The Saturday 7 - for real this time

I actually have a lot to report today! Hold on to your hats!

1. Stella used up the third of her nine lives. In case you're new here, this free cat has caused us more trouble (and money) than any animal we've ever owned. First, she pulled down some window blinds and severed her tail - resulting in an overnight vet stay and minor tail amputation. Then she got locked outside and found her way back in by way of the chimney (where she was stuck for an unknown length of time until we heard her meowing). Now for the most recent catastrophe . . . Last week, Justin noticed that Stella had an open sore in her armpit. She had licked all the fur away from it, so it had probably been there for a while before we noticed. It smelled kind of funky and was oozing pus. Not a good sign. But she was acting totally normal, and it was like 8:00 at night when he noticed. The next morning she got up with him as usual, drank out of the sink like normal, and didn't seem to be acting strangely at all. When I got up a couple hours later, I purposely looked for her to check on her sore and couldn't find her. That's not totally unusual. She often finds places to hide for naps throughout the day. But I got more and more concerned throughout the day when I couldn't find her anywhere. I was terrified that she had crawled away to die somewhere and I'd come upon her rotting corpse weeks later. Around 8:30 p.m. Justin went downstairs to change his clothes and shouted, "I found her!"

One of our dresser drawers doesn't close all the way, so she can climb in it and then through the back of the dresser into a closed drawer. I'm pretty sure she was sleeping in Justin's shorts drawer for about 12 hours that day. Chat GPT said that classifies as lethargy, and when combined with a disinterest in food, and a stinky oozy sore, I knew we had another vet bill coming. 🤦

She was still lethargic by the time we made it to the vet the next day, which actually worked in our favor, because she let me push her into the cat carrier, and she just huddled on the bench next to me trying to hide while we waiting for the vet.

Can you see her?

The verdict: she had a high fever (over 104!), likely brought on by an animal bite (probably another cat) that got infected. She received a very expensive antibiotic injection, got the pus drained out of her abscess, and was outfitted with a cone of shame and some pain meds. I received a stern talking to from the vet for letting her outside where she is able to get into fights with other animals. I assured the vet that after this expensive consequence of my foolishness, Stella will not be going outside ever again. Oy.

It took her a while to get the hang of the cone, and I found her bumbling hilarious.

2. A couple days after the Stella Affair, I took off with a group of women from Book Club for the Gospel Coalition Conference for Women in Indianapolis. This is our third time going, and it always proves entertaining! We have interesting luck with Airbnb's, and this time was no different. Despite being named "Luxury Home Close to Downtown Indy," the house did not quite live up to expectations. It was 95* the day we arrived, and no one had stopped by to turn on the AC before our arrival. One of the bedrooms (with four beds) was on the top floor, and it was easily over 100 degrees up there. As one of the only people in attendance who isn't terrified of bugs, I was called upon multiple times to dispose of centipedes and ants and earwigs. The listing claims that the house sleeps 11, but there were literally 4 forks and 3 bowls. But the worst part was that the door to the basement was locked with a key code. We were under a tornado watch and one member of our group has a serious phobia of tornadoes, so she really wanted the code to the basement in case we should need it. This was how my conversation with the Airbnb owner went . . .

"Please take extra care!" Lol! Fortunately, despite the tornado warning and blaring sirens, we were not hit with a twister and lived to tell the tale.

The conference itself was wonderful, as usual. I'll never tire of singing praises with 9,000 other women (and Shane & Shane!) - a little foretaste of Heaven! And we were blessed with so many godly speakers who inspired us to "Turn Our Eyes to Jesus."

Road trippin' in my new vehicle! (I hate driving so my cousins took the wheel. I just provided the vehicle.) We have the best road trips together - playing games, doing Mad Libs, and singing hymns and Christmas carols at the top of our lungs!

The whole gang (missing a few beloved Book Club members, but these were the 8 who made the trip)

Lunch on day one. We wanted to avoid paying Convention Center prices, so decided to walk to Chick-fil-A. Unfortunately, 8,000 other women had the same idea. By the time we got our food, every seat in the restaurant was taken. But it was 90 degrees and we didn't want to trek back to the convention center before eating, so we plopped down on the sidewalk outside the restaurant to eat.

Day Two!

Lunch on day two - too hot and tired to walk to a restaurant. Got this special from a food truck on site at the convention center. It was mac n' cheese, pulled pork, and goldfish? Guess how much I paid for this and a 20 oz. coke (they didn't even have Dr Pepper!).

Despite the scorching temps outside, the convention center was so cold. Finally, by the last day, I remembered I had a blanket in my trunk! I felt kind of silly carrying it around, but it was worth it not to have my teeth chatter during sessions!

We headed home shortly after noon on Saturday, and decided to stop at the Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch on the way. We found a location 30 minutes north in Carmel, Indiana. It didn't take us long to realize there was something strange about the town, though. Almost every single intersection was a roundabout. We didn't have to go that far off the highway to get to the restaurant, but we went through 6 roundabouts to get there!! I decided to look it up, and sure enough, Carmel, Indiana is the roundabout capital of the US!

Yikes. I should've written a separate post for each of these points . . . But wait! There's more

3. I started watching my niece on Justin's side of the family this week. She's almost 7 months old, and I'm just watching her one day a week during the summer. She's the sweetest little peanut, but it's been a while since I've watched an infant! Thankfully Lena is a huge help. We had lots of fun having a baby in the house again this week!

We even made a trip to the library!

4. On Wednesday, we kicked off the first official day of Aunt Sadie's Summer Camp. I'm watching Nash, Saylor, Nova, and Brodie every Wednesday this summer, and I knew that we'd all go crazy without some structure. So I did what I do best and went over the top planning scheduled activities to fill our day.

I started by choosing devotionals from Louie Giglio's Indescribable:100 Devotions About God and Science, and then built themes around the lessons I picked. This week, we learned about creation - specifically the solar system. After breakfast (homemade pancakes, thank you very much), I sat them all down for "lesson time." We read our devotional and two other books about space.

Then I gave the older kids a few verses to look up that talk about God creating the heavens, calling the stars by name, etc. We watched a short YouTube video about two teenagers who sent a Lego man to space. Then we moved back to the table for craft time.

Ping Pong balls + paint in a foil-lined pie tin =

Add an electric tea-light candle, and you get planet night lights!

We had a constellation snack . . .

After lunch, outside time, and half an hour of silent reading, I turned on a space-themed movie. I chose Lightyear because my kids have been really into Toy Story lately, but I forgot that it features a pretty blatant lesbian couple. Oops.

One of the unexpected hits of the day was the "Bored Jar."

I actually created this with Lena and Levi in mind, but once the cousins found out about it they were obsessed. The rule is that if you whine "I'm bored" to me, you have to draw a card from the Bored Jar. And no matter what it is, you have to do it. No trades. No saying, "Never mind. I'm not bored anymore!" Most of them are fun (play with perler beads, draw with Art for Kids Hub, work on a puzzle for 15 minutes), but there are also a handful of chores in there. A few chore cards were drawn throughout the day, but the kids actually did them with good attitudes! And the prompts for fun things worked exactly as I intended. Once one kid started with perler beads, more joined in. Once one kid started on a puzzle, more got involved - and worked on it for way longer than 15 minutes. This is the whole list if you're interested. Some of them are pretty specific to my family, but they're a good jumping-off point if you're looking for ideas. I even included QR codes on a few of them, to give the kids ideas or visuals.

It was a tiring but successful day. I'm already making plans for the next few weeks!

5. Yesterday was our first annual Cousin Fun Day at one of our favorite places: Lewis Adventure Farms! We bought our tickets in May when they were running a sale, and caravanned the hour north for a full day of cousin fun! It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Some years we sweat through our clothes by 10:00 and some years we're drenched in rain. This year, the temperature was perfect, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky!

6. So our first two weeks of summer break are behind us. I'm already panicking that it's going so quickly. I always think summer will be a slower time for me, but it rarely is. This week I spent most of the day Monday working on Soccer Camp stuff and gearing up for the week. Tuesday was baby day, Wednesday was Aunt Sadie's Summer Camp. On Thursday I went into school for a few hours because I have a couple summer events that require attention. And Friday we were at Lewis Farms from 9 am - 4 pm! Today I spent a couple hours preparing for next week (meal plan, summer camp plan, groceries), a couple hours in the church library, and a couple hours writing this post! Haha.

7. Pics and memes:

Lena did my nails. Don't mind my old lady fingers.

Levi has been listening to the Warriors series on audiobook for over a year. I grabbed the physical book he's on when I was at the library and he's actually been reading it!! Be still my heart!