The Saturday 7

1. I did it! I survived Spring Break with 4 kids! Haha. My hat's off to those of you who do this all the time. Somehow 4 is way harder than 3. Or I'm just getting old . . . We had so much fun with Nova. The kids adored playing with her, holding her, helping with her. I loved all the gummy smiles and babbling and snuggles. She slept pretty well for me. She only truly slept through the night 3 times, but on the nights she woke up, she ate quickly and went right back to sleep. I'm not going to lie, though. I'm going to enjoy sleeping all night again. Haha. She's going home tomorrow and we're all going to miss her!

2. We had a nice, low-key Easter. I tried to scale back on the Easter basket situation after reading that book about how entitled my kids are. Haha. We did an indoor Easter egg hunt Sunday morning before church. Levi thought it was the greatest thing ever.

He was so cute, carrying his basket over his arm.

And then we had fun dressing Nova up for her first Easter.

I love how Nova's looking at Levi like, "What is your problem?" Lol

After church, we came home where my brother and sister-in-law slaved over the stove for hours to make us a non-traditional but truly delicious Chinese Easter dinner!

Sorry. I ate half the soup before I remembered to take a picture.

Showing off her Easter dress

The best pic I could get of his outfit.

3. We didn't do anything very fun or exciting for Spring Break thanks to freezing temperatures, snow, and two little kids who need naps and constant supervision. Thankfully, my van got fixed in one day (and the day we were stranded at home the kids were so good!), so we were able to get out and about a bit. The highlight of the week (for me) was the 2018 Spring Break Library Tour! We went to 3 different libraries in one week to check out their kids' areas and their books. Yes, we are that cool. #almosthomeschoolers

We also hit up "the play McDonald's":

We hosted a playdate on Thursday. I had the girls clean their room the night before, and the morning of the playdate, Lucy posted this on her door:

Hahaha. It's amazing how she takes ownership of her room when she's the one who cleans it!

The girls spent much of the week doing Perler beads. Lucy got really into spelling names:

We read lots of books:

I'm bummed this picture turned out so badly. My dad reading to the girls while they played with beads.

And of course we did some play-doh:

My mom got Levi this Thomas playmat complete with a bunch of mini trains. So he spent much of the week lining up trains.

4. Today was arguably the girls' favorite day of Spring Break. They recently started watching Nailed It on Netflix - it's a spoof of Pinterest fails where amateur bakers attempt to recreate a professional's masterpiece. The results are hilarious. After watching the entire first season, Lucy decided she wanted to have her own reality baking competition - complete with a host, judges, prizes, and two rounds! In the first round, the girls decorated brownies:

Then the judges taste-tested and marked their scores.

Lena won round one by a slight margin and was awarded the "Star Baker" medal. Then it was on to round two: cakes. My mom helped the girls decorate in this round so that I could be an impartial judge. Their final products were impressive!!

This time Lucy won and took home the crown and trophy for Baking Queen.

How's that for a pretty epic prize? Lol

It was a huge mess and I spent forever cleaning it all up (I made them help too.) But it was so worth it for their excitement . . . and all the dessert we got to eat today. :-)

5. This morning I finished off Nova's last can of formula at 7:30 am. No one else was awake yet and I didn't want to take her out in the cold, so I waited until everyone was up and around. At 9:20, I decided to venture into town. Our stupid town doesn't have a grocery store, but we do have two dollar stores, and I naively assumed that one of them would carry formula. Apparently dollar stores don't do that?? So I busted off to Meijer 15 minutes away, speed-shopped, and made it home just as she started to fuss for her next bottle. The whole scenario reminded me why I appreciated breastfeeding so much. I never had to get out of bed when my babies woke in the middle of the night (thanks to a bassinet right next to my bed). I never had to search for hot water when we were out and about. (I begged a librarian to get me hot water from her private kitchen one day this week.) I never ran out of formula and had to make a Meijer run. And I never had to pay the astronomical prices! I about passed out in the baby aisle when I realized how much a can of formula costs. $30 for a week's worth of food?! For a 6 month old?! That's insanity! I'm not worried about paying it for Nova because my nephew will re-imburse me, but if I had to buy that every week for my own baby?! Ouch! Although I will say the one perk to formula feeding is that someone else can do it. There were many times this week that I set the girls up with Nova and her bottle while I made dinner or switched over the laundry or played with Levi. I was tied to my babies while breastfeeding. They never took bottles, so I fed them every 3 hours for the first year of their lives! (Please hear me when I say this is not an indictment on those who choose to formula feed. I know not everyone can or wants to breastfeed. These are just my observations.)

6. Speaking of babies, I can finally share that my little sister is pregnant! She has been on the fence about whether or not she even wants kids for the past few years, so we were all shocked when she announced it. I'm so excited for her. And while I've been vocal about my sadness that my kids don't have cousins their age, I love that the age difference between my siblings and me means that just when one of us is done having kids, the next one is starting. So we always have a baby around! After having Nova for 10 days, I'm realizing that I don't really want to go back to the baby phase. It was fun for a short time, but I think I'm ok with being done and just enjoying the next phase of having older kids. And knowing that there will still be babies in the family (and I don't have to provide them) helps soften any doubts I have. Libby, of course, is freaking out about how big she's getting and has had me searching old blog entries to see how much weight I gained and how big I looked at certain points. She'll be 17 weeks tomorrow and looks like I did when I was 8 weeks with Levi. Don't let her fool you into thinking she's at all large. She's still buttoning her regular jeans for Pete's sake! While I was going through some old pictures, I came across this one of me at 16 weeks:

Do you think I was still buttoning my jeans at that point?? Lol. Granted, that was my third (technically 5th), and this is her first, but I don't think she has anything to worry about.

7. More pictures!