The Saturday 7

1. Here we are . . . 2025. We rang in the New Year in our usual fashion - at home, without much fanfare. Our kids have no problem staying up til midnight, so they all stayed up and played games with me. 

First up: Levi's new Dude Perfect game. It was fun! Not at all as obnoxious as I was worried it'd be. 😂

Then we played Lucy's Hues and Cues game. As you can see, hilarity ensued. 

We also played Lena's Poetry for Neanderthals, but I neglected to take pictures of that one.

Obligatory selfie at midnight! (Lucy straightened her hair just for fun and doesn't even look like herself!)

2. I made some decent progress on my cleaning projects over the past two weeks. Of course I didn't get even close to everything done that I wanted to, but I tackled some big projects. A lot of things depend on Justin finishing his "man cave" in the basement. Right now, everything that will eventually go in there is shoved in a corner of the playroom. Once that stuff is out of the way, I'm going to move a big shelving unit from our dining room to the playroom. I'm on a mission to store all of the toys and puzzles and games downstairs in the playroom, instead of overflowing out of every nook and cranny of our living spaces upstairs. But I managed to do some serious cleaning and organizing of the basement, dining room, a couple closets and cabinets, and the basement bathroom/shower. Of course I put that last one off until today. I've been dreading it forever. I just really despise cleaning showers. So I never do it. And then they just keep getting grosser, which makes the job more difficult when I do finally get around to it. I feel like there's a lesson there . . . 

3. I've also spent a fair amount of time reading over the past few days. This is par for the course for me - I tend to start out really strong with reading at the beginning of the year. I get way ahead of my reading challenge, then get complacent in my assurance that I'm so far ahead until I realize somewhere around November that I've fallen way behind and it's too late to catch up. Dang . . . this entry has turned into a veritable book of fables with all these lessons woven in! Anyway, this week I read two books. 

The first was a biography on William Wilberforce (Amazing Grace by Eric Metaxas). As a humorous aside, I have to admit that I have to pause and think about his name every time I talk about this book, because I get Wilberforce confused with Wilt Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. Lol. All very different men. Anyway . . . I knew very little about Wilberforce and was amazed at his story. I'm so convicted by people like him who are so singularly passionate about righting wrongs - especially when they're not particularly affected by them personally. Wilberforce was not a slave. He was a very wealthy white man who was politically well-positioned. But his knowledge of the slave trade drove him to spend nearly his entire life fighting it. I am slightly annoyed that he alone gets so much credit for it, though, considering the plethora of allies he had throughout his life that were equally passionate about the cause. I gave the book 4 stars because it was well-done and very interesting, but I'm not crazy about Metaxas's writing style. It's so wordy - like he's trying to impress readers with his vocabulary and verbosity (see what I did there?). Look at these couple of sentences for example: "Why drag one's feet against the inevitable pull of Progress? Had not the Enlightenment brought the sunshine of Reason to the world, and hadn't those felicitously reasonable beams evaporated the fetid swamps of backwater religious parochialism?" (Pg. 45) . . . I get it, Eric. You know a lot of big words. You don't need to use them all in one paragraph.

4. The second book I read is going to fall under my new feature for 2025: What Sadie Learned This Week. The title is Fallout by Steve Sheinkin. His book about the invention of the atomic bomb was one of my only five star reads last year, so I was excited to find another book by him for free at Embrace a few months ago. I picked it up blind, knowing only that it had something to do with the Cold War. I feel like I say this every time I read nonfiction: how did I not know this stuff?? I'm decently well-educated, fairly well-read, and I have a wicked memory, but I apparently knew nothing about the Cold War and/or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Holy cow! That was some scary stuff! In fairness to Mr. T., my high school history teacher, I do remember learning that the Cold War was a non-violent conflict between the USSR and the U.S. I knew it had something to do with communism. And I knew there was something called the Cuban Missile Crisis that had something to do with an invasion called the Bay of Pigs. I was aware that schoolchildren had to do drills for nuclear bombs, and that people were building bomb shelters because they were so afraid of them. But I had no idea how close the world . . . or at least the northern hemisphere . . . came to complete annihilation! Or that JFK was such a pivotal part of neutralizing tensions with the USSR that could have come to literal blows. I loved the book and devoured it in a single day. But it was very interesting to read alongside my current Bible study in Revelation . . . 

I'm doing the Jen Wilkin Revelation study with a group from church, and it has given me such a good overview of the end times. She's less interested in decoding specific clues that may or may not lead to the exact timing of Christ's return than she is in noticing rhythms and symbolism throughout the book. Studying it this way has allowed me to see so many things I haven't noticed before because I've been too busy trying to figure out if Donald Trump is the antichrist. Something we've learned is that throughout all the horrendous tribulations people will experience in "the last days," God ultimately holds the reins. He gives his avenging angels specific instructions, allowing them to harm 1/4 of the crops or 1/3 of the people or whatever. The numbers grow as the book progresses, but he holds back from completely obliterating everyone and everything until the very end. Our human perception of this tends to be that God is cruel in stringing the people along, making them suffer for so long. But the reality that Wilkin points out is that each of the plagues people face are an opportunity to repent. God gives the people chance after chance after chance. And yet, Revelation says that people will continue to blaspheme God and refuse to repent. 

Tying this back to the Sheinkin book . . . in the last chapter, Sheinkin points out how close the world was to extinction. From his secular point of view, he says that there were a variety of circumstances that prevented it . . . not the least of which was luck. But as a Christian, I can't help but wonder if God brought the earth to the brink of extinction like he did in the days of Noah, or like he wanted to do to the Israelites when they made the golden calf at Mt. Sinai. But he relented then, and he did again in 1962. He withheld his wrath for another day to give us more time to repent. Wowza. Let's not waste the time we've been given.

5. Whew. That was a doozy. Now it's time for an unpopular opinion. This was triggered by an innocent facebook post that came across my feed today:

Why?? What is wrong with having an ugly trash bag box under your sink? It's like the fancy wooden covers for ziploc bags. Seriously? Another thing I have to spend money on? It's the influencers again. They're convincing us that our normal lives are inadequate. I will not be influenced! You'll have to pry my yellow Aldi trash bag box out of my cold, dead fingers!

6. On another note . . . I mentioned in my 2024 recap that Justin and I will be celebrating our 20th anniversary this year and we really want to go on a vacation to celebrate. But we have no clue where . . . or when. Who's got a suggestion for us?? Here are my requirements: 

1. We really need to stay under $2,000 (including airfare, lodging, rental car, etc.) Is that even possible?? (I'm good with opening a new credit card if it comes with exceptional perks - like a ton of airline miles or something. Haha.)

2. Nowhere cold.

3. No camping.

4. No big cities (as our main destination. I understand the necessity of flying into a big city.)

5. Some kind of cool sightseeing/activities that aren't too physically taxing. (#oldlady #outofshape)

6. Someplace that doesn't require me to be on a plane longer than 4ish hours. 

Even if you have a good idea of a website I can browse for deals, I'd appreciate that. So many of them require specific travel dates, and I have no idea! Sometime this year! 

7. The first pics and memes of 2025:

Saylor napped at my house on Thursday. Stella is terrified of her when she's awake, but she was a big fan of Saylor's soft blanket when she was sleeping. Haha.

Levi hosted his first ever playdate this week. His friend (who is only a month older but like a foot taller) showed up wearing a matching shirt!

Levi and his friend spent an hour driving his cars on the treadmill and taking funny videos of them on my phone. Lol. I just told Justin I want to get rid of the treadmill since no one ever uses it, and suddenly it's Levi's favorite toy.

I'm using this the next time someone complains about me listening to Christmas music in October!

Last night Justin and I stacked his free birthday burger with a gift card at Red Robin, ran to Target, and got back home by 7:30 to read in bed like the nearly 40 year olds we are!

With my new electric blanket of course!