Adventures in La La Land

I have to crank this one out quickly because I still have birthday presents to wrap . . . 1. We had a belated Easter Egg hunt at Niki's house. Every year she hides a golden egg with $10 in it. Levi found it last year. . . . and then he found it again this year. Haha. He was thrilled, but the other kids were not. 2. We've continued to do all the soccer. Levi's been playing goalie a lot and doing pretty well. Lena is enjoying playing forward most of the time and has come so close  to scoring multiple times! 3. I made 117 root beer floats for the secondary students who earned them during our last fundraiser. It was surprisingly hard to find enough root beer. I had to go to three different stores to get them all! I felt like a walking story problem pushing my cart full of root beer through the store. If Sadie needs to make 117 root beer floats, and each float requires 12 oz. of root beer, how many 2 liter bottles does she need to buy? (Spoiler alert: it's 21. And I only k...

1. Easter was especially meaningful this year, because Lena got baptized!  I am incredibly proud of her for choosing to do it. I didn't get baptized 'til I was 18, because I was so afraid of getting up in front of people. The fact that both of my girls did it when they were 12 blows my mind. In Lena's case, I can't say enough about anti-anxiety meds. I was nervous about starting her on them so young, but this year has shown how much she needed them, and how much richer her life is because of that little serotonin boost.  2. We spent a lovely Easter with Justin's side of the family, stuffing our faces, and playing cards. The weather was finally beautiful, so the kids played outside. And Lucy and Justin both joined in on a Wizard tournament, which is unheard of! Unfortunately, all 3 of us lost. Haha. But we had fun and tried our best, so that's what counts. 😁 3. Lena had a home game this week, so Justin went to that while I took Levi to his practice. As much as I...

1. This week I bought an ear wax removal kit that comes with a camera. I've been having a problem with my left ear continually feeling "clogged." I wasn't sure if it was actually an ear wax problem, or something more internal, but I got fed up enough that I decided to spend the $20 on an Amazon special. It was fascinating . After I finished (and replaced the disposable cap on the end of the tool), I made each of my family members try it too. To no one's surprise, Justin's ears were already clean. Lena and Levi were both too squeamish about sticking the tool deep enough in their ears for me to see anything.  And Lucy said, "yeah, no." But I greatly enjoyed seeing the inside of my own ears. Also, apparently my blockage problem really was just wax because it hasn't bothered me at all since I scooped out all that grossness. Oops. I'm disgusting. (Title of my memoir) 2. Lena had two games this week - both in Timbuktu and on the same night and time...

Oops. I skipped last week. Time to catch up.  1. Let's see . . . first we had a tornado. Or at least something tornado-adjacent. The sirens were blaring, but the intrepid weatherman assured us that the actual tornado was in a different part of our county. So we stood at the window in our second story living room and watched the storm whip through, like any reasonable Midwesterner would. Our next door neighbors and everyone to the north of them in our town lost power, but we did not! The power was also out at school, so we had an unexpected day off on Monday!  To celebrate, we went to Altitude with some cousins. And since Altitude shares a parking lot with Outback, where my mom happened to be working, we hopped over there (like kangaroos - get it?) for lunch. Libby was there too, but I inadvertently cut her out of the picture. Sorry, Lib! 2. Tuesday was Lena's first soccer game. She's playing on the middle school team at school this year, and as a 6th grader with zero playin...