The Saturday 7

1. I read 19 books in the month of July. I should really get a life. Lol. I've already gushed about Emma M. Lion. When we did our Screen Free Week after Soccer Camp, I stocked up on physical books from the library and went on a Pepper Basham tear. I love some of her earlier stuff, but she seems to have carved out a new niche for herself in the Christian Fiction community of "fun and frothy." The books are still good, but they lack the depth of her earlier work, so they were almost all a solid 3 stars for me. I love Goodreads and have used it to track my reading for years, but this year I'm trying another book-tracking app called The Storygraph. I like the community aspect of Goodreads more, but Storygraph makes really cool graphics:

2. Outside of reading, my other new obsession is Merriam Webster word games. I don't even remember how I stumbled upon it, but obsessed might be putting it lightly. This is exactly why I can't have games on my phone. I have no self control. This isn't an app, though, which makes it even more dangerous - I can't just delete it off my phone. It's literally the games tab on the dictionary website. There are a bunch of games, and I like most of them, but the two that have kept me up past my bedtime this week are Blossom and The Missing Letter. The latter is literally just a crossword game. I don't know why it has sucked me in so dramatically. But the first one is a word game along the lines of Text Twist or the NYT Spelling Bee game. The thing about Blossom, though, is that while there are endless word combinations, you're not trying to come up with all of them - only the top 12. If you score under 300 points you're just a genius. If you get 300+ points, you're a Blossom Boss. But if you get 350+ points, you're a Mega Boss. I have spent hours this week playing every round available, and then going back and replaying them numerous times in an effort to earn that elusive Mega Boss Title. 

Today's was hard. I'm going to have to go back and replay it after I finish this.

3. These obsessive behaviors have honestly been bad for my mental health. I've been struggling through a fair bit of depression lately. I don't know if it's the end of summer blues or perimenopause or screen addiction, but everything feels negative. I saw a picture of myself recently that made me realize how much my weight has gotten out of control and I feel helpless to change. I'm so overwhelmed with policing screen time 24/7 and feel like such a failure that we don't have this figured out yet. I'm sad that summer is almost over and we didn't do anything very fun or exciting. And yet, I'm positive part of this panicky depression I feel is because I need the routine of school again. So you see why I'm choosing to zone out over word games or immerse myself in fictional worlds. #copingmechanisms #atleastitsnotmeth

4. I have two weeks of Aunt Sadie's Summer Camp to catch you up on. First up was Poison Dart Frogs/Poisonous Animals in general. We read about how a single PDF contains enough poison to kill 15 full grown men. And then we came up with as many poisonous animals that we could think of. I was surprised how many the kids knew! For crafts, we attempted to do a Pinterest project. I had read that you can coat a rubber snake in liquid glue and once it's dry, you can peel off the glue to look like a snakeskin. Well either our glue was too cheap or we didn't put enough on, because the snakes just absorbed it and nothing peeled off. Haha. We also made an "ink" blot poison dart frog that turned out pretty cute:

Aww, deadly poison. How cute.

For snack, we leaned on snakes as poisonous animals, and had snake tongues (fruit by the foot).

That was our screen-free week, so there was no themed movie. 

This week was Shark Week. We read lots of books about sharks, and then I tried to sing a really catchy shark song about baby sharks, but Nash and Levi wouldn't stop screaming "nooooo!!!" so I finally gave up. We had shark fin waffles for breakfast (just waffles cut into triangle quarters), and shark fin Doritos with shark juice for snack.

Blue gatorade, sparkling lemonade, and ice cubes with shark gummies frozen inside

Shark fin Dorito. I even found some cute snack cups at the Dollar Store!

Then we made my favorite craft so far . . .

It's a shark and minnow cup catcher! We cut out teeth, taped them inside a blue solo cup, cut out a fin from another cup, slapped on some eyeballs, and then cut a hole in the bottom to thread the string through. The minnow is a bead covered in a very exquisite hand-drawn rendering of a fish done by yours truly. It was a fun craft, because the kids could do most of the steps themselves, and then they had a game to play when they were done. Winning!

The piece de resistance for Shark Day was lunch:

I bought a can of sliced black olives specifically for this, even though no one would eat them. It's all about the aesthetics! Lol. But seriously, how cute is that? Don't ask how it looked after it was cooked . . . suffice it to say, I'm glad I took the picture before I microwaved it. Lol.

We attempted to watch Shark Tale during quiet time, but the kids haven't made it through a whole movie yet this summer. Pretty much once the popcorn is gone, their attention spans are done and they're off to pester Lena again. 

5. Despite my moaning about not doing anything fun this summer, we did manage to sneak in two different beach trips with cousins this week. (Lucy came to both of them, but somehow didn't make it into any of the pictures.)

The heatwave also subsided enough for a couple days that I was able to open the curtains and enjoy the late afternoon sunshine streaming in. These are the things I long for all winter:

Levi was playing with cars - not throwing a tantrum. Haha.

We added Lainey to the menagerie a couple times recently, so that's been fun as well. 

She got to come over on a day that I watched my baby niece, too, and she had a blast practicing for her Big Sister role.

6. As summer winds down, I've started to turn my focus to school starting in a few weeks. I've been poring over the calendar, and trying to get ahead of anything I can now because fall is going to be crazy. One of the things I've been putting off all summer is soliciting donations for our fall auction. I love a lot about my job - making graphics, running the social media, putting on events, coming up with creative ideas, etc. But I will never love asking for money or free things that we're going to turn around and auction off to make money. Haha. I finally worked up the nerve to go visit some local businesses yesterday, and as Levi started begging for fast food I was struck with a stroke of genius. Levi loves people. He's not afraid to ask for money. And he has really cute dimples. No one would tell him no, right?? So I bribed him with McDonald's if he would be my mouthpiece at the businesses I needed to stop at. I gave him a couple lines to memorize and he took it all in stride! We hit 14 businesses in an hour. Most people said, "give me your information and I'll get back to you," and a few gave us gift cards on the spot, but no one gave us a straight no! Dimples for the win. 

7. Just two memes.