The Saturday 7

1. As I'm sure you've already seen, I volunteered at VBS this week. I was in charge of the preschool room and had a blast with those hilarious little munchkins. I also had a blast writing up the "curriculum." It was very low-key, but totally my kind of thing. I have to share one funny story from the week. On Monday, we talked about Noah. I was trying to make it real for the kids, so I told them that the ark must have been loud with all those animals on it. And stinky! I asked them if the animals pooped on the ark and they all thought that was hilarious. At the end of the day, during the review, I said, "What did God put on the ark?" I expected the response to be "animals!" but instead, one little boy shouted out, "poopy!" Lol. Way to go, Teacher. 

2. Last year when I helped in VBS, we only made it two days before quitting. Lena refused to go to nursery, so I had to carry her all day, and Lucy was a wreck and spent those two days attached to my side crying for me to pick her up. This year, my wonderful sister, Niki, came to my house every morning to watch Lena. It was still traumatic. Lena screeched like she was being murdered every morning as Niki peeled her off of me. But she settled down quickly and had fun with Niki all week. And Lucy improved a little, at least. She didn't start melting down until part-way through Thursday. I actually had Niki come pick her up early because she would not stop crying/whining/begging to be held. And Friday was rough all day. I'm beginning to despair that she'll ever go to school. I'm going to have to homeschool her because otherwise she'll just cry all day every day at school. Ha.

3. Justin and I celebrated our 9th anniversary on Tuesday. As usual, we're poor and couldn't afford to do much. We got all dressed up and went to Amore for dinner. We went there for Libby's rehearsal dinner two years ago and I fell in love with their chicken alfredo, but haven't been back since. I was disappointed to see that chicken alfredo wasn't on their menu, and when I asked the waitress about it, she said they just do that for rehearsal dinners. Just then the owner walked by, though, and recommended anything with the four-cheese sauce because it's supposed to taste just like the alfredo. So I ordered sausage ravioli with four cheese sauce. The owner was the one who brought our meals out, and as he set mine in front of me, he said "So you went with the vodka sauce?" I said, "No. I got the four cheese." He whisked our meals back to the kitchen and had mine re-made. Finally, I got the right one. The sauce was amaaaazing. But there was definitely no sausage in my ravioli. I'm too chicken to speak up, though. Haha. Justin had Amore's famous lasagna, that was the size of his head. He wasn't overly impressed and didn't think it lived up to its reputation. The waitress came back to box up our leftovers and told us we could get a free dessert since it was our anniversary. We hadn't planned on getting dessert since we were stuffed, but we're too Dutch to pass up anything free! So we got the truffles.

Please forgive my horrendous photography skills.

It took forever for them to come out, and I was pretty underwhelmed. We got three tiny truffles that were way too fudgy. I definitely prefer the Ferrero Rocher ones from the grocery store checkout lane. Haha. Finally, we were ready to go, but just then the waitress started toward us with another plate of dessert! She said we got another free dessert for reasons unbeknownst to me. And this one (raspberry tiramisu) came with chocolate liqueur shots.

Neither Justin nor I have ever had a shot in our lives, but we chugged them down anyway. Two words: sick nasty! *shudder* I can't believe people drink stuff like that for enjoyment! I thought it tasted like cough syrup. Haha. So Amore was just ok in our book. Not really worth the nearly $50 we paid for our meal. We tried to be hip, urban foodies, but have come to accept that we're country bumpkins who prefer chain restaurants. Haha.

4. I've been slacking on my article reading lately, but I really loved this one: How To Manage a Mommy Meltdown. It was hilarious and relatable, but also useful. Most of her suggestions are things I've done in the past (blast worship music, get out of the house, have a mommy time-out) but I always forget in the heat of the moment when I just want to lay on the floor and cry. Haha.

5. My favorite part of the above article was this portion:

You check Facebook in between kissing booboos, wiping up syrup spills, and throwing your hair in a messy bun and you see that all your friends have gone for a jog at 4 am, actually taken showers, dressed their children in adorable matching outfits, and shared photos of their morning smoothie #kale.

I have been having such a bad attitude about all my healthy friends and their stupid healthy lifestyle posts. I now have three friends who are Beach Body Coaches. I love you all dearly, but if I have to see one more picture of you doing push-ups, I'm going to push up my fist through your face. ;-) (Don't worry. I don't actually possess the upper body strength to do any harm because I don't do push ups.) And then there's the clean eating bandwagon. Does anyone eat junk food anymore? Am I the only one who's not afraid of the chemicals in my pop? I know it's pure jealousy. I wish I could be disciplined enough to work out. I wish I liked vegetables and could say no to Reese's peanut butter cups. I wish everyone else would just be fat so I don't have to feel so out of place. Lol. I'm not sure how to get over it, though. So in the meantime, I'm just going to keep pinning snarky e-cards like this one:

6. Lucy recently figured out how to use "Siri" on my phone. I have an Android, so it isn't actually Siri, but it's the same idea. Lucy pushes the button and speaks into the phone, then the phone responds. I love the conversations they've been having.

Lucy: Frozen stuff
Phone: Here's some information about Frozen
Lucy: Frozen stuff, not information
Phone: Definition of formation
Lucy: Ugh. Song about the coronation.
Phone: Here are some pictures of carnations.
Lucy: Ugh! Let it Go with the real person not the fake Elsa.
Phone: I didn't quite catch that. Please try again.

It's quite entertaining. Although I need to figure out how to put filters on her google searches, so the phone doesn't mishear her someday and show her something she shouldn't be seeing! Haha.

7. I can't believe that summer is 2/3 of the way done. :-( I've been feeling guilty that we never made a summer bucket list, but then I decided that we're going to do the summer bucket list in reverse. We've done some fun stuff this summer. Maybe I'll make a list at the end of the summer of all the cool stuff we did. That way I won't feel guilty about not checking everything off the list. Haha. We've gone to the beach a couple times, did VBS, jumped in the sprinkler, had a tea party, spent hours in the pool, and Lucy even got to go bowling for the first time last weekend. Nothing too revolutionary, but a good summer nonetheless.