Since around the beginning of blog time, I have always wanted to be able to share the daily happenings of life. However,
living life tends to trump
documenting life around here with two little boys to keep up with. I am only able to get on the computer when they are both asleep, and by then I am usually so exhausted that I need to sleep too. That's why we tend to squeeze two months of business into each blog post.
So...both boys are sleeping now and I'm not exhausted. A great chance to share an exclusive insight at the daily life of our family. Perhaps it will be wordy and sleep-inducing to our readers, but to my future self, hopefully enlightening.
If you would like a one sentence summary of the rest of this post, it goes like this:
Nothing happened all week until a Massner family night on Friday, a cousin's wedding on Saturday, and church followed by an evening at Grandma Lanz's on Sunday.
Or, if you are up for reading the detailed recapturing of the past week, here goes:
Monday:
Matt came home early at noon today and then worked from home for the afternoon. He has been working out on job sites the past couple months, and today the crew quit early because of the rain. This is probably the first time he has ever actually gotten work done at home - paid work anyway. We got smart and set up a little "office" in one of the basement bedrooms and he locked himself in there for the afternoon. The boys usually just want to play with Daddy when he is home, so this worked out well. I just pretended Daddy was at work. When it was time for a snack or supper, we called him and told him it was time to eat.
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| This is something Matt gets to supervise when he is working on job sites. |
Both boys were overtired this morning, so I put them both down for naps mid-morning. My house was pretty well caught up from the weekend, so I used the rare opportunity to do some online shopping for supplies that have been stacking up on my list. Since Micah has been born, I have made use of Walmart.com's FREE 2-day shipping on orders of $35 or more. A package of diapers already gets me to at least $20, so if I add a couple more things that I need anyway, woohoo! It's here in two days, and I don't even have to leave the house! This also condenses my town trips to doctor visits and groceries. I'm not really much of a shopper, especially since having two boys.
I also applied the finishing touches to my 2017 scrapbook on Shutterfly and got that ordered. It is nice not to have that hanging over my head anymore!
So, it was a productive day for me because I rarely get anything done on the computer, for reason of the boys as mentioned above.
During Micah's second nap in the afternoon, Levi helped me make some "37-Calorie Brownies" - a recipe that we got in an email from the dentist that I wanted to try. They were 100% healthy (made mostly of plain Greek yogurt, oats, and stevia) and the boys loved them, although the boys tend to love anything that seems like dessert. We also made some strawberry lemonade smoothies to share with Daddy!
I let suppertime sneak up on me and pulled off a 15-minute beef and tomato mac for supper. The boys love anything with noodles.
The boys usually go to bed around eight if there is nothing going on in the evenings. After that is our opportunity to get a couple things done before we go to bed ourselves!
Tuesday:
It has been about three weeks since I have been grocery shopping, and I am starting to notice. We ran out of milk and cottage cheese, got down to three eggs in the fridge, and were running low on other essentials such as oatmeal and brown sugar. But rather than do the sensible thing and go shopping (!), I preferred to put off a trip to town as long as possible. Making a list and getting two boys loaded up for a trip to Burlington for groceries always sounds like so much work, whether I drop them off with someone or bring them with me.
Instead, we spent the week using cream on our cereal, having the boys drink the unsweetened almond milk that I had on hand (yuck!), and then mixing up dry milk to use once those were gone. For brown sugar, I just made my own out of sugar and molasses. Eggs were restocked on Wednesday by Phil and Kelli. So the main things I have done without are oatmeal and cottage cheese.
I was feeling really on top of things today. Micah has resumed taking morning naps, so that has given me more time to get things done in the mornings. Levi and I even had our supper casserole in the fridge by late morning! He loves to help me in the kitchen, and it is something that is easy for me to include him in. If I try to get into any other project, the boys start getting in my way and making me frustrated (so rather than get frustrated, I just stopped trying to get anything extra done anymore!).
I also got a blog post finished and posted. I had written it up the week before and just needed to add the pictures.
Oh, the things one can accomplish when there is NOTHING going on all week!! I don't mind staying home; it keeps things so much calmer than when we leave the house.
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| Micah discovered a new trick! He was SO impressed with himself for this balancing act! |
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| Levi was impressed, too! He had to figure it out himself. |
Usually, Jesse comes to babysit while I teach piano lessons on Tuesdays, but today he couldn't make it. I put the boys down a little bit later for naps in hopes that they would sleep through lessons, and it worked! My last lesson also ended up cancelling, so things went very well with the boys despite the lack of a babysitter! Grace and Will were my two lessons for the day.
Matt got home a little after 7 today, so we ate supper without him. His hours haven't been quite as predictable lately since he hasn't been in the office. The boys and I made some smoothies to sip on while we watched him eat supper. Then...dishes and bedtime!
Wednesday:
The excitement of the day was officially running out of diapers this morning. We made use of spare pull-ups and cloth diapers (I've been out of the habit of cloth lately) until...YAY!! I've never been so happy for the Fed-Ex truck to arrive with a shipment of diapers, just in time for supper! I am always so amazed and thankful for some of the conveniences I have as a mother today!
Today we did laundry and kept the house caught up, but other than that I mostly just played with the boys and did the usual daily eat-a-meal, clean-up-after-a-meal routine. I gave the boys baths this afternoon and got them dressed for church before supper, which has turned into our normal Wednesday routine. That way, we are not rushed after supper and can even consider cleaning up the table before heading to church and arriving on time. I also don't stress as much if Matt gets home late because then he is the only one who has to get ready after supper.
Another highlight of my day was making country-style ribs. I have very little experience with cooking "chunks of meat" but, as you know, my groceries were dwindling and meat doesn't require very many other ingredients besides seasonings. It is a good experience for me to learn to cook meat. We have purchased a 1/2 hog and 1/4 beef over the past couple years from Matt's cousin, but I pretty much only ever use the ground meat because I don't know what to do with the chunks! So. This past week I have been forcing myself to cook chunks. I pull something out of the freezer and thaw it, and then type that kind of meat into Google and make a recipe that looks good.
The ribs were DELICIOUS. Like probably the most delicious thing that has come out of this kitchen since I moved in. BBQ ribs are Matt's favorite, but he is usually disappointed when he gets them from a restaurant because they aren't totally fresh. Many compliments to the cook today. ;)
We went to mid-week church services this evening, got home late and went to bed! Oh, and we forgot to stop at the grocery store for milk on the way home.
Thursday:
Ok, so being stuck inside all week finally got to me. I think the warm spring weather from last week was too much to handle. The boys and I got all bundled up and drove to Mediapolis, where we parked at my mom's, stopped and visited her for a bit, and then took a walk to the library for story time. This is the third time we have ever been to story time. The first time was on Levi's birthday. The boys are still a little young to get the full effect of the story time thing, but it is a good excuse to get out and also to get a fresh supply of books to read! Levi sat quiet and still the whole time she was reading today, though he needed a few books of his own to look through while she read. I left Micah in his stroller with some board books until the story was done. Levi enjoyed the craft, and then found the play dough and had fun with that for awhile!
We headed home after that. Micah fell asleep on the way home, and Levi and I went down for naps after eating lunch. Piano lessons got cancelled today, so our afternoon was a little calmer than usual. Today's "chunk of meat" was a smoked ham - that was definitely a first for me! It ended up being very simple and delicious, too! Several compliments again from hubby. And it's not like he praises my food like this every day. He doesn't usually say anything negative, but he just isn't the type to get excited about food in general. Strange, I know... ;)
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| And I get excited when my green beans turn into trees on my plate. Amazing. |
By this evening (after one day away, mind you), the kitchen was a disaster and the dishes piled high. Matt played with the boys after supper while I got everything cleaned up. Ahh...so nice to have things back in order again! We then followed the usual bedtime routine with the addition of bowls of ice cream for me and Matt after the boys were asleep. :)
Friday:
Matt recently rearranged his work schedule to work 80 hours in 9 days and then take every other Friday off. Today was the Friday off, so we enjoyed having him home! He actually thought he was going to have to go out to a job site anyway until he found out at 10:30 that they didn't need him. So his morning wasn't very productive. After lunch he realized he still needed to get in another hour of work for the week, so he went downstairs and worked on his computer for a bit before going out to the garage to work on his wood projects.
Levi helped me make a shortcake for dessert tonight. We also received a bunch more packages from my online shopping trip, along with the boys' pictures that I had ordered last week! That gave me a project for the day of getting them framed, labeled, and mailed for family. We also finally got around to hanging up the boys' pictures in their room along with some wall words (they've been sitting in the closet since the last time they had pictures taken in June). Very exciting!
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| Our new addition to the wall in the boys' room! |
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| This is an old addition from two years ago right after Levi was born...but I think I forgot to ever put any pictures on the blog so I'll do that now. To think there used to be a day when I had the time, energy, and personal space to make something so fun! I traced giraffes on boards to match the crib bedding, Matt cut them out on his jigsaw, and then I painted them and added the yarn. We loved how they turned out! |
We went to my Mom and Dad's for supper tonight. The whole family was home (following the arrival of the second college student at 9:30) so it was a nice time to be together. Since Jonathan didn't get home until later, we lost track of time and didn't end up leaving until around eleven. Oops!
Saturday:
Of course, the boys still didn't sleep past 7:45 in the morning! It actually worked out well that they had a short night because they both took nice naps in the morning and I had to wake them up to leave for Trevor (Matt's cousin) and Allison's wedding in the afternoon. The wedding was simple, short, and sweet...perfect for parents of two little boys. From there we went to the reception at the fellowship center and then home for the evening. We had protein-stocked smoothies by the fire for supper. We were all exhausted, so we put the boys to bed at 7:15 and then moved all the clocks ahead an hour so it could be 8:30 and we could justify going to bed too (after a quick bowl of ice cream; brownie mix is our favorite topping these days).
Sunday:
The boys were up at 7:45 this morning, the usual! Apparently they weren't fooled by daylight savings. We still got a nice long night of sleep since we got to bed early!
Our Sunday morning routine is fairly efficient these days. After we shower and get dressed, Matt makes breakfast with the boys and we eat by 8:30ish, then we get the boys ready, finish getting ourselves ready, and are out the door around 9:30. It is a 20 minute drive and singing starts in the Sunday school at ten.
I never know when I get to church how we will make it through morning services while Matt is teaching Sunday school, but God has always provided help in some way or other! We are very blessed with helpful family and friends at church. Today Levi sat with Hannah S. and Micah sat with me. After lunch, I put Micah down for a nap and Levi sat with Matt during the afternoon service. We were thankful to have a lot of visitors in church today!
After church, there was a 90th birthday open house in Burlington for a lady from church, so we stopped in there to wish her happy birthday before coming home for the afternoon.
I spent the afternoon making stromboli for supper while Matt entertained the boys. I like the recipe because it makes three big loaves and I can put two in the freezer for another day!
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| Before Matt intervened, Micah found his own entertainment while I was making supper. He has a fascination with crawling into the back of my spinning corner cupboard. |
It was our night to visit Grandma Lanz for the evening, so we enjoyed an evening at her place with Kyle and Kelli's family, topped off with her delicious cinnamon rolls!
Home again, home again, jiggedy jig...to bed again, bed again...that's the end.
