The "Saturday" 7

1. This week I attempted to potty train Levi. He's almost 2.5 so I figured it was time, even though I'm still scarred from training my last child. I bought him some cool Thomas the Train undies and a new ring for the toilet. He was mildly interested the first day. He refused to wear the undies, so we went outside and I let him run around naked and sit on the potty chair every few minutes. He peed twice, just a tiny bit, and got a sucker. Once he figured out there was candy, he was much more interested.

The problem is I don't want to sit at home all day hounding him to pee. I have places to go and things to do. So I'm probably not being nearly consistent enough. By the end of the week, he didn't want anything to do with potty training. At least until Justin and I left for the weekend. He was obsessed with my mom taking him to the bathroom. When she started texting me about how much he was sitting on the potty chair trying to go, I told her to have him trained by the time I got home. Alas, no such luck. He isn't really making the connection yet between the feeling that he needs to go and actually going. He just gets lucky sometimes while he's sitting there. Haha.

2. We went school shopping on Thursday.

Haha, we actually did need a few things - glue, notecards, etc. And I let the girls each pick out a cute notebook and pencil box since we're not buying backpacks or anything else fun this year. We're starting school a week from tomorrow, and I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. This week I'll be re-organizing the school room, double checking my lesson plans, printing worksheets, and trying desperately to come up with ideas to entertain Levi during school. I'm going to attempt to have some busy box type activities for him every day. We'll see how long those last.

3. Justin took Thursday and Friday off so we could have a family day before summer ends. We decided to check out a new to us beach on Lake Michigan. Actually, Justin went there once as a kid and loved it, but he hadn't been in years, and the rest of us have never been, but heard lots of good things about it. It's a beach on the big lake with a shallow channel that leads to a smaller lake. We've heard that kids love the channel, and it was cool, but my kids were way more interested in the big lake. Before we left, Lena asked me cautiously if there were sharks and I explained to her that Lake Michigan is awesome because it's so big it kind of feels like the ocean, but there's no salt and no sharks! There were, however, really big waves. As we were leaving, I noticed the red flag (no swimming) flapping. I asked Justin, "Was that there when we drove in?" and he said, "Yep." Haha. He knew better than to point it out to me. And not knowing let me enjoy the waves instead of fearing for my children's lives. I mean, obviously, I still feared to some point. I lectured Lucy about not going out past her stomach and made sure to keep my eye on Levi and Lena every second. But we all had such a blast jumping in the waves and playing in the sand. I think part of the reason my kids didn't enjoy the channel more was because the waves were so big the current in the channel was really strong and Levi couldn't stand up against it - especially with his life jacket on. It just sucked him in. Haha.

In the channel (Justin and the girls are sitting down)

I hate this pic of myself, but it's the only family one we took.

Glee

Ok, so the waves don't look that big, but they really were!

Levi is screaming to get off my lap in this pic.

Sand angels

He crashed so hard after the beach, he even stayed asleep when we got him out of the car and for half the time we were in the restaurant!

4. I noticed this week that I've fallen behind on my goodreads goal. I've only read 58 books this year, and according to GR, I'm 3 behind if I'm going to make it to my goal of 101. Fortunately, Justin and I had our anniversary getaway this weekend to catch up on some reading!

5. We rented a cabin through HomeAway.com a month ago. I searched for hours for a cheap cabin on a lake within 2 hours of home, and ended up with this one in Farwell, MI. Population: 853. Haha. It was actually kind of an interesting experience. Last year, we rented a cabin via Craigslist with no issues. The guy was helpful and communicative, met us at the cabin when we got there, checked us out a couple days later. I expected pretty much the same thing this time around. But the lady we dealt with was not very helpful. When I booked it a month ago, she sent me an email saying she was looking forward to our stay and would be in touch closer to our expected arrival. I'm pretty sure that was an auto-response. Because I never heard from her again. Friday morning before we left, I sent her an email essentially saying, "I hope you're still planning on us." The website said that check-in was at 4, so I told her we'd do our best to be there around then. She never responded. We pulled up at 3:58. No one was there. All the doors were locked. We gave her 'til 4:15, then I emailed her again. She finally responded, "The door should be unlocked. Push hard." So we tried all the doors again, but they were definitely locked. Finally she said, "I'm so sorry. I'm not in the area. I'll send Ray to unlock the door. He'll be there in 5 minutes." We didn't know who Ray was, and hoped he wasn't planning on murdering us, but as promised, he arrived minutes later, stuck a key in the lock, said, "Sorry about that," then hopped in his car and left. It was so weird! There was a binder on the counter with the key and some basic info, but we never saw nor heard from the lady -or the mysterious Ray- until this morning at 10:15 when I got another automated email that said, "We hope you enjoyed your stay with us. Safe travels home!" Again, the website said check-out was at 11, so we were packed up and ready to leave by then, but I'm pretty sure we could've stayed as long as we wanted because apparently no one ever checks up on the renters! Lol.

6. Despite the strangeness of the hosts, it was a nice weekend. The cabin was nothing special. It didn't have air conditioning, so we were a little toasty, but it was clean, had nice views of the lake, and cable TV so I could indulge my Fixer Upper craving, and Justin could watch some sports. We rode around the lake in the new boat, Justin did some fishing, I did lots of reading, we slept in, we went antique shopping, and ate lots of restaurant food. Although our restaurant choices were kind of fails as well. Haha. Friday night for dinner, we drove 10 minutes to the next town which has a small "downtown" area and picked a restaurant at random. I got the 4 cheese macaroni bake, which honestly tasted like White Cheddar Pasta-Roni. And Justin got a burger. The waiter gave him cheese options which included cheddar, swiss, or pepper jack. Justin chose pepper jack, but as he started eating his burger, he kept saying, "Wow. This is really spicy. I've never had such hot pepper jack." Eventually he stopped eating it because the spice was so overpowering. When our bill came, it said "Burger with ghost pepper jack." Um, ghost pepper jack is made with habanero. The waiter said nothing about ghost peppers! Poor Justin. Haha. We did score with donuts from Cops and Donuts, though. Apparently they're world famous. I'd never heard of them, but greatly enjoyed the donut I had!

Big ole fat bass

I was sitting still with my feet in the water and the fish literally started nibbling on my toes!

Treasures while shopping

It was a nice, restful weekend away. And we're so fortunate that we have wonderful family to watch our kids, so we don't worry about them while we're gone. My parents kept the kids one night, then Saturday night the girls went to Uncle Luke and Aunt Esther's for a sleepover. They were big fans of Esther's deep soaker tub:

7. Just a couple more pictures:

Sunset over our backyard

Siblinghood personified