Rickett's Glen State Park, Our Little Peanut, Soccer Starting, and An Afternoon at the Lake

Samantha: 111 Months, Week 1

Aedan: 77 Months, Week 3

Owen: 35 Months, Week 1

With our Tour of the Midwest now over and school starting in a couple of weeks, I was starting to feel like our time to do things together as a family was slipping away. Even though we have largely been with one another non-stop since mid-March when everything shut down, and it's been like we've had an extended summer, I still feel sad at this time of the year, knowing that Ben will be going to more regular working hours, and Samantha and Aedan will be gone all day at school. I always look back over the summer and hope that we did enough fun things, had enough experiences, spent enough time playing together, and that I gave them enough attention. I cherish our summers together, and they always seem to go by so fast. Most of the time I end up feeling guilty and wish I would enjoy my time at home with the kids more, rather than thinking they are too loud or too messy. I know these summers that I have with them are fleeting, and some day I will miss these days when our house is loud and messy, it's just really hard to appreciate that when you are in the middle of it.

So on Sunday it was going to be a beautiful day, and we figured we would take advantage of Ben's last day to go on an outing with us before heading back to a normal work week. We decided to go to Rickett's Glen State Park and attempt the trail up to the waterfalls again, the one we did on July 3rd, the day before we got our little peanut. However, this time we prepared better. We packed and brought our lunch along with us on the hike, along with snacks and water bottles, so that way we could stop and take breaks as we went. Once we got to the waterfall area, we let the kids put on their water shoes and wade around in the water, and that really helped break up the walking part of the hike which is hard for Aedan and Owen to handle sometimes. We had a great time, even with our little peanut with us, she slept cuddled up to me in the Ergo on the way up and back down, and while we were at the waterfall we were able to feed her her bottle and let her hang out and look around. It went really well, and it was much more successful than the last time, even though it is a pretty long hike for little legs. Here are some pictures from our time at the waterfall. It was beautiful.

Here I am with our little peanut in the Ergo, she was happy as a clam in there.

Here are some action shots of the kids wading in the water. They love this kind of stuff and were so excited to look in the water for bugs and creatures, and try stacking up rocks and knocking them back down again.

Here are my attempts at getting all three to look at me and smile. It's more difficult than you would think. Silly kids! They just didn't want to stop playing so that I could take a picture of them.

The kids like it when Ben goes out in the water with them to throw big rocks up into the air so they can watch them crash back down into the water and make big splashes. They love how strong and fun their Daddy is.

After out little peanut was done with her bottle, Ben took over holding her so I could go out in the water with the kids. It was fun to explore the water, climb over the rocks, help Owen not trip and fall, and see how close we could get to the waterfall before it got too deep. The kids saw some adults climbing up the side of the rocks to the top of the waterfall, and Samantha and Aedan wanted to try it, to which they got a very firm no for an answer. I said it would be super slippery and dangerous, and I have heard stories of hikers getting hurt at Rickett's Glen and having to be airlifted out, so we definitely didn't want that.

Here is Ben sitting with our little peanut while I was off with our kids in the water. 

He took a few pictures of us walking around and exploring. I particularly like the pictures of Owen and me holding hands. He wants to go over the rocks so fast so he can keep up with Samantha and Aedan.

Ben tried to take pictures of the kids and me in these next few, but the sun was shining on us so much that it kind of washed us out.

Here I am crouching down pointing something out to Owen in the waterfall.

Here are some pretty views of the water and forest after we had our fill of playing in the water and began our hike back down to our car. It's so nice having a beautiful state park like this to explore so close to our house.

Here is a cute picture of Ben holding our little peanut just before dinner that night.

Monday, August 17th was Ben's first day back to work on campus, doing a normal schedule of being gone every day so that he could get prepared for the semester that started the following week. Our summer break was over, and it was time to get back to a more normal life and routine. Our little peanut had a hard day and was very fussy and did not sleep much. Aedan couldn't find a library book that was due back, and we had been looking for a very long time. He thought it might be in Ben's car, but I didn't know if that was him just trying to get us to stop looking. I was trying hard not to complain, but it was definitely an adjustment with Ben going back to work every day. We got into a new rhythm with him working from home at the end of the spring semester and then all summer long, and I rely on his help a lot when he's here, especially with basically having a newborn thrown into the mix without have the 9 months to prepare ahead of time, so it was a bit overwhelming all of a sudden having all four kids on my own.

That evening before dinner, we were all playing outside, and Owen wanted to play hockey with me. I had our little peanut in the Ergo carrier so she was happy and cuddled up since she had a fussy day and didn't feel like being put down. This way she could sleep happily, and I still had my hands free to play hockey with Owen. She was so adorable with her hands crossed in front of her face while she slept.

Tuesday was a busy day for Ben because he was doing TV interviews regarding the election. He had to dress up nice since he was going to be recorded, too. When he told the kids that he was interviewed for TV, Samantha exclaimed, "My daddy is famous! He's going to be on TV!"

Upon returning from our trip, we discovered we had mouse droppings in our kitchen again. So we put out traps Friday night and Saturday night and caught one mouse each morning. It's really gross to me, and we always make sure we don't leave anything out and clean up crumbs and everything, too. We think they are coming up from behind our oven, because those are the traps they were caught in, so we are thinking that at some point we will need to pull our oven out and see how they are getting in, and if there is a crack or hole we can fill in somehow so they stop getting in our kitchen. Yuck, I hate mice, and it's frustrating that this is the third time it's happened after being gone for a long period of time and then coming back home. We will definitely have to do something about this problem.

On Tuesday morning Aedan woke up with another missing tooth that fell out during the night, this time it was the one on top on the right side. We thought he looked so cute with the gaping hole in his mouth. I think it's so cute when kids start losing teeth like this and they end up looking like a jack-o-lantern. He was proud to show off his new smile to us, and he couldn't wait for the Tooth Fairy to come that night.

Here is our little peanut playing on the floor gym. She is interacting with it a lot more now, looking at the toys, and actually batting at them with her hands. It's fun to watch her interact with the world around her more and more each day.

And here she is all wrapped up and snug in the rock and play for her evening nap. It's too bad that I can't show her face because she's such a little cutie.

Our kids adore our little peanut, and they treat her just as if she were their real little sister. They hug and kiss her, play with her and talk to her, and are always excited to see her when she wakes up for the day or from a nap. This is the part of fostering that breaks my heart. We have opened our hearts to this little girl. She is a part of our family. Taking care of her and talking about her and to her is such a part of a rhythm of our day at this point, that when she goes back home with her mom there will be a huge hole in our home and in our hearts that she was filling, and we will miss her terribly and think about her every day.

Here's my sweet Aedan cuddling her on our bed, giving her sweet kisses that just melted my heart.

Over the last few days the rock and play that we got from my friend Melissa from Bible study has stopped working all the time. Ben has been able to fix it temporarily, and it will work for awhile, but then it stops working, and by that I mean that it stops rocking back and forth. Our little peanut is not great at sleeping flat on her back because of her reflux issues, so we usually try to lay her down in the pack and play for the first stretch of sleep for the night, but then if she's fussy or when she wakes up again, we just put her in the rock and play for the rest of the night. Plus, she takes pretty much all her naps in the rock and play. We just want her to be able to sleep, and Ben and I need our sleep as well, so I decided to look on Facebook Marketplace for anyone that might be selling another rock and play. We use it enough that I figured it would be good to get something else. I was able to find someone local that was welling one for $20 that I picked up that night, and I was excited to have one that would be more reliable.

That night was Samantha's first soccer practice. She was a little nervous about going, but she was excited about doing soccer again as she really enjoyed the camp over the summer. She recognized a couple people on her team from camp, and she was doing well with the drills they had lined up for them that day. Here are some videos from practice that day. With Little League being cancelled over the spring/summer, we were glad the kids expressed interest in soccer and wanted to try out a new sport.

Samantha really enjoys her American Girl dolls and plays with them fairly consistently. She came downstairs on Wednesday morning with Kit and was so proud that she matched her with the same hairstyle, a red shirt, a sweatshirt tied around their waist, and jeans. I love my little girl, she is so sweet and beautiful.

This picture gives you a little more perspective on how tiny our little peanut is since you see her in the rock and play not wrapped up. She still keeps her legs pulled up like a little frog and often has her arm up by her face when she sleeps. This first picture is catching her in a stretching motion where she arches her back and makes cute this grunting noises before settling back down to sleep.

On Wednesday afternoon I had an eye appointment to finally get an exam and order new contacts. Once again, I was almost out of the emergency box my Michigan doctor sent to me during quarantine time, so I was glad that I was called for a cancellation so I could get in sooner. Ben was able to come home early to hang out with the kids so I could go to my appointment. Everything went well and I ordered a year supply of contacts and went on my way.

It was a hotter day on Wednesday, and I thought it would be fun to take a family trip to the beach that evening since our chances to go swimming in the lake are going to be gone soon with school starting and cooler weather coming in. It started off pretty nice, but then it got cloudy, windy, and it started to rain on us. The kids had maybe swam for forty-five minutes, and we had to just pack up our stuff and leave. I felt kind of disappointed that we didn't have more time, but Ben reassured me that the kids had a blast with the time they had, and we will have more chances to go swimming and have gone quite a few times over the summer as well.

On Wednesday night I finally got the cloth diaper stash from Christy out and stuffed all the diapers to get ready to use for our little peanut. I figured since we were still using our stash for Owen, and Christy didn't need hers anymore, we might as well take them and use them because we could have future foster babies as well that we could use them for. This will help us save money on buying diapers, plus they are so much better and easier to use. They contain messes better, and they help prevent diaper rashes. It's weird that thinking about diapers can make you sad, but with Christy not needing them anymore and probably not having any more children, and with me having Owen who will be out of diapers soon and Ben and I not planning on having any more biological children of our own, I felt a little sad to think that she and I were reaching our end of having younger kids and growing our families and staying home taking care of babies and toddlers. We are thinking and moving more toward older kids, and going back to work ourselves, and moving into that next phase of life. It's strange to think about, and sometimes it makes me sad to think that my years of being a stay-at-home mom, spending my days solely with my children, will be coming to an end in the next few years once Owen enters Kindergarten. I have such a mixture of feelings from nostalgia and wanting to stomp on the breaks or turn back time, wishing that I would have relished these years with my children more, but at the same time looking forward to the future because I want to be back in the classroom teaching again, and I'm excited about the freedom to travel and go places and do fun things with our kids that you can't do when you have babies and toddlers in tow. I'm excited about making more money for our family so we feel like we are on more secure ground and taking some of the pressure off of Ben, and I'm excited to watch our children grow and to have a new, different, and exciting relationship with them, because even as they grow, it's not like they need us any less, just in different ways.

There have been some changes as of this week with the advice from the public health officials about the opening of schools, and some schools have changed their back to school plans because of it. Some have changed to hybrid or gone all online. However, thankfully, Lake Lehman has stuck with their plan of the three options that they outlined at the beginning: in person with social distancing and masks, virtual learning (like watching the classroom lessons and activities from home and participating somehow), or enrolling in cyber school through the school district. We were given the option to change to a different option if we wanted to, but Ben and I decided to stick with our decision to do in person school because we thought that would be the best choice for everyone involved. So we will enter this school year with lots of prayers for the health and safety of all the kids and teachers that will be entering the classroom after 5 months of being at home.

Thursday, August 20th we had a well visit check-up for our little peanut, so we had a busy day ahead of us. I worked it out to drop Samantha, Aedan, and Owen off at a friend's house so that way I could just take our little peanut. They wouldn't be allowed to come in the office anyways because of Covid restrictions, and with Ben working and having meetings, he wasn't able to be with the kids. However, our kids were excited to play with the Chapman kids at their house, especially since they haven't had a chance to play with anyone for a long time.

After dropping them off, I drove our little peanut down for her appointment at noon. Her mom was supposed to meet me there, but ended up having an appointment she couldn't cancel. I was a little disappointed about that, especially because this was her two month check-up, and she would be getting vaccines. However, I came prepared with Tylenol to give her afterwards and a bottle to feed her. She weighed in at 10 pounds 15 ounces which put her in the 57th percentile. Her height was 1 foot 8.87 inches which put her in the 6th percentile. Her BMI was 17.66 which put her in the 93rd percentile, and I'm sure a lot of that is because she is slightly above average weight for her age, but pretty short for her age as well. Her head circumference was 38.1 cm which put her in the 61st percentile. Our little peanut checked out great and did well drinking the medicine for one vaccine and then got a few shots in her legs. She screamed and cried of course, but once I picked her up and held her, she settled down. It was one of those moments where I felt super attached to this little girl. I was the only one there for her at that moment, and the nurse commented on how entranced she was with me and how my touch was so calming to her. I felt so protective of that little girl in that moment, and although we knew going into this that she was most likely going back home, there are definitely times where I would be perfectly happy with her joining our family permanently.

I can't go into too many details, for many different reasons, but Ben was supposed to hear some work-related news on that Thursday, but it was not the news we were wanting to hear. I can't say anything more about it now, but maybe someday I will be able to look back on how everything played out and be able to make some sense of it. But for now, we are just left in a state of confusion and sadness.

Our afternoon felt very rushed with getting back from the doctor, picking up the kids from the Chapmans, and then getting back home to attempt to put Owen down for a nap, even though it was late. Our little peanut was pretty fussy that evening because of her shots, so she required a lot of holding and snuggling, which we were expecting, and we were fine with. I even put her in the Ergo to carry her around for awhile after dinner as we were trying to clean up.

Here is Samantha cuddling up with our little peanut in her bed that night as I sang songs and prayed with them. They love it when she can lay on their bed before bed time. Samantha, in particular, loves having the little sister she always wanted.

On Friday it was going to be another nice, warm, and sunny day, so I made plans with my friends Grace and Alysse from Bible study to meet at the beach for the day. We spent a long time there, and it was so much fun. The weather was perfect, the kids were in the water for hours, and Owen was even okay with going in the water without me so that way I could sit and talk with my friends and watch our little peanut. I'm glad we were blessed with such good weather to enjoy another fun day at the lake, for who knows, this may really be our last chance with school starting in a week and my days with the kids home from school limited. I loved watching my three kiddos play in the water together. They are such little fishes, and they get along so well together and love to play with one another.

They even had a seaweed fight! Even though my friends left much earlier than this, it was such a beautiful day, the kids were having so much fun in the water, and our little peanut was perfectly content just hanging out with me, that I decided to just stay as long as I could and milk the day for all it's worth. We had nothing else to do, and it felt good to just spend time outside in the sun.

Ben and I don't get the chance to go on very many dates lately with Covid and also just having four kids, one of which is a foster kid, so it's kind of hard to imagine paying a babysitter to watch them just so we could go out for dinner. So on Friday night I had the idea to feed the kids mac and cheese, and then Ben and I would order Turkish food from Istanbul Grille to eat while the kids watched a show together in the living room. That way Ben and I had the chance to talk uninterrupted, and the kids were happy watching something. It was an at-home date, and it was pretty nice. We don't take many pictures together, and I'm not too big of a fan of how I look in this picture after just spending the whole afternoon at the beach, but I think it shows just how handsome my husband is. I love his easy, natural smile and his caring eyes. This man is my person, my best friend, my partner, the one who loves me no matter what, and the only one I would ever want to spend the rest of my life with.

Here's our yummy food, and it was delicious! Definitely a place we would like to eat at again.

I haven't been too great with keeping up with exercise, which I wish I would do, but on Saturday morning I was able to sneak out for a run along the lake. As I went along, I was just captivated by this beautiful view with the bright sun shining over the mountain, illuminating the lake and showcasing the beautiful blue of the sky and water. I love living near the lake and the mountains. It's so beautiful here.

He hadn't done this for awhile, but here are some silly pictures of Owen after I laid him down for his nap on Saturday. He's so silly! And I love him for it.

(Blog about August 16-22, 2020)