Photo Journal - Josie Boettcher

I'm so glad it's Friday! I had a little bit of a frustrating morning with Ollie...really just the 20 minutes before we left the house and also in the car on the way to Melis's. She's just been so obstinate and pushy and ugh! Anyway, I had a really great visit with Melis and Naz and Ollie played okay too. Not as good as before, but it was a rainy day and I think it's hard for two-year-old's to stay comfortable with each other when they don't see each other more than once a week. Like, we were seeing each other on Mondays and then another play date for a little while, but it has been a little more spread out lately. Hopefully we can get back to seeing each other more often again! Good for all of us, I think. I'm posting these Halloween pictures today, because I couldn't fit them in yesterday's post. Also, a picture of the two sweet girls watching Frozen. :)

What a day! My parents headed out this morning, right after taking the kids to the bus stop. I think we were all VERY exhausted from all of the hard work of the previous couple of days, so I kind of just sat for a while, staring. After staring for too long, I got Ollie ready and we went to visit Brittany and Anna at their new house! Such a great place, with a big yard, in a good area, and a beautiful neighborhood. Once they get their projects done, I feel like it will be the perfect home! I'm so happy they've been able to move on from their rental...even though I know all of the renovating stuff has been really overwhelming for Brit. I took her 20 weeks pictures today!!! Her baby is now the size of a banana...and he's a BOY! They're going to name him Luca. 💓 Today was Hilliard's trick or treat day and, man, it was hectic as always. I got all of the costumes and trick or treat buckets ready ahead of time, so at least that part was done by the time the kids came home...

After two FULL days of hard work, the play set is pretty much done! There are a few finishing touches that I'll have to do later (railings, attaching slides & climbing wall), but the structure is completely built. It looks amazing! I'm super grateful for this opportunity to work side by side with my dad and for my parent's willingness to do hard things with us. Here is a photo series done morning, noon, and late afternoon for each of the two days. 

We started working on our play set last night! Today was a LONG, LONG day. We worked so hard! Things are really coming along though and I'm super excited about how it's progressing. So thankful for my marme and dad for doing this for us! I don't know how it would even be possible without them both.  

Twinsies!

Ben and I got to go on a really fun date this afternoon. It was so nice to be alone with him for a while! We went out for lunch at the Mexican restaurant near our old condo and then went to see the new Venom movie afterwards. We also got to spend some time at Half Price Books between the two and that was one of the best parts! I love going to actual book stores...especially ones that I can afford!  After the date, Ollie was looking really cute in her princess dress, so I took some photos of her looking out the window and some of them turned out really cute! 

We had a play date with Naz and Melis today and Melis brought me some Turkish delights! They have pistachios in them, which kind of change the texture of the yumminess IMO (I actually love pistachios), but I was very grateful for the gift and Jonas has been gobbling them up! Sadly, both of the girls were super, super grumpy, but I had a really great time visiting with Melis.  We also took the kids to the Monster Mash at their campus this evening. We did some trunk or treating and some wandering around, looking for friends. Thankfully, we got there really early, so we missed the long lines and got to head home early too. I feel like it's worth noting that Jonas did not dress up for this event and did not collect candy. Where did my little boy go??? 😩

I've been taking all of my pictures with manual exposure lately, so things have been a bit off. 😅 I took 25 pictures of Jonas before I found the exposure I wanted for this photo, but once I got it, I really liked it! I took a bunch of pictures at the pumpkin patch earlier today (which we attended in the RAIN) and so many of them are weird. Like, way too dark or over exposed. I haven't attempted to edit them yet, since the spooky Jonas picture took me two hours last night, but I'll get to them eventually!

I had my first dietician appt. today, which was not nearly as enjoyable as my doctor visit yesterday. It was an hour long and she talked to me like I've never known a single thing about nutrition in my life. Kind of annoying. The most frustrating part was that she pretty much told me that although my insurance only requires two months of dietician "supervision", she probably won't clear me until after three visits or more. 🙄 But, whatever. I'm moving along and this supervision is going to be happening right over November and December, my worst eating months. *CHRISTMAS COOKIES* So, it will be tough to show her that I'm eating well and losing weight right now. I'll try though!  Ollie ran away from me at the store today and I literally had to throw my bag down and run after her, after walk chasing her up and down aisles with no success. I spanked her in the store, but I really felt like picking up my stuff and just leaving her there for someone else to deal...

It was a pretty typical day. OTHER THAN I had my first bariatric surgery appointment today! The doctor was super nice and I feel pretty encouraged about the whole process. The only downside is that she said that the timing I thought would happen would likely not happen. It seems to be more like a 5-month process than a 3-month process. 😞😞😞 On the upside, I won't have to talk to the initial point of contact person again! She made me anxious and I kind of hated her. I got to schedule my first dietician appointment for TOMORROW and I'm super excited that at least there was no delay there, at all. 

All of the stressors of home came back to me on the drive today. There really aren't that many, when I think about it logically, but this weight just settled on me, like hey, you have so much to do! I can actually only think of two extra things, besides my weekday plans: work on my job and get my parent's room ready. Maybe if I just keep thinking about it that way, I'll feel less stressed out.  The drive wasn't bad, although there are always bad parts of long, long drives like this. Lots of movies, lots of Ollie crying, lots of snack-passing. I guess I'm glad to be home, but I wish I could get this anxious irritation under control. It's sucking a lot of the joy out of me.  I like our little family portrait above. For a car, cellphone picture, it's pretty fun. 

Today was Pat's memorial service and although there were many difficulties that came up (the WEATHER, for instance!!!), I don't want to focus on the negatives. We were set up in time, there were a good number of friends and family who came, the food and drinks were yummy and plentiful, there were lots of laughs and good conversation, and we got to celebrate Pat together. I'm thankful that we were able to be there. 

I didn't write a blog post on this day. It's Monday now, but I have some really great pictures from Friday evening at Patrick's house that I wanted to get posted.  On Saturday, though, we spent some time at Dawn's, prepping sandwiches for the service, and we went on a date in the evening. 

Me & Marme took the kids to Linvilla Orchards today and Evie met us there! I’m really glad we got a chance to visit with her, even though I’m still definitely not at my best. I was snappy and impatient with the kids and really let every single little thing dig under my skin. It really wasn’t a bad time, although all of my thoughts about it are bad right this minute. The kids had a great time. They played, fed chickens and ducks, got to pick out pumpkins, and had popcorn and funnel cake (courtesy of mommom)! There were a few emotional breakdowns from Ruby and Ollie (and ME, inwardly!!!), but all-in-all, the kids behaved and we had a nice time. Mommom, sadly, was having a lot of joint pain while we were there and I have a feeling Evie was pretty put off by my terrible mood and impatience with the kids, but I can’t assign feelings to her. For all I know, she had a wonderful time. *shrug* Thinking about it though, and boy have I been thinking about it a lot, attitude really does affe...

Well, my terrible attitude persists. I was miserable the whole time we packed up and drove to DE. MISERABLE. Ben ended up driving, which actually went well (from my end anyway) and didn’t seem to cause him too much pain. He was sore and tired afterward, but he always is after such long drives. When we got here, it was tougher than I imagined it would be to not come home to…home. If that makes sense. I knew I wasn’t going back to Russell Rd. ever again, but not coming home to the home that I’m familiar with and comfortable in was hard. And being in a terrible mood already, I was probably just not a fun person to be around today.

The last couple of days have been SO busy. I've been running on fumes and acting like a jerk. It's also not super helpful to my mood that my period is due to come any day now. I took a break from productivity and hung out with Melis and Naz this morning. It was a really nice time again, although both girls were a little less excited about the visit than they were last time. They were still adorable, princess-y, twinsies and had lots of fun...even though Ollie hid away to eat play-doh for like 15 minutes.  After I got home, I finished up everything on my to do list, plus some. We're all set to leave tomorrow morning, first thing. We'll see how this goes! There's no part of me that's looking forward to the trip, but I'm trying to at least get to neutral, rather than extremely negative (like I have been feeling for the last few days). 

  It was a good day that had some miiiggghhhttty stressful parts to it. Just trying to get ready to go to Delaware on top of all of the other normal things. 

It was a nice, easy day today. We pretty much just sat around for the first half of the day. We made meals and prepped for dinner with Travis and Kylienne, got stuff ready for school tomorrow, did laundry, and grabbed a Target pick up. It's our big guy Murphy's birthday today! A whole year old. He's a good cat and although it's a little inconvenient having a pet sometimes, I'm glad he's in our lives.  The kids got SO dirty while they were playing outside this evening. This filthy little girl has known Kylienne and Travis's daughter, Riven, since she was tiny. They're only a month apart in age and we've had countless play dates together. Nonetheless, Ollie is standoffish with her and pretty much refuses to play with her. It's a bummer. It would probably help me and Kylienne's friendship if the girls played together a little better! Alas, me and Ky have just as difficult a friendship as our daughters do. 

The morning started out kind of rough. I was feeling frustrated and resentful that I didn't have much solid time to relax and get the day started slowly. The kids were kind of hyper and nutty and I was just being a little bit of a jerk because things weren't going my way. Thankfully, once we got outside, I got my space and the kids got to go crazy...without driving me crazy too! I cleaned out the van, finally. It has been really messy ever since our Maine trip, so it definitely needed a good vacuum and trash clean out. Ben did a LOT too. He gathered up all of the leaves and mowed/supervised Jonas mowing the front and back yards. Hopefully he doesn't suffer too much for all of that work he did today! His leg has been feeling a little better the last two days, so I hope that means he's making some progress towards healing.  I'm starting to feel really anxious about our Delaware trip next week. We leave Thursday. I'm not really in the right mindset to list out all ...

Today, we played with our new friend Naz and her mama Melis. We had SUCH a good time! Ollie got along really well with Naz and they actively played together quite a bit. It was really nice to see, after months of angry, resentful, not friendly Ollie, who rejects all offers of friendship from anyone. Besides Ollie playing so well with Naz, I'm kind of friend crushing on Melis! It's so nice to click with someone and really have a good time laughing and talking. (Melis's husband Cerag is awesome too!) Super thankful that we met these guys!

Pizza and a movie night!!! We watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, which I honestly didn't remember at all. PLUS, Jonas's "friend" Allie came over after school to hang out and she stayed for the movie. (So the quotation marks is just because Jonas has a crush on her.) Honestly, it was a little tiring having her here! I feel bad about it. I mean, it was fine, it just would have been a lot more comfortable if she hadn't been here. 😂 It was another nice, slow day for me and Ollie. We ran to the store and I splurged on a sparkly pair of rain boots that Ollie was BEGGING for. She just would not let go of them! A completely full week ended up being the slowest week I've had in a long time. I started a new wool felting project today. I've been wanting to make/buy a felted ball garland for a really long time - probably two years - but realized that buying felt balls was not really in my budget. So I bought the wool and started the project. It's actually re...