The Saturday 7

1. One day this week, at 11:30 pm, Lucy and Lena were still awake, screaming and giggling and playing and fighting. I had put them to bed at 8:30. I've been doing bedtime solo for like 5 weeks now and it's getting real old. Especially when the children do.not.go.to.sleep! So I decided something had to change. The next day, I told the girls we were going to have "major cleaning day." Every few months I get fed up with the state of their bedroom and deep clean it. While we were cleaning, I mentioned nonchalantly to Lena, "Do you think you'd like to move your bed into Levi's room and start sleeping in there?" To my surprise, she was totally on board. So we spent allllll day cleaning and re-arranging. Lucy is beyond excited to have her own room and kept asking, "Can I arrange the furniture any way I want?" I agreed and then proceeded to help her drag her dresser to the very center of the room. All the other furniture is pushed up against walls, but she wanted her dresser smack dab in the middle. Okaaaaay. Lol. 

The first night of the room switch Levi was exhausted and fell asleep immediately. I listened to an audio book with the girls for half an hour while we waited to make sure Levi was good and asleep, then hooked Lena up with an audio book on her tablet and some headphones because she's not used to falling asleep in silence (thanks, Lucy). The good news is she never woke up Levi. The bad news is she came downstairs roughly 20 times crying that she couldn't sleep. I finally had to get my angry mom voice on to make her stay in bed and she was out by 10:30. The second night, Levi's head popped right up as soon as I tiptoed in his room to put Lena in bed. I heard him talking to her over the monitor for a little while, but they both fell asleep soon after. It's gotten a little better every night since then. Lucy still stays up til 11:30 most nights, but she's just reading or doing quiet craft projects, so it doesn't bother me as much. Especially since I'm usually up 'til then reading too . . .

2. I read one of my favorite books of 2018 so far this week: Sons of Blackbird Mountain by Joanne Bischof. (affiliate link) The love interest is deaf, which is something different for Christian fiction. It was interesting to see parts of the story told from his point of view. And the main character's name is Aven (female). Isn't that gorgeous? If I were ever to have another daughter and I could get Justin on board, I'd totally consider that name. If only it started with L . . .

3. Tomorrow, Justin and I will celebrate 13 years of wedded bliss. Yes, we were babies when we got married.

To celebrate, I bought him this:

And his gift to me is that he doesn't have to work out of town next week! Woohoo! Haha, kidding about the boat. He's been wanting one for ages, we have the money now thanks to the extra income from this out of town job, and he found a great deal on facebook marketplace. We're going out for dinner tomorrow night, but our real gift to each other is a weekend away in a couple weeks. We rented a random cottage in a random little town in Michigan through VRBO. I always just search for something on a lake that is somewhat updated (no vinyl furniture and little to no wood paneling) and within 2 hours of home - because I'm a wimp about long car trips. So we're going to go away sans kids to fish, read, sleep, and eat at restaurants for every meal. My kind of vacation!

4. So here's a random question: do you think I should get my hearing tested? I've noticed in the past few years that I don't hear what other people do - like watches beeping or children crying from other parts of the house. I watch TV with the captions on because I can't quite catch every word. I've never been too worried about it. But then the other day I was watching PBS Kids by myself (because I'm cool like that) and this little blip about cicadas came on. They were talking about how cicadas make a screeching noise to communicate and then apparently played the noise. Everyone on the screen was covering their ears and exclaiming "Wow! It's so loud!" I literally did not hear a thing. My kids weren't in the room so I couldn't ask them if they heard it. Was the pitch just too high for my ears? I hear cicadas in real life all the time! Anyway, Justin keeps telling me that I need my hearing tested, but I feel like it's a waste of money. I obviously have some hearing loss, but it's not debilitating. I don't feel like I need hearing aids yet. I probably will in the future. But is there any benefit to being diagnosed with hearing loss? Could it be a sign of something else? (Probably a brain tumor pressing on my auditory nerve or something.)

5. Today was the family baby shower for my little sister Libby. I was in charge of the games and had a great time coming up with some fun new ideas. I can never find anything I like online, so I always end up making up my own. (I wrote a blog post with some of my game ideas here.) Today we played my made up version of "Baby Apples to Apples." I pre-chose cards from the game that I thought would fit and parceled them out into sets that I handed out to each team at the shower. Then I asked questions like, "The best moms are good at this." Libby got to choose her favorite answer. Some of the answers today were "salsa dancing," "having a baby," and "baking cookies." Other questions included, "Childbirth feels like this:" (angry hornets was the winner that time), "We hope your baby grows up to love: (Libby chose "cleaning the bathroom" lol), "The perfect role model for your baby would be:" ("Sisters" was the winner because Libby knows better than to cross us. Lol), and "The best place to take your baby when he's crying is:" ("My parents' house" obviously!)  So I made sure each set of cards had a few nouns, a few people, a few places, and a few verb phrases. It was so fun to hear all the hilarious answers.

The second game was "Name that Name." Libby still hasn't picked a name, so I gave her some helpful suggestions - but she and the guests had to work for it to figure them out. I came up with a bunch of "clues" describing a boys' name. All of the names are nouns/verbs/adjectives. For example, "What would be helpful to have if you get a flat tire?" Answer: Jack. Here's the list. Anyone want to try it out?

I think it will get bigger if you click on it. 

 Our cousin Alisa got 18 right. Anyone beat her? Without the help of Google??

The whole shower went great and Libby got tons of adorable gifts for the nameless little man. We can't wait to meet him!!!

When your Grandma and Aunt work at Once Upon a Child . . .

Sisters pic!!!

One with Mom too!

6. Now that the shower is done, I can turn my attention fully to VBS! It is starting on Monday, and I have been preparing all week. I spent allllll day yesterday prepping crafts and organizing all my supplies into bins for each day.

Baa. (Is it really VBS if you don't make an animal mask with cotton balls?)

It's a bad sign that I'm exhausted before VBS even begins . . .

I'm going back to my roots and directing the preschool class again this year. As far as I know, I should only have about 12 kids, so it shouldn't be too bad. But 8 of them are boys. Haha. The hardest part is the age disparity. I'll have Levi and a few 2 year olds like him who have never been to school, can hardly talk, and are still in diapers. And then I'll have 4 year olds who aren't quite old enough for Kindergarten, but have done preschool and know the ropes. I was given a curriculum this year (instead of writing my own as I have in years past), so I had a starting point to work from, but I didn't love most of their suggestions, so I'm supplementing a lot of my own ideas (via Pinterest). I'm beginning to think I have a control problem . . . Lol. Anyway, feel free to pray for us next week!

7. A few more pictures . . .

He's allowed to watch half an hour of car videos on YouTube every night during Jeopardy. The Jeopardy theme song is officially his favorite song, now. Haha.

Gotta love our redneck town that needs to specify this

For 2 years we've had 2 huge mounds of dirt sitting where our pool used to be. This week, our farmer neighbor drove his tractor over to level it out for us. Levi is in his glories.

Even Lena got in on the action!

My friend just sent this to me from a party we went to in May. Sweet girl.

Monster truck pajamas? Check. Rain boots? Check. Hose? Check. Pool full of muddy water? Check. It's a good day.

Chillaxin . . .