Year 4, October 5th-7th, 2019: Apples, Exhaustion, and Surgery Prep!

What a weekend!  Despite being tired from our concert, we finally made it to the apple orchard for our annual apple picking pictures.  And we brought Ava along with us!  I love, love, LOVE including her and my kids' other friends, in things we do.  The more the merrier! I mean, why not?  Yes, the apple picking trip is a solid tradition dating back to when I was 15 months old.  But we got our annual picture of all 4 kids in, along with their "first day of school" pics, two months late!  Bwahahahaha! They played along.  It was a quick trip because we had a birthday party to go to and Benaiah had to go to work.  It was a GORGEOUS day for apple picking, but there were very few apples!  It's always a toss up of when to go, either we suffer in brutal heat in August and early September, or we wait and the apples are already picked over.  Pleasant View Orchard has a ton of varieties and they start becoming ripe in August and then each variety comes in through the next two months.  So, checkmark that off the list.

Then we went home for a quick lunch and then off to a birthday party for 2 1/2 hrs.  Meanwhile, Jared came home from the elders' retreat exhausted, so he went to bed for 4 hrs.  I joined him for a bit when I got home, too.  We spent the rest of Saturday doing not much at all.  And same on Sunday.

"The best part of waking up (it isn't Folgers in your cup)...." is Abishai reading to you....

Oh these two.  The bickering and bantering, the challenging, and the snuggling.  He had on their new (yes theirs, she bought it this time, and yes to share.  She even asked which size he wanted) For King & Country hoodie and she had on her Winterjam hoodie and new For King & Country t-shirt. But at least she got him to climb on the haybales.  Ava is so good for him because she makes him eat healthier and move his body more.

Benaiah climbing out of the tunnel.

We been posing in this same spot since 2003 I think.  It used to be Anderson Orchard back then though and sometimes I still call it that.

Circa 2010

Gotta get a picture with the extra girl in it.  I love how Justin is patting Abishai's head. The weather was perfect and we got everything we needed to get done.

A few minutes of playtime on the hay bales with tunnels and slides.

Justin on the slide.

Hey look, all FOUR of my kids together in one action shot!

It's a good thing Abishai had long pants and sleeves on today.  Keturah reminded me that he is sensitive to hay.

Keturah couldn't wait to wear her Washington DC hoodie today, but it did get a little too warm in the sun.  Speaking of the sun, I totally forgot to put on sunscreen or wear a hat today.  Good thing my scar was covered.

Look who got up on the top of the hay bales at the encourgement of his girlfriend! Hehehe!

Boys! Stop wrestling!  There's little kids around here!

They will kill me, but I don't care.  Of course this is NOT a proposal, but this is indicative of how he treats her, like royalty!

She was trying to get the hay out of his hair.

Always picking at each other, literally.

Come on, boy, you can get up the hill!

Made it!

He's so big!  He's been climbing hay mounds since he was 3!

Littlest brother trying to show up big brother.

Of course he can do it!

Ava easily fit through the tunnel.

HI!

Little guy of course.  And Keturah hopped on one foot across the top of it.

"Let's pose for the camera and pretend we picked apples."  I literally said that.  You see, that's how a lot of Instagram stories are!  Totally posed while chaos is going on around them!  We did pick 1/2 bushel worth of apples, but it was mostly Keturah, Justin and I that did it on our way back to the car because the trees were pretty picked over.

We got a lot of green colored ones.

Last official apple picking trip for this one.  Bittersweet.  At least he got up early on a Saturday to do this for me.

Abishai said, "I remember this (place)!" as we drove into the orchard.  I'm so glad he remembers!

Keturah kept reminding everyone to twist the apple and pull up, not down.  Well, I was in a hurry and ruined quite a few buds this year.  Whoops.

Why yes, I think they act like siblings already.

Nice action shot, Ava!  Lol!

Four kids plus one!

Justin's turn.

And yes, "first" day of school pictures that are two months late.  But I was bound and determined to get their individual shots and their group shot with the same clothes on, so we had to do it when Benaiah was willing and able.  Here we go!  Keturah in 6th grade.  Still loves bright things, reading horse books, and sleeping Current close friends are Emily and Bailey.

Justin, 9th grade, still loves Minecraft and Fortnite.  Pre ordered Legos (Overwatch series) for the first time. Still clueless and losing his water bottle all the time.  Great babysitter of Abishai.

Abishai, the crazy one.  He's gotten a bit of a mean and bossy streak lately.  But he can cut his own banana and nectarine and play lots of video games.  And he can open and close the back door by himself.  He loves to do his siblings' chores.

Oh my senior.  Benaiah. I should have posed him a bit better, but I'm hoping we can afford and have the time to get some nice senior pictures soon.  And yes he needs a haircut.

He's huge! And working 35 hrs a week at CFA where he just made Team Leader.  He's got a wonderful girlfriend, Ava Thompson, and I think they are very much and sincerely in love.  He has 5 classes this year at Southside Christian School and then he is officially done! He plans to take a gap year and work, and then got to Ozark the year after that for Bible and business. His best friend is still Ethan Strunk, although they don't get to hang out much.  He still volunteers on the tech team at church and drums (and plays keyboards for Crave) for big church, Franklin Rd and Shelby St, and Crave.  My little baby has grown all the way up!

My crazy crew!  All ages and stages.  No wonder my brain is fried!

"I just want to be done!"

We bypassed the pumpkin patch because we already have some fake ones inside and outside this year.

Again, this used to say Anderson Orchard.  But I think it's basically the same as it was 15 years ago.  This orchard is only 15 minutes away from the house.  The playground and hay bale mountain are free.  They have a nice large store of local goodies and plenty of things to purchase to eat, like apple cider slushies.  No extra costs involved.  Just pay for your pumpkins and apples.  I think the hay ride is even free.  Simple and easy.  Most of the other orchards try to entice people with extra things like bounce houses and games, etc. that all cost extra.

Apple trees, a little bare, but we found some anyway.  Good thing we aren't picky about what kind we get!

Check out all those different kinds of pumpkins!  Yes, they are pumpkins, not squash.  They might be "gourds" though.

Hanging out while the others and I finished picking apples.  Time for apple cider slushies!

Sorry buddy, not this time.  We can come back and play another day.  We have another party to go to and Benaiah has to work.

Aw, romantic.

A little dark, but everyone is lined up with their treats.  And because the weather was cooler, the bugs and bees weren't as bad.  The orchard was pretty busy though.

He drank two sips and then just brought it home.  Keturah drank it the next day.

Keturah opted for a caramel apple with sprinkles on top.  And this year, she finished the whole thing right then and there!  Well, it helps that she didn't eat much for breakfast.  But usually we wait until we get home to eat it and it takes us a few days.

Not sure what was bothering him, but he definitely wanted to go home at this point.

Abishai learned how to properly "dab."

Miah finally gave in and let Abishai have one of his candies.

Note to self to pick up one of these next year.  And, the small hay bales were only $4 compared to Aldi's at $7.  The mini ones were only $3!

Keturah devoured that caramel apple!

Awww

Abishai didn't want to let Ava go.

Oh wait, there's no picture of Mom yet!  Ta da! Selfie time!  But I have to retire the red shirt underneath the plaid one.  It's going a ton of moth holes in it!  I love the color of that shirt!  And it's just one of those worn and comfy type shirts that you own forever.  Sigh.

After a quick lunch at home, we headed over to our friend's house for their 11 yr old's birthday party.  It was pretty much her large family and ours with a couple of other friends, but there was still plenty of fun and noise!  The kids got to decorate cupcakes!

This is Justin's with a few pieces of hot dogs on a toothpick in the middle like a little house for the gummy bears.

Abishai loved the Mike and Ike candies, so he chowed down while the others decorated.

The birthday girl needed to put her sprinkles just so on the icing.

Keturah's cupcake.

Pretty!

Oh my! That's a lot of yumminess on there!

Abishai found the bucket of cars and trains and immediately set up a line of cars for the monster trucks to crush.  He went to the party in his pjs because he had put his apple picking clothes on on top of his pjs so he could whip them off when we got home.  I didn't have the heart to make him change again.

Justin and friends up in a tree.  He said he went up much, much further than that.  And he did it barefoot.

I neighbor stopped by on his backhoe and let the boys climb in it.

What a big bucket!  Don't press any buttons in the cab and make it move!  Don't worry, the truck wasn't on.

That's a big scoop!

Justin promised to build his other Lego set with Abishai around, so they did it when we got home from the party.  Abishai mostly just watched this time and played with his own Lego.

I only bought this flag at the concert because I knew exactly where it could go and serve a purpose.  I wasn't going to buy it to have it sit in a box somewhere.  It's the first band I've seen have a flag as a souvenir.  As I was putting it up and looking around, I was reminded again that my house doesn't have a cohesive theme like most modern homes.  Well, it does have it's own theme, and that theme is all about memories.  I love to decorate with my memories, I always have.  I want to have little reminders of what has happened in my 38 years of life.  So, here we have a picture of a lighthouse on PEI to the left of the flag, and below it is the 35th anniversary of Michael W. Smith's career event plaque.  And then the For King and Country flag from the concert where I got to shake hands with Luke Smallbone and Ava did, too! And then the Tardis from Doctor Who, which reminds me of my Dad, but also of our time in Canada and all the fans up there and how I became intrigued with BBC shows and European bloggers and culture.  And of course the quote is awesome, "You want weapons? We're in a library! Books! The best weapons in the world!"  Actually, they did look through the books for answers but they might have thrown some of them as well.  But the point still stands, knowledge is power.

Meanwhile, this is what Jared, Gary, and Leah were up to on Friday night and Saturday morning.  The first annual elders' and elders' wives "retreat."  I'd call it a weekend event, not a retreat, but maybe alot of them did get to stay in hotels because they were out of state.  Looks like they had a lot of great fellowship and learning time.

On Sunday, both Gary and Leah were gone, so Jared took Justin to church for the 9:15.  Then Benaiah, Keturah, Abishai and I joined them at 11am.  Well, Keturah was with us, Benaiah came in and sat somewhere else, and Justin volunteered in the 1st grade room.  We had grilled ham and cheese sandwhiches for lunch, took a nap, and Jared, Keturah, Justin and I were off again to volunteer at the 4:30.  Jared and Justin were recruited to work because there was only 1 other adult scheduled for the 2's room.  Keturah had KP worship.  I and two other volunteers actually had 4 babies in our nursery room this week because it was Family Dedication Sunday.  They changed the baby dedication service back to how it was when our first 3 were dedicated, as part of the regular church services.  They didn't do this long ceremony or introduced each family, but the families, friends, and congregation all said a pledge of helping raise the child(ren) in the faith.  There were 4 families at our service, including a black family, yeah!  This is definitely a change I agree with!

One of the kids in the nursery was Hudson, our preacher's son.  It was the first time I've actually held and played with him!  He's already 10 months old!  But everyone wants to hold him, so I stood back.  He's very, very smart and busy.  He reminds me of Abishai.  Keren, his mom, says she has to play with him constantly, and he goes from room to room and is never still.  It's exhausting, she says.   I reassured her that while some may try to diagnose a kid like that as hyper active, it's actually normal and great to be like that.  I can tell that they do interact with him a ton just by the way he knows how to "properly" play with toys, throws a ball, etc. I'm looking forward to see how he grows and how intelligent (like his parents) he is.  I think she still plans on homeschooling, so I look forward to that, too.

Also, our new music minster and his family was introduced today.  While I'm having a hard time accepting that they are a "pretty" family from the outside, I'm sure once I get to know them, I won't be so jealous.  They have 4 young kids, with 1 in heaven, and the wife is skinny, successful in her home business, and beautiful. Typical millennial family.  He didn't lead worship today, which I'm actually grateful for because it means that they could just get used to their long commute from Avon and be present with everyone and scope out the place more.  They just had their baby 3 weeks ago, so I hope it wasn't too hard on them to be there at church all day. Josh Howerton led today and it made me sad because he's leaving us in a few weeks.  He's gotten so good at leading, too.  Oh well, things change.  Time to get used to it.  We are still here though.  Where else would we go? We aren't the church hopping kind of people, that's for sure.

After church, we came home, and Ava came over.  I did my best to leave them alone, but it's harder when it's dark and rainy outside and I have to pass through the rooms to go somewhere else.  And Abishai spent a lot of time in the same room as Benaiah and Ava while he was on the tablet.  Speaking of Abishai, we left him home with Benaiah during the 4:30 because he fell asleep playing video games!  Benaiah was dozing, too, so it worked out fine.  Abishai slept for nearly 3 hrs so he didn't start to go to bed until 10:30.  He was super excited to build things in Minecraft with Daddy.  Anyways, Benaiah and Ava talked and played a round of Monopoly.  He finally gave her the vegetables and chocolate he bought her.  He bought her vegetables because she kept telling him to stop buying her junk food.  She was so excited about the avocado especially!  But she loved the chocolate, too.  And the chocolate chip cookies from CFA that someone had made last night.  Apparently you can only keep baked cookies for 24 hrs.  Yes, they actually bake them in house.  So Benaiah and Ava got to spend some significant time with each other this weekend and I couldn't be happier for them.  It's what they both needed after a stressful week full of projects and papers that were due.

And that's it for now. Tomorrow I make sure everything is ready for the week in case I'm out of commission.  That means showers, laundry, dishes, and a bunch of books ready for the kiddos to read.  They have to do math and read books for school this week as a minimum.  Justin can keep going with some other things, and Keturah can review other subjects as well.  I may or may not do science and history with her, and probably not history with Justin. I'm at peace with the surgery, too, so let's just get it done, ok?  Here we go.

Biggest baby snoring away.

Littlest baby right beside him.  Sunday afternoon napping at it's finest!  Jared and I napped, too!

Aww, our PEI friends, Nicolas, Kerry, and Brenton Dickieson.  We definitely want to keep in touch with them.

And Colts won too!  But Pats have CREAMED every single opponent so far this season!

I guess we wore him out the past couple of days.

The game stopped in the middle and the controlled automatically disconnected.

The For King & Country flag is more sheer than I had hoped, but that's ok.  This is what it looks like in the daylight.

Abishai hasn't had much Daddy time lately.  I think Daddy missed him, too.  He was showing Daddy his Angry Birds game and trying to desperately fit on Daddy's lap.  He's just getting too long!

The love birds playing a competitive game of Monopoly.  Benaiah won.  It's the only board game he's willing to play because he actually wins.  Lots of play fighting going on though.

Loving up  the dog.  They used to be closer but Benaiah's so busy it's hard for him to take the time to be with Socks anymore.

Because Abishai had a 3 hr nap, he did stay up until 10:30pm playing Minecraft with Daddy.  He literally built a house on Minecraft from scratch by himself.  He can destroy walls and reposition them.  He change what's in the character's hand to what kind of brick he wants to build with. And he was talking a mile a minute when he was explaining all of it, "Mommy, Daddy, Mommy, Daddy,...."

Back up, buddy!

"Now Daddy, you have to come in my house and play cars with me.  Just pretend there's cars on the ground between our beds, Daddy.  Let me back in the house, Dad!"

Wow, I had zero time to take pictures today!  I was running at pretty much full speed all day!   Abishai woke me up as usual, at 7, but I refused to get out of bed until 8 or 8:30 (see, I can't even remember what happened 13 hrs ago).  We got Justin up at 9:30 and Jared had come home for something so he pulled Keturah's covers off and I think she was out of bed at 10:30.  They both got their breakfast, did chores, and started on schoolwork.  I finished putting together the rest of Abishai's Lego vehicles.  And, just like when you take something apart and try to put it back together without instructions, you often end up with extra pieces, and that's exactly what I had, extra pieces.  I think somewhere along the line Benaiah or Justin had gotten a fire truck and so I know a couple of big pieces go to it.  And the rest of the pieces are either the extra tiny 1x1 pieces of the different sets or some regular bricks that were brought into the mix, which is fine.  I just don't want to loose the special pieces into the big boxes of random Lego.

Then it was lunch, then it was this or that, then finally I got to the kids' homework, and I wanted to put in a significant amount of time today because I don't know what the rest of the week will look like.  Hopefully I've given them enough detailed instructions that they can follow.  I guess I need to lower my expectations a bit because I'm already getting all bothered because I have too much to do in the next few hours and Jared wants me in bed at a certain time and I hate that pressure.  I'll sleep through surgery and probably the rest of the day, I'll be fine.  I'll wake you up when I go to bed.  Anyway, I had been fine until we didn't finish school until 5.  Then I had to shower, make dinner, wait for Jared to get home, but he was late, go get groceries, put away groceries, make sure dishes and laundry were put away properly, and now I have to type up instructions because I know without a doubt that I'll come home to a disaster. Grandma is babysitting, but she doesn't know what the kids really should be doing on schoolwork or how much TV time they can have, which is none at this point because they have NOT made my deadline the last few weeks.  Yes, we are having "I forgot" and trust issues right now.  Sigh.

Plus I should write them all notes, and I want to watch TV shows, and I want to relax, and I can't because ANXIETY, no matter how peaceful you are in the days leading up to something, when it's go time, the anxiety levels increase dramatically.  Yeah, it's stupid. I can't control it no matter how hard I try and I can't wish or pray it away.  I just need everyone to go away so I can do what I need to do without their time tables and pressure.  I will be ready when I'm ready. Ok, I better get off of here before I burst into tears.  Things to do.

Aw time hop! I'm glad Everly is always smiling now! And Abishai LOVES that shirt Justin is wearing.  In fact, Abishai said that Justin WAS him.  Silly goose!  Abishai and I also played a game of "talk to the hand" and my hand became a puppet that said, "Will you be my friend? I like warm hugs!" which sent Abishai into giggle fits while Jared was in Meijer.  Then Abishai fell asleep in the car on the ride home because it had gotten dark out and it was 8pm.  We successfully transferred him to his bed fast asleep.  He had acted very tired all day and said he couldn't walk at Aldi's tonight.  Oh, and we were in Aldi's for about 30 minutes including checkout time with a full load of groceries!

At least Jared's meal was ready when he got home and he didn't have to cut up his own salad for once.  A little scanty on the types of veggies, but it's grocery day.

The End