed to fill it to the brim! That's why the previous post was so much later than expected. I'm actually writing this one first, because I don't want to forget all the fun details for today. Then I'll go back and fill in the rest of the days, post it, and then post this one. I like them to show up on the blog chronologically. So, here goes!
Right, we spent from about 4 hrs outside, from 1:30pm to 5:30pm. The kids were stir crazy from the read alouds we had done, so I started with "you need to go outside for at least 10 minutes!" Well, that always turns into staying out longer, and it most certainly did. Keturah ended up bringing out her gymnastics mat, built a fort with it, and we *almost* did some school outside. But she wasn't sharing very nicely with Abishai and was screeching at him for all the neighbors to hear. She decided to break down the fort and I sent her to her room to cool down. Meanwhile, I had the genuis (and exhausting) idea of setting up the big tent! First of all, I had forgotten that we had a small tent, too, and had I remembered, I would have just used that one. Oh, I had the idea because I had previously gotten out all the camping chairs from the shed and saw it. That was after I put laundry on the clothesline again (so that the sun could bleach the whites at least). Ok, going backwards, but I'm trying to type this out while listening to Keturah and Justin play Minecraft and my brain is brain dead, so, you get what you get and you won't throw a fit...moving on....
I started setting up the big tent, putting the poles in the wrong places, looked at the directions, misplaced one of the polls in the tall grass, panicked, tried using other poles, and then thought I had lost one of the poles in Canada, and that's when I started looking around at other boxes in the garage and found the small tent. When I went back out to the big tent to put it away, I found the missing pole. GRRRR, well, at least I know all the poles are there! We haven't used the tents since moving back, and the last time I slept in one was when I was 8 weeks pregnant with Abishai. We were at the annual Atlantic coast Christian church conference (I can't remember what it's called!) and we slept in the tents for 2 nights in New Brunswick and it was SO COLD. And I was so ill and barely made it through because of the morning sickness. Plus, no one knew about the pregnancy except Jared and his parents. Anyway, not the best experience and I doubt I'll ever sleep in a tent again. It's not my thing. Never was. But, while setting up the tents, we found CANADIAN GRASS in the little one and a Shaw's (from Manchester, NH) water bottle in the big one. Jared had brought back a big package of small water bottles from a work trip with the MCC college students that they had done in New England. We kept them for emergencies mostly, but did use them up before we moved, or in this case, this one was probably from the previous summer, so 2015. Needless to say, we didn't drink the water that was still in it. I have no idea how a partially full water bottle could end up in a tent that you have to squish and squash down to fit in a bag and you not notice it's in the way! Oh well, it's a souvenir! Not really, I'll recycle it, don't worry.
So I got the little tent set up and we'll probably use it often because it's easy to use. However, as I was setting it up, Abishai thought it was funny to squish it down by laying on top of the outside! Oi! None of the others dared to do that. Oh well, he enjoyed getting in it afterwards and we played "yard monster" with him in it trying to be a monster and trying to get out of it. By that time, Daddy had come home with Benaiah so he could spend a few minutes at home before taking off again to go to dinner with the board members of e2. We got Benaiah and Justin to mow the lawn for the two hrs before dinnertime, but barely. It's not a mystery that Benaiah procrastinates sometimes and would have rather not done it today, but he has other chores at grandparents house on Saturday, and we are going to a big playground on Friday, so there's not as much time as he thinks the rest of the weekend. Justin ended up doing the majority of it, mowing the whole back yard in 1 hr and 45 minutes! We want to transition to Justin taking care of our yard completely on his own so Benaiah just has grandparents' yard to do and then he can work at a "real" job. But Benaiah has to train Justin, which he is willing to do. The trimming still needs to be done, but we don't care as much about that as some do.
Sidenote, Keturah has been struggling with math, and we were talking about it with Benaiah, who was sharing what he was doing in math. I sarcastically suggested that maybe Benaiah could tutor Keturah and he said he would! Now, I'm not sure how or when that would take place, but I'm very excited that he was willing to do that. He might not always show it, but he loves his siblings and his friends and really, really cares about people's relationships, and always has. He's going to be a great preacher/teacher/minster someday! But in the meantime, he's not there yet.
Back to today, Jared spent time covering up the sump pump drainage pipe with topsoil and grass seed. It looks a bit silly because he put a chain link fence barrier on one side of it so that Socks doesn't charge through it. It crosses over the sidewalk, so now we'll have this little hill and an interruption in the sidewalk. Dorky, but whatever. Point is, he spent time outside with the kids and got something done in between work and more work. Abishai is having a very hard time watching Daddy come and go lately. He cries and cries and gives Daddy a million hugs and runs after him when Jared walks out the door and even gets in the truck with Jared for more hugs. So we make every effort for Jared to be home for a little bit between 4-6pm if he has an evening obligation like he did tonight. Abishai wanted to help with Daddy's project so badly, so he was trying to scoop up the dirt after Jared had seeded it. At one point, Jared took away Abishai's shovel and went to throw it but it ended up going straight up into the tree he was standing under. Whoops! It came right back down, but still, we had a good laugh about it, among the chaos of everything. Abishai was already dog tired by then, so Jared had to help get him inside to wash up for supper. At one point, Jared was holding Abishai with his blankie and paci on the recliner so Abishai should get some snuggle time and Abishai almost fell asleep! He was so tired that he didn't even want to eat! But I did get him to eat something after Jared left and he perked up a bit. At this point, Benaiah also left with Grandma for worship team practice. He's just doing tech this weekend, but they prefer for him to be there when they run through it. Grandma slaved away the day cooking the meal for the e2 board meeting and then graciously took Benaiah for us because Abishai needed to be in bed ASAP. I'm sure she would have liked to stay home and attend to her guests. We are so grateful that we can be flexible with one another and help each other!
When I went to change Abishai for bed, I noticed he was really, really dirty and suggested a bath, even if he was super over tired, and he obliged. That's when things got really, really crazy! I ran the bath for him, put in the soap, made sure he was happily playing with toys, and then stepped out to do some laundry folding. I always leave the door open so I can hear him. I hadn't finished my dinner either and wanted to get that cleaned up, too. But when I came back a few minutes later to check on him, I found him on the verge of dumping a whole shampoo bottle full of shampoo into the tub! And I noticed the tub water was greyish and there were alot more bubbles than before. Oi! The kid had already dumped one of the boys' shampoos in the water! Eeek! I had to remove all the rest of the shampoo bottles so he wouldn't do it again! I called Justin in to help watch him while I finished laundry, and Abishai proceeded to dump a huge jug of water right on the rug outside the bathtub ON PURPOSE! Yikes, I guess I'll be doing more laundry and cleanup when he's done. So I got him rinsed off and out of the tub, and took him into the hallway to dry off because the rugs were too soaked to lay him down to put a diaper on like we normally do. Well, after he got up from getting his diaper on, he peeks back into the bathroom and sees Justin leaning over the tub rinsing the soap off of the rest of the bath toys, with one of his knees on the ledge of the tub so his foot was up. This little fact, the foot being up, sent Abishai into the most hysterical laughing fit I've ever seen! He was cracking up at Justin's FOOT! So much giggling! And THEN he actually feel backwards FROM LAUGHING, and KEPT ON LAUGHING!!!!! Yes, he was that exhausted!!!! When Abishai is tired, he gets so wound up like this.
Well, life moved on, I got him in our bed so he could read his books and wind down. He ended up not sleeping in our bed because it was still very bright out. But he wouldn't stay in his room either unless Justin was in there. So I told Justin to read a book while Abishai fell asleep and then he could come out and stay up as usual. Keturah behaved well throughout this, and because Justin had finished the rest of the lawn without complaint and helped with Abishai, I let the two of them play Minecraft together, as a reward. Justin had already had his TV time for the day, and Keturah had been grounded, so this was definitely a grace moment, which I have a hard time giving. Point is, it was a great parenting moment. And lately, I've been frustrated with myself in my parenting, so I needed a "win" to prove to myself that I can do it the "right" way, or rather a better way than I usually do, which is dictator/legalist. So, yeah for me! But now I'm super behind on reading a book for discussing with Justin, and writing the blog, and dealing with email, etc. etc. It's a case of "choosing what is better" and I did. And then reminding myself that it's ok that the other important things got cast aside today. Making the memories is much more important than recording them. Most people don't have an issue with that mantra, but a few of us need to be constantly reminded of it, especially daily vloggers who always apologize for not getting videos posted when they are dealing with a crisis or something. Anyway, that's a side topic for another day.
Time to load up the pictures and get back to that other blog post. Then tomorrow is a park day! I'm going to make a bigger effort this year to go to the park days that our east side homeschool group faithfully plans every single Friday at a different park in the summer. In the winter, they rent out a church's gym (where we did the Valentine's party), and I'm hoping to commit to that as well. I really like this group of families that are not associated with our church, and we need these playdates in order to get to know one another. And their monthly mom's night out events, too. This should all get easier to do now that Abishai no longer naps and is generally more flexible and can handle his own. So, onward!
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| I used to be a morning person that gladly saw the sunrise. I am grateful we have decent view both of sunrise and sunset. Waking up to this helps. And waking up before everyone else and starting the day in quiet (not quiet time, that doesn't happen until later, I had an appt to get to), was pretty cool, too. My muscles are just so stiff in the morning that it's extremely hard to get out of bed quickly like I had to do today. I'd love to change that but don't know how. Anyway, pretty colors! |
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| When I came home, Abishai ran right out to greet me, but then was even more upset when Daddy left. After school, TV time and lunch, we all went outside. Check out this big boy! He can run and push the big tire swing and THEN climb up on it, and stand on it while it swings back and forth. He's so big!!! And fearless!!! |
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| Keturah didn't want to be outside, so she set her timer to 10 minutes. Well, one hr later and we were still outside. She is still at the age where you can play this little trick. It's much harder to pry the electronics out of the older boys' hands. |
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| Peek a boo! |
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| Nice! THIS is what I hope for and long for that the kids will remember in their childhoods. THIS is why I am grateful we have such a huge yard and it's all fenced in. Ah...perfection! |
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| Watching the garbage truck man, as always. He even honked for us today! But whoops, the trash can almost fell backwards into the ditch when he went to pick it up! |
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| Abishai was super excited to get the camping chairs out, especially his small one. Then he noticed I was on my phone checking email and Instagram. Well, he said, "I go get my phone Mommy." and he proceeded to go find one in the house to bring out and then play on it! Monkey see, monkey do! (insert face palm here). He also said later, "Sissy, Mommy, ssshhhhh be quiet! I'm on the phone!" Out of the mouth of babes! |
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| We tried doing school outside but bad attitudes stopped us short. Also, the sun was super bright and I don't typically wear sunglasses (I don't have prescription ones so I would have to wear a pair over my normal glasses or take my normal glasses off). Oh well, we tried. |
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| Prince Edward Island grass and dirt! Sweet!!!! I was telling a friend after I posted this pictured on Instagram that in 2011 when we were visiting the island for our interview, I brought home a tupperware container of PEI dirt as a keepsake. I never got around to dumping it back onto the beach the years we were there, and I'm glad because I still have it! I also have lupin seeds I hand dried and a package of them that Leah gave me, so I could possible plant those. I think they are annuals though, so I might wait until we fix our flower beds first. |
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| Shaw's! I worked there in NH before w were married! Again, Jared had brought it back from a work trip to New England with the MCC students. Yes, there's still water in it. No, we didn't drink the water. How it fit in the tent's bag with the tent I don't know. |
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| Crazy grass growing on purpose in the flower bed between the walkway and front patio. It did get mowed, but really, you need a weed whacker. I'm just going to leave this area as is for now since we did get the nasty black tarp stuff up and filled it in with new topsoil and such. We left the two boulders and Jared planted a bush or something there as well. We have a lot of work to do on the rest of the flower beds, but we'll get to it this summer. |
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| First mowing of the season! I had to sneak this picture and Justin then told me the same thing that he didn't want his picture taken either when he's working. Oh well, guys, I can snap a few pictures for posterity and it's not going to harm you, promise. |
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| No, we aren't going camping but it's finally warm enough and dry enough to start getting out the spring and summer gear! All of the camping chairs still work from 2 years ago and have their bags. That's a miracle! Or good stewardship! |
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| See, here he is with the phone again! Some kids might bring stuffed animals, blankets, and books into their tent. Nope, not Abishai, his first thought is get the phone! |
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| It's hard to see, but there's a monarch butterfly on the large post there on the left. I loved monarch butterflies and were fascinated by them growing up. If Aldi's gets some in stock, I might get a hummingbird/butterfly feeder for these guys! |
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| Benaiah started mowing our whole lawn when he was 10. Justin is almost 13 and it's now his turn. And, his left broken arm isn't completely straightened yet, so he's got a slight handicap. The arm is a TON better than it was though and 85% able to stretch out straight again. We were worried there for a little bit that it would never fully straighten out because Justin was afraid of the normal pain when you stretch something, so he wasn't stretching it very often. It's great to see some progress! His next and last check up is the first week of May. |
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| He looks humongous! |
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| Ready to take on the world! |
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| Daddy got in the tent with Abishai! This is a one person tent so technically a short adult could use it. Benaiah used it on the camping trip I described above and Jared, I, Justin, and Keturah shared the big tent that sleeps 6-8 people. I like using this simple tent as a play tent. But I am missing having the teepee we had, too. Oh well, I can't keep everything, right? |
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| Do NOT mind the nasty bathtub! It's just the tannins in the water and we are finally getting a water softener and filter installed in the next week or so. I know I can use the rust remover stuff but there's no point until we get the filter on it. It's all cosmetic and NOT harmful. Actually, the amount of iron in our water is at a 2 (ppm?), which isn't that bad. Anyway, we all had a good laugh at how much soapy bubbles Abishai had all over him, his toys,and the bathtub! You see, with the harder, unfiltered water, it's hard to get any soap to suds up like this. So he must have dumped half of a bottle of shampoo to get this many bubbles because we NEVER see it like this. At least he's clean! |
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| Mercifully, he didn't read too many books tonight. He knew he needed sleep, although he tried to protest a bit. After he had had all his books in the hallway the other day which had been in our room, Justin had put them all back on the regular shelf instead of returning them to our bedroom. I nearly panicked when I couldn't find the truck and car book with the pigs going on a picnic book. But, we did locate it and I brought in all new board/preschooler type books for a change of pace. Yeah! He actually picked up the PEI board book I got him that we read almost every day after I nursed him for at least a year and started talking about all the pictures in detail. I think he does remember a little bit of it in his subconscious. But I found it interesting to listen to him describe the pictures now because he has such a large vocabulary now and talks in sentences. I don't think I've read this to him in about a year. The one he's reading in the picture is the one he got for his birthday which is about big vehicles working and then going to sleep for the night. It even has a button that sounds like a snoring truck. Abishai played that one over and over, so I knew that he knew he needed to go to bed. But..... |
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| ....I don't want to go to bed! I need to play Batman and get the bad guys first! No child, go back to bed! And he did, finally. And all is quiet, finally. He's worn out and I'm worn out from chasing him and being on my feet most of the day. But it's worth it. His shirt says, "Bedtime is hard work!" And it's so true! Good night! |
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