C-19 Week 25

We made it through week 25 of staying home!

So much drama caused by simply asking my oldest to put his clean laundry away… lol. I’m all trying to have a serious work meeting and someone is launching undies at my door.

I didn’t want to go swimming at all after a long day of meetings. But how on earth do I say no to his cute face? She already had her swimsuit out and she’s learned to sweetly ask “Natalie go swim?”

So we clearly went swimming. She’s impossible to say no to sometimes…

But other times, it’s a little easier…

She’s pretty much living in her new pink shoes and I noticed at bath time that she’s getting some bad callouses from not giving her feet a break. She wears them to bed and I have to sneak them off her feet after she falls asleep. So I thought I would be smart tonight and put her in footed pajamas so her pink shoes wouldn’t fit. Well that worked, but led to this epic meltdown.

I did try to compromise and let her use her brother’s camo crocs, but since they aren’t cute pink dinosaurs, she wasn’t on board. It ended up with her just having to get over this one.

Caught this guy reading the comics on an old planner of mine he found in the office. I wasn’t sure he even got the jokes, but he seemed to enjoy them. Looks like such an old little man sitting there reading Dilbert comings over his glasses. :)

The upside to making Taco’s every Tuesday is that we usually have leftover taco meat to make nachos later in the week. And we all looooooove nachos! But wait - this isn’t our kitchen…

Did we make it through week 25 by not staying home???

C-19 Week 24

We made it through week 24 of staying home!

Well at least I am not the only sucker in this family. Look at the inflatable slide Matt bought for the kids! They’ve been doing really well at their swim lessons, so he figured they were ready for some excitement that was a little safer than the diving board. We’re still a little nervous about the deep end… it’s very deep…!

Neema appears to be loving the fact that Natalie’s hair is getting longer and she can do more exciting braided hairstyles! I wouldn’t even know where to start on this…

Also, with everything else going on, I forgot to schedule her 30 month check-up. (I forgot it was a thing, honestly). So we were a little late, but her pediatrician was so happy with how well she is doing!

But it’s Natalie, so rarely do we get an appointment with absolutely no stress… Her pediatrician asked if Natalie had ever had a renal ultrasound since Microtia and kidney issues commonly show up together - same timing of development for ears and kidneys! She didn’t seem overly concerned, but it was one we needed to check off the list. The imaging department didn’t have any openings until that evening, so Natalie got to go in her pj’s.

Unlike her cardiac ultrasound when she turned into a Hulk baby, she was chill as could be for this one. I let her have my photo to watch videos and she was quite the cooperative patient.

And no kidney abnormalities! Whew…!

Henry had a pretty rough day with virtual school and was just very out of sorts. He disappeared and when I went to find him, I found him sleeping in Natalie’s room.

Sometimes you just need a nap.

I mean, I feel his frustrations, their schedules are insane. I can barely keep track of when they are supposed to be on Zoom meetings even when I printed out the schedules. It’s a bit of a stretch to expect a 6 year old to figure this all out on his own.

But Thomas had a good citizen assignment today and needed some photos of him doing good deeds. I was more than willing to make suggestions on this assignment! ;)

Matt was out of town this weekend, so I decided to treat the kids to donuts. And the lady taking orders apparently got confused by my donut list I read out. We ended up with waaaaay too many donuts. So we took the extras to my friend, Kayla, who lives right down the street.

There are benefits to living close to me. ;)

Natalie putting her brother to work! She actually makes me nervous trying to use the skateboard, so I like this method much better. :)

Girl stole my pizza! I cut up her own little pizza pieces, but she only wanted the piece I had.

Rude.

I accidentally left my phone in her room during nap time. I couldn’t find it and thought it might be in there, so I didn’t want to ring it in case she was sleeping. Then I realized that with the apple watch, you can activate the camera on the phone and took a picture to confirm it was in her room. Which is also when I noticed my camera roll already had several toddler-taken pictures.

lol - well I guess she’s too busy to be sleeping…

Crocs & socks??? Definitely his dad’s fashion sense there…

Playing a hide & seek game with the kids. And enjoying the alone time while they are trying to find me.

It’s the little things when it’s 3 against 1 for a weekend… ;)

I ordered a new chair for our upcoming beach trip and someone thinks it is her new chair. I will fight you for it, little one…!

Kayla was having a rough day and couldn’t find any restaurants that would deliver her chocolate cake. So I did what any good friend would do and made her a chocolate cake.

Well - half a chocolate cake - it wasn’t bad enough of a day for a whole cake. ;)

Goodbye Eliza

This morning was the end of an era.

15(!) years ago, we adopted this adorable crazy little puppy named Eliza. From the first moment we met up, Eliza ran up to me and completely stole my heart. She was my velcro dog and wherever I went, she was right with me - including road trips and camping trips!

She's been through so many adventures with us, including driving both to and from Alaska! She tolerated the tiny humans in her life despite the fact they took away some of her mommy's attention. And even though she was getting blind and kinda deaf, she could still track down her momma to lay down at my feet.

But dogs aren't meant to stay with us forever and today was our last day with our Eliza. I will miss her terribly and still hope all dogs go to Heaven. Maybe her and furry Natalie have already found each other for a good chase.

It was hard to narrow down 15 years to a reasonable number of photos, but I did my best. Gonna miss her scruffy face.

Look at this baby! We actually have no idea how old she was when she's got it, they thought maybe 2 or 3? Which made her a grand old 17 or 18!

Eliza at the beach doing her best sugar cookie impersonation... That face says "I regret nothing!"

They loved our beach trips! She wouldn't venture out quite as far as her sister, but she loved it all the same!

And camping! These two were always up for nature time with Mom & Dad!

"Why would mom need foot room when she can have me closer to her??"

She traveled back & forth with me to Dallas so many times my first year living in Houston. The drive was a drag, but the company was so awesome!

More camping! This was on our trip to the Grand Canyon with my mom. Eliza looooooved that she got to come and her sister didn't.

So tolerant of Halloween costumes! "Anything for you, mom!"

In Alaska! Loves the cooler temps and apparently the strong wind in her face!

She got super sick on us in 2016 and the surgeon couldn't guarantee that doing the surgery would give her much more time. But we figured she had earned at least one expensive surgery. ;)

Jokes on the surgeon though - she came out of it like a puppy again!

And made it four more years!!!

I may have let her get a little too shaggy at times in Alaska, but that seems fitting for the cold weather, right?

Got this awesome drawing the other day for donating to a shelter in need of funds. I was honestly expecting a disaster and got this masterpiece back. An amazing drawing to forever remind me of what an awesome dog she was. Love you forever, Eliza Bear

C-19 Week 23

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.

C-19 Week 22

We made it through week 22 of staying home!

Natalie was busy “cooking” for me this morning! I love you, babe, but I am 100% sure I don’t want eyeball soup…

The only way I can get my kids to run errands with me is to promise them a treat. We decided on Dairy Queen today and I warned them if they got dipped cones, they would have to eat them fast! Well Henry tried, but it was a melting disaster by the time we had only driven a few blocks.

lol - his face speaks volumes…

This might be the first time ever she has fallen asleep while eating! She was still trying to put a few blueberries in her mouth even while she was clearly asleep. It was the cutest!

And a nap the next day! Maybe she’s decided she doesn’t completely hate naps??

Still up to her old tricks of stealing my chocolate though!

Also she looks adorable in this colorful dress she picked out. But the best part of this photo is that she put her Violet phone on the phone charging stand on my desk. Girl knows what’s up!

Just trying to get some work done and these two weren’t having any of it. Must dive bomb mom with paper airplanes!

(Also every day is pajama day around here these days…)

We’ve been doing a lot of food delivery these days. I am exhausted by the end of most days and it’s not like we can just go out to eat. But this was the first time our pizza boxes have come with a tamper-evident seal.

These are such bizarre times…

In trying to distract the toddler long enough to have a meeting, I thought I would set her a train track up in the entry way so she could play with it and I could keep an eye on her. Surprisingly, she was pretty happy playing with it for quite a while!

So bad news for us… Neema has been out sick for awhile because we were worried she was showing the symptoms of Covid. The mild worry ramped up a little bit when she lost her sense of smell… Well test results finally came back yesterday for her and sure enough - she was positive. And had definitely been in close contact with Natalie when she started showing symptoms.

Given her history of respiratory issues, her pediatrician wanted Natalie to get tested even though she wasn’t showing any symptoms. Homegirl was all excited for a car ride with mom! Until they did the nose swab and she was sooooooo upset. I had to pull over in the hospital parking lot and give her hugs to calm her down.

Luckily the children’s hospital returns tests much faster than the city-run testing sites, so we knew by the next day she was negative.

Thank goodness!

This is what happens when you don’t know your own strength, Henry! ;)

I guess she was just getting my hopes up with those extra naps this weekend. What a mess! Even the teepee was down for the count…!

When you give a toddler chocolate… they will make a big mess!

At least she likes washing her hands?

Another nap!?! Now she is just messing with me… ha!

I was trying to order the drumsticks without nuts because I love Henry, even though he is totally wrong with his peanut hating. But the only ones they had without nuts were “mini” cones. I was not expecting them to be this mini though!

But no complaints from Natalie - she thinks they are just her size!

C-19 Week 21

We made it through week 21 of staying home!

Natalie has been hanging out in her window most mornings when she gets up before Neema arrives. But she doesn’t exactly understand weekends, so sometimes I get to sneak in her room and catch her hanging out in the window. This morning she had her electronics with her to stay entertained while she waited. ;)

It fell out again! Aaaaaaaa! Matt was vacuuming the floor and spotted it before he accidentally sucked it up. I had noticed it looked a little weird, but didn’t pay it much mind. I should have - the balloon had a tiny leak in it and it finally leaked enough to fall right out!

Thankfully we were able to get a new one back in place without having to take her to the ER like the last time it fell out. Unfortunately, it didn’t want to go in easy, so I had to put some lube on it to get it in. Even more unfortunately I used the wrong kind, so I had to pull it back out, wash it off and then try again.

She was not impressed…

We seriously do not get out much. I bought them these masks months ago at this point and there had been no reason to wear them. But we had to run an errand for mom, so I promised them ice cream if they came along. They was quite a bit of complaining about wearing them, but they decided the ice cream was worth it.

They better get used to them though - school is coming again soon…

One of my coworkers (who lives very close by) accidentally ordering 5 bags of apples instead of 5 apples. She asked if we wanted some since there was no way they could eat so many apples. We were also failing to eat the poor apples, so I decided to use them the best way I knew how and made an apple pie! It was a new recipe I tried out that used the boiled cider I bought from King Arthur Flour awhile back. And weirdly enough was baked in a paper bag?

It was amaze-balls, y’all!

Day 1 without our dear Nanny. She was feeling not so great at the end of last week and we told her to go ahead and stay home. I was worried about not having help again, but decided if she was not feeling well, it was better to play it safe. Natalie didn’t seem to mind the change in routine at all!

As a side note, she got jealous of her brother’s new backpack and decided she needed to start carrying around one of her own. Since her Monkey bag is devoted to therapy appointments, I dug out Thomas’ old Cars backpack and she loved it!

It’s only Monday and she’s already taken care of those pesky papers over the window… Sigh…

I guess I need to be able to see her if we are doing group management for a few days?

Took Natalie outside to play even though it’s ridiculously hot. I decided to draw her some of cats with the sidewalk chalk since she used to love them so much. Apparently she has either changed her mind or decided my drawing today wasn’t up to her standards - she covered them both in dirt. :(

Even with my tiny critic destroying my art, I was kinda enjoying drawing with the chalk - it’s been awhile since I’ve been hanging outside to use it. So I went with just sketching out our names across the blocks of the walkway. She seemed happy to run over them if nothing else. ;)

Since it was so hot, I figured she’s enjoy one of her tiny popsicles.

Little girl ready to tackle the day! Disappointed that her brothers are still snoozing away. Don’t worry - she woke them up, she needs them up before she can watch a movie with them. ;)

Decided to run out to get Chick-fil-A for lunch. I asked all of the kiddos if they wanted to join me, but I only got one taker. Doesn’t she look so happy to be going for a drive in the car?? Of course, she had to bring her backpack along too!

Also, don’t judge me on the pjs. It’s hard without her nanny…

When it rains, it pours, right? The upstairs AC decided to go out this morning. I started feeling hot and was all worried I was running a fever, but finally we caught on that the AC was struggling. Matt was doing his MacGyver impersonation and working hard at getting it fixed. But then it was Natalie’s nap time and her room was close to unbearably hot (see Thomas’ expression above). So I pulled out a spare fan and piled up a bunch of our fancy ice balls behind the fan to try and cool the air down a little bit.

Is anyone surprised that Natalie may not have napped?

I ordered a paint by number kit at the beginning of the pandemic and it never came. It finally came though! And I pulled it out to get started on it. Good lord the painting areas are tiny. Lol - I might go blind, but I bet it looks cool. :)

Well since her bestie isn’t her to entertain her, I guess I’ll have to put her to work! She actually seemed pretty excited to be helping clean up her playroom. I sent Neema a photo and she sent back “oh no, my baby!”

So you can tell who the softie is here… ;)

We decided to go for a drive. Not to any particular destination, but just to get out of the house. The kids would not accept “nowhere” as the destination, but I think the drive finally got the best of them and they all fell asleep! It was a minor miracle, getting the youngest to nap these days is next to impossible!

Our nowhere destination did have a city park though and the park had this fun hill! The kids all ran up there and yelled at me to take their picture. It turned out to be a super cute photo of all three of them! You can’t even tell it’s a bazillion degrees outside!

The hill wasn’t quite so vibrant green up close, but the kids got even cuter! Love these cuties to the moon and back! :)

C-19 Week 20

We made it through week 20 of staying home!

Almost 5 months…

Wowsers.

Thankfully the kids are getting along great! Nothing to see here, no kids trapped in a laundry basket prison… ;)

Do you think she knows how much this bothers me and that’s why she keeps doing it? To be fair, I took away almost all of her books from her room. This is the last possible one she can rip and I didn’t like it anyhow. Turns out it was a favorite one of her dad’s to sing songs out of. Whoops!

First time to try spaghetti! Not the first time it has been on her plate, but she finally took a few bites! Wooo!

Also, you can see she is wearing the cool necklace Jenny made her at the beach house last year. We should be at the beach house with them this week, but we aren’t. We are home, not at the beach. Viruses just ruin everything.

Swimming time! Someone was getting a little antsy waiting for their turn…

You also be unsurprised to hear she got pretty mad when I wouldn’t let her wear her shoes in the pool. She’s obsessed!

Slowly, but surely, they are turning into better swimmers!

It seems like every week brings a new thing that she plays with for the week. This week is was part of the campfire kit that Grannie made for the boys years ago. And she mostly just carried it around in this tray and picked the pieces up with tongs to pretend to eat the smore’s. At least she was willing to share her pretend chocolate bar with me!

Henry found his cookbook again last week and wanted to make the Mini-Donut Muffins. We didn’t have buttemilk, so I told him he would have to remind me to buy it with the groceries and then we could make them. He was determined enough that he even wrote “BUTTER MILK” on my grocery list (took me a second to realize that wasn’t an intentional space on the list - lol).

So we finally made them today and he was soooooo excited about the whole process. :)

And it must be genetic, he didn’t remember his apron either. ;)

The turned out pretty good! I reeeeeeeeally wanted that one that had extra cinnamon on it, but the baker gets dibs and of course he wanted it too. I’ll remember that next time I make him cupcakes! ;)

Christmas in July!

This summer hasn’t been the most exciting. It feels like the same week is just repeating itself over and over again… So when the bakery by us started posting about celebrating “Christmas in July” with cookie decorating kits, I have to admit I liked the idea. I’m not usually one for celebrating holidays multiple times (I’m looking at you, Trick or Treat in the Heat!), but desperate times…!

But if we are celebrating Christmas, we are going to do it right! So first off, we waffled some cinnamon rolls - one of our previous Christmas morning favorites. :)

I even thought to pull out the Christmas plates!! Of course, the boys wore their Christmas PJ’s last night. And I even pulled up the Christmas station on Pandora to be fully festive! :)

Natalie seemed excited about the cinnamon roll waffles, but only took a few small bites. Sigh - sometimes she just likes to get my hopes up about how much she will eat.

And of course, we had to watch Christmas movies! Natalie even sat through both Frosty movies!

Henry generously offered to model my chef’s coat that I rarely think to wear. (I was making cookies and getting flour everywhere, but did I think to wear an apron? As if!) I was telling someone about my grand plans to open a bakery and how a friend made me this coat for it.

B3 = Blue Bungalow Bakery

Never going to happen, but it sure is a fun dream! :)

Cookie time! You know me, I wasn’t going to buy a half dozen cookies from a bakery when half the fun is getting to make them! The boys were definitely excited about this part of the day!

We even gave Natalie the stuff to decorate her own cookie. She went minimalist with the icing and mostly ate the decorations, but she got to be a part of the fun!

Side note that I love her hair when we finally take the braids out. It’s got the 80’s crimp vibe going and makes the most awesome ponytails. :)

Matt even decorated a reindeer - with no candy bullets in it this time! (Which will make more sense once I get around to posting the photos from last Christmas’ cookies…)

Look at all the yummy cookies!

Someone enjoyed eating her cookies more than decorating them! Well, at least eating the icing… ;)

And to end the day off right - fondue for dinner! It’s my favorite Christmas tradition and I wasn’t going to miss a chance to make it. Though given it was just the four of us, I may have pared back the number of dippers and only made one kind. But it’s the thought that counts!

It was a great day to look forward to and even more fun to spend the day doing Christmas things. The boys did tell me at bedtime it would have been better if there were presents, but otherwise they had a blast!

Merry Half-ish Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!

C-19 Week 19

Made it through week 19 of staying home!

If you lose kids in the house and it gets very quiet, it generally means they are secretly watching the ipad. Pretty cute to find them all snuggled up with each other.

Unsurprisingly, Natalie loves chocolate pudding! This girl loves pretty much anything chocolate. :)

Also, you can tell the days I am in charge of hairstyles pretty clearly, huh?

My dad has been bummed because he hasn’t been able to find his favorite drink anywhere these days. He even called the company to find out what was up (that’s my dad) and they said production was halted right now. But then Matt randomly grabbed my this at the gas station today, so I had to send it to my dad. He was just a teensy bit jealous.

Turns out I was jealous too - Matt drank it because I left it in the fridge overnight. :(

I read all these stories of animal shelters trying to raise money by offering to draw people’s pet for a small donation. The skill of the volunteer artists was not guaranteed and there were some hilarious “fails” on the drawings. One of my friends up in Vermont posted that a shelter up there was doing the same thing and she was going to volunteer to draw. So I jumped on the chance to get a ridiculously bad drawing.

Turns out I didn’t get a ridiculously bad drawing, I got the most amazing drawings of Natalie & Eliza that I could have imagined. Holy cow, I would love to be like half this talented…!

Also, I feel like I own them way more money!

For the past few years, I have been pretty prone to having ergonomic issues and the not ideal home office set-up finally caught up too me. (Possibly too much time on electronics isn’t helping either…) I was hurting enough that I booked a massage in the middle of a pandemic - side note, getting a massage with a face mask on is weird.

Matt sweetly found an adjustable option at Home Depot that he could modify for a new computer desk. It came with drawers that he removed and he moved the floor brace to the back so it wouldn’t be at my feet. While I am still trying to yoga my way back to not hurting, the desk at a proper height is definitely helping!

I’ve been bummed that Natalie has been tearing up books, but they have mostly been ones I didn’t mind too much. But today she ripped up my favorite kids book!

What did Pete the Cat do to you, Natalie?!?! I was going to try to salvage him, but there is a pretty sizable chunk of two pages that is just missing. Surely she didn’t eat it…?

Sigh… Good thing she knows how to be utterly adorable?

Neema left her with some perfect braids before leaving for the weekend. And she accessorized herself with some Hawaiian leis. Looks like she’s just about to go to a beach party, huh?

Speaking of accessories - look at her adorable new shoes! I picked them out online and she loves them more than I could have imagined. Unfortunately that means she refuses to take them off - ever. I have been sneaking into her room after she falls asleep to take them off so her feet get a little bit of breathing time.

The boys decided to turn their bunk bed into a spaceship - which apparently means almost everything went overboard. They used to make boats and rocket ships by throwing all of the couch cushions on the floor - guess they haven’t lost that building technique yet. ;)

Technically they were supposed to launch yesterday, but the launch window got delayed because the astronauts wanted to go swimming. But at 3pm today, there was lift-off! Matt surprised them by playing a countdown over the speakers and since I was next to Thomas, I did my best job to make the bunk bed shake like a rocket.

I think you can tell from his expression that it was worth the effort! ;)

Of course, they were deep into space when I asked why no one had on the astronaut costume. Lol - there was a mad scramble to go retrieve it from the closet. That’s better - it’s much safer to do space walks with the right equipment!

Also you may have noticed that Henry is only wearing one sock. I swear he’s only wearing one sock more frequently than 0 or 2. Every time I ask him why he just says “Because that’s what I do, I’m a crazy kid.”

Maybe I’ve told him he’s crazy a few too many times…? ;)

C-19 Week 18

Made it through week 18 of staying home!

Time for church at home! Sometimes all three of them manage to stay for at least the singing…

Also, Thomas put on his Christmas PJ’s last night and soon everyone wanted to match! Well the kids at least - either their rooms are cooler than mine or they don’t care if they are warm while sleeping.

Lost track of the little one and found her trying to replace the battery in the train engine. “I fix it!!” She couldn’t quite manage to get the screw out, but she at least had the tool in the right spot!

And look who came for a visit!!! She finally had enough time off of work that she didn’t feel like she would be risking bringing us any sneaky viruses. We were just as worried about getting her sick though, so Neema stayed home while she was here.

I honestly don’t know who was most excited to see who. She thought she heard a kid squealing in excitement when she was walking up to the door, but it was totally me! The boys have been so excited about her coming, but then spent a little too much time asking to play video games while she was here.

They did manage to get some fun games of Catan in while mommy was stuck working though!

I kept teasing Henry that his Nonni was going to pull his first loose tooth since my grandmom pulled my first one out. I had tied a string around it and was constantly wiggling that tooth to get it out - my grandmom just touched the string to look at it and the tooth fell out! I was so bent that she “pulled it”.

He was ready to avoid any attempts to have a string tied around it, but his Nonni is sneakier than that! She cut up an apple for a snack and the first bite took that loose tooth right out! Lol - I was so excited the trend continued!

We finally got a pool fence! Only took us a whole year… I feel better already though! Someone likes to try to dart from their water table towards the pool and stress me out.

It took some debating with the fence guy, but we came up with a layout that still enables us to get to the side yard, have plenty of room at the entrance to the pool and room for the kids to jump in from the side. Winning!

Natalie rediscovered the costumes! The girl certainly has her own sense of style…! :)