The Saturday 7

Sorry for slacking last week. I didn't have anything to report. 🤷

1. I can finally share the "secret project" I've been working on! A couple friends and I are starting a church library! 🎉 I know, I know. You're all thinking of the moldering church library filled with dusty tomes from the 80s rotting on some shelf in your church's basement. And I won't lie. There's still potential for our library to take that turn. Haha. But we've been researching, visiting other church libraries, scouring used book sales and free book events, creating presentations for the deacon board, and making our poor husbands haul things and build things and become way more involved than they signed up for! We spilled the beans in the church bulletin a couple weeks ago, and started asking for donations. But we've been collecting books on our own for months. We found an affordable Library Management System (libib, if you're interested), and have entered almost 900 books into our system to date! 🤯 It's still a work in progress, because each of those books will require a label, many will require a barcode, and all need to be organized and shelved (assuming we even have room for all of them). We're starting "small" to gauge interest, but we have big ideas for storytimes and reading challenges and pastoral recommendation features. Today, Justin and Troy finished putting together and cutting down to size a set of shelves we received for free! Look how beautiful they are against that freshly painted wall!

The other walls will be painted green soon, and the chairs will be adjusted, but it's actually starting to look like it's ready to house books!

2. In other exciting book news, Levi read his first full-length chapter book recently. He picked up a graphic novel Lena had sitting around and ended up reading for an hour straight! He had it finished in a couple days and was so disappointed that there isn't a sequel! I'm a dope and should've realized that graphic novels would be his gateway to reading (seriously - what kind of librarian am I?). In my defense, I honestly didn't know he could read at that level. But now that I do . . . mwahahaha! That said, it's hard to find graphic novels for boys that aren't full of potty humor or graphic violence. Never fear. I'll find some and report back.

3. I'm working on finding a balance between my new job and life. It's supposed to be a 7-hour-a-week gig, but I'm bursting with ideas and bad with boundaries. Lol. It's hard because there's always something to do. Haha. Last year in the library I wrote a curriculum that I'm largely replicating this year. There are certain things I have to do to prepare for each class, but they have a definitive start and end. This development job has endless possibilities. Ooh! I could post that on facebook. Or shoot, I haven't featured anything from 4th grade this year. Better go take some pictures. Or I need to research reels I can do with secondary students. Or That appeal letter isn't quite right. How can I tweak it? Of course, there are a few things that have deadlines. I'm working on starting a monthly newsletter. It won't be done by the end of September, so I'd really like to get it out the first week of October. And 7 hours a week is not sufficient to complete it. I'm brainstorming content, interviewing people, taking pictures, writing articles, and creating an entire template from scratch. For every "feature" I have to make a corresponding graphic. (Ok, I don't have to. No one's making me. I just really want it to be eye-catching and engaging. Visual elements are the best way I know to do that.) I'm also trying to promote our upcoming online auction, get a head start on our fall print newsletter, write blog entries, solicit and organize photos from teachers and staff, and make plans for our big appeal for the expansion project we're undertaking. It's a lot. And I love it. But I find myself spending hours working on things from home unpaid. So I've been working on prioritizing. My lists are out of control, but the only way I know how to corral all the things bouncing around in my head. I've started to give myself a couple things a week that I can work on from home - the things with actual deadlines - but otherwise I'm trying to do most of it at school. (That said, don't ask me how many hours I worked on the newsletter yesterday and today. Lol.)

4. I think this newfound need for a work/life balance is affecting my dreams. Haha. I've been having a recurring dream the past few weeks that I'm in hysterics over the loss of my children's childhood. I'm crying and wailing and bemoaning that they grew up and I didn't enjoy them enough or cherish their childhood enough. Yikes. The good news is that when I wake up, I don't actually feel it quite as intensely as when I'm dreaming. I actually think I wrote about it earlier this year. It is something I've wrestled with, but really, I'm so dramatic in my dreams! (I also frequently have dreams where I'm raging in anger over something. Suppressed emotions much?)

5. Another reason my subconscious is reminding me to spend time with my kids is because I got sucked into genealogy research again this week. Haha. My sister-in-law asked for a list of family names as they're trying to come up with a name for their unborn baby, and I went a little overboard. Lol. I ended up sending her 147 names. Hahahaha. And then I started diving into all their histories and finding all kinds of interesting information! I take everything with a grain of salt, because the site I use (FamilySearch) is edited by the general public. It's easy to misconstrue an old document, to attribute the wrong name to the wrong person, or to get taken in by sensational stories that may or may not be 100% true. But dang, I found so much royalty in my bloodline. Kings of England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and even Africa?! (I mean, I do tan really easily . . .) There's this guy, who is apparently a big deal. He's my 26th great grandfather. My dad's side of the family is almost exclusively from the Netherlands - with the exception of one little branch from Germany. But my mom's side covers pretty much the rest of Europe. They also emigrated a lot earlier than my Dutch ancestors, and there are a lot of records that my great great great (etc.) grandfathers helped settle the early American colonies! I spent like five hours one night untangling a maze of three men with the same name who lived in Grand Rapids at the same time. I finally figured out that two of them are related to me distantly, and one is no relation. It's like the greatest puzzle of all time with never ending facets to uncover.

Ultimately, I did come across a wealth of amazing names, so come November I better have a nephew with a cool family name like Sjoerd, Jurjen, Guurt, Mijndert, Ulrich (A Knight's Tale, anyone?), Lettice, FitzGilbert, Hrolf, Marmaduke, McDuff, Ebenezer, or Magnus!

6. Oy vey. Is anyone still reading? I'm long winded tonight! One more quick one before the pics and memes. I feel the need to record that this September weather has been absolutely amazing. Usually, I do everything I can to avoid turning on the heat before October, but it's September 28 and we just turned on the AC because it's so humid in our house! Aside from the humidity, the temperatures have been incredible, in the mid 70s most days. Lena and Levi have suddenly gotten into football, and our front yard has become the playing field for all the neighborhood kids. I love it, and I'm going to miss nights like these so much when dark and lonely winter sets in. 😭

7. Ok, on to pics and memes:

Cute boys watching football at my parents'.

Fireworks and glow stick jump ropes at Apple Fest last weekend.

Cutie patootie taking selfies during church. 🤦

Some kind of elaborate creation that kept him busy for an hour!

After weeks of waiting, Lena finally got her band instrument! Her wise teacher advised the class to practice outside so they don't annoy their families. Sorry, neighbors! Lol. Actually, in a plot twist that surprises no one, Lena is pretty good. She has natural talent and persistence to learn what doesn't come naturally!