A Peek Into Our Week

Look at this. 

I know there are people that love this.  But those people do not have toddler boys. 





 
speaking of toddler boys....Savers shopping with my girl and I scored this awesome Batman shirt.  Whenever I wear it, Bennett looks at me with hearts shooting out of his eyes and says, "I love your shirt Momma." 

 
 And here's what happens when you stumble across a bag of peanuts and don't want to share.

 
 My parents are the BEST!!  Mom sent a big cupcake piggy bank full of money for us to have a family party!!  Such a fun surprise.  I promised we'd have some cake and ice cream and take lots of pictures.  And she told us to put the leftover money in the vacation jar. 

VACATION....Yes please.  We paid our down payment on our condos this week!!  119 days.  I am so excited.  And so is everyone else.  Almost every day someone will ask a new vacay question.  "Am I going to sleep in the same bed as last year?", "Can I sit by Nathan in the car?", "What time will we leave?", "Can I look on Amazon for a skim board?"  

Yeah.  It's a thing. 

 

Zekey is fantastic at making eggs.  My kids would eat eggs for breakfast every morning if they could.  And since eggs are $.89/dozen at Aldi right now they get to have eggs almost as much as they'd like.  It takes about 3 dozen to feed the whole family so that's a cheap breakfast. 

2018 Bullet Journal

New Year = New planner 

Some of my girls got new planners too and we had a fun planning night getting them all set up and ready to use.  I had this beauty on my Christmas list....

leuchtturm1917 dotted a5

Of course you don't need a particular notebook to start a planner.  But I love this one.  It lays flat, has 2 ribbon markers, a dotted grid, index, and a strappy thing to hold it together.  The binding is tight and the pages have a good weight.  It's worth the money.  I need something to decorate the outside though. 

Cover page.  I don't do monthly cover pages.  But I'm hoping this will last the whole year so I did a yearly one with my word REST.

In the front of my journal I set up all the trackers I knew I'd need and use all year.  I'll make more as the year goes on, but I like having these all in one place right now.



2 Simple bookshelves to track the books I want to read and the ones I've finished.  These will include the read-alouds I do with the kids.

My kids' behavior/color chart.  This is super important to them and I keep the striped bookmark on this spread so they can find it easily. 

A work in progress.  Just some food ideas to pull from when I'm making a menu.  The other page will be Crockpot, Emergency Meals, and Instant Pot hacks. 

A tracker to remind me of some things I want to keep track of.



Bennett is a good napper but Waylon hardly ever naps even though he desperately needs it.  But I do need a quiet time.  So I pay my older kids to sit quietly (as in silently and don't say a single word) with him and read for at least one hour in the afternoon.  This helps me keep track of how much I need to pay to each kiddo on allowance day.

Plus a basic school schedule.  Don't let this fool ya.....we never run on time. But it's a goal to shoot for.



All of January is blue.   Next month I'll use pink or red for Valentines Day.  Menu plan for the month.  I do this in pencil in case I need to change it up.  Not because I want to be perfect, but because when I make next month's menu I can look back and see when we ate certain things so I don't repeat it too much.



Regular daily spreads that help me live my life.  This is where I keep the solid color book mark.



Then I flipped to the last 2 pages to make some Christmas notes since Christmas was still fresh on my mind.

And that's it so far.  I'm always looking on Pinterest for new ideas.  Some people are SOOO artistic and crafty.  I love looking at their spreads and getting ideas for mine. 

Like this one..... Look at this adorableness! This may find a page in my BJ sometime this year.

A Peek Into Our Week

We are starting to settle back into routine after the holidays.  Honey went back to work and the college kids start back Tuesday.   I love me some routine!!  

Here's a peek into our week....

Isn't she just so beautiful? 

We had some left over popcorn from one of those popcorn tins.  Mallory spread it out and drizzled white and milk chocolate over it all.  

Hand-me-down tinker toys from friends! 

I hate the mess that onions make in my fridge.  I cleaned it all out this week and put all the onions and garlic in this bowl. 

Honey and I have been married 29 years and in all that time we have never had a new mattress.  All of our mattresses have been hand-me-downs....until now.  This was our Christmas present and it finally came!!  They shipped it all rolled up in this duffel bag.  When you unroll it on your bed frame it lays flat immediately but you have to give it some time to poof up.  It has a forever warranty and you don't ever even need to flip it.  It's much firmer than we thought it would be but it takes some time to get completely poofed up I guess.  Anyway, we like it. 

Happy New Year and My Word

Happy 2018 everybody!! 

I just love new starts.  New planners.  New goals.  Big dreams.  Plans.  Changes.  All of it. 

I have never felt more sure of my NY goals than I do this year.  Picking one word seems to be the thing to do and this is my first year to pin it down to that ONE THING. 

My word this year is 

REST

Our little love QBall went home to his family before Christmas and it has been just us.  No more fosters.  And a chance to see what our family looks like complete with our 2 newly adopted sons.  We had a crazy intense year of 3 toddler boys all under 3.  Then watching them grow a little older and into new things.  Then the highs of adoption and the low of sending "our baby" home. 

And we are tired. 

We all need a hard re-set.  A season of rest.  To sleep and think and read and be quiet.  To reconnect as a family.  I need to get back to cooking and eating the way I like.  To get out of survival mode.  To stop and listen and look people in the eye...and smile.  To breathe.  Rest. 

I'm pretty good at going and doing.  In fact, I feel guilty when I take a nap because it seems so lazy.  So I'm still trying to figure out what it will look like.  But I figure it will be saying No to the things that stretch me thin and make me feel overextended.  Making sleep a priority (with no guilt).  Doing the things that fill me up....reading, a project, cleaning my house, reading to my kids, walking with my neighbor, cooking, writing letters to my grandmother, and blogging. 

But then what?  Because I'm pretty sure that if I'm not careful it'll become boring and feel lazy after awhile.  So I don't know yet.  I don't know about our future in foster care or what the year holds for my older kids and how we will need to support them.  I want to trust God with it all. 

In the meantime, my kids have been sleeping more, playing more, and Xboxing more.  This whole year of rest is off to good start.