The Saturday 7

1. We crossed another item off our summer bucket list this week: Go to the Beach. I've been waiting for a good hot day, but we've had such a mild summer, that we haven't had many options! We finally just decided to go yesterday. Our friends Paul, Missy, Bob, Kris and their kids were "camping" at the Christian Reformed Conference Grounds near Grand Haven, so we called them up and asked if they wanted to go with us. The Conference Grounds has its own beach access, so we ended up heading there. It was so nice. I totally want to "camp" there someday. (Camp is in quotation marks because they stay in a super nice "cabin" - that is actually a nice, clean, modern house. My kind of camping. Haha.)

We didn't actually stay at the beach that long because Lucy had to go potty, but we had a good time while we were there!

2. I made a new recipe this week: Tortellini Salad. I thought it was delicious, but I don't think Justin was a big fan. Haha.

Photo Credit

3. Justin's car has been doing this weird jerking/hesitating thing. I can't really explain it, but it's gotten really bad in the past couple weeks, so we took it into the shop. We have $400 in our emergency fund, so I was praying that it would cost less than that. They called us back the day after we dropped it off and said they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, so didn't charge us a thing. Haha. Not quite sure that's what I had in mind, but at least nothing is glaringly wrong!

4. I've been feeling really bad about my weight again lately. I decided I really need to start cutting back on Dr Pepper. So I told myself I could have one glass with lunch and one glass with dinner. That's it. I did great at the beginning of the week, but on Wednesday I had to babysit at Niki's for 11 hours and I was really tired and it was really hot and we were so close to McDonald's that I got a 32 oz for lunch. And then we got pizza for dinner, and everyone knows you have to have pop with pizza, so . . . I got another 32 oz for dinner. Haha. It's a good thing I don't like alcohol as much as Dr Pepper or I'd totally be an alcoholic. :-/

5. My little sister got married almost exactly a year ago. About a month later, her husband got the news that he was going to be deployed to Kuwait. (He's in the Navy Reserves.) He deployed in February, 6 months after they got married. And he came home on Thursday! He was originally supposed to fly in at 4:30 in the afternoon, so I got the girls all dressed up in their patriotic dresses and made a big deal to Lucy about how we were going to the airport to welcome him home.

His flight ended up changing to 10:45 pm. But we all still wanted to go, and Lucy's a night owl so I knew she wouldn't be too bad. The girls actually did really well. And it was so cool to be there to welcome Braden home - and to see my sister so happy after 6 months of missing her husband!

6. I came up with some pretty fantastic "independent play" activities for Lucy this week. On Monday, I got out a box of band-aids, Lucy's doctor kit, and all her stuffed animals/babies and told her to play animal doctor. She was in her glories.

$1.50 well spent! 

She played by herself while I cleaned the kitchen, got dinner in the crockpot, and started a load of laundry. Success! And then I played with her for many days following this (until we ran out of band-aids).

On Tuesday, I decided to use the idea Cara gave me when I asked for suggestions last week. I gave Lucy play dough, spaghetti noodles, a bowl full of dry cheerios, and cut up straws to thread on the spaghetti. I went in the other room to make some calls and came back to this:

"Look, Mommy! I made soup!"

Thinking outside the box. Haha. I don't know why it bothers me so much that she combines the play dough colors. It's her play dough. She doesn't care if the colors are mixed. Mostly, it just stresses me out because when it's time to clean up, I can't put each color back in its predetermined cup!

7. Like I've said before, I do these activities with Lucy because otherwise she drives me crazy begging me to play with her every single minute of the day. Sometimes I feel a little guilty for not wanting to play with her every second of every day, but a friend of mine posted this article on facebook yesterday, and made me feel much better. Haha. This is my favorite part:

When I was a kid, I remember spending my days eating Spaghetti-Os, watching marathons of Muppet Babies, and playing outside for hours and hours with no adult in sight. You know what that's considered now? Neglect.

Seriously. I don't ever remember my mom doing a craft with us, she certainly didn't throw us elaborate themed birthday parties (although she did do fun stuff like treasure hunts and fun games!), and I don't think anything organic ever crossed our lips. I know my siblings and I watched a ton of TV. And we didn't have cable, so it was the stupid PBS shows all day - The Big Comfy Couch anyone? Haha. But I had an awesome childhood. And I dare say I turned out to be a pretty normal, well-functioning adult. And my siblings turned out even better than I did, so apparently my parents did something right! Even without Pinterest to guide and direct them. ;-)