Photo Journal - Josie Boettcher

It's the long-awaited trick or treat night!!! And, of course, the weather was terrible, as it always is on trick or treat night! 😅 We did school this morning and I started out in a great mood, but, again, easily slid into a worse and worse mood throughout the day. It's really just normal kid stuff and my kids are wonderful! They're just being themselves, bickering a little, rough-housing, etc. My point is, they didn't do anything wrong. Throughout the day, though, I was getting more and more emails in about work and I started having a small pit of anxiety in my gut when Sherri sent out her reminder email yesterday or the day before about the parenting meeting next week. For some reason I thought I had more time! I'm all discombobulated. *sigh* Anyway, throughout the day, my anxiety grew and grew with each email because I feel so overwhelmed and so busy, and now I need to give some real attention to this work situation. I didn't quit when I wanted to in Septembe...

I maintained a pretty positive attitude over the last couple of extremely busy days, but I lost my momentum today. It was less busy, and I started out in a great mood, but the kids wore me down way too easily. We eventually finished up our schoolwork, after much dragging of feet. Ollie complains day in and day out about school and I just feel so irritated about it. I feel like she's so ungrateful! But I try to remind myself that she has no other real school experience that she remembers, so this is all she has to draw upon, and this is hard for her! She is challenged every day and sometimes she just wants a break from that. I get it. But I wish she would complain and slow things down LESS. That's all.  After school, we got ready to take Jonas to his doc appt. It went pretty well! More talks about how he could lose weight, but the doc tries to be really sensitive and kind. I appreciate her efforts to be up front about his need to get to a healthier weight, but that she doesn...

Today felt very busy again! We woke up and headed out to our Wild & Free autumn party. I stayed up late last night and made more witch's fingers, so I brought those and made some lunch to bring too. We left a few minutes late, but then I also went to the wrong park. *face palm* I realized it when we got there and it was abandoned at our meeting spot. 😅 It took another 25 minutes to get to where the car's directions sent us...after 10 minutes of construction traffic. But, conveniently, the map sent us to the wrong place! We were in a neighborhood behind the park. So, we turned around, went back through the traffic and finally got to the park 15 minutes later. We were a whole 50 minutes late to the party!!! I was very frustrated and it took me a while to cool down. Thankfully, I love that group so much and got to chat with my friends and was feeling really good before too long. Everyone brought wonderful snacks and there were fun activities. Friends brought awesome seeds to ...

Woo! Today was a crazy day. We did school in the morning, then around noon I started snack prep for HC tonight. First, I made the brain rice krispies treats, then I made the witch's fingers and the brownies. I put the web on the brownies and made the little spiders on top, then did the mummies last. It was a lot! During that, I made the ballots and the certificates and pulled together all of the little last-minutes things, like a tablecloth, and plates, and other decorations.  The home church Halloween party/costume contest was fun! Grace came along again and dressed up, which was great. Rachel, Mark, and James took prizes for most creative, overall best, and funniest! Actually, Ben and James were tied for funniest, but it felt better to give it to someone else, rather than take our own prize home with us. 

We all slept so well last night! SO well, in fact, that we overslept this morning. *face palm* I needed to be at Dwell by 9 to get things set up for Oasis, since I covered for Sarah today, but I didn't even wake up until 8:15. We got all the kids up, rushed as fast as we could and left the house at 8:35 so that we could stop at Dunkin' on the way. And we made it! I was so grateful that we made it in time and I didn't have to feel rushed once I did get there. CT went well and Sarah's spooky hallway she set up went really well. I was so proud? excited? for her. She did a wonderful job with this event. Not many people from HC were here today, so we headed home pretty soon after CT ended and I got everything packed up and put away. We grabbed our pumpkins from Kroger on the way home and only spent $15 for all six!!! Such a great deal! The afternoon was chill. We did not do much. I did like six loads of laundry and emptied coolers and bags, but mostly just hung out. Jonas an...

Well, sleep last night was a little challenging. It really was freezing cold. By the time Ben came into the tent, I was shivering and told him I wanted to get the kids up and go home. But he convinced me to get another blanket on and keep trying. I did put another blanket on and was able to fall asleep. I woke up about a dozen times, shivering, worried about how the kids were doing, but ultimately slept ok. Around 6:30 all the girls woke up. Ben informed me that the breaker had tripped last night, so we hadn't had heat for the last few hours. Everyone needed to pee, and we did have the little potty tent right behind our tent, but we still had to unzip and sit out in the cold to pee, which was really hard for all of us! The girls decided to huddle together and put all of their blankets on top of all of them, while they played their tablets. I snuggled back into my sleeping bag and blankets and got another hour of sleep or so, until it felt like I needed to get up and get out of the ...

Today's the day! We did our school work and then got our last-minute things finished and packed up to leave for the campground by 2:30. I couldn't believe we actually left when I hoped we were going to leave! We didn't hit any traffic and got to the campground pretty early. Tyler was already there setting up, and I picked the best site for our huge tent as I could. It felt like the sites were smaller at this loop, but the circle was very nice! I spent the next hour or two getting things set up and Ben got there shortly after that. It looks as though our site will be the hangout spot again, which has its ups and downs. On the upside, Ben really struggles with feeling excluded at these kinds of things. If the hangout spot is our site, he never feels excluded. Big, big win! On the downside, all of the kids are on our site all of the time. All of the trash is blowing around our site, and all of our food and drinks are being perused by curious children for the whole weekend...ho...

We stayed home for almost the entire day today, aside from a quick trip to the store for some last-minute camping supplies. The whole day was spent doing school, then packing. Packing, packing, packing! It feels like so much work for just a night or two. I really do love camping, especially with the HC, but it's a lot of effort! And it's supposed to be COLD this weekend. I'm not sure how it's going to go. I keep trying to remind myself that if both nights don't work out, that's okay. But then it's like, dang, that's a lot of packing and setting up for one night. 😅 Our plan is for me to prep everything alone, then go early to the campsite so I can set everything up alone, and then Ben can come later and enjoy all of my hard work and preparations, while still finding a million things to gripe about! Okay, okay, that's not fair. That is the plan, but Ben feels bad about coming late and his work schedule also didn't give him any time to prep. It...

We did school this morning and then the girls had their annual physical at the doc. The visit went well and was quick, but not quick enough for them to get to choir. I was so glad about it!! I'm sick of driving them to choir. Ever since they changed their location, it has been a huge bummer driving over there and back to get them. When it was right down the street it was awesome. Oh well!  We spent the evening opening up some of our new Amazon finds. :) 

It's our new pizza and a movie night!!! But, as I thought more about it, I realized that two Tuesdays a month the big kids have Middle School CT and two Tuesdays a month I have book club! So Tuesdays aren't going to work permanently, but we'll do it tonight and next week. Thursdays are just so crappy for pizza and a movie night because either me or Ben has to leave before the movie is over every week. Monday is HC, Tuesday is all of the things I just said, Wednesday the girls have choir until 5:30 and it goes until 6 one week per month, Thursday is cell, and only Friday and Saturday are free. But we like our Fridays. *sigh* Sundays are out because that's the kids HC night. Wow. How did we get to the place where we have no free evenings???  This morning we had an awesome field trip to Marmon Valley. It's super hands on, so the kids get to make Johnny cakes and grind corn, they get to make their own candles, then split wood and drill a hole into it to make their own c...

I have high hopes for this week! We have to finish the schoolwork we didn't get done last week and hopefully get through nearly a whole week's worth of the next week's work. We'll see how that goes! We have a field trip tomorrow to one of the best places ever for a field trip, but I don't think we have any other days we won't be able to get school done. I had a little stress hanging over me because the internet was out when Ben got up and he really wanted me to solve the mystery. I can't stand calling customer service and was really dreading dealing with it. I just kept hoping it would come back on by itself! It did not. I ended up doing a chat to get it resolved instead and they could not help at all and scheduled someone to come tomorrow...during our field trip. So then I had to change the appointment because I just couldn't skip another awesome field trip!!  My friend Angela finally came to HC tonight! Sadly, I got stuck in a traffic jam on 270 on the...

Ben and I got into a huge argument this morning. We were all up and getting ready to go to CT and then one of the kids comes up and says, "well, dad isn't leaving right away, so he said I can ride with him." So I ask him when he comes upstairs what that's all about and he tells me he really just doesn't want to have to go to prayer, so he was thinking he'd drive separate, since I have to be there early. I got super irritated about that and he got really upset with me for being irritated, rather than understanding. And things just popped off from there. Lots of fun! It's just, man, you're going to some pretty great lengths to not have to pray with your home church. Do you not think that's a problem? Do you not think that might be spiritual warfare you're going through? Do you not think this is something you should be fighting? And why do I have to fight for my Christian husband to hang out with the guys he's in fellowship with?? It just gets...

Well, turns out the kids were pretty disappointed about not getting to go to the Renaissance Faire today. We decided, after both finishing our work and going on a date, to take them to Scene 75 for the afternoon! It was pretty fun. We spent like $75 on game cards and, while that felt like a lot, it was a lot cheaper than our day would have been if we had gone with the original plans. We split up for a lot of the time, so I was with the younger girls playing skee ball and air hockey most of the time. Then we decided to use a big chunk of our cards to play mini golf, which was fun. Sadly, I lost my game card during the golf game somehow and it was gone when we went back in to find it. I still had almost $20 left on it! We promptly found two other game cards on the ground and recouped $6 of it, so I guess that helped a little. At the end, we went to exchange our tickets, of which we had about 700. You'd think that would allow us to get a pretty good prize! Nope. Each kid got a few tin...

I ran around all day today, back and forth across town. First, I dropped Jonas off at Micah's at 8:50am so that he could go to the pumpkin patch with him. I found it notable that Shannon didn't answer the door or greet me at all on drop off or pickup. Whatever. *sigh* Then I went to Jenny's to read for a couple of hours. My plan was to go straight to 4th street to work on the bulletin board, but then I realized that I forgot all of my bulletin board supplies!!! *face palm* Instead, we went home, had lunch, then turned around and went back to 4th. Once I was there, I laid out all of my letters and did a last double check that the verse is accurate online. But it turns out the verse was ENTIRELY INNACURATE!!! Oh my gosh. It was not even a verse. I did all that work to get the letters made. I sure wish I had checked before going today! So I did as much as I could this afternoon, but I'll have to go back tomorrow. That settles it, we're cancelling the Ren Faire tomorrow...

Today was incredibly stressful for me. I had to be at co-op an hour early for picture day, but also had to make sure things were going well in my class. Lauren was a freaking HOUR late and leadership was so pissed that they told me I can never use her again on the yearbook committee. I mean, I can't really blame them, as she is consistently late to almost everything. But it's still a bummer because she is a good photographer! The morning went about as smoothly as I could hope, but I was ready to drop by the time it was over.  Ben and I drove to cell together tonight because it was at Jenny's and he was meeting with James at his house. It was kind of nice to go in the same car and Ruby is getting a little better at letting us leave! That's part of what's hard about going to cell, just leaving everyone at the warm and cozy house to go drive in the dark all the way across town. It's such a struggle! Group was pretty good. Noemi led and she was super long-winded...h...

Everything got cancelled today because the girls are still sick! It's very sad. We were going to go to the life-size tabernacle in Grove City with CACH this morning. :( Instead, we sat at home all day. We did get schoolwork done, but that's pretty much it! 

A day of cancelled plans. :( I wasn't feeling too bad today, but Ollie and Ruby were a mess! Coughing and sneezing and congested. But I held firm and did not let today be a sit on the couch and watch TV all day kind of day. The kids mostly just laid around still, but they did some playing too. We got school done and then I spent the afternoon getting super pissed at everyone for existing too loudly and sent them all up for quiet time. I'm glad I did it though. I mean, not the being snappy at everyone part, but the insisting on having some alone time part. I got to read a little. It was nice. And it did cheer me up!  I didn't go to my online book club tonight because the book was horrible and I just couldn't finish it. A quick email recap of the book club stated that everyone hated the book. 😆 

Sick again. I kept thinking it was just a little thing and I’d feel better super quick, but it hit me like a bus today. I could barely get out of bed this morning and laid on the couch basically all day, just letting the kids watch movie after movie. Ruby and Ollie both felt feverish and were coughing a lot, so it felt right to have another veg day for them. But dang, boring and kind of mind-numbing to just lay there in front of the tv watching kid’s movies all day! Ben did a good job taking care of everything, though, and I’m so grateful he was off work. I was really sad to miss HC tonight. 

I’m sick! It’s so sad. I was hoping yesterday was a fluke, but no. I had to call out of CT, which sucked and I was supposed to do a bunch of stuff with different people, so I woke up and had to send like eight texts. And then I spent the day feeling guilty! But what was I supposed to do about it? I ended up laying on the couch all day long. Ollie was very annoyed with me because I had told her we could have our date this evening, but it didn’t happen. I just felt too yucky.

Man, I was SO looking forward to today!!! It felt like a very long week. I woke up with a terrible headache, but powered through in the morning and went on a date with Ben for lunch. We finally tried out The Rail, a restaurant right around the corner from us. My food was just ok, but Ben’s burger was amazing, he said. Then we went over to Target and got a few essentials. Ben had “bathroom pains” but kept insisting we stay at the store because it’s our date but, dang, how am I supposed to have fun knowing you really need to use the bathroom?? So we headed home. My head was KILLING me by this time anyway, so I was ready too.  I ended up taking 8 Tylenol throughout the afternoon with no relief. Finally, right before bed, I took one more and my headache backed off a little. So ridiculous! I hope I’m not getting sick. Clem is at a sleepover tonight. She has been looking forward to this for weeks! All of the girls in her HC are going to one of the leaders’ houses for the night. I hope sh...

Today was pretty chill. We finished up school this morning. It was tough, doing school every single day this week. We usually take Tuesdays off, at least, but we had to squeeze in unfinished work from last week too, which made the week feel very long! But it was a quick morning and then we just got to relax after that. I wasn’t feeling great this afternoon, so Ben ran out and got some stuff for dinner to grill. He handled that and I started a fire outside to burn some of that tree that was cut down a week ago. It was pretty nice! We sat out on the deck for hours. I read and kept feeding the fire while the kids jumped on the trampoline and played together. Ben cooked, then relaxed with us for a while until he got tired of sitting outside. We made roasted marshmallows and stayed outside until it got dark. It was the perfect Friday night.

We did school in the morning today and then I was determined to get everyone out of the house for a little while. It feels like we’ve been inside all week! We went to the library to get some new books, then to McDonald’s to get drinks for everyone. After that, I stayed outside for hours putting up Halloween decorations. Man, our yard is decked out! It honestly might be a little over the top. But Amazon was having their Prime Deal Days and a bunch of decorations were on sale. I ended up getting two new inflatables, a spiderweb, and these glow in the dark eyeball things. Those, in addition to our existing decorations and a homemade one that I started years ago but just finished today, combined to be a lot! I got really irritated for a while, because an hour of my time was spent cutting down this damn rose bush and then getting it put into yard waste. Its thorns tore up my clothes and hands and the neighbors dog barked at me for literally every second of my time out there. Then I had to g...

We had another school day today, which was fine. We didn’t do much this afternoon, but I’m starting to feel the urge to get to work on the house again! I can’t wait to fully get that motivation back. Work has been stalled for a long time, aside from finishing up Clem’s closet. I wish I could purge stuff! The house just feels so full, and cluttered, and disorganized. I sat in traffic getting the girls to carol choir today, then sat in traffic coming home from it. THEN, going to pick them up was wild. 35 minutes to get somewhere 10 min away! And another 40 minutes home. If it continues like this, we will not be doing carol choir anymore. I stayed in a good mood, but it was very frustrating. Jonas and I went to Bonefish Grill for a date tonight, but it was packed so we walked over to Yoshi’s instead. I had no idea how expensive that place was! And I wasn’t even in the mood for sushi! But Jonas was excited and felt loved. He didn’t open up about anything, really, but it was good to spend s...