Photo Journal - Josie Boettcher

I slept horribly last night, for like the 4th night in a row. Consequently, I am exhausted. It's been too many days of draining stress and bad sleep. I'm starting to get kind of cranky. Cranky or not, we went to Wild & Free! And it was good. The hiking part was pretty fun, but when it got sunny, it got HOT. Like really, really hot. We went to an obstacle course after the hike and the heat really ramped up at that point. Sweat was dripping down my back and soaking my underwear and bra. I mean, it was just Hellish. After all that, we all found a spot in the shade to have our picnic and that was absolutely beautiful. The shade felt like Heaven after all that heat! I sat there and chilled with the other moms for an hour and a half. It was super relaxing. After it was over though, I felt like I could just pass out. 😅 Thankfully, this was our only real thing today! We got home around 1:30, after picking up our grocery order. So I put all of that away and took Ruby out on a littl...

It wasn't a bad day. I'm working really hard to push off the anxiety and overwhelm and dread that's been crushing my soul lately. I'm kind of being successful! Well, God is being successful and I'm trying to not impede Him too much. We did school this morning, took Jonas to Lighthouse, I went to Jenny's to visit, made dinner, and went to HC in the evening. It was just the first crazy day in this crazy busy week. It was nice to decompress with Jenny for a while, though. Yesterday, Sarah Groom pretty much told me she thinks I should just leave the job if it's not a good fit for me. I, of course, loved that feedback and feel like it has additional weight because she works for Nathan currently. So, today, I was telling Jenny that I think I'm done. I'm just going to email him and give him a month or two notice. Haha but by the time I got home, I had changed my mind again! I sure wish God would be a bit more vocal on this job stuff. I do not know what the ...

It was tough to wake up this morning, after the night we had last night! I also ended up having THREE drinks, which is crazy for me, so I slept fitfully. I kept waking up every hour or two feeling super dehydrated and also having to pee really badly. I bumped into my water bottle, which woke Ben up around 2, then I laid there anxiously for 30 minutes wishing he would fall back asleep, but he didn't. He ended up leaving the room after another 15 minutes or so and I was incredibly relieved. It's so hard to sleep with him nowadays.  Anyway, we did wake up in time for CT though! That went smoothly today, and I got to have conversations with some people - Cathy Treyens, Jenny and Alex Detloff, Sarah, and Angela again. It helps getting to talk to people during CT when I know I won't be able to visit with HC afterwards. At least I got some good time in with someone! We spent the rest of the afternoon at home, just reading, and watching a family movie together. I got really tired a...

Today was a great day! It was long and we did a lot, but it was great. I slept in until 9, which was crazy, then helped Clem sort through her clothes for a while. It needed to be done. She's growing like a weed, and it feels like her style changes every couple of months. She hates half of her clothes now. 😐 I'll be hoping for some more hand-me-downs soon!  Ben and I went on a mall date. I got a Cinnabon and he got a Charley's steak. Both were yummy! But poor Tuttle Mall is just a shell. It's at least 3/4 closed now, so our walk around wasn't very fun. Ben thought he was in the mood to shop, but I think the lack of options kind of bummed him out, so after an hour of wandering around like ghosts, we headed home. I took Jonas on our monthly date an hour or so after that. We just went to Target and got Starbucks and I bought some new dish towels. 😅 Two very exciting dates in a row!!! We headed to the Dwell hosted Community Festival in the afternoon/evening and had suc...

We only had about 20 minutes of school today and spent time relaxing this morning. We headed to Anne's in the early afternoon and hung out for a couple of hours. I don't know what kind of juice those boys were drinking today, but they were acting CRAZY! I felt bad for Anne because she was feeling embarrassed about how they were acting and had to keep disciplining. But we did get some good time to talk amidst all of the chaos. I feel like it just shows that we haven't been around enough lately because they seem to act a little wilder around people they're not used to. I could be wrong though! They might have just been having an off day.  When we got home, I started dinner prep and read my book. Thanking God for a relaxing couple of days. He knew I needed some rest and provided it to me! 💓 I finished up Clem's closet, aside from floor trim and finally started getting some things hung up in there. Only two more closets to go. Hopefully they don't each take 2 1/2 m...

I started the process of quitting LHM today by reaching out to my co-teacher, Shannon. She normally texts back within a few minutes, but I didn't hear back from her all day. I'm assuming she's upset. It's a bummer, but I can't base decisions about our family life on Shannon's feelings. When I had mentioned to her last year that I was thinking about leaving, she was super frustrated with me and kept trying to get me to change my mind. Oh well. I'm going to reach out to leadership tomorrow.  I also set up a hangout with Anne for tomorrow! I can't wait. It's been so long since I was able to just go over and visit with her.  We just got school done today and I didn't do too much else. We went to the library for a little while and, for once, I didn't rush the kids. I ordered pizza for tonight and we watched Elio . Ben surprised me by going to group tonight. He's been so tired lately and sleeps terribly every night, leaving him zombie-fied the ...

I'm so frustrated with my life right now. When I look ahead at my weeks, I have no time for anything! Clem's closet has been incomplete for months now, I rarely see my friends, and my life feels full of obligations. So, I spent the evening making a love/hate list and writing down my current commitments. Here's what I came up with: Love About Homeschooling: - Freedom of time!!! - Later mornings - Awesome community - Extra time with my kids - Wild & Free - Seeing good friends - Going to the movies - More library visits Things I Hate About My Current Homeschooling Situation: - BEING OVER COMMITTED!!!!! - LHM - Westerville choir Current Commitments: - Wild & Free (weekly)              - CACH (2x month) - LHM (2x month)                      - Lighthouse (weekly, but not much time spent) - Work (daily)                     ...

Ah, another day in paradise. 😅 We skipped Wild & Free AGAIN today because it was rainy this morning, meaning lots of mud on the trail, and it was an hour away. I just don't want to drive that far to get places, just to get muddy and uncomfortable! I do feel bad though, because we've missed four in a row now. Yikes. I feel like they're going to kick me out! I know they won't, but we're technically only allowed to miss once a month. I don't think they think it's a big deal, although I know they'd prefer for us to be there. I just wish I had less on my plate. I knew leading up to this school year that I was over-committed but continued marching forward with my stupid plans anyway. I am a coward, not standing up to my children and insisting that we cut something out. *sigh* So now I just want to cut everything out! I won't though. I'll stay the course for now. I can do this. We really just hung out and did school all day. We are living a new lif...

Man, today was quite the day! I think I started off with some grumpiness, because I was a little short-tempered during school. I'm honestly feeling really frustrated about how long certain sections of our school day take and am feeling powerless to fix them. I'm also upset about how messy the house has been lately. BUT. Talking about things being outside of my control...Clem found pinworms in her poop today and it felt like my world kind of exploded. I mean, in reality it's not a huge deal. She's old enough to have generally good hygiene, so it's not spreading around the family, and we should be able to clear it up quickly. But those initial hours of panic right after figuring it out were pretty intense. I instilled a whole new set of hygiene protocols in the house. Some would be good for always, some are a little over the top. But, for now, it's what we're going to do...at least until this problem is over. Poor Clem was panicked, of course. I feel so sad fo...

We took it relatively slowly this easy...didn't rush to get out of the campground too much! Patrick started a fire and we all sat around and visited. It was fun to recount the many going ons of last night! You know how I mentioned heading to bed pretty early and settling in to read my book?? Well, I kept hearing footsteps and rustling around for probably the next 45 minutes. I was pretty freaked out, honestly. I couldn't find the hatchet I brought into our tent to "protect myself" and just kept praying that nobody would stab through the tent and kill us all. I knew it was either a human or a very, very heavy animal stomping around. After 40 of those terrifying minutes, I saw and heard a vehicle pull up to my site and some people talking. I had had enough! I came out of the tent to see what the heck was going on and Noemi was walking away from a truck that was pulling away. I chased after her and asked what was going on. Apparently, she'd spent the last hour or so ...

Sleep wasn't awesome last night. Ben was tossing and turning for hours, and he drank too much so he kept having to leave the tent to pee. He also had this weird sleepwalking episode in the middle of the night where he was convinced one of our kids was outside of the tent wandering around, and I had to yell to him that they were all in their sleeping bags. It was pretty frustrating. He kept apologizing when he came back in, but his sleep has just become such a problem lately and I'm feeling really over it. It's like, when he has an issue, he REALLY has an issue. Right? His main current issue is insomnia and because he has insomnia, I never get to rest well unless he sleeps in a different room...which I practically beg him to do every night, but he is really resistant to it. I don't know. He is such a complicated man. I have no idea why he won't just sleep somewhere else, but he has said he thinks I'm just pretending to be okay with it, which I'm not, and he f...

It was a pretty good day, but there were some very difficult parts of it too. I just feels like any time I'm packing for something or getting ready to head back home from a trip I am an absolute crazy person. This camping trip was no exception! We did school in the morning, finished up around noon, and then we rushed around the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully, everything was packed and ready to go around 3 so we didn't have too many hours of panicked packing.  Set up was hot and sweaty (yay for camping in 90 degree weather!), but it was efficient and that part was over pretty quickly too. Then the relaxing began! And that was great. It was a fun night. Travis and Kylienne came for the night, but they are kind of at each other's throats right now, so that's a little awkward. Also, their kids are...not my favorite. I try to love them, but they're so attention seeking that it wears on me pretty quickly. I just worry about what they're not getting from Travis and ...

Pizza and a movie night! But, first, CACH. It was a good morning. I was feeling slightly anxious about class, but it all went very smoothly. At this point, I'm just wondering how we're going to manage our six weeks well so that we can get everything done before winter break. I'm not really sure how we're going to do it! I guess I should give it some thought, rather than just keeping it as a nebulous anxiety looming in the future. I think this is a thing I can partially control.  We took the afternoon off of school today and I spent a lot of time packing for camping tomorrow. I had to work for a little while too. I was feeling pretty desperate about not having enough people to work on Saturdays for LTC class childcare and sent a last-ditch email out to just the folks who helped out with the servant team meeting. Well, I got 5 people who want the Saturday morning job!!! I couldn't believe it! It was such a freaking relief to know that it'll be covered. I'm not...

Sadly, the peaceful, easy feelings of the last two days are gone now and in their place is stress and overwhelm. *sigh* At least I had that awesome vacation! I think I'm starting to get stressed about packing for camping maybe? Ben is really, really overwhelmed about it and has been bringing it up a dozen times a day. Today, we did school in the morning, but, again, I had to cut Ruby's time short so that I could do something else. I needed to get to Jenny's because we haven't gotten together in a couple of weeks. She and I actually had a great time catching up though! We had a lot of fun, lots of laughs, and lots of good convo.  When I got back, I had to immediately turn around and take the big girls to choir, then run to the dollar store, then do some work. Jonas made dinner when I went back to get the girls. Such a blessing that he is able to do that now! He made tacos for us.  After dinner, I was doing some cleaning and Ollie was helping out. She went in the kitchen ...

Lord, take me now. I'm such an idiot. I sent out a recruitment email with someone else's completely filled out employment application attached to it! WHY, GOD?!?  Why am I so bad at everything???  Aside from this horrible snafu to end the day, it was a decent one. We got all of our schoolwork done and the kids all got clean bills of health at the dentist! No cavities! I made a veggie lasagna from scratch that turned out to be pretty delicious...although Ollie wouldn't even touch it for some reason. I had my online book club with MaryJo from 7-8 and that was fun. It's been a couple of months since I last made it to that one. Then, after getting Ruby and Ollie to bed, we watched a show with Jonas and Clem! It was a good day.  But, seriously, I want to crawl under a rock and die after sending out that poor woman's application to the entire freaking church that way. I mean, who freaking does that??? I couldn't recall the email, couldn't delete the attachment, co...

It was kind of nice to get back to school today! I mean, I appreciated the time off, but there's something comforting about just doing our everyday routine too. After the stress of prepping for vacation, my day seemed more open and free, giving me this sense of 'I can do anything!' It might not be reality, but I love the days that feel that way. I really do consider them a blessing. Every hour that I can say to myself, 'what should I do with myself?' is a blessing. I hate having a tightly packed schedule and there are so many things I wish I had time for. Anyway, that was a little rambly. It was a good Monday. Home church was really nice tonight. I got to have some chit chat-type convos with a few different people, ate a few snacks, and the girls had a great time in child care. I'm starting to think that Tyler might be my favorite HC teacher. I have really found his last few teachings to be memorable and convicting. And, when I think about it, some of the HC tea...

We made it to CT today! Well, all of us except Ben. He wanted to get a couple of hours of work in and go for a run, which is fine. It was my week to serve, though, and since we're camping next weekend, I really wanted to be there. It was an easy week, Oasis-wise, and I got the opportunity to catch up with a few different people while I was there. I went over to say hi to Angela and see her baby, who is a couple of months old now. She told me about this awful skin condition her baby was born with...she had no skin at all on her leg when she came out! And I guess her skin will tear and fall off very easily throughout her life. What an awful thing to be facing, as parents. She's been getting as much education on the condition as she can, but there's not a ton to be done about it at this point. She mentioned still feeling convicted to get into a HC, but still being worried about not having the time to commit to it. I completely understand. It's a hard routine to get into! I...

Not a ton to report on for today. We got up at 5, were on the road by 6, and drove all day long. We got home at 9:15pm. It was a very long day! Ben and I were extremely tired and took turns driving the whole way. We got into an argument about screen time. I want to cut way back on it, but Ben doesn't really understand why I feel like it's an issue. He gets super defensive every time we talk about it and it feels like he's treating me like I'm crazy for wanting the kids to have less of it. It's a really frustrating conversation to have with him and when I asked him why he gets so upset about me limiting the kids screen time, he told me I was being disrespectful, questioning him this way. I just wanted to shut down the whole convo at that point, because I could see it was just doomed, but he got more pissed when I suggested we drop it. So, we waded through the mess, then gave each other the silent treatment for the rest of the drive and the night once we were home. Wh...

Wah! It's time to get ready to head back home. It's sad that nearly the whole last day of the trip gets consumed with prep for the drive home. Maybe if we had more space in the car, that wouldn't be the case? But we need every single inch of space, so I have to pack really carefully. Then, of course, we have to clean the house so that it's spotless before we leave. I guess the homeowner only hires the cleaner to do the bathrooms and kitchen, so the rest is up to us. And, really, we have to do the bathrooms and kitchen too, we just don't have to scrub them down, just make sure they seem clean. It's a really annoying part of renting this house out. We have to dispose of our own trash, bring our own towels and sheets, and we have to clean the house before we leave. It's extra complicated, knowing we have a 16-hour drive ahead of us and knowing we're leaving before dawn the day of checkout. Alas, it is what it is and this is why we get such a good deal on th...

Happy birthday to Gabey baby! I feel bad because I didn't even remember that it was his birthday. Evie reminded me!  It was kayak day today! Evie got annoyed that we decided to skip the Breakwater, but we really wanted to actually use the kayaks that we spent a bunch of money on, so we spent the ENTIRE day at home, which was wonderful! We explored the rocks and kayaked all day long. I went out 8 or 9 different times with all of the kids. The kids all jumped off the dock today, into the freezing cold water! They are so brave and crazy!! JJ joined them for their second round. :) It was fun that he decided to do that! No other adults were willing.  MJ and dad made lobsters for dinner tonight and it was perfect. We had baked potatoes and corn on the cob with it. So good! It makes we want to eat lobster every dang day. Too bad I can really only get it once a year!  We had a fire tonight and hung out for hours just talking and laughing. We went to the other side of the house an...

Another slow morning, as seems to be our trend. We hung out here on the beach, watching the tide come in and letting it splash on our feet. I had a little crab friend come visit my feet over and over again, until I finally got too freaked out and moved. :) He was cute but...I was clearly infringing on his home turf!  We headed to Claws for lunch today and met dad and MJ there. Evie and JJ came along. I really splurged on lunch and got myself a WHOLE lobster! It was crazy expensive. Poor Ben has been so disappointed with his meals out. He keeps getting burgers and they keep being disappointing. Sad. I really enjoyed my lobster though! The kids were being a little obnoxious and I think dad and MJ were pretty sick of it, after having two of them over to spend the night last night. I was sick of it and I had only had two of them for the last 15 hours or so. After lunch, we headed to the Owl's Head Lighthouse's birthday! 😂 It was fun! We waited in line and got to actually go up int...

Today was a pretty relaxed day. We had a slow morning, then packed up lunch and went to Marshall's Point Lighthouse (the one Forrest Gump runs to!). We spent HOURS there, just wandering along the beach, searching for cool rocks, letting the waves splash us, and investigating tide pools. It was a really nice time there. Ruby made a little friend, who proceeded to follow us everywhere...which made taking photos a little harder than usual!  After the lighthouse, all of the kids went with dad and Marme, back to their camper for the day, while Ben and I went on a date. We drove around, looking for pottery shops with no luck. We went to one that looked super weird and decided not to go inside 😬 It's such a bad feeling to be the only customers in a shop where everything was made by the person working and you don't like any of it! So we just avoided it. Of course, he probably saw us pull up, look through the windows, then drive away. 😅 But at least I didn't have to see his fa...