We made it through week 23 of staying home!
Virtual church is still going strong! Though it was clearly early in the praise & worship part of the service, because these two don’t hang out very long most Sundays…
As you can tell by the super fun braided hairstyle, we finally have Neema back to help with Natalie. Life is sooooo much easier when she is here! :)
I made banana bread! We struggle with eating the bananas before they go bad. (Though in my opinion, the only good use of bananas is in banana bread…) I also realized that I haven’t been baking much at all during quarantine - which should be a good indicator of how overwhelmed I am by everything…
But the Christmas cookies did make me want to try and squeeze it in if I can. So the stars aligned to encourage me to bake again with the bananas going bad!
Henry is ready for his Zoom parent-teacher conference! The mask wasn’t required, obviously… ;)
Side note on the cool mask - I’ve been working with a few people at work on starting a new employee network focused on employees with disabilities and family members with disabilities. We were supposed to launch back in April, but that clearly fell through. But we’ve been working on getting things going despite all this madness and one of our fun additions was to provide clear masks to employees to help out communication for hard of hearing folks. (Guess why I feel strongly about that?? lol)
So one of our supply guys at work found a few options and sent them to me to try out. This one is definitely my favorite of the 3. Henry’s teachers liked it so much I sent them some as well.
Spread the accessibility! :)
She’s clearly ready for me to be done working and while I can’t be 100% sure after the fact, I bet she is saying “Black iPad?” to me. She knows she gets some iPad time once Neema leaves and I still have work to get done.
I can’t say no to that beautiful face!
I’ve been warning the boys they won’t be able to play video games all day once school starts up next week. So they decided to spend their remaining time wisely and get to the end of the Lego Movie video game! They played this game quite a bit, but the download got corrupted earlier this year and wouldn’t work. I got it fixed finally last month, but they had to start over.
But look at those proud boys who just reached the end!!
First day of school!!!!
Weirdest first day of school, but the boys seem pretty excited about it anyhow! We struggled with where to put the boys earlier this year when it was “temporary”, so we made them better school areas this time around.
Though this hallway area didn’t last long because someone kept coming over to harass their older brother. So I moved a desk into the boy’s room and told Thomas he could lock Henry out if he needed too.
Brothers…
Her pulmonology check-up was this week and it seemed like a great time to check-in on our Coronavirus scare. Her pulmonologist seemed pretty encouraging that not many of his patients (who are obviously higher risk) seemed to be catching it. And the few who had didn’t end up needing hospital-level care. He said to continue being careful, but was on board with our plan to send the boys back to school when it is allowed.
She was so excited about the block giraffe I built her! Of course, as soon as I took this photo, she ripped the head off and put it on backwards. Kids are crazy…
Thomas was bringing my laptop downstairs after class and started threatening to drop it because it was “so hot!” I, of course, threatened him with no Minecraft ever again if he dropped my laptop! I thought he was being dramatic, but the laptop was blazing hot! I was so worried we were about to be doomed on virtual schooling if my laptop was about to die…
It looks like laptops with bottom vents can overheat if there is anything under them, so we think maybe a piece of paper was underneath it and was blocking the air intake. I told Thomas to be super careful with it the next day and so far it hasn’t overheated again.
I got a little concerned the other morning when I woke up at 3am to a noise and decided to go check on the kids. Natalie met me at the bottom of the stairs… Given she knows how to unlock doors, we decided to flip her doorknob around so we can lock her in her room at night. She was not pleased with this option at naptime though and has started yelling for “mommy” under the door. Though she gets pretty excited if you peek under her door at her. ;)
Superhero cape is now on it’s third Hoyt kiddo. Hopefully I have a few more months to make her an “N” cape before she notices she’s missing out…!
Oh and she got a new bike! It’s a hand-me-down from my friend Kayla whose daughter has outgrown in. Natalie looooooves her new pink bike! She’s been doing awesome on her balance bike, but some pedaling practice will surely help when it comes time to get her first real bike, right?
Somehow, I bought her more playdoh! And this kinda has sparkles in it!
What is wrong with me? I don’t even like dealing with playdoh…
Clearly I am a sucker for this girl.