The Saturday 7

1. Good news! I finally lost 10 pounds! Bad news. I've lost all motivation to continue. Haha. My pants are looser and my belly is flatter (I look 3 months instead of 6 months pregnant.) At least until I eat carbs. Then my belly pops right back out. Ugh. I'm telling myself that I'll diet during the week and eat what I want on the weekends. But we'll see how long that lasts . . .

2. I've been reading a book about the Charlotte Mason method to prepare for homsechooling. Our curriculum is largely CM based, but I'm not a die-hard follower. (I like worksheets and structure - sue me.) It's been interesting to read about her ideas. She's a big proponent of unstructured play - especially outside. I love anything that tells me it's good for my kids to entertain themselves instead of heaping on more guilt about how I don't spend enough time with them. We had really nice weather last week, so we spent lots of time outside. As long as I'm physically present outside my kids are pretty good about finding things to do. The girls did a trampoline tricks show, then put the hose on the trampoline to jump in the water. And Levi had a blast sending his cars down the slide into the pool, then digging in the dirt. We even found a toad (frog?)! The girls were terrified and ran away screaming. But once I assured Levi that they were crazy and this little toad wasn't going to hurt him, he was fascinated. He kept asking me to move it into the dirt hole he'd dug or on top of his excavator, and he got really upset anytime the poor toad tried to hop away. Charlotte Mason would be proud.

Lena almost has a front walkover on the trampoline, she can do a back walkover with her head on the tramp, and she's starting to figure out one handed cartwheels. Girl's got skillz.

3. The past few days it has been brutally hot and humid here - temps in the 90s and heat indexes in the 100s. I know much of the country (and the world) experiences heat like this on the regular, but it's unusual for us northerners. We have thick blood to survive the cold and aren't equipped to handle the heat! Haha. Especially because we don't have central air. We're thankful for lots of shade trees and window AC units. We're also thankful for Justin's social butterfly dad for making friends with people who own lake houses. Lol. We're going to one friend's lake for 4th of July and we spent yesterday afternoon at another friend's cottage. My kids could swim/play in the sand alllllll day. We had to drag them home after 3.5 hours.

Lena rocking her 3T swimsuit. It's the only thing that isn't huge on her!!

Levi and Grandpa VK ❤

Justin took the girls out to the raft while his dad played with Levi, so I got to read in the hammock for like a solid 10 minutes!

And then they all went out on the paddle boat together. 

4. While Justin was gone this week I decided to try a new show on Netflix. I've heard lots of good things about The Crown, so I checked it out. It's a little slow for me, but hopefully it'll pick up as I get more invested in the characters. And it's rated MA, so I did have to see a few naked butts, and hear some nasty language, but it was actually much milder than I expected. Immediately after finishing the second episode, I spent half an hour googling the order of British Kings and Queens and learning what a "consort to the queen" is, as well as discovering that the Queen's husband is still alive. Why do we never hear anything about him? Poor guy.

5. Tonight, my wonderful little sister invited us over to her air conditioned house for a break from the heat. She had ulterior motives of course. She wanted us to bring pizza and help her with her baby registry, but those are totally acceptable conditions for a few hours in AC. And then my girls roped her into playing a couple board games, so she didn't get off totally scotch free. (Scott free? What is that phrase?) I loved helping her with the registry. It's amazing how much has changed in just eight years since I registered. Bumbos with buckles? My babies had to be smart enough not to fall out. Monitors you attach to your baby's toe to make sure they never stop breathing? Shopping cart covers? How will they ever build up their immunity if they don't lick the shopping cart handle? Lol.

6. I've got nothing else and our Internet keeps going out, so I'm going to quick slap up some pictures and hit submit while the Internet is working.

Oh man. This was so good. It's a hot dog with mac n' cheese, queso, and bacon. (I wasn't joking about slacking off on my diet.)

Pretty sure that's going to be the title of my memoir.

Girls watching cartoons together nicely. (Before the heat wave, obviously.)

Popsicles in the pool today.