Year 4, July 5th-7th: And the Wind Down

Phew, what a crazy week!  I could NOT keep up with the blog at all because most nights we didn't get kids in bed until 10pm or later! In fact, I started panicking on Saturday because I was literally 5 days behind.  Thankfully I had everything loaded up onto Snapfish and YouTube but still, I needed some extra time to catch up.  So, I'm writing Fri/Sat/Sun post on Sunday.  I hope to get it all done but it's already 10pm.  Let's start with Friday.

Friday, we ended up going to a Bailey's house to swim in their pool.  At first it was just going to be Keturah.  Then I asked if Abishai could swim as well.  Then I asked if Jared could come along because when I made the plans, I didn't know he was off for the day.  And then, Shauna, Aaron and the girls had gone up to her mom's house, where she got in a fight with her brother and they high tailed it back to Gary and Leah's.  It was at this point that I said enough is enough, you've done what you could do.  Time to take back and process all that has happened, breathe, regroup, and rest.  There will always be another time to work on the house.  There is no exact timetable because it doesn't need to be sold right now.  Anyway, so the girls were home and invited them to come along with us.  And when we got to Dawn's house (Bailey's mom), she was babysitting two other kids on top of her own 4 kids.  We ended up with 10 kids and 3 adults having a grand time!  The pool was super warm and not as refreshing as I thought it would be, but I did find a bathing suit that fit and got in.  We swam for 2 hrs straight.  Then Dawn had bought some tie dye so they all tie dyed some shirts.  How much fun!  That's Dawn though.  She's the most hospitable, laid back, spontaneous, fun mom I've known.  Not necessarily unorganized though.  She's opposite than me in those ways but I love her for it and she has taught me how to go with the flow just from being that example to me.  We had a blast!

But Dawn is a talker.  And Shauna's sister, Stasia (who also came up with her husband from Tennessee to work on he house), is a talker.  And I talked at length with Ginny on Wednesday.  And all of them shared some level of what's wrong in their lives.  It left me feeling very depleted by Saturday.  I'm not used to that many people dumping their problems on me like that.  Well, they were just venting and while I love to listen and I love to offer encouragement and support, I hadn't anticipating having a full week of it.  I was so mentally exhausted!  And I've been learning how to listen without taking on the emotional burden of someone else's situation.  That's so hard for me not to do.  My counselor has told me that when I feel like I'm being selfish and making decisions based on my own needs (like saying no to things) that I also do care about others because of how I do take on their problems and think about them often and pray for them.  I do balance things out.  Speaking of balancing things out, my hormones are completely out of whack and I'm PMSing when I shouldn't be and that combined with extra social time equals very moody me.  So on Saturday, when I had promised to take Keturah to a birthday party 30 minutes away, I really didn't want to do it.  I wanted to stay home and blog.  But of course I'm glad we went.

Oh, so after swimming on Friday, Everly and Nora stayed with us until Aaron and Shauna got home.  They had gone up to her mom's house to pick up the things they had decided on taking home with them but ended up being there 2 1/2 hrs.  Ugh!  Bailey also came home with us to spend the night.  So, Keturah has had plenty of social time this time.  I rested until nearly supper time and then whoops, I forgot to plan supper!  And there wasn't enough appetizing leftovers to go around, and then, ding! I had an idea!  Let's crash Gary and Leah's place because she had made twice as much food as she needed to for Wednesday night.  And since Aaron and Shauna were leaving the next day and we would be inheriting the leftovers, why not go over there and help eat up everything! So we did.  And we stayed late.  And Jared washed dishes so I could talk with Stasia.  And the girls had a blast again.  I know Nora was a bit moody this week, but it wasn't as bad as some weeks have been.  When she was done playing, she went to her room to pack indicating to the others to leave her alone.  So we did.

Time to swim in the warmest pool I've ever been in! I should have had Jared put more sunscreen on me.  We didn't put any on Keturah, but Abishai had some on.  We all had pink cheeks at the end of our 2 hr swim.  I took a few pics and then went in myself for most of the time.  It was kind of freeing not sitting on the sidelines and just taking pictures.  I am grateful my bathing suit did fit me ok.  It was one that was given to me last year.  Not the prettiest thing, but it works.  No one sees you when you're under the water, right?  I think the kids enjoyed the fact that I was in the water, too. 

Putting those flippers and diving gear on, which lasted all of 2 minutes.

And those trusty old spiderman water wings.  We do have another pair in case these break, but they've lasted for over 3 years I think.  But how cute is this guy?  I can't believe he just learned to swim last year.  He was all over the pool today, in the deep end, back to the shallow end with a little push.  It was nice not worrying about him all the time.

Lots and lots of girls.  Our friend's boys were off playing a different game in their garage.

My little fish.

This is EXACTLY how Abishai tackles life.  Dive in with all he's got.  What a cutie!

Just chillin'

I did bring my sunhat! I look a little goofy, but oh well.  I didn't wear it in the pull though and I wish I had.  It doesn't fit that well when I have a flexi in my hair.  Which, by the way, does fine with chlorine.  The ones with wooden beads and the copper finish might tarnish a bit.  I didn't put my whole head under the water though.

Abishai has been talking about this boat since the last time we were here last year!  He sees it on a few of his favorite YouTube videos with all it's accessories.  So, after we were done swimming, he sneaked up to the playroom or boys' room upstairs and found one of the accessories! Goofball!  What a great memory he has!

Then it was onto tie dying.  I can't believe how Jared just sort of jumped in to help.  I don't know why I wasn't pushing myself to be more involved, but I do often hold  the camera, so, I guess he figured he would do what he could.  Everly was the expert t-shirt folder and helped everyone get their shirts folded and rubber banded.

10 kids folding t-shirts while Dawn got the dye ready.  Dawn is so awesome because she's so spontaneous and doesn't worry about things like staining an outdoor rug or their bathing suits.  She just goes with it!

Nora, the bathing beauty!

Time to tie dye in the grass of course!  The kids LOVED it!  The more dye, the better!

Loads of different colors on this one.

Jared did Abishai's for him.

Jared and a bunch of kids, so typical.  Not that he's a kid, but he's always been good with kids.  He'd play with any of the kids that came to our small groups in the past.  It's a wonder why he doesn't volunteer in the elementary kids area, or even the middle or high schools.

Nora had a TON of dye and it came out so dark and gorgeous!  (See below).

Bailey with lots of colors

Look at Nora's hands!

They developed a system to wrap the t-hirts in plastic wrap to let them cure over night.

Lots of different sizes and colors and weights depending on how much dye each person used.

Ignore the yawning dog, but we traded in two boys for the week for 3 extra girls.  They still love talking about poop though.  Oi!

Come on guys, it's a tire swing!  It's too hot, let's go inside!

Meanwhile at CIY.....Benaiah doesn't text me, nor does he post much until Friday and this is what I see.  Justin never found the Lego building area, but Benaiah did.  How stinkin' sweet!

Then he shares this with the world.  Yes, we know all about it.  He has to wait until he's 18 and he has to pay for it himself, but we aren't against it because it has a lot of meaning to him and somewhat to us.

Best...answer...ever!  Yes, Benaiah does dress like his dad does and even wears his dad's clothes.  I think what the friend meant is that Benaiah is a clean cut good 'ole boy who doesn't color his hair, pierce body parts or get tattoos.  

Ava posted it on Instagram, too.  Check out that smirk!

LEFTOVERS at Grandparents' house, come and get 'em! Woot! Woot!  I love that all our kids are used to eating leftovers.  You just have to combine a protein with some carb, veggie, and fruit and away you go!

Even our guest, Bailey, doesn't mind (nor did Wolf mind on Sunday when he came over). 

The start of a great salad.  He added bacon and oil vinegar dressing.  He also ate a BLT.

The bread is for the BLT.  Oh and he had strawberries on it, too!

Bailey made the comment about all the crosses in Gary and Leah's house (she had never been there) and so the girls went around counting all of the ones they could see without opening up cabinets and books.  I think they found nearly 50 of them.  Then they decided to make up these thank you notes in the form of crosses to put around the house.  How thoughtful!

Bailey was concentrating really hard.  She asked me what the fruit of the spirit were so she could write that down, as well as the 10 commandments.  Oh, and these guys are all homeschooled, how cool is that?

I'm glad the other girls can have some positive peer pressure on Keturah.  This wasn't something she would have thought of to do nor would have been willing to do if I had suggested it.  This is why it's important to include good quality friendships in our children's lives.  They can't live in isolation, even when they or we prefer it.  Time to stretch ourselves and go with the crowd on this one.

On Saturday, we tried to wake up in a decent time, and it's a good thing because Benaiah and Justin's buses were going to roll into the church parking lot at 11am and not 12pm like I thought.  So we got our morning stuff together and headed over there to surprise the boys.  The truck had been left there all week, so they did have a way to get home either way.  After we saw the boys and Ava, Benaiah left in the truck with their stuff and we took Justin with us so we could talk with him and be there when he saw his surprise.  We had brought Bailey with us, so we dropped her off on the way back to the house.  Then Keturah, Abishai and I left at 1:30 for the birthday party.  The boys had quickly put their things away and I started laundry.  The birthday party was at the family's house that we went to two weeks ago to celebrate the dad's new employment.  I'm glad we went because the birthday girl doesn't have a lot of close friends and I knew she probably needed some encouragement.  And it was a mermaid themed party.  Very low key, but Ariel cake, Jellyfish decorations made of crey paper and paper plates, a crown she made herself, and party hats in the form a mermaid tail.  Oh and there was mermaid multi colored "poop" ice cream and "mermaid (aqua colored lemonade) juice."  Although I didn't need more adult time, I'm glad we went.  Keturah didn't throw a fuss about going either, which surprised me.  Brianna is a year older than her, but I think she understood that we needed to go.  She enjoyed herself somewhat.  And funny thing is, we'll see the same people next weekend at the nursery pitch in.  The 4:30pm nursery volunteer team seems to have become our small group.  We've seen each other off campus multiple times this month.  Crazy! They are sweet people, but it seems like our whole social life revolves around church events and people.  We can of course say "no" to any of it, but if we can, we try to do all the things.  That makes it difficult to fit in things like birthday parties for our own kids or going to the children's museum or to a local water park or splash pad.  It's just the busy season we are in right now.

After the party, I had been able to calm down, and was ready to spend some time with the blog and got a couple of days done.  Yeah!  We ate more leftovers and tried to get to bed early so we were ready for church on Sunday.

Abishai loves playing host and shows all our guests around to his favorite things like Legos.  Keturah ended up sleeping on the couch.  Bailey had a really hard time falling asleep the night before, and said she read an entire book on Marco Polo that was sitting on the school table.  #homeschooler

Abishai showed Bailey all his favorite bedtime books!

Using the truck bed as a platform to see the buses roll in!  We got there with just a couple of minutes to spare!

The van was a couple of minutes of the buses, but here they come!  Come them! 1-2-3-4-5-6!!!!

Ok, where are they?  Which bus holds the seniors (Benaiah) and which one has the freshman (Justin)? And which one was full of just junior girls?

Get out of my truck!  Someone's a bit grouchy.  Come to find out, he got dehydrated and made himself very ill for most of the week.  He almost had be taken to urgent care.  And here I was worried about Justin the whole time.

Ava made it through her first year at CIY!

Justin!  You're home!

Aw, gotta get in the last good bye!  Instead of walking home, Ava's mom told her to drive her stuff home.  Makes sense.

Aw, puppy missed his buddy, too!

Thanks, Mom! I'm so excited!

We picked up the tie dye shirts from Dawn when we dropped off Bailey this morning.  This is Nora's!  It's incredible!

Everly's multi colored one.

I love how Keturah's has most of the tie dye on the bottom.  She's already worn it twice!

Not enough dye, but this is Abishai's blue and green one.  I'm glad Jared put the yellow in there, too.

The Ariel cake that Brianna's mom made for her.  That's incredible!

Paper plate and streamers make great jelly fish decorations!

The birthday girl who made her own seashell crown.

Playing with cars with Savannah, Brianan's youngest sister.  Lining them all up of course.

Justin chillin' in Brianna's room among all her fancy pillows like he owns the place.  And yes, he's still in his new Minecraft pj's.  I could hardly get them off of him to wash them!  He wanted to wear them to pick up Justin from CIY, too.

Johnson tradition, ice cream on vacation.

I'm so glad they did this.  It's not always about the destination, but about the journey.  I don't think we will be able to take our time either direction on our way to Delaware.  Bummers.  Oh, and Gary has leanred how to use GIF's, which are those little animated clips from famous tv shows and movies.  The only problem is, he's never seen most of those tv shows or movies.  He's just trying to stay up with the times I guess.

Back to normal life....gaming....

.....and sleeping....

Playing Minecraft with his favorite people in his Minecraft pj's.  Abishai is in heaven!

Summer sunsets are the best!

Sunday was normal.  Benaiah played drums for MSM worship, so Keturah got to worship with him at the 11am.  Justin volunteered and we went to service at the 11am.  Abishai asked if he was going to go to Justin's room (1st grade room) and we had to tell him he had two more years before he got there.  He really, really missed Justin, his buddy.  And Justin missed him a lot.  It was red, white and blue theme, so I wore my Patriots shirt because well, there would be no Independence Day without the Patriots winning against the British.  So,....service was fine.  We had leftovers again for lunch and Wolf had come with us so he could start building the Millennium Falcon with Justin.  I took a nap.  Then Justin, Keturah, Wolf and I headed back to church.  Keturah ended up helping out in KP worship although she wasn't scheduled.  Justin I think went to service.  Wolf volunteered I think in a KP room.  Then Wolf and Keturah went to the MSM hangout.  I found Justin there, playing with his younger buddies, and I had to pry him away from a Smash Bros tournament saying, "You don't belong here anymore."  Poor guy is now at the bottom of the totem pole in high school and was missing his younger friends who are still in middle school.  How sweet!  That is until he beat his sister in Smash Bros.

We came home and he finished his Falcon with a little bit of help from Abishai.  It took less time to build than the rocket did at Christmas time.  Benaiah had taken a 4 hr nap, so we woke him up and he ate some dinner.  Jared picked up Keturah, who was wet from the water balloon fight they had.  She said she wasn't going to participate, so she wasn't really prepared for it.  But I think she had fun anyways.  Falcon was finished and shown off, Fourth of July Twinkies were consumed, and then it was off to bed.  And now I'm done with the major portion of the current blog post, yeah!  Now to add pictures and videos tomorrow.  Praise the Lord!

Abishai kept saying, "When Justin gets home, Daddy, me, and Justin are going to build the millennium palcon."

Hm,.....so these are the actual pictures from Move, eh?  He said the other couple were a little more into each other and that he and Ava thought it would be best not to kiss and have a lot of PDA.  I'm glad.  But just check out that smile! He's madly in love with her or something....

Oh that smile.  It kills me.  Maybe because it's very similar to Jared's.

This is what he really thinks about tattoos.  This is why you have to be on the social media platform that your kids are on.  They share things on there that they won't share with you.  Yes, I stalk him.  And it's ok.  I love knowing these things.

Read this carefully.  This is why I think this relationship is meant to last - in sickness and in health.  He's already praising her for dealing with his grouchiness!  You're welcome that my sickness has trained you to recognize compassion when you see it.  And as far as him "evaluating his faith" goes, I think it's more of a making his faith his own and not his parents' and grandparents' thing.  I think that's a very healthy thing.  Not every CIY is going to have this huge decision at the end of it.  I'm sure next year will be the best because hopefully he won't get sick again and he'll be even more mature, and hopefully Ava will get to go again, etc.

Silly selfie.

Oh my word.  The boys bought scrunchies of all things from the merch table!  I could have given him my scrunchies!  You're weird!

Awwww.....I TOLD him to bring some nice clothes in case Ava dressed up for dress up night.  But did he listen?  Nope!  So he had to buy a nice shirt from a retail store nearby.  Oi! Stupid tax!  But at least they looked cute together!

Indian Creek Christian Church at CIY Move 2019.  All 350 of them!  They took up nearly 1/5 of the arena! Eek!

Man buns.  Sigh.

Great sermon by Emerson!

And this is why I don't handle sarcasm well.

Keturah got a belated birthday gift from Emilee!  I hugged Emilee and said thank you myself because it's something I would have loved to own!  And if Keturah grows out of it and doesn't want it anymore, I'm keeping it!

Abishai is so obsessed with Justin that he follows him everywhere.  Justin and his friends just take it in stride and includes him in whatever they are doing.  It's so adorable.

I think they missed each other.

Time to start the big Lego build!  10 bags worth, plus small bags within those big bags.

The internal portion of the Falcon.

So close to 150,000 miles on the van!  I took this picture in case I forget to take one at 150,000.

Wait a minute!  Justin, you're not in middle school anymore!  What are you doing back here?  "I just miss my friends, Mom."  Boy, you'll be fine, come with me and let your sister be.

See, always together these two.  Always.  Abishai did help a little bit, but he was also anxious for it to get done so he can play with it.

Nearly finished.

Hi, ho, the gang's all here watching the finishing touches go on.  Except of Benaiah.  He's on his computer or he was out trying to buy cold medicine, which he couldn't do because he's underage.  Whoops!

Ta da!  This is the Millennium Falcon from the (Han) Solo movie before the escape pod was released.  Plus, it's pure white because it was before it had been in numerous battles and barely escaping situations.

The End