Photo Journal - Josie Boettcher

Yesterday was a dream day. I woke up at 7, but laid in bed until 8. We had an easy breakfast and I caught up on my blog posts and got to work on this pumpkin head picture I did. I had nowhere to be and nothing pressing to get done. Ben and Jonas went to watch the game at Alex & Jenny's and I went through some toys to sort out what needs to be donated/thrown away. But, really, just easy, easy, easy. I loved it. In the evening, we watched Rings of Power and had some popcorn. If things weren't super weird between me and Ben right now, it would have been the perfect day. Today was a little busier. We went to CT in the morning and the kids' trick-or-treating event afterwards was pure chaos. We ran to Target to pick up Abi's birthday presents and a few groceries and then headed to Abi's 7th birthday party. Man, it was awkward. Alison was SO cold to me, like seemed to wish I wasn't there at all. As a matter of fact, she invited me & Ben to leave! We declined at...

I'm finishing up Jonas's costume today and it's looking pretty darn good! He's excited about it and that's the most important part, for sure. The foot part is a little weird and Brit suggested elastic going underneath. I dismissed it at first, because I misunderstood her vision, but after more thought, it's a great idea. I'll put it underneath like stirrups and it'll be just the thing to keep the feet from looking wonky.  We had the Halloween HC party at our house tonight! It was a fun time. I loved seeing all of the kids (and adults!!) dressed up and the trick-or-treating went really well. We invited a few other families from the neighborhood, but none of them came out, which is fine. I invited them like an hour before the party, which didn't give them much time to wrap their heads around going to a party with a bunch of strangers AND dressing their kids up beforehand. If we're still here next year, I'll have to give people more time.  Speak...

I finished up all of the girls' costumes today!!! I'm so happy to be done sewing them. I really have enjoyed it, but it has felt like every minute of free time I've had, I've needed to spend sewing. Not ideal. Of course, if I had started these in September or something, it wouldn't have been nearly as rushed.  Ollie and I went to the "pumpkin patch" at a church on Henderson Rd. to finally grab some pumpkins today. The kids have been asking almost every day when we're going to carve pumpkins, so we just ran out and got some. I've actually gotten last minute pumpkins at this church before. They're overpriced, but at least they're nearby! Ollie hobbled around, limping, while we were there. It was her first time really having to walk since she hurt herself, but she did ok.  Instead of pizza and a movie night, we did pizza and pumpkin carving night and it went well! This was Ruby's first year carving, rather than painting, and she did really...

Man, what a day. I started the morning with some panic cooking, so that I could get Anne's meal made in time to drop it off before my playdate at 10, then decided to make my meatballs for Friday's party while I was at it, and THEN Ollie dropped a 20lb weight from the weight bar onto her freaking foot! Panic ensued. Of course, we were worried that it was broken, but the doc talked us down from taking her directly to the ER. I ended up finishing up two meals for Anne, made the meatballs, made brownies to bring the Traders dessert too, and got some snuggle and play time with my girl. Haha play looks very different for both of us though. My idea of "play" was building all of the Duplo sets and making sure we weren't missing any pieces (WE ARE, OBVS) and her idea of "play" is...actually playing with the Duplos. 😅 Either way, I was on the floor, engaging with her for like 2 hours.  After Ollie's nap, her foot was really, really swollen and she couldn'...

I woke up today like, YES, I have nothing going on. I will spend the ENTIRE day finishing up these Halloween costumes! And instead, I feel like I spent half of the day doing dumb stuff, wasting time, and basically none of it sewing costumes. I dropped Ollie off and when I got home, I saw that I had two voicemails: one from Clem's bus driver and one from her school. She forgot her iPad and today was state testing, so I had to run right back out and drop it off to her. I got home again, made tea, and went downstairs to work. I got Ruby's top mostly done, but it's been delicate, time-intensive work, figuring out how to do her costume. She can't stand things to feel weird on her skin and I'm worried I'll do all of this work and she'll just reject her costume when I'm done. I've been doing a lot of surface sewing and gluing for her.  I went to pick up Ollie, made her lunch, and then found out that I couldn't go down and sew anymore because Ben was goi...

We got out around 8am to head home. Tears were shed, hugs were squeezed, love was expressed, and then we were on the road. The drive actually went very smoothly, once we got going. I mean, three stops happened in the span of the first hour and a half 😅 but, after that, we only stopped one more time. We got home around 3:45. The kids were such troopers in the car that we decided to hop in the hot tub with everyone in the evening. I got lunches prepped, dinner made, laundry done and was ready for the big Monday ahead! Ben's first day in his new CFO role is tomorrow. He is nervous, anxious, excited, and honestly, just can't wait to have this first day over with already.  My parents' plans have changed, sadly. They had to cut their trip short and are coming over tonight and leaving in the morning. Marme's sister-in-law, Carol, died pretty suddenly on Saturday morning and MaryJo needs to be with her family. Carol and MJ's brother, John, were married for 57 years!! The k...

Sleep was muuuch better last night, thankfully. We had a slow start today, but ended up having fun. We went to lunch at Papa Doc's, which was DELICIOUS, and then went to Lake Wylie to hang out for a bit. The kids threw enormous rocks into the lake and walked around on the shore for a while. Afterward, we went over to the playground for an hour or so. Then we went back to the house and chilled out for a bit. I think we're all mentally preparing to leave tomorrow. We got some really delicious pizza for dinner and then hung out and talked for a while before bed. We have an early start tomorrow!

Oh man, I had such a hard time falling asleep last night! I was still awake at almost 2am. I found myself humming Ollie's lullaby in my head, because I couldn't hear it since I didn't bring the monitor. I honestly think that's what was messing with me the most!  We had a great day though. We went over to Freedom Park in the morning and walked around and played for a couple of hours. I took lots of pictures and...oh gosh. I RAN. The park had a 40-yard dash and we were timing everyone. Ben talked me into running it...kind of. Really, my kids were confused about why I didn't want to and I felt like I needed to, to prove to them that running IS fun! lol It actually didn't feel horrible! It was only 10 seconds of running and I went as fast as I could. My muscles were like, wait, what's going on here?? I felt like my quad was going to detach!!!  After the park, we had lunch at the Shake Shack and I got this amazing portobello burger. SO GOOD! We came back, relaxed...

Today was a long day. Ollie went to school and I consistently worked to get ready for our trip, from the minute I droped her off until the minute we left the house at 12:50. Cleaning, prepping, packing, laundry, groceries, and on, and on. We had a hard deadline of 12:50 because we had to be at Ruby's evaluation meeting at 1pm.  The eval meeting went pretty well. They say that they don't think she's autistic and they don't recommend any additional services at this time. On the one hand, this is all school-based. Any odd behaviors that don't affect her education are ignored. On the other hand, this is great news! She's doing well in school and none of the stuff that bothers her at home is transferring to the classroom. This is what we really wanted, because it means that she should be able to thrive in any positive, supportive school environment, without needing any special services that, say, a private school may not have.  After the meeting, we grabbed all the k...

For the first time in a while, I felt like I had TIME today!!! It was such a freeing feeling. I even read for 15 minutes! I worked for a while, sewed for a while, went to Clem's parent/teacher conference, and edited pictures for this post.  I'm pretty excited about my next photo concept. I have no idea when I'll be able to do it, but hopefully one night next week. It is going to be an evening shot...or sunset-ish again and it'll be outside. I thought about doing it this evening, but it's really just too cold. We'll see what the weather is like next Tuesday or Wednesday. I'd love to be able to do some kind of photo shoot with Naz and the girls while we're in NC, but I can't think of any good ideas! I need to do some brainstorming.  These are just a few shots from my parent's visit yesterday.

I'm finally starting to feel a little less bad. I am really happy to have my parents here and a lot of my to-dos have been done. I finally finished editing my crow photo too!! I'm feeling less anxious about my trip on Thursday. Just, generally, feeling less down. Thank God. It hasn't been too long, but it's been a tough one.  Not much happened the last two days. Yesterday was mostly just getting ready for my parent's visit and today I worked in the morning, had a new client call, went out to lunch with my parents (yayayayayay!!!), and shopped for a new jacket for Ollie. I got to work on my picture a bit, I'm about to make dinner, and then I think we'll head to prayer and HC. I don't really have much going on tomorrow either, so I'll just do some maintenance cleaning and maybe plan my next photo shoot? IDK! But I'm happy to not have anything going on. I might start with some gathering of stuff for the trip and whatnot. I love that I'm starting...

RENAISSANCE FAIRE DAY!!! I have been waiting for this for a long time. We got out of the house right when we wanted to, the drive went smoothly, and when we got there, there was a CRUSH of people waiting at the gate to get in. It took about 20 minutes to get through, but it was fine. We had such a fun day! We saw some really fun shows, listened to some good music, spent a bunch of time walking, saw some incredible costumes, and hung out with HC friends. The kids got a bunch of free stuff (thank God, because everything is too expensive there!) so that lessened their desire to shop and made it all more exciting for them too. I love going to the ren faire. First, it was a favorite of my mom's. We went there every year for many, many years and I love going in her memory (kind of). I also love the bravery of people willing to dress up and put themselves out there that way! They put so much time and effort into those costumes and even get into character. I just love it. I've never pa...

I still struggled quite a bit today, but it was better than yesterday. I cancelled my apple picking plans with Shannon and Alicia because I didn't want to go anymore. And not just didn't want to go, but it was tipping me over the edge, thinking about driving 35 minutes to Lynd's, figuring out parking, paying $25 for a bag of apples, acting cheerful doing apple picking with Ollie, then driving 35 minutes back, then figuring out what I'm going to do with all of the apples, just to have lost 3+ hours of productivity. Also, I have the most raging, horrible period of all time. So. I cancelled. And I feel like an ass. And I feel like a person who doesn't keep their word. And I feel like a person who is weak.  Once that got cancelled though, it opened up my day. I worked a little, got some cleaning things done (not much), finished Clemi's cloak, took a shower, and got outfits together for family pictures. I probably would not have had our pictures done today if I had g...