Photo Journal - Josie Boettcher

We had a very relaxing day today! We watched TV and read books and the kids played. Ben and I went out to lunch together, but I don't think we'd go back to that restaurant. And, unfortunately, Ben started having stomach troubles (absolutely predictably) when we were on our way to our next stop, so we headed home instead. I relaxed for an hour and then took Ruby out for our November date. She talked the whole time, which was fun because she's not always talkative on our dates. It felt a little too cold to get Rita's, IMO, but she was a happy camper.  The kids were bickering and annoying the crap out of me when I got home, so I asked them if they wanted to make some snowflakes! We had a great time working on that for an hour or so AND the wall looks amazing now. :)

Today was Jonas's party day!!! And, boy, was he excited. Ben was supposed to take him and his friends to lunch, since he likes hibachi so much more than me, but he has just been in terrible, terrible pain lately. It's at nearly its worst and he is feeling so discouraged and frustrated. He can barely move his mouth and can't eat when it's this bad, so I ended up taking the kids out to lunch, rather than him. It was a good time, though! After we ate, everyone came back here and hung out for the next four hours or so. They really just stayed in the basement, so it didn't bother me at all! While the kids were here, my friend Kate came to visit with her daughter, Ella. We always have such a great time hanging out together. I wish we could figure out a way to see each other more, but she works full time and Ella goes to school full time, so it's just tough to find good times to get together.  Ollie FINALLY got her wish and we decorated the tree tonight! It was exhaust...

Happy Thanksgiving!! This morning was perfect. I prepped the food yesterday, so today I just needed to finish it up and I had more than enough time to sit around and read. No pressure, no stress. It was great. The only downside was my sadness at not being with my family. I talked to Marme for almost an hour and she was feeling really sad that we weren't together too. We sent each other pictures, but it was not good enough! I did shed a few tears, but some years it's just going to be this way when you live 500 miles from your family. Sometimes I just hate this choice we've made for our lives, but sometimes I'm so glad we live here. I guess there are just ups and downs to anything. We headed over to Patrice's around 3:30 and spent a few hours there. Clem, Ruby, and Ollie LOVED Trey's little cousin Mya and played with her the whole time. The food was great and we played fun games after dinner. It was a really great time and we felt so grateful that we were invited ...

  The kids did a lot of playing and a lot of relaxing, while I finished up a few different projects around the house. Clem's closet doors were the main accomplishment! I messed up, though, and put all of the peel and stick paper on upside down, so I ended up having to change all of the hardware around so it would still be right side up when I hung it. 😅 It was a really nice day though! Ben came home early and the only thing I "had" to do was take Clem to choir. I just sat in the car, read my book, and drank my Starbucks. Not bad!!

Thanksgiving break! Finally! It feels like we should be done for the entire month or something, based on how exhausted I've been, but I'll take the week and be grateful for it.  We relaxed in the morning and then headed to the movies around lunch time to see Wicked for Good . The girls got all dressed up in pink and green...they even asked me to paint their nails pink and green! It was a great movie! Of course, the kids didn't like it as much as the first and the romance scene was a little awkward for them, but I thought it was great. It was a nice, relaxing first day of our time off.

Today was a very rough day for me. It's not like everything went wrong, I just really struggled to manage my emotions. I had to run out, first thing, to get my pick-up order because there were things in it that we needed for breakfast. Then, somehow, we didn't get school started until almost 9:30. I started with Ruby and Ollie, as usual, and decided to check in with Ollie while I was reading. Okay, related side note, Ruby can't stand it when I ask Ollie questions and not her. But the thing is, Ruby remembers EVERYTHING she hears. She learns super well by just plain old listening. If I ask her questions, she answers them correctly and I never get to gauge whether or not Ollie is learning. She also always blurts out answers because she's so afraid I won't give her an opportunity to show us all how much she is learning. And I get it! She wants praise and to show me that she's a good student and she's learning. I understand. But, because of her constant eagernes...

Man, I was laser focused today! I didn't go to CT and, instead, got right to work on the girl's closet. I emptied it out and disassembled while Ben was running. Then, once he got home and showered, I changed and we went out on a date. Nothing fancy. We just grabbed Panera and ran a few errands. I spent the entire afternoon working on the closet more. I called MJ and we talked for an hour while I painted the closet (pink, of course). Then, as that dried, I made the candied yams for Jonas to bring to his friendsgiving at PINSY. Clem made brownies to bring earlier. It's so frustrating because her book says they need to cook for 30-35 minutes (she makes them from scratch), but they're completely overcooked within 21-22 minutes. She was very disappointed that the edges were all rock hard, so I cut them all off and just packed up the center pieces. A few less brownies than we wanted, but it's ok! Lots of people are bringing stuff.  After dropping Clem off at group, I came...

I let myself get way too frustrated with Ben this morning. I spent some time relaxing, then when he went out for his run, I got dressed and started doing some yard work. Our back side yard got cleared out by the power company recently for access reasons and it was really a blessing because we've always wanted that area to be usable! This brought us 75% of the way there. Well, the last 25% is a lot of hard work too and Ben is not really up for it. He doesn't see my vision for that space and feels overwhelmed by the task. Anyway, I went out there and got to work starting a fire to burn some of the wood that's still over there after he left. I knew Ben did not want me to do this, but I did want to do it and I felt like it was a good way to start clearing out that space. I wanted to just rake the branches and mulch crap together and burn it. We've gone back and forth about it several times. I figured, today, the ground was soaked and it was not going to spread. The only thi...

I cannot even express how absolutely exhausted I feel. And I know it's not warranted. Many people are busier than I am and I'm out of the phase of life when my kids should be exhausting me. Alas, I am SO out of patience, SO irritable, SO over all of the questions and all of the "mom"s, whether it's fair to the kids or not. Ollie had a tantrum for almost an hour this morning because she lost one of her pencils they use in art class. I had no idea where to find it and offered lots of logical points: you can borrow from a sibling if you need it, just don't mention it to your teacher at all, I'm nearly certain your teacher will not ask you to use it and will not notice. Nothing mattered. She screamed over my words, thrashed like a wild person, ran up to her room wailing, kicked her radiant heater over, denting the floor, was entirely inconsolable. Over a freaking pencil. I almost gave in to letting her skip art, but I decided to just stay firm and have her dea...

Final class day of the CACH semester! I'm a little sad, but mostly relieved. I was anxious leading up to it, but it didn't go badly. It was fine. I just have to let go of control. I really wanted to have pictures of every class for the yearbook and I wasn't free to go take those pictures so...I guess it's up to other people to make sure it happens! Which means it probably won't happen. Everyone loves to look at the yearbook, but nobody wants to have to contribute to the yearbook. It's ok.  After class, Christina invited us over to Chick-fil-A for lunch. I was a little stressed because I needed to get my chili and bread started, but I haven't gotten together with her in so long that I felt like I should make it work. It was actually a really great time. The kids had so much fun with her kids and I had a really nice time catching up with her. As always, she extended invitations to all of their small group happenings: movies this weekend, Die Hard debate next ...

Today, we woke up, started school ON TIME for once, and got almost everything finished by the time I needed to head to the library to judge this speech and debate team competition. So, long story short, my friend Julia found out that I did copyright editing for my past work and, a couple of months ago, asked if I would judge this competition. I pretty much forgot about it until last week! But, thankfully, she reminded me many times over the last week, and I was ready to be there today. It was actually pretty fun! The kids worked SO HARD. Their speeches were awesome! I feel like there's no way I could write a paper and then memorize the entire thing and then present it to a panel of adults when I was that age. These presentations were all over 9 MINUTES. That's 9 minutes of memorized material! Just mind-blowing to me.  The rest of the day was just driving, it feels like. We left the competition, I dropped some kids off at home, then took Clemi to choir in Westerville. She loved ...

Wild & Free was cancelled today because of the cold, rainy weather, so we got some school stuff done in the morning and then we went to the library to pick up some holds before they expired. The girls did each other's makeup before we went which was, admittedly, slightly embarrassing for me. But, at the same time, it was just this perfect model of carefree, innocent childhood, when any makeup is good makeup. They were so, very excited to have gotten all gussied up before we went out for the morning. It was so adorable and so sweet. And definitely a little silly! After errands, I got back to the house, made lunch for the kids, and headed over to Jenny's house so we could read together. At the same time, Ben was driving home because he's feeling terribly depressed and wants to give up on his whole life. I felt pretty awful for not being there for him when he got home, but he honestly just wanted to sit on the couch and watch tv and that's what he did so...hopefully no...

Monday fun-day! Patrick hung out in the morning for a little while, while we started our school day. He headed out around 10 and we finished things up around 11:15 so that I could get Ollie to her annual well-check. The doc informed me that it has actually been a year and a half. Oops! Her checkup was good, though. She's healthy and doing well. I decided to turn our time together into a date, so we headed to Bob Evans for lunch after the checkup. Not the Duke Bob Evans, praise the Lord. Lunch was good and we had fun together. We went to Target afterwards to look for some Christmas gifts for Ollie to get her siblings. We found none of those, but about 100 things she wants for herself! *eye roll*  I did not get anything ready for dinner because I did not make dinner plans at all for the entire week. Everyone is very disappointed in me. We just ate leftovers. I should really plan some meals! And shop! I went to HC alone tonight because Ben has been feeling really sad and hasn't be...

I am so stinking tired today. Ben slept in bed last night and woke me up probably a dozen times. I mean, that also means he was awake that often, but we're talking about me here! I went to CT pretty early this morning to help Sarah out. It's been a long weekend for her, with her husband at the retreat. Patrick came to church with us! I asked how he liked it and he said he really liked our church a lot. He also said he really like Mike Woods a lot. I didn't ask him about the teaching specifically because he was giving me pretty brief answers and I didn't want to bug him. The afternoon was spent doing various productive activities: kite flying, putting up floor trim, cleaning old closet doors that were stored in the shed, doing some laundry, finally updating this blog 😅 To be honest, I'm just counting down the hours until bed.

Today was a good day! The morning was pretty busy, but the rest of the day was super chill. Me, Clem, Ruby, and Ollie all got up before 7:30am so that I could leave the house by 8:10am and get to work by 8:35! I worked for a little more than an hour. I just wanted to make sure that the tablet and printer were working properly, since the girls have had so much trouble with it in weeks past. Everything was working fine, and I am NOT going in next week! They will be ok without me coming in early to get things set up. Haha I hope.  After work, me and the girls headed to Anna's house for her birthday party. Six-years-old! I still remember when she was a brand new baby...even when she was still in her mama's belly! It was a fun party and the girls had a great time. I'm so grateful to be a part of the Torellis life. There are friends of mine who always seem to hold me at arms length, but Brit has never been one of them. She is a friend that I can always count on to include me and ...

We did school this morning and took a break to go to art class. Clem and Ollie had such a bad time last week that they didn't want to come this week. I gave them a pass, but told them they don't have a choice next week! Ben got to work from home, but it didn't change much in our day. We spent the afternoon cleaning up and I worked for a bit and also did a LOT of work on the CACH yearbook. I did a little formatting, but mostly I downloaded hundreds of photos and organized them into their respective folders.  In the evening, Ben and I went to Roundtable and bought some Christmas presents and then we ran to Giant Eagle to get a couple of things for Patrick's visit this weekend. It was a nice evening. We watched Monk with the kids after we got home and Patrick got here around 10, after a loooong 8.5 hour drive.

We had a field trip to the OSU Planetarium today! It was so cool. It was a really cool presentation and it was fun to see our CACH friends. It was also kind of cool to drive to campus and walk around a little. The kids were super excited about seeing the little delivery robots scooting around!  I made tacos for dinner and, since it wasn't pizza and a movie night, felt like I had plenty of time to dread leaving the house before I headed to cell group. 😅 However, there was nothing to dread! It was a great night. The teaching was pretty quick and the questions were decent. But conversation afterwards was really good. I kind of cornered Jayce and we talked about her grief for a little bit. I shared probably too much of my own experiences, but, overall, I think it wasn't bad. She didn't seem too irritated with me, at least! I second-guessed myself on the whole drive home, but it is what it is now and I just wanted her to see that we are safe people to talk to about what she...

We did school this morning and Jenny came over to hang out with me for a while. It was an ok day. I'm just struggling to keep myself together, emotionally. I'm not sure what's up with me. Hormones, maybe? Something is wrong though. I can't stop crying and it is very annoying!  I cleaned and we relaxed this afternoon. Ruby wanted to go to choir, so I dropped her off and picked her up. Clem is feeling really sad and misses her Westerville choir so much. Her experience in this Carol Choir is getting worse and worse, now that a girl joined that she really doesn't like. I guess they're having issues every week, to the point where Clem won't go anymore. I texted the Westerville homeschool choir director and asked if she could join late and she said she'd still love to have her. So I guess I'm going to pick that back up! I feel sad about adding something back to my schedule that I was so glad to be done with, but this is one of Clemi's main interests in...

Ben was off today and we decided to take a family trip to Costco after school. :) It was fun, but we spent SO MUCH FREAKING MONEY. Very stressful! Why is it so expensive to go to Costco? We grabbed a pizza when we first got there. Literally, the only affordable part of that trip was lunch. 😅 

We woke up to a winter (autumn) wonderland this morning! The girls were so excited that they woke me up early to ask if they could go outside. I said it was fine, as long as they didn't make a mess and didn't need my help. 😅 We did school-work and the girls intermittently played outside and/or got snow to munch on. I took Jonas to co-op and, at some point during the day, decided I didn't want to go to homechurch. I felt shitty about it, but the weekend got away from me. I had plenty of time to do the things I needed to do, like get a date in with Ben and go grocery shopping, but we didn't actually do either of those things. Consequently, we had no milk, no bread, no peanut butter, no eggs...you name it, we didn't have it. The kids were very displeased, and time ran out today. I just decided to skip so I could meal plan, go shopping, and squeeze in a date with Ben. I wish I didn't feel so guilty taking a night off! But I do. Jenny mentioned that Alex had curated...

This is my favorite picture from the whole shoot!! I love it.  We went to CT this morning and I actually got to sit in on the teaching! Woo! It feels like that doesn't happen very often. We hung out in the cafe with friends for a little bit, then went to Chipotle for lunch on the way home.  We spent most of the day just relaxing! I started a photo book for our Maine vaca in September, and tried to get caught up with some other stuff, but it was mostly just a chill day. Jonas and Clem went to group and we stayed home, chillin'. Ben and I got in the hot tub with Ruby and Ollie for a little while, which was fun. It was snowing while we were in there!  

I went to work this morning, just because classes were turning over and I knew we had 19 kids expected. It just felt like a lot for the weekend girls to get things organized on their own. I hung out there for a little over an hour, then headed home. Once I got back, I took Ruby out on a date around the neighborhood. We just walked to the park, then searched for Christmas gifts for her siblings and Ben, then walked back. We also discussed our book, but I have no idea where it is, so I had to work from memory!  After we got back, I took Clem out on a date! It was a very date-heavy day. She and I went to Dairy Queen for some treats and brought back lunch to everyone else. Interspersed with the dates was plenty of reading and PLENTY of laundry.  In the evening, we went to the Danhausen's house for PINSY's (the middle school group's) parent night. When we got there, Clinton told us that we were going to be the only parents there! 😅 It ended up being a really great night and won...

I thought today was supposed to be relaxing! *sigh* We went to the kids' new art class at 10:15am on this rainy Friday. We were expecting a young person who had just finished art school. In fact, it was a very old, severe-looking woman who had just finished art school! The kids all went into the dining room to learn, while the moms all sat in the living room. About halfway through, Allie came and told me that Ruby was inconsolably crying. I went in and got her and we sat in the hallway for 20 minutes while she completely fell apart because of the teacher's expectations, and hard to understand instructions, and the homework, and the writing, and on and on. It was the perfect reminder for why we decided to homeschool her. It's just too much pressure for her! I tried to convince her that she doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to do, but she just couldn't let go of the feeling that the teacher wouldn't like her and would be super disappointed in her. I...

Well, the last thing I was anxious about this week is finally over! The photos actually went really well. I had a very uncomfortable text exchange with Lauren last night, but I made it clear that I needed her there early...and she was EARLY! She got there way before me and I got there 45 minutes before co-op started. 😅 It seemed like she was saying, see?? I can be on time! I just appreciated that I didn't have to have to chastise her or anything, because that would have sucked so bad. Picture day went smoothly, but I missed my class entirely again. I have no idea how people's projects are looking right now or if they're anywhere near being finished. And, honestly, next class I need to run around and try to get photos of other classes because it's the last class day and the last opportunity to have these classes in the yearbook! I need to not be teaching first semester, or second semester either, really. We'll see though. I think I need to just brainstorm with leade...