Saying Yes to My Family and No to a Lot of Other Things (and my new house keeps surprising me)

This weekend, Friday through Monday, is the fishing trip my husband and his identical twin brother go on. They have always brought kids with them, whoever wanted to come. Sometimes my oldest daughter goes, but my youngest has never wanted to. This year my oldest decided she wanted a girls weekend. This meant my husband took his 3 sons (remember My Three Sons? such a great show!) and his twin took his 3 sons. This year his oldest, a girl who is in college now, also went. That's 9 ways of crazy and fun, in case you lost track.

FRIDAY
They got a late start to the lake, and the girls and I just puttered around some. I proofread until I decided that was dumb because I wanted to hang with my girls. So I bought The Devil Wears Prada with my Google Play credit and found a movie the girls really ended up enjoying. We keep making jokes about it ... "That's all." ... "I starve myself until I feel like I'm going to faint, then I eat a cube of cheese." We discussed guys and what NOT to do. We went to bed around midnight.

Sidebar: we found out last weekend from the previous owner of our home that we not only have pear trees but also peaches and apples and ... mulberries. This is significant to me because we had mulberries in our backyard when I was growing up and they were heavenly. To have my kids also experience this amazingness ... it's just one more sign that this house was supposed to be ours. Oh, and there is a lilac bush (always has been one of my fave flowers) right outside my bedroom window! This house keeps surprising me with messages from beyond!

SATURDAY
We had a bunch of errands to run quickly. First up was to get a mocha frappuccino light with coconut milk from Starbucks because I NEVER go there anymore and Joel had gotten me a gift card for Mother's Day. Then PetSmart for super worms for the bearded dragon. Found a great cat to adopt but it was already taken. Boo. HyVee for some sale things and to stock up for the 24-hour challenge the girls were going to do later. Target for ingredients for SLIME. Slime is our life.

Sam had a soccer game at 3:30 so I met the guys at a church in Spring Hill, KS to pick him up and we headed out for his final game of the season = a big win! He played goalie the first half and rocked it on the field the second half. He says soccer is his life and that's why I made it a priority to grab him and take him ... then return him back to the church so they could all go back to the lake.

Mommy's little goalie!

The 24-hour challenge started at 6:30 p.m. It's when you stay in one room for 24 hours and you can't come out for anything. Location = my bedroom since it is the only room with a connected bathroom. The girls made the best slime of their lives, they said. They hung out in their dad's closet, which contains our fireproof box. Yeah, the one I had to lug to a locksmith a while back since I had lost BOTH keys.

Pizza ... Canadian bacon is the way it came, so I fried up some bacon for it as well since my girls love bacon ;-)

We got glitter at Target for Ultimate Slime. Shoot, I knew you'd want the recipe. I'll have to come back and post that. This one had foaming facial cleanser and body foam to make it fluffy.

Girls making slime

I proofread on Aron's laptop in there since I broke mine. Don't ask (but I will say that my book I'd been working on forever may very well be lost, and I'm strangely okay with that, like I got a message to slow down). Oh, and I also lost my wedding ring last week. It was not a great week. I could use some prayers about the ring!

SUNDAY
I slept later than I have in probably a year (almost 9 a.m.!!!) and got up to proofread. I painted the girls' toenails bright pink, and they played Sandbox on their Kindles, watched some shows on their Kindles, read, played with slime and were kind of bored. I did a lot of dishes plus more laundry than should be allowed by law, made some fun food for the week like lime rice with Ranch and cumin, listened to gunshots, and stared out at our property. Luckily it was not a great pool day :-)

Joel, who has his own car now, left the campsite to hit two graduation parties to celebrate three of his friends. One was homeschooled all the way through, one was most of the way until senior year, and one went to regular school until senior year, when she was homeschooled. See, we have a diverse group of peeps, and it's clear "school" comes in many shapes and sizes!

This was actually taken Saturday after we dropped Sam back off. I hate saying goodbye to my family but I love when they go on adventures together!

I made Taco Soup for dinner. I also made two tater tot casseroles and froze them since I knew I would need something to take to TWO different potlucks on Wednesday (homeschool co-op field day and Theology of the Body for Teens final party). I did all this while watching The Real Housewives of Miami on Hulu because it doesn't take a lot out of my brain. I also get some weird sort of pleasure out of cooking and eating while watching women who probably barely eat so they can stay super skinny, which is not one of my main priorities in life.

At 6:30 the 24-hour challenge was over and so we had some taco soup (see recipe above) and left at 7 for 7:30 Mass. It felt weird going to church so late!

Eva did not want to quit the 24-hour challenge. I think it would be a great thing to do again in the winter, but not all 5 kids at once!

Callie made Daddy's closet her little haven. Yes, that's a fireproof box and no, there's nothing exciting in it besides photo negatives. I once had to call a locksmith because I lost both key to it! And yes, we have a security system for our home, plus cameras plus a gun so, haters, just don't even tell me how dumb I am to post this photo.

FINAL REMARKS
We said no to a lot of things this weekend, but we desperately needed a chill weekend. We needed to sleep and be lazy. I needed to catch up on house things and make homeschool plans and make some meals for the week. Joel attended the graduation parties and represented our family.

So we did not attend the graduation parties as a family like we normally would. We said no to Seussical. No to the dedication of our church (two-hour Mass then potluck) after remodel, which meant no to Callie dressing the altar and no to her singing in the choir and no to two practices for that as well with 40 minutes of driving for each one. No to the twice-a-year family reunion picnic. There were other things and I can't even remember them! Things kept coming up and I just kept saying no.

Instead, I prioritized my girls and honored that they wanted to do this challenge and that it would keep us home. I prioritized my soccer-playing son. I prioritized my home and my sanity for the coming week. We are just coming off a busy season of musical theater and we didn't know what hit us. We had to recover.

I didn't feel as selfish and guilty as I thought I would. I know my peeps understand. If I run myself into the ground, I can't be good for anyone. I'd be a crappy wife, mom, homeschool teacher, co-op teacher/planner, friend, daughter, everything. I'm feeling a pull to TREASURE my family. Also, why would you ever want to leave this? I mean, we prayed for our dream house for so long and we have it ... we need to hang out here as often as possible on our little patch of heaven way down south!