The Saturday 7

1. After a gloriously warm Christmas, winter returned with a vengeance on Tuesday. I knew we were supposed to get some snow, but didn't realize it would be this much!!

Look at our poor little picnic table! Haha. I should've stuck a ruler in it. That's got to be over a foot of snow!

Lena and Levi were so excited to go play in it. Justin just bought them kid-sized snow shovels, so they bundled up with the intent to shovel the driveway. However, when I opened the door to let them out, we saw this:

We've seriously never talked to this guy - rarely even seen him outside his house. But we dropped off homemade treats for Christmas and he stopped by a couple days later to thank me and introduce himself. And now he's our friend! Haha. A few minutes later I checked on the kids out the window and saw this:

I love not having to go outside in the cold with them! 🤣 

2. Tuesday night was New Year's Eve. We sent the kids to my parents' overnight so we could stay out late "partying." Lucy and Lena were extremely excited, but I could tell Levi was nervous.

(That last part should say "old house" - I don't proofread my snapchats.)

And then it dawned on me that while I've been away from him overnight plenty of times, he was always at home. He's never spent the night at someone else's house without me! Now that we don't live with my parents and they live in a new house, this is a whole new ballgame. As told by the girls he did about as well as I expected. He couldn't decide where he wanted to sleep, so went back and forth from the living room (with the girls) to my parents' room all night. Little sleep was had by all - at least at that house. Justin and I got home around 1 from our friends' house (where our "partying" consisted of dinner, 3 hours of Bible study/prayer requests/prayer/discussion, a rousing game of Telestrations, and copious amounts of Dr Pepper), dropped into bed and slept uninterrupted with only the two of us in our bed all night! It was glorious. 

Check out the timestamp on the picture I got from my mom that night. 🤦How many kids under 10 do you know that can easily stay up until midnight? (It's 11:03 as I'm typing this, and the girls are gleefully playing in Lucy's bedroom. It's the only time of day they're nice to each other!)

3. The rest of Christmas break has been spent playing lots of games - mostly with Lena, mostly Phase 10, Skip-Bo, and King in the Corner. 

A rare moment of the girls playing cards together. Lucy only plays once in a while, and she usually quits as soon as she starts losing. And she almost never plays without me. The above scene was short lived. 

The girls have also been making lots of slime. I was nice and bought them slime kits for Christmas, but I didn't realize they came with glitter!!! The herpes of craft supplies!! It is everywhere and I cannot get rid of it!!! Levi's been enjoying his many racetracks and new cars, and this awesome remote control boat.

Yay for a deep spa tub!

4. I've really been trying to spend time with my kids this week, hence all the game playing. I've been reading aloud to them, coloring with them, and trying to set more reasonable limits on screen time. I'm still having a hard time connecting with Lucy, though. More often than not she shuts herself in her room and doesn't associate with the rest of us. Isn't she too young for that?? Although, honestly, after this week I see where she gets it from. I have really been craving alone time lately. The depression hit a little bit yesterday and today, where I start to feel panicky about my life. I feel really trapped sometimes. Especially when I remove my escapes into fiction. Instead, it's just one day after another of making meals and cleaning up after them, doing infinite piles of laundry, telling myself to put my phone down and enjoy my kids, breaking up fight after fight, listening to Lena whine that her loose tooth hurts, changing Levi's diapers and begging him to wear undies, fighting with Lucy over eating something without cheese in it. And telling myself all the while that I'm going to miss this and I need to enjoy it while I have it. Reminding myself how many women would kill for a life like this. Berating myself continually for not being thankful enough, for feeling trapped and panicked when this is the life I've always wanted. Have you heard this refrain before? Yeah. So have I, thank you very much!!!! I want off the carousel!!! Oh, and definitely not helping matters is dieting. Justin sensed my stress earlier this week and said, "Why don't you go get some coffee," to which I replied, "I can't have coffee from the coffee shop! I can't have sugar or carbs or anything delicious! Pass me that wilted lettuce so I can make another salad!" #dramatic

P.S. Did I tell you that I asked my doctor if she had any resources for counselors that accept my insurance, and she replied, "We have an in-house counselor here! Would you like to set up an appointment?" Appointment set for January 17. 

5. A quick update on the picky eating battle. On Thursday I made tater tot casserole and portioned out one bite for each kid. The "bite" consisted of one green bean, one tater tot, and a few pieces of ground beef smothered in cheese. You would've thought I'd asked them to eat live cockroaches!! The rule is "sit at the table until your bite is eaten." Lucy refused to even come to the table. She decided to take the punishment of staying in her room all night with no screen time over sitting at the table. Levi sat there for an hour and half declaring vehemently that he was "never going to eat that."

I finally wised up and smothered Levi's in ketchup, then Justin spoon fed it to him in minuscule portions until he finally downed the whole bite.

Lena is actually my least picky eater, and ate her one bite fairly quickly. She proceeded to eat four more bites so she could make herself something else. At least 1/3 of my kids has a hope for eating like a normal human someday.

6. I've been following my reading plan in my chronological read-through of the Bible. It's obviously the first few chapters of Genesis, that I've read hundreds of times before, but it's still kind of boggling my mind. I have so many questions. Is the cherubim that was placed in front of the Garden of Eden entrance still there? Who was Cain afraid was going to murder him when God exiled him into a foreign land? What on earth did people do when they lived for 900 years? And how did they not have 20,000 kids?? If I was married for 500 years in a culture with no birth control, I would have 500 kids. Seriously. This is crazy stuff. Haha.

7. Pictures

Finally set up the baby gate! Ruby doesn't seem to mind.

How I feel about health food.

I felt bad for not doing anything fun with the kids for Christmas break, so we met up with some friends at Altitude on Friday. Apparently everyone else had the same idea. It was absolute chaos.

Poster child