what day is it??

 after 3 days of my house looking like this:

 the kids playing in random places like this: {the coat closet - gotta hand it to them! they made due, huh??}

 {at least we got a chick fil a meal out of it! one day i couldn't even BEGIN to get near the kitchen, and just hadn't really thought/planned for that - oops!}

 but now it's DONE! and it looks AMAZING! i will show "after" pictures. but nothing is back on the walls yet and life is still running along.

in other news: this was my dinner 4 nights in a row. it's a small lunch plate (not a big dinner plate!) just some spinach - not cooked, 2 eggs cooked in coconut oil and a sprinkle of cheddar cheese. YUM! i changed it up last night because we went out with the Young's - SUPER yum!

keeping ourselves entertained on saturday evening. pat was "bench pressing" the kids...and i challenged him to bench me :-) {you can kind of see how LIGHT our walls our now!!}

 um. right? rebekah picked out joshua's outfit for church on sunday. :-)

 but she woke up in TEARS sunday morning. it was the fIRST time she cried through the WHOLE thing. so, i changed back into my sweats after being ready to go to church, and sent pat to church with the other 5 kids (and he had to teach our 35 3rd graders :/) and rebekah and i hung out on the couch all morning. it ended up being SUCH a gift. it was QUIET. and the LONGEST i was able to just BE with her! she slowly improved throughout the day. and it currently (monday afternoon) snowtubing with pat and joshua and bailey. maybe not the wisest decision...but after basically being COOPED up in our house the last week, she needed to do something fun...and so did pat and joshua and bailey! i'm sure she'll pay for it to a degree, but i hope the EXPERIENCE outweighs the added pain she might feel.

 we had a gift certificate to Outback from christmas. so we got some fun appetizers that we made into an early dinner for the kids yesterday afternoon while we watched the FOOTBALL! i guess they were good games. i was just excited that zac brown band sung the national anthem ;-)

living a few miles from DC on inauguration day is quite an experience. i probably shouldn't share any thoughts on the matter because i hardly ever watch the news...but i have to say one thing. i am thankful that i am a citizen of the US - i have been born into such wealth just by LIVING in this country. but, watching/listening to just little bits of the coverage makes me almost certain that people in other countries must look at us at so ridiculous...for one, WHY must we spend SO much money on an inauguration for a president THAT IS ALREADY IN OFFICE?? i KNOW it's tradition and all. it's just SUCH a waste of money (especially when there's SO much talk about debt and all!) second, the benediction at the end of the inauguration...i lost count how many times he prayed for "us to be blessed". WE ARE! and that's not what we should be praying for! do we not have enough blessings???? ugh. kinda makes me feel sick. lastly...the comparison between obama and Martin Luther King, Jr?? stop it. just because it's happening on the same day and their skin is the same color? good grief! thanks to MLK, Jr, my family looks the way it does. i am SO grateful to him for his courage and vision. i'm sorry, but Obama (or Bush or Reagan) is not going to have such an impact on my family...or any family in the future. there is no comparison. there just isn't!

looking in from the perspective of other countries, i'm a bit embarrassed, to be honest.

ok. enough about that.

ready for a NEW week ahead! how about you?