The Saturday 7

1. And just like that, the first week of summer break is over! 😭 As always, I started the season with big plans . . . and mostly stuck to them. You may remember that I've declared this summer "the summer of self-control," and I'm happy to report that I did not have any sugary Dr Pepper this week. I made the transition to gross old Diet Dr Pepper - which is better than nothing, but not as good as the real thing. So I should be lookin' real slim here pretty darn quick . . . Except I'm almost 40, so it doesn't work that way. But I'm also striving for self-control in the way I use my time. I made myself a list of daily chores, and weekly chores. The weekly chores are all things I've been meaning to get to for months. Like reorganizing the dining room and finding homes for everything on the "clutter counter." Next week is the dreaded basement. That's going to be a big project, but a necessary one since our AC isn't super efficient, and it's going to be wicked hot. I'm also trying to do a little bit of work on each of my four part-time "jobs" throughout the week: School Library, Church Library, School Development, Church Soccer Camp. Some are more pressing than others, but I'm trying to get ahead of the game in a few areas so that I'm not so swamped and overwhelmed in the fall!

2. The kids' summer rules are necessary but annoying. I decided that they each get one free hour of screen time a day, and have the opportunity to earn one more by doing a chore and reading or exercising. It's a pain to keep track of everything, but it's worth it to have concrete limits. They've been pretty good about finding things to do this week - mostly playing with the neighbor kids. I don't love living in town, and wish we had a backyard forest for the kids to play in, but I am thankful for the built-in-friendships that come with small town living. And we worry a lot less about tics when they're not constantly roaming through the woods. 🤷

3. One fun thing we're doing for the summer is a family-wide reading challenge. Whoever reads the most pages by the end of summer gets $20. The reading has to be chapter books. Levi is allowed to read "mom-approved" graphic novels (aka, not the ones with four words a page). Justin isn't really interested ($20 of his own money isn't much of an incentive 😂), Levi is a defeatist who doesn't think he can win, so he's not going to try very hard, Lena is competitive, and Lucy spends most of the day reading anyway. I just don't want to let anyone else beat me. This was the standings earlier this evening:

Lucy added 6 pages since I took the picture, and I added 77. So she's only 20 pages ahead of me!

4. The book I just finished to tack on those 77 pages was a very random one with a bit of a backstory. When we first started our church library in November, we relied solely on donations to fill our shelves. We took free books from anyone who would give them to us. In the six months since then, we've received so many books we don't have room for them all. Now that we have the luxury of being more selective, I've started to weed out some of the really old ones to make room for newer. One that I weeded this week was These Are the Garments: A Study of the High Priest's Garments by C.W. Slemming. Just look at the cover:

This book was written in 1955 and it looks like it. But after I deleted it from the system, I started flipping through it, and actually found myself really intrigued! Ha! Since it's fairly short (169 pages), and I'm getting close to my deadline for reading 40 nonfiction books before my 40th birthday, I decided to read the whole thing. I love making connections between the Old Testament and the New, and understanding the cultural context of the Bible. So this book is actually right up my nerdy little alley. I really enjoyed the first few chapters . . . but then it started to drag . . . to the point that I had to force myself to finish it. I do feel that the author stretched the symbolism a little far in some respects. But some of his assertions really hit home. I'll keep it at my house in my personal library in case anyone is ever upset that I removed it from the church library and wants to read it for themselves! 😂

5. I got to watch some nieces and nephews this week. 

This little cheeseball was not happy to see me either day that I watched him this week, but he warmed up quickly, and he loooooves cheese-ing for the camera. 😍

Nash and Saylor came over on Thursday, and after a few hours of Nerf fights that invariably ended in tears, we decided to head to the splash pad (with NGK of course). 

We ended up spending two hours there, bopping between the splash pad and the playground! I was glad I had brought a book!

6. We also went to the beach this week. Levi got the idea in his head that he wanted to go to a lake, and he would not let it go, so I finished up my chores and Soccer Camp prep and we busted over to a small local lake at like 3:30 in the afternoon. I was shocked that even Lucy came! (Though she wouldn't let me provide photographic evidence.) I was even more shocked when all three kids swam in the water! It was hot that day, but it hadn't been hot for long, and the nights were cool, so I figured the lake would be freezing. I stayed on shore with a little light beach reading:

Not a bad start to summer!

7. Now for pics and memes:

We had a random hail storm on Monday. It whipped up out of nowhere, hailed for a couple minutes, rained for a couple minutes, then the sun came out like nothing had happened. I'd never seen hail like that before. It looked like snow on the ground!

Saylor is all about the accessories lately. She does not wear glasses, and it was not her birthday. Lol. (Lena painted her face, which made her day.)

We tried free lunch at the school down the road from us. It was pretty gross. We ended up going home and having real lunch there instead. 😂

We're also doing the reading challenge at church, of course! These two have been working diligently to cross off squares on their Bingo sheets. (I may have bribed them with the Pump House if they get three Bingos each.)

I deleted all my phone games . . . and now I've gotten hooked on Project Runway. (But I won't watch it when my kids are around, so at least it's not on too much! #selfcontrol) 

Gotta love a good Calvinist meme.