Leftovers

I haven't managed to fit these pictures into any of my previous posts, but I like them.  Maybe you will, too!

I like this robot that Ryder built!

Oreo continues to be very cute

Bentley took this picture a couple weeks ago-- skillz!  And everything is even MORE green now!

My flowers came back with a vengeance!  I'm so happy!!!  And I just LOVE snapdragons!

This is Bentley while we played Code Names.  He's really weird.  And he sort of looks like a terrified wizard here.

Colton loves climbing on these rocks

Our deck is nearly done!!!  Squeeee!!!!

Twinsies!  I love that they just happened to put on the same pajamas this day!

The New Normal

We're finally settling into a sort of routine here, so that's good!  Every morning we have our Come Follow Me lesson with Craig, then he hides in the basement doing Zoom meetings while I supervise the kids doing their school work.  We call it homeschooling, but since Ryder and Colton's teachers post all their assignments on this great app called Seesaw, it's probably a thousand times easier than actual homeschooling.  It's still a pain for me, but nothing like if I had to build my own curriculum!  Bentley and Kendra are fairly self-sufficient and can usually do their work on their own without much help from me, so that's working well.  Whenever Craig has a break in his meetings, he helps Ryder and Colton with their Spanish homework.  And we give Camille a new letter to practice writing each day and she is embracing this challenge whole-heartedly, so that's fun to watch!

Once the kids are finished, I usually take off and walk the neighborhood for an hour or so.  I call friends and sisters or listen to an audible book (The Happiness Project-- it's had so many great ideas that I ordered a paper copy, too!) while I wander in and out of cul de sacs and up and down hills.  This is the best I've ever been about taking my allergy medication consistently, and it's been a joy to watch all of the trees taking their turns blooming.  First we had the cherry blossoms, then the Eastern redbuds, and then the flowering dogwoods.  It's all been beautiful, and these walks are good for my soul.  Probably my lungs and legs, too.

Here I am setting out on a walk with Craig!

Speaking of flowers, this hardy little chive plant of mine just bloomed!  So cute!  I bought it when we first moved to Charlottesville, so this is probably the longest I've ever kept anything green alive!

Once I'm home I shower off all the pollen and get to work on laundry, dishes and dinner.  By then the kids are out riding bikes with their friends and Craig is painting the deck.  Or jumping on the trampoline with the kids, if they have any say in it!

Can you see Craig's face here?  I love it!  The kids love making us jump on the trampoline with them so they can bounce extra high.  It's finally been long enough since giving birth that I am able to do this again, so that's exciting!

Lunch in the treehouse!

Here we have Ryder using one of those balloons with a string attached so you can punch it really fast.  You know those, right?  I love the juxtaposition of that face with those church clothes.  Will Ryder ever not be hilarious?

Saturdays still feel a *bit* special because there's NO schoolwork and NO Zoom meetings!  That's cause for celebration and/or laziness:

Watching SGN all together late Saturday morning!  Quality family time, right there!

It's not a bad way to live!



Wait a second-- You haven't watched SGN yet???  Have you been under a rock???  Here, let me get you started:



You can find the next episodes on your own now!  (#2 is my favorite, but they're all wonderful!)

Trying New Things

Several months ago I heard a speaker at church talk about learning how to knit.  He said he was surprised that it wasn't actually that hard to do and he enjoyed it.  One of my favorite bloggers has also documented learning to knit extensively.  And then A.C. Moore, which was RIGHT NEXT TO US went out of business and started selling everything at even bigger discounts than before.  I'd mentioned to Craig that I wanted to try knitting and he said, "Well, now is probably the cheapest time to start!"  So I watched a YouTube video on what I needed, and I marched to the store and bought myself some knitting needles and yarn.  And then forgot about them for a few months.

But now that we're all home so much I REALLY felt like I didn't have any excuse not to try.

So I HAVE BEGUN KNITTING!!!

And true to form, I'm pretty terrible at it.

But that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying it!

I definitely picked a bad yarn for a beginner.  It's so soft and fuzzy (and PURPLE!) and I just love it, but that fuzziness also makes it really hard to see what I'm doing.  That's at least part of the reason why I'm bad at this.

First, you have to cast on to your knitting needle.  I got that down after a few tries, and actually I LOVE casting on!  It's so easy and mindless!  The next part-- you know, the actual knitting part-- is where I'd get all screwed up.  The lady on the video made it look so easy!  But I kept getting it wrong, and the more I watched the video, the more I couldn't even tell what she was doing.  I kept having to unwrap everything (which at least did have the small perk that I could go back to casting on, which was more fun anyway!).  Eventually I just found a different video that was slightly clearer.  Mostly, I just loved how the guy explained, "It won't look like you've done anything, but trust me, it's going to work."

AND HE WAS RIGHT!  It's working!!!

Now I just have to keep doing this about a hundred thousand more times!

Some day this will be a scarf.

Take that, quarantine!

Spunk

I signed Colton and Camille up for another round of swim lessons.  After one class, I realized that my life would be WAY easier if they were simply put in the same class, rather than spending a half hour for Camille's class followed by a half hour for Colton's.  I emailed the person in charge to ask if this could be arranged, and, after consulting with their teachers, she replied that Camille could be placed in Colton's class, but she worried that if this proved too difficult, Camille might get frustrated or scared and end up regressing.

The very idea made me laugh.  I've seen Camille display plenty of emotions in her short lifetime, but never scared and quitting!  I assured her Camille would do just fine and genuinely looked forward to reading my book in peace while they both splashed around in their lessons.  As I'm sure you've already guessed, before we could proceed any further, everything got shut down for COVID.

But the other day Camille marched into the house, still wearing her bike helmet, singing at the top of her lungs a line from the opening song of Six: The Musical about the wives of Henry VIII: "I'M A SURVIVOR, CATHERINE PARR, I BET YOU WANNA KNOW HOW I GOT THIS FAR?!?!"

And I thought to myself, Yeah, she'll do just fiiiiine with whatever she puts her mind to!

Still a fan of chocolate fondue

Getting ready to help Daddy paint

She looked so queenly wrapped in this blanket as though it's ermine!

And finally, for your viewing pleasure:

COVID Easter

I had warned my kids that we wouldn't be able to dye as many eggs as we have in the past (when I once let them dye a dozen eggs each!).  But then the week before Easter, Costco was back to having their 5 dozen egg pallets!  So we were able to dye plenty* of eggs, which made me and the kids all very happy.  They did five or six eggs each, so we didn't go completely crazy.  But it was still plenty fun.  I don't know what it is about dyeing eggs, but it truly is one of my favorite things to do.

It looks like Bentley is concentrating really hard here, but really he's just adjusting that weird copper scooper tool. 

I promise we actually had fun doing this!  My kids look like I'm torturing them..?!?!

There we go!  Kendra had fun!

Lovely eggs!  My favorite is the one I made (left corner, one from the top)-- I dropped it in red and forgot about it, and then repeated with blue.  For some reason it got all speckled and ended up looking like a galaxy.  Perfect!  

A pyramid of squishmallow pillows!

Easter morning, Craig and I slept in (BLISS!) and then the kids found their Easter baskets.  Craig made pancakes and sausage for everyone, and then we made everyone get dressed and go outside and ride bikes.  We had ulterior motives, we knew a special visitor would be heading our way, and sure enough...

The Easter Bunny came by!  His helpers were riding hoverboards and wearing pink bunny sleepers-- it was great!

After that I showered and got on my church clothes (and makeup!  Remember when we used to put on makeup every day???).  And I had time to make a salad and a batch of funeral potatoes and tidy up the living room while we played the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's recording of Handel's Messiah.  And then, we had Zoom Church with family!

Craig took a picture when we were done

As Zoom meetings are, this was a bit awkward and stilted, but it was still nice to get to see everyone and hear hymns (thanks Mom for playing piano and to the Richards family for doing a special musical number on such short notice!).  So that was lovely!

As soon as that was done I put the potatoes and ham in the oven.  We usually have Easter dinner with Craig's parents (who had also joined us for Zoom church), but we felt that our house was probably a germ fest that we didn't think was a great idea for them to come to, and they didn't seem comfortable with us going to their house, either, so we opted to FaceTime during dinner.  That was awkward-- I don't ever want a camera pointed at me while I'm trying to eat, and the longer it went on, the more Camille felt the need to just shout every thought that came into her head, louder and louder.  Not exactly the quiet family dinner I was hoping for.  But at least they could finally see the kids and have a nice chat with each of them!


It was so weird to not "go" to church on Easter, but I didn't mind that things felt a lot more relaxed than normal.  It actually gave us more time to reflect on the meaning of Easter and then there was still time for the silly fun stuff, too.  It was nice.


*Full confession: I didn't expect Costco to have eggs at all, and certainly not pallets of them, so when I stopped at Target first and they had eggs, I bought 18.  And THEN bought 5 dozen more at Costco.  I came home from that shopping trip with 78 eggs!!!  {Gulp!}  But in our defense, they WILL all get eaten.  So we're not actually being wasteful!

Changing Our Minds. Together!

Craig and I are always very deliberate when we choose paint colors.  We look at the colors in different lights (daylight and electric lights).  We compare how it will look with different furniture and throw pillows and curtains.  We're a bit ridiculous, honestly.

But despite all our precautions, sometimes it just goes wrong. 

We decided to paint our deck grey with black trim and I was so excited for it!  Our house is already a very light grey with black shudders, so I figured it would all tie in perfectly.  And then Craig started painting the railings and it looked 100 times better and we were both so pleased!

And then he started on the grey and painted a big old chunk of the deck and I was like, Huh.

It's not like I hated it.  But I didn't really LOVE it, either.  And it seemed a shame to spend so much time and money painting the deck if I didn't love it when we were done.  For some reason, it looked sort of bluish to me.  And while I'd thought it would match the house nicely, it didn't.  Not exactly.  And somehow that just felt worse.  So, yeah.  What do we do about that?

It took me a day to admit my feelings to Craig.  And another few hours to ask what he thought about changing the color?  Craig thought it over and said he thought we should move forward with the grey.  He pointed out that we'd have to paint it again in another few years and could change the color then.  He made a good point, so I agreed.  That was fine.

A few hours later, Craig found me and said he wanted to revisit the topic.  He wasn't liking the grey, either.

So we spent another day staring at the paint chips and almost on a whim (for us!), picked a new color. 

Craig got back to work re-painting the next day:

And I LOVE this new brick-red color!  Ironically, it isn't that different from the old color (if you can see what's left of it).  I didn't expect that.  The old color was a bit orangey-er, and it had faded a lot.  So I guess that's why this new one looks so much better?  Also, the basement level of our house is brick, so it should all tie in nicely still.  But the main point is, I LOVE it, and I think that's all that really matters.

No, that's not true-- I'm also loving how Craig and I figure stuff like this out.  I love that we can talk rationally and work through a problem and come to a decision together.  I've seen enough terrible marriages to know that that is a rare ability in a couple!

More Quarantine Stuff

After two weeks of things being mostly shut down, our governor REALLY shut everything else down and then everyone in the neighborhood got a lot more strict about what kids could do.  So my kids have had to play together more than ever before, which is not a terrible thing.  It hasn't always been smooth sailing, of course, but lucky for all of us, I don't usually take pictures when they're fighting, so all I end up remembering are the good times!  Yay for selective memory!

I caught these three all playing legos together like champs!  It made my heart happy:

And as we all know, spring makes me SO HAPPPY.  All these leaves just dumped a TON of pollen into the air so now Colton and I are itching our eyes like crazy.  But I still love it!

Here's Craig bouncing all the kids!  (Only Camille notices that I'm taking pictures!)

Craig and Camille fly her kite

Colton lost a tooth!

Picnic on the (very clean, powerwashed) deck!

Except Colton and Camille decided they'd rather eat in the treehouse!  To which I said, 'Sure, why not?'

And dinner was followed by more trampoline time.  I can't even begin to understand how they can jump on a trampoline after eating, but no one threw up, so I'm not complaining!

And on this morning Colton and Camille surprised me by dressing up as twins!

We biked/scootered/skateboarded the trail at Riverview Park!

Stopping for a break and I finally noticed that Camille was wearing two completely different shoes!

Walking under the freeway overpass behind our house, and here you can see Biscuit Run, the creek that goes behind our house, with Bentley pretending to throw Camille into it and her looking properly nervous!

Craig and I had a sort of double date night (but socially distant) at Riverview Park

Can you tell which bench hasn't gotten powerwashed yet?

And this week Craig started painting!  So we're doing the railing in black (obviously) and then the deck itself will be grey.  And I am already thrilled with how it's looking!

I love this photo-- I love that I framed Craig perfectly in the dogwood blossoms!  But look how hard he's working while I'm just sitting in the shade, occasionally taking his picture!

Life is good!  But the longer this quarantine goes on, the less I seem to get done.  It's like life is slowing down and so am I.  The other day I actually thought to myself, "I need to get the oil changed in the cars.  But I also need to boil eggs for Easter.  I guess the cars can wait until next week when I'm not so busy."  WHAT???  How does boiling eggs count as busy???  But it sort of does feel busy now?  It's weird.  It's all so weird.