The Saturday 7

1. Lena turned 9 on Sunday. It was not a very exciting birthday, but we'd done lots of celebrating leading up to the actual day. She got the traditional breakfast in bed, we went to church, she chose lunch (Taco Bell), home to open presents, played a couple games, and that was about it! 

I found this selfie on my phone. Haha. Cutie. 

2. Monday was Justin's 37th birthday. He celebrated by . . . going to work! Lucky him. We did get take-out for dinner, and we had cake and ice cream. I feel like 37 is officially "late 30s." I'm only 36, and clinging to "mid 30s." It doesn't matter how old he gets, he's still a stone cold fox. He's been working out and getting all fit. Part of me feels bad for not keeping up with him, the other part of me likes sugar too much to care. Lena made him this sweet gift for his big day:

3. I read my first "Christian Living" book of the year. I got a bunch for Christmas, and my intent is always to be better about reading them. I usually read a few in January and February, then peter off for the rest of the year. Haha. Anyway, I read Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin.

This is my Goodreads review:

I enjoyed the perspective Wilkin brought to the purpose of studying God's word, and the way she called out some of the inefficient and inappropriate study methods that have become popular during my lifetime. She says in chapter one that we incorrectly believe the Bible was written to "help me," when it was actually written to tell us about God. She warns against emotionalism, the "Xanax approach" (the idea that the Bible exists to make me feel better), the "Pinball approach" (bouncing around and taking in little snippets without ever considering the overarching theme or original intent), as well as many other potential pitfalls that have become commonplace in Christian circles. The second half of the book contains her idea of proper Bible study. I really did appreciate the 5 P's and the concrete questions we can use to help us study the Bible thoroughly and accurately. But I was slightly put off by her condescending tone. She seems to think her way is the only way, and any deviation from her extremely in-depth method is laziness. I also felt that she "tooted her own horn" a little too loudly in her chapter on teaching that just rubbed me the wrong way. Overall, the book contains solid truth and helpful methods for Bible Study that have challenged me to dig deeper into the Word and fall more in love with Jesus.

4. I'm 3 weeks into my winter semester of college classes, and am maintaining a 100% in all three of my classes so far. They're all library classes, and very easy. For my internship, I have to log 86 hours of library related work. I will probably get that filling in for Mrs. Miller next month, but just in case we have a lot of snow days or I'm out with Covid for two weeks or something, I'm doing some supplemental library-related work online. The professor gave us a few websites to do indexing through. I initially looked into Every Name Counts, but decided it was too emotionally difficult for me. Every Name Counts is an initiative to build a digital record of the victims of Nazi persecution. So I was literally looking at handwritten prisoner registration cards and transcribing the information about people's names, birthdates, occupations, family members, and the personal items they brought with them into a database. Some of them included dates of transfer to other concentration camps or dates of death. I was surprised by how much if affected me to read them, but I knew I couldn't keep doing it. So I switched to indexing for Familysearch.org. I've been recording land deeds and grantor/grantee information for the state of New York. Much less emotional. 

5. It's possible that I'm more emotional than usual lately because I've been attempting to wean myself off of my depression meds. I've been on the highest possible dose of Zoloft for a long time. I wish I could remember exactly, but it's been years - maybe since Levi was born? At the time, I had three very young kids and my hormones were out of whack from pregnancy/nursing. But now, my life is pretty darn near perfect and I just don't want to be on such a high dose anymore. Of course, my main motivation is weight loss. I gained 15 pounds within a year of starting Zoloft. Obviously, I'm older now, and my metabolism isn't as good, so there's a chance I'll have to actually diet and/or exercise to lose any weight, but I'm hoping that less medication will equal less weight. I was taking 200 mg daily, and I've been down to 150 mg daily for 3 weeks. I really don't feel any different. I think after it's been a full month, I'll try to drop down to 100 and see how that goes. I'm not sure I'll ever wean myself off of it entirely. I do believe there is a chemical imbalance in my brain and I'll probably always need some kind of medication, but I'm hoping to need less and less of it! 

6. My present to Justin for his birthday was supposed to be a "year of dates," but I dropped the ball on actually planning 12 dates. So instead, I gave him a "commitment to monthly date night." Haha. I have a few planned, but some we'll just wing. Tonight, after shopping for basement flooring and stuffing ourselves at Red Robin, we tried something we've never done before: axe throwing! 

I look somewhat demented in this picture because I was laughing. Lol.

We were actually both very bad at it. Everyone around us made it look so easy, but we could not get the axe to stick in the wood! Justin has really good aim, and actually hit the target many times, but the axe always bounced off. I just threw willy-nilly and without much strength, so I was extremely unsuccessful. Lol. We still had fun laughing at ourselves. We'll see how sore I am tomorrow . . .

7. Pics and Memes

Lena got to go to a fun birthday party this week where they had a little painting session.

This cat showed up on our deck today. Lena and Levi were totally enamored with it. They made it toys and brought it water and really wanted to feed it. I mean, it is pretty cute. Look at its little mustache. I'd definitely name it Chaplin if it was mine. 

When I got dressed today, Lena ran to her room to change into an outfit that matches mine. Our shirts say different things, but other than that we're practically twins. 

We finally upgraded Levi to a twin bed instead of the toddler bed he's slept in for 3 years. (Now if only he'd sleep in it all night instead of in ours.)

It was brutally cold all week. But at least we had this gorgeous sunrise on Wednesday.

Levi's two front teeth have been dangling grossly for weeks. One finally came out while he was eating today. Hopefully the other one will follow suit soon. 

😂😂😂