Week 4... this week felt centered on school decisions swimming in my head on repeat, with the off button broken. That will probably be its own post, but for now, we dive into week 4 of 11.
Monday was glorious. My mother-in-law took three THREE of my children to the beach for 2 days. She took Elizabeth, June, and Emily. One thing that the pandemic provided was a ton of time with mom. First, the pandemic locked us all down together, not allowing others to be involved in my kids' lives. Then, Jim got a new position at work which is a wonderful thing because he's advancing and it's all good things for supporting a big family, however, this new position puts him on call 24/7, in addition to a normal 40-50+ hour week. Because of this, it's been mom-heavy recently too.
So, to have something take my children away from me and give my brain a little alleviation from parenting 5 children was a really nice thing. I was left with Josh and Annie, a very neat dynamic.
For our Monday event, we chose to take advantage of Albrtis Pool. There were 4 openings for the 1:30 session and we snagged 3 of them! The bummer was that after 5 minutes in the pool, it thundered. When thunder happens, everyone has to get out of the water. Swimming resumes 30 minutes after the last rumble of thunder. Welllllll, we sat out for an hour because every few minutes there would be another rumble.
Annie snapped these 2 pictures during our hour wait, haha. They were so well behaved while we waited. That was particularly impressive because it was HOT!
FINALLY the whistles blew and we got back in!!!
We were able to swim for an hour before more thunder rumbled and it was -almost- our time to head home anyway. After dinner we headed over to gymnastics. I didn't get a picture of Josh, but I got a bathroom selfie of me... so there's that...
Tuesday we met up with Annie's friends at the park. As discussed in past blog posts, my big kids aren't keen on parks anymore. When I realized I would only have 2 children in tow, I took advantage of a park date to give Annie some play on her level. They played for 2 hours and had such a good time!!
Tuesday rounded out with ice cream, bedtime, and I jumped on Zoom to run Stella's Hearts pregnancy loss support group.
Wednesday has no visual proof of existing beyond my breakfast, haha.
My recent favorites are Aldi's GF bagels and Starbucks iced coffee from the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Also, fun life hack: I love buying the $4 bundles of flowers at the grocery store during the Spring and Summer. It's a small thing but makes my heart happy.
The rest of Wednesday consisted of picking up the kids, an awesome zoom chat with my sister-in-law and a new friend, and a virtual meeting with a July birth client. There was definitely some cup-filling that happened at the beginning of this week and for that, I'm so thankful.
Thursday we met up with 2 families, some of our favorites, at a local creek. This creek isn't super close so it's not one we frequent often. It was nice to be back.
2 of my Godsons were at this outing... this is my youngest little Godbaby. He's so scrumptious!!
Elizabeth insisted in taking a photo of me and little mister belly baby, all while carrying 27 cups and water bottles because #momlife
However, what you can't see from these few photos was how nice it was to have the kids couple off (there were 15 kids between us that day... none of us came with all of our kids either lol), find buddies, and play. Because the kids played so nicely, my 2 friends and I were able to sit (gasp), talk, and catch-up. It was really really nice.
Friday it POURED. Flash floor warning all day, poooooooooooured. However, that meant that the heat completely backed off and it was in the 70's all day. We opened the windows and both enjoyed the cool air and pitter-patter of the rain.
Because of the rain, our events changed for the day (we had pool slots, waaah!) but I got a notification that our sofa shipped and would arrive Saturday. Each year we choose a project to tackle in or around our house. Last year Jim built the studio. This year I got to decide and I went fairly simple: a new livingroom. This room never, well, worked. I worked with a designer and she helped me find the right layout for this room. We ordered new furniture, a rug and while the chairs and rug came in, the sofa was back-ordered.
When we got the shipping notification it meant clearing out the room of all remaining "old" items and laying out the rug in preparation for the sofa.
I ordered the rug back in April and it had been sitting in its packaging. I forgot what it looked like. I was pleasantly surprised by what I picked out lol.
The kids chose to do yoga together, pictured above, and played relatively nicely all day. It's not super common, so I soaked in their comradery.
Now it's Saturday and we are awaiting our sofa and mentally gearing up for week 5...
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