The Long Awaited "Saturday" 7

Sorry about the delay. I was caught up in my genealogy research last night and didn't feel like blogging. Deal with it.

1. We survived our busy week thanks to flexible and accommodating babysitters, and even had a snow day on Monday! We were one of only two schools in our area that closed, and the roads really weren't that bad, but we weren't complaining! We spent the day playing games, watching TV, and making Valentine's Day "mailboxes" which led into taking all of our food out of boxes and using said boxes to make an elaborate Barbie house/garage.

2. On Tuesday I went on a field trip with Lena to the museum/planetarium show. The museum staff lost our lunches, so there was a bit of a kerfuffle. Finally, one of the moms went outside where we had left them on a cart with the promise that they'd be brought in. They were still there, on the ground, sans cart . . . very mysterious . . .

Friends waiting to board the carousel

A card in the gift shop I was tempted to buy.

The whole first grade class. <3

3. Lena's class party was Thursday, and Lucy's was Friday. It's nice that I don't have to bop back and forth between them, but it's two days I need to find a babysitter, and two days I'm out of the house, so it feels like a lot. Lena's room mom is amazing and spends lots of her own money to provide awesome crafts and activities for the kids. I'm Lucy's room mom (despite the fact that she told me this week, "It's funny how Lena wants you to be her room mom but you're not, and I don't want you to be my room mom but you are." 🤦 #feelthelove). Needless to say, Lucy's party was less fun and exciting than Lena's. Lol.

Sun catchers

Cupid's bow and arrow

Photo booth

Slime making!

Lena's box. (She insisted on taking the picture herself.) It's a 3 tier cake with 7 candles and various decorations. Haha.

I did find a cool game. It just went faster than I expected.

This was Lucy's box this year. She wanted to make a tiered cake, so I was happy to find this set of 3 nesting boxes at Goodwill for $4. She glued them together, decorated them and attached the Eiffel Tower. Voila!

We also made "Cupid's Catapults" out of popsicle sticks, then played a game of flinging/catching conversation hearts.

4. For Valentine's Day at home, we carried on our tradition of Shells n' Cheese candle lit dinner. Justin and I did this once pre-kids when we were super poor, and have continued it for years. The kids think it's the best thing ever. We've also started a tradition in the past few years of going around the table saying what we love about each other. It's so sweet to hear what the kids think up.

5. A potty training update: I'd say he's 90% trained during the day. But he hates wearing undies, so it's a constant fight. If I'm diligent and force him into them, he can do it. He's still going a tiny bit in his undies before catching himself most of the time, so I'm not labeling him totally trained. And we haven't been very brave about wearing undies outside of the house. That's the next step. My goal is to have him fully (day-time) trained by March 10, because that's the day he goes in for preschool testing. Say what?? I've been telling people that I'm not sure if preschool testing is the kind of thing you can fail, but I worry that he's going to. Haha. I don't know if it's because he's my baby or because he's a boy, but I feel like he's way less ready than the girls were at this age. I've gotten worse with each kid about teaching them the alphabet and shapes and colors and all that jazz. Lucy could identify every letter of the alphabet by name at 26 months. Levi knows maybe 10 (at nearly 4 years old). Honestly, I'm not super worried about the academic stuff. He'll learn that. That's what school is for. Mostly, I just can't imagine him sitting at a desk and following directions. He's gonna be like, "Nah. I'm gonna go play with the toys." It's truly my anxiety about failing him as a parent. I can't control him and hate myself for that. But I don't know what to do. Hopefully he'll surprise me by following directions better than I anticipate.

6. In genealogy news . . . I reached out to Justin's side of the family for any interesting anecdotes, and got this about Dutch "Collegiants."

In Christian history, the Collegiants (Latin: Collegiani; Dutch: Collegianten), also called Collegians, were an association, founded in 1619 among the Arminians and Anabaptists in Holland.^[1] They were so called because of their colleges (meetings) held the first Sunday of each month, at which everyone had the same liberty of expounding the scripture, praying, etc.^[2]

The practice originated in 1619 when, after the Synod of Dort forced the States of Holland to dismiss clerics for encouraging refuge to individuals being persecuted for religious beliefs, three brothers of Warmond by the name of van der Kodde (or Codde)—Gijsbert, Jan Jacobsz, and Adriaen—decided to hold religious services of their own.^[3]^[4] The sect began as a refuge from the bitterness of the Calvinist and Arminian controversies of the day. Their name is derived from the custom they had of calling their communities "Colleges", as did Spener and the Pietists of Germany.^[5]

The Collegiants' first place of meeting was at the village of Warmond, at the residence of one of the brothers, but they shortly established their headquarters at Rijnsburg, a village 2.5 mi (4.0 km) northwest from Leiden, and were hence called the Rijnsburgers (Dutch: Rijnsburger Collegianten).

Woohoo! Go van der Koddes! Way to start your own religious sect! I've spent a lot of time this week trying to figure out how our family connects to those 3 brothers. I think I'm getting close, but it's tedious work. There are sooooo many Pieters and Jans and Gijsberts and Adriaen/Adrien/Adriaans and Willems. Plus, some of the time they're referred to as van der Kodde, sometimes van der Codde, and sometimes just Kodde or Codde! I love the research, though. #librarianatheart

7. Pics:

Ruby accidentally left her puppy here over the weekend. She was so happy to be reunited with it that she couldn't put it down long enough to eat breakfast.

On Wednesday, Levi, Ruby, and I made a Valentine's Day craft. I taped a heart on a piece of white paper, then put the paper inside a ziploc bag with splatters of paint:

Then I let the kids go to town smearing it around, stomping on it, driving cars over it, etc.

Aaaand . . . it didn't work. The paper was too thin, got way too saturated by the paint, and tore to shreds when I tried to pull it out of the bag.

So then, I put the paper under a Ziploc bag taped to newspaper on the table. That way, I only had to peel off the bag instead of pry the paper out of it.

Ruby thought she was hot stuff, standing on the table.

I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. Once I peeled off the heart, it left a cool "resist" image. I painted Ruby's palm and pressed that into the white space left behind by the heart. (Levi was mad that the first one didn't work, and wasn't inclined to join us for the second attempt.) Just take my word for it that it was cute. :-)

While we were doing the art project, I noticed there was a smudge on my camera lens. I scrubbed and scrubbed at it, but it would not budge!

Finally, I decided that I scratched the lens. 😭 I did some research and found a YouTube video on how to fix it, but it looks super complicated, so I decided to take it somewhere and have it looked at. Of course, I never actually have time, so I was thrilled when I noticed a few days later that it seemed to have fixed itself!