2015 - Week 38

Week 38, off and running! This week, overall, was pretty quiet. Never really a bad thing in our house!

Monday was off to a SLOOOOOOOW star, as expected. The girls and I overslept, and were a little late to daycare and work. I wanted to give Olivia some time to sleep in, to make sure she was feeling better, and just didn’t want to be rushed. Luckily, she seemed perfectly fine, and normal as can be. Hopefully whatever was bothering her doesn’t reappear. I was off to work and I still feel so incredibly unmotivated. I just cannot find it. Aside from just not being into my work/load, all I can ever think about is the mile long to-do list, and all of the things I could be doing at home. And, I just feel exhausted and worn out in general…ALL THE TIME. I feel like I just need some time off, sometime away, all to myself. I need to re-energize and re-focus. Like that will ever happen. After work, I picked the big girls up from daycare, and we played outside for a little while, before heading in to make dinner and hang out for the night. Eliza seems to have a cold going on, and appears to be teething, so I think she’s going to be in a pretty bad mood for a while. She’s not usually the happiest of campers on weeknights as it is, so we’ll see what happens. After dinner, we watched a little TV before sending the girls off to bed, and then we settled in for a late night Vikings game. Their season opener was Monday Night Football, in San Francisco, so it was on SUPER late. I hung in there for quite a while, but it was seriously a horrible, terrible game, and even I eventually had to throw in the towel and go to bed. Dangit Vikings!

Tired Girls = Slow Morning!

A Note That Came Home with Olivia Today - I Love that she Loves Learning So Much!

On Tuesday we had a much better start, even with the late Monday night. Eliza had a rough drop off at daycare, she was crying and reaching out for me and SERIOUSLY, that will break your heart in pieces! I hate dropping off my kids sad or crying. I just have to remind myself, it’s temporary, and by the time I pull out of the parking lot they’ve moved on when we have days like that. I had a much more productive day at work, and now I just need to hold onto that new focus and keep it up. Christian had his follow-up appointment today, to discuss his upcoming surgery (to remove the “scar tissue” mass on his chest”. It is an outpatient surgery, so he will come home the same day – which is great, but it’s still surgery, and he does need to be put under for it – which is scary. He’ll have to take about a week off work, but we’re hoping he’ll be feeling up to it a little earlier, and his work can put him on lighter duty for a few days. They should be calling to schedule it soon and, as scary as it is, I sure hope it happens sooner rather than later, so we can stop being so worried about it. I picked the girls up after work, and met Christian at home. Amelia’s soccer practice was canceled for today, so I left her and Eliza home with him, while Olivia and I were off to her practice. Christian had dinner ready when we arrived home, which was a nice change, and we arrived home to find Amelia passed out on the living room floor. Turns out, now she’s not feeling too hot – I sure hope she’s just exhausted and it’s nothing more than that. So, she was off to bed. Meanwhile, Eliza was completely miserable all night long – screaming, crying, throwing fits and NOTHING would cheer her up. It was a LOOOOONG night in our house. Thankfully, I did eventually get her to sleep, a little earlier than usual, and luckily she did stay asleep all night. Olivia ate dinner with us and watched a movie before she was off to bed as well. Poor kids, it’s always something with them!

My Tired Kindergartner!

All of our Orchard Visits - Love!

Wednesday started off pretty typically. Everybody seemed well and in better moods, and we were all off to work, school and daycare for the day. It day started off a little chilly, but it warmed up quite nicely. That early fall crisp is starting to hit in the mornings and evenings, that’s for sure! After work, we stopped home, and I again left Amelia and Eliza home with Christian...this time Olivia and I were off to school for her 1^st Grade Curriculum night. We got to visit her classroom and she showed me around, then we were off to the library to listen to the teachers talk about all of the stuff they will be learning and working on this year. I can’t believe how much they learn – it’s CRAZY! They said kids her age are now learning things that kids from our generation didn’t start learning until middle school (like entry to geometry for example), and from listening to them and reading through the handouts, I definitely believe that. These kids are going to be smarter than me in no time, that’s for sure. The meeting ended up running late, so we hurried home for baths and dinner before shuffling the girls off to bed. I think it’s going to be another rough morning tomorrow, but we’ll see. Some storms were rolling in as we went to bed, which doesn’t help. You just never know how the house will handle stormy nights. Christian’s supervisor has approached him again about the potential to taking a management position on the overnight shift, which is also a new revelation we’re discussing. He worked overnights for the first few years he worked there, probably for about 4-5 years, and moved to days when I was pregnant with Olivia. And, he only moved to days because his union went on strike, which lasted a few months, and some of the employees didn’t return to work when the strike ended. So, it was pure “luck”, if you can call it that in that situation. They’ve approached him about taking this position a few times over the years, and they continue to have bad luck trying to fill it with a reliable, capable person. He basically told Christian they’re having issues with the current supervisor, and IF it doesn’t work out with that person, the job would basically be his if he was interested. We’ve always been pretty anti-nights, but it’s actually starting to sound like it won’t be so bad. He’d be home in the evenings for dinner and to hang out for a little while to be at soccer/softball, and then would leave for work, likely returning around the time we girls leave for work/school/daycare in the morning. Then, obviously, sleep most of the day. Of course, he doesn’t want to be back on the nightshift, but we used to be much more worried about the logistics of things. However, the more I think about it, the more I think that it might not be so bad after all. So….there may be more to come on that topic over the next few weeks, we’ll see.

Thursday was a pretty standard, quiet day. I’m not sure why, and I think it’s kind of strange, but overall Thursday has always seemed to be our low key day of the week, for as long as I can remember. Kind of strange. We thankfully had a pretty peaceful night, even with the crazy thunderstorms that hit. I will say, we’re pretty lucky in that storms don’t seem to affect our kids, or our animals too much. Whew! Everybody did wake up with some kind of sniffle, cough, runny nose going on though – which sucks. It is that time of the year though – those spring and fall weather shifts wreak havoc on the immune system! Outside of that...work, daycare and school were pretty standard, we had a quiet night of dinner and some cuddle time, and it was my Friday at work, which always makes every day better!

My Throwback This Week - to a previous orchard trip. Look at how little!!

Friday was a pretty busy day around the house. It was my Friday off, WOOT!! Christian was off to work, and I let the girls sleep in a little bit before dropping the big girls off at daycare. Eliza and I stopped at Walmart for a few things, and then hung out at home. After breakfast she was pretty tired, so she went down for a morning nap. That doesn’t happen too much at home – she usually just takes one long nap around lunchtime, so she was definitely exhausted. Then, I looked around like a deer in headlights at our disaster of a house. It seriously looks like a tornado hit it….every room, every corner of the house. It’s so overwhelming. Eventually, I got to work. I got the living room pretty cleaned up, started on the kitchen, but mainly focused on getting everything back into the general area/room it belongs in. That’s always my Step 1 in cleaning – makes it a lot easier to clean and organize a room, if you know everything that is supposed to be in that room is there. In my world anyway. Amidst the cleaning and picking up, Eliza woke up, we had some lunch and played for a while, before she took an afternoon nap. I’m dying to get a sitter(s) for the girls one of these weekends so I can just have the house to myself, and really hit it hard – just clean, clean, clean the day away. And, we’re actually contemplating hiring a cleaner to really scrub and clean the kitchen and dining room good…floors, walls, countertops, cupboards, appliances…everything. I feel like they’ve just become a lost cause at this point. We’ll have to keep talking about it, but I think it would save me a lot of sanity! Finally, we picked the big girls up from daycare around closing time, stopped at Target, and met Christian at home for the night. We made dinner, hung out for a while, and the girls were off to bed, one by one. It was a pretty early night for all of us.

Spent the Day with my Honey!

Saturday, oh Saturday. You’ve somehow become my most exhausting day. Christian was off to work as usual, and he’s been going in much earlier on Saturday’s lately. Which, I think causes the girls to wake up earlier as well – so, it was an early start to the day for all of us. I did some dishes and more cleaning in the kitchen while the girls watched a movie…we had breakfast, and got ready for Saturday soccer. Olivia’s team has been doing pretty bad lately – it’s horrible to say, and they don’t technically keep score yet this year, but man do they get killed every week. The coaches have been getting pretty frustrated because the overall issue with the team is that they just do not listen. Several of them really have a lot of skill, and they could be a great team, but they just really need to work on listening, passing and spreading out on the field. Hopefully all of that will start to come over the next few weeks. It doesn’t help that the two other teams in our leave have quite a few really tall, big girls – so a lot of the girls on our team are still pretty intimidated by them. Hopefully they gave over that as well over the next few weeks. Olivia did play MUCH better this week though…focusing, keeping her hands to herself, thankfully. Amelia steam did really well this week, and she played AWESOME! She didn’t get a goal, but she came SOOOOOO close a couple of times, and she got a really awesome assist, passing it to a team member right in front of the goal. I was so proud of her, and she was beaming with pride herself. After her game, we stopped at the park to play for a while, and FINALLY made our way home. These mornings are exhausting! We had a little lunch when we got home, and Eliza was down for a nap. I started some laundry, and the big girls played downstairs for a while…before they started fighting and yelling and being loud – waking Eliza up. UGH, seriously, little in life makes me more upset than somebody waking the baby! I collected myself, and ended up walking the girls down to the park for a while to burn off some energy. It hard to take Eliza to the park now though, because she wants to do everything, and I just can’t keep up with her. I can usually get Olivia to play with her and keep an eye on her for a while, but she wants to do her own thing too, so it only lasts so long. We spent a pretty good amount of time there, and arrived home just as Christian did, from work. The girls stayed outside and played with him for a while, while I relaxed and folded some laundry. Then, he started draining the pool, and cleaned the cover. I can’t believe it’s time to pack away the pool already!! Definitely the end of summer mark right there. We had dinner, watched some movies with the girls and hung out for a while before sending the girls to bed, and relaxing for a while…before passing out ourselves, of course.

she sure has grown...

Sunday was a pretty typical Sunday in our house. It started off slow…the girls slept in for a while, I showered right away to wake up and get the day started, and then got to work on folding the last of yesterday’s laundry (while starting today’s loads…laundry, I hate it!) . I did some more work cleaning up the kitchen while everybody else got ready, and then we were off to IHOP for breakfast. We had never been there before, and decided to try it out (vs. our Perkins breakfast staple). It was alright, but I think we’ll definitely stick with Perkins going forward. Eliza went down for a nap when we got home from breakfast, and I was back to folding laundry, while we watched the Vikings game. Then, the big girls fighting started up again, and I swear I’m going to lose my mind. I don’t understand why they have to pick at each other and pick ON each other every chance they get. I bed and plead with them to just leave each other alone, to separate, to do their own thing when they can’t get along, and they will not listen. On top of that, Olivia has had the WORST attitude lately, and suddenly. The eye rolling has started, the annoyed moans when she doesn’t get her way, the toddler-like fits when we tell her no. It’s been getting worse over the last few weeks, I guess since school started up, so I’m sure it’s partially related to being tired and busy, but I feel like we suddenly have a teenager in the house already. It’s SO frustrating, and just a little glimpse into our future. I’m exhausted at the though; already. We finally got them separated, and they watched some videos and relaxed for a while. There was peace, for a while. Christian later brought them outside with him, after the game ended, while he cut the grass and I finished up laundry. The girls’ BFF, Bella, stopped over to play with them for a while, until I had to take the girls off with me to pick up some winnings from a contest I entered recently. I won a coat for Eliza, which we picked up, then we hung out and waited for the “pick-ups” to end, to see what would be raffled off from the no-shows. The girls played at the park for a while, while we waited – and it was actually a really awesome park, with a lot of structures I’ve never seen before. The girls were having a blast…until a storm rolled in and we had to retreat back to the contest area, out of the rain. They were giving out books to the kids, so the girls each got to pick one out, and then during the raffle I ended up getting some snow boots for Olivia and a costume for Eliza. It was a pretty good haul! While we were away, Christian and his friend Lorenzo grilled, and we sat down to eat right away when we arrived home. Not much more time left of grilling season; we have to take advantage! After eating and some play time, Christian gave the girls their bath, while I put the last of the laundry away. Finally, he and Lorenzo went out for a couple of beers, I got the girls to bed, and then I finally settled in with Hulu, in the peace and quiet, and enjoyed some me time before bed. Me time…is there anything better than a little me time?! Absolutely not!

she gets right in line to get her hair done - it's so cute!

Until Next Week! XOXO