The Saturday 7

1. Thanks for all your input on my last post about school choices. I change my mind every 5 minutes. Sometimes I think, "For real. 5 years with my parents. Our priority has to be getting out of here and letting them have their house back." Minutes later, Levi is clinging to my leg crying and the girls are screaming at each other and I think, "I can NOT homeschool them. They have to go to school. So be it if we have to stay with my parents longer." Circle back to the girls sitting at the table playing with beads and listening to Odyssey and I think, "Well maybe if we have a really good schedule and lots of outings I can do it. Look at them listening to Odyssey so intently. Think of all the good audio books we could listen to at home . . ." So, obviously, we're no closer to making a decision, but I didn't really expect anyone could make it for us. We'll continue to pray and see what happens . . .

2. I read a few books this week: Not by Sight by Kate Breslin and Chasing Shadows and Drowning Tides by Karen Harper. They were all good. The Harper books aren't Christian and are marketed as romance, so I was a little wary, but they were surprisingly clean. They're way more suspense than romance, and the romance - while somewhat more detailed than Christian fiction - was nothing explicit, which I appreciate. #affiliatelinks

3. I made Levi an appointment with the ENT, but they can't get us in 'til the end of March, so we had a follow up at his doctor's office this week. She said his ears look good, but to keep the ENT appt. to discuss tubes. That was on Wednesday. All day today, I felt like Levi was not acting himself. He's been mopey and clingy and I caught him sticking his fingers in his ears a few times. But he's not feverish at all. This ear stuff is the pits. Why haven't they invented a test to check for ear infections at home?

4. I randomly came across some pins on Pinterest about freelance writing as a way to make money from home. Thanks to the Pinterest algorithm, after I clicked on a couple of them, hundreds more started to show up. I spent a couple days this week going down rabbit trails of work from home opportunities - especially jobs that include writing or editing. Unfortunately, most of them require college degrees or years of experience. And while the idea of writing appeals to me, I lack both the confidence and the life experience to have anything worthwhile to write about. I can blather on in a weekly blog about my daily life and feelings, but that doesn't translate to marketable work. I've gotten a little bit of (unpaid) experience lately consulting with a local company on their facebook marketing. It's easy, doesn't require a lot of my time, and I feel like I have a little bit of a knack for it. I'd love to be able to do that kind of thing on a slightly larger (and more profitable) scale, but it seems like a long-shot. I actually think I'd be better at editing, but that's the kind of job you really need a degree for. No one is going to hire me just because I catch errors in books and spot typos everywhere I go. Darn you, Pinterest, for getting my hopes up.

5. The girls had their first snow day of the season on Friday. That has got to be a record for the latest snow day ever. Especially for our school. We used to be notorious for closing at the drop of a hat until we got that new superintendent from Canada . . . Regardless, we all enjoyed the day off on Friday. Justin got an email at work so he texted me to let me know school was closed before I even woke up. I turned my alarm off and went back to sleep. See, this is why I can't get a job. Hahaha. Seriously, though, have I said lately how thankful I am that my husband gets up at the crack of dawn and works outside in the freezing cold all day so that I can snuggle my kids, sit in my chair with a book, and have the freedom to go to class parties and field trips? I don't take it for granted.

6. Levi reached the exhausting milestone this week of having so much to say but saying it so incoherently. He is talking so much all of a sudden, but none of us really knows what he's saying. Haha. I've noticed that he always repeats his words in rapid succession. For instance: door. If someone shuts him out of the bathroom or he wants a door open, he says, "Doh doh doh!" Never just once. When he is talking about his cars, he always says, "Yoom yoom yoom." He never just says "yoom." He and Lena have a new game called "race" where they run around the house. He says "wace" pretty clearly, but then there are times he says that same word but doesn't want to run. We're fiiiinally starting to realize that "Wace" is also "Luce" or "Lucy." And snow is "no," which is obviously pronounced the same way as another word he uses quite frequently. It's so confusing. But adorable. He also recently learned to finally enunciate the word "yes." He used to respond affirmatively by saying "uh." But now he very clearly says "yus."

7. Pictures

My all-time Text Twist high score. I couldn't lose! This game actually lasted for days. I just kept minimizing it so I wouldn't lose my score. I was aiming for one million, but they finally got me on the word "innate."