All the Fun! Part II

When I sorted through my pictures for Part I of this post, I must have been interrupted, because I was missing a few pictures that I knew I wanted to post.  When I went back through the folder, I found many pictures that I wanted to post.  So, since the previous post is all wrapped up and finished, I'm adding a second part that is separate, for no other reason than that I found more pictures I want to remember. = )

Alice's ID, well, all her pictures actually, had a typographical error.  I found it super funny, personally.  Honestly, I was tempted to leave it and just let her be Alice Crockov for the rest of her school days.  Ultimately, we got it corrected, but I still find it humorus. 

I always think that it's my last year with MOPS, but I think since it is my primary social time, I just need to accept that I'm going to be in it a long while.  Technically I'm in MOPS next, for the official record, since all of my children are older than Kindergarten.  I love the theme this year!  It's "We go together" and it is all about kindling friendships and maintaining old ones.  So far, I've loved all the media they've produced.

I had 15 minutes to run into Aldi and then go collect someone from somewhere.  This is what a trip for one single item looks like in rush. lol.

Speaking of Aldi, they had these laundry baskets, for about half of what I'd priced them out for, and so I did it.  I completed step of one improving my sanity.  Now, I just lay the clothes in the basket for each child as they come out of the dryer, and if they need something, they know where to get it.  If the basket gets full before they hang up their clothes, I start getting rid of things.  

Eventually I would like to have a rack put in, like the inspiration I saw many years ago, but I will need to find a new home for the coats and ski pants. So, it may be a few years.

I bought the ingredients to make baclava to bring to Steve & Natalie's housewarming party, but simply ran out of time.  So, I made it earlier this week and brought her some to try.

For spirit week, leading up to homecoming, Emily planned out each of her outfits.  We found a huge flannel at a yard sale, but were able to borrow a smaller one from Natalie, which looked much cuter.  She also picked out some cute boots to wear with the ensemble.  Alice decided on Tuesday to join in on the fun, by requesting a 'country' hairstyle.  I was very happy that she wanted to participate!

The next day was college day.  I have a pile of Texas Tech shirts that my mom has collected for me over the years, just for spirit weeks, but Alice ended up wearing one of the ones from my regular rotation (every week is spirit week for me!)  Emily found a cute flannel when we went back to the thrift store for a piece of her Halloween costume.  She was so excited about it, she didn't want to wait an entire year to wear it, so she wore it over her tech shirt the next day.

Autumn is in full swing.  While the days were fairly mild, we took care of many outdoor chores, including the first round of leaf raking!  

They are looking for sign-ups for Trunk or Treat at the little ones' school.  Now that my crew is older, I feel like I can finally be on the giving end!  

I searched the internet to see what cool things they had to pass out (instead of just candy.) While they have some nifty and interesting things, I can't help but think about how much junk is being put into the environment for the sake of novelty.   I wanted an alternative, and thought of something to bounce off of my children.

I asked the craftier of my children if they would help me paint "dead rocks" to pass out.  When they heartily agreed, we swung by our favorite landscaping place, and bought an entire bucket for $2.

We washed all of the rocks, then started to paint.

Grace worked really hard, but eventually started getting sillier and more creative.   So, we have several rocks that stray from the "dead rock" collection, but I think they'll find good homes just the same.

Even with 4 of us working (mostly) industriously, we did not finish decorating the pile.  So, on day 2 of painting, we managed to finish them all off.  Juliet and the rock were both dead by the end.

A few of the rocks that received extra paint:

Grace helped me take out my dead garden vines earlier in the week, so this will be my final garden update for the year.  My porch doesn't look quite as 'orange' as my imagination suggested, but I love my 3 pumpkins that grew!!!

Now I feel like all of our events have been covered.  We have many things coming up on the calendar, hopefully I can get them in the blog a little bit faster.

later days

April 1st, Directed to Stay Home, Day 19, School at Home Day 13

The expected high today was 47F.  It was mostly cloudy, but the sun peaked out a while.

I had a house full of hard workers this morning, and we had some intermittent zoom calls with friends and classes!

Emily and Abby got to chat at 10, and William's class also took place at the same time (oops...) Emily had the laptop and William used my phone.

For Grace's 11am zoom call with Zoey, she requested my phone, so that she could "show her our house." lol
William made a toilet paper measuring tape (in units of paperclip).  He had to measure several things, and seemed to really enjoy it!

Emily wanted to make some pretzel-marshmallow-chocolate chip spiders.  They were a favorite craft today!

Emily's teacher sent her a card with her address in it, and Emily has been so excited to send her some pictures.  She picked a bicycle theme, and once everyone drew theirs up, we got it ready to mail!


And today, oh today, we had a lice outbreak.  And I'm not even foolin.' = (

Some how, during quarantine, when he has literally had contact with no-one, William managed to catch lice.  ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The only guess we have is that the bar chair that I bought for Billy must have had some on it, and William just happened to put his head there?!  I sprayed it with lysol and let it sit outside before I brought it in, but didn't even consider lice. ugh.

So, today, everyone has been checked.  Billy ran to get some lice treatment and William has had round 1, all of our stuffed animals are in a secondary level of quarantine.

I'm working on washing every single piece of bedding that we have in the house, plus coats and anything else that might possibly contaminate someone.

Sarah was heading to the pharmacy in Lansing, so she also got us some and brought it by in a porch drop. = /  So, I've sprayed and sprayed some more.

And then, right before bed, I found 3 more lice in his hair.  So, it was back in the tub with him for another 10 minute session. = (

Combing through his hair this time though was very enjoyable, since the big girls brought down their regular bedtime books* and read to me! = )

Now I'm exhausted, the kids are kissed and asleep, the washer and dryer are still working hard, but I'm off to bed.

later days

*Alice is reading Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Emily is reading The Dragon That Ate Summer (and he's still hungry)

January 2nd

Today was a mostly sunny high of 46F with very little wind and no precipitation.

If all my days this year mimic today, I think I'll be okay.

My sister called me from a thrift shop (twice.) The first time to ask if I needed anything, the second time to let me know that she had collected the only thing I was after!

Alice got to enjoy almost the entire day with her friend Willow at her birthday celebration. Her mom kindly retrieved and returned Alice today, since I was homebound for my plumber window.  Alice came home full of sugar & exuberance.

I cleaned out some unused games and boxed up some German books to mail to a friend and knocked out 2 load of laundry.

Grace and Juliet decided to spend some of their Christmas cash on Minecraft (the Microsoft version) to play with the big kids.  I loathe the Microsoft Minecraft set up.  Once they are connected it is great, but the set up is brutal.  And to make matters worse, I bought and 'gifted' the wrong version - the xbox version.

So, I had to spend hours chatting to try to rectify my mistake, and also set up a Microsoft account, then an xbox account for each twin. Of course, setting everything to private and adding their siblings as friends and adding back up x2 just takes forever. Once the accounts were set up, I 'gifted' them the game, because we do not put any of our credit card info or sign ins on the kids' machines.

Since Alice was gallivanting, I took the opportunity to play with Emily and the twins for a little while.

The most exciting thing that happened today, by far, was that the plumber came to install our new faucet! The spray handle of our old one had some sort of failure inside, and was spraying water down into the cabinet. Billy and I both tried to see if we could replace it ourselves, but the people who redid the kitchen did a few questionable things. The repair actually required him to break out a power tool and saw off the old apparatus. Then he had to scrape off some sort of epoxy or sealant that they had used on the base. It was enough work to merit the price.

Thankfully, we were able to leave the handle pulled out and dangling*. I am sooooo happy to have a fully functioning faucet again. I do keep leaving the sprayer pulled out though. = )

Alice came back home and was quick to take over her computer and play Minecraft with her siblings, but it was time for me to start on dinner a-n-y-h-o-w.  

I made a macaroni & ham casserole with some leftovers from yesterday.  Not my favorite, but very few complaints.

And when Billy got home he got to start the fight with William's PC that has some sort of virus that kept kicking him off the internet and out of applications.   He's trying to avoid formatting, but it's not looking good. = /

Hoping to wind down the break tomorrow with a less exciting (and hopefully less frustrating) day.

later days

*The wait was because we had something leaking in the basement.Billy went down a few weeks ago and sealed off the water filter connectors in the basement, so I was waiting to make sure the basement dried out and I didn't need him for a double purpose before scheduling. 

Daily Entry

How awesome would it be if I documented every day instead of once every couple of weeks, or once a month?  Well, today I'm updating the blog again, even though I just posted some entries yesterday. It's a little entry, but I think lots of little entries are more desirable than one big post.

So, today, we made Texas shaped blueberry muffins.  They came out better than I expected (I pictured them sticking in the mold and coming out in pieces) but were too much work for the return. = )

Over the weekend, Grace got sick.  She woke up retching, and soiled all of the sheets & blankets she was using.  I had to wash them in shifts, on sanitize, and the comforter pictured was thrown in with a secondary blanket we pulled from the closet.  This secondary blanket is green, and despite being purchased used, managed to tint everything in the wash green. = 0

So, laundry fail on my part, and now I want Andes mints each time I see it. lol.

Emily's VIP day is coming up the first week of March, so we took the time to make her poster.  She picked out close to 50 pictures.  We compromised, and she selected 9 large ones, and the rest I printed 4 per page.

I tried to find Alice's from last year, and couldn't find it in the blog or on facebook.  It's not a great picture of her, so maybe I skipped out on posting it.  But I had to sow the personality difference of my two older girls.  

I'm pretty sure I spent more time printing Alice's pictures than she spent assembling her project. Emily spent at least an hour choosing, prioritizing, counting and displaying. = )

It was a nice day, even though I spent time I had allotted for one of my 'to-do' list items filling out surprise paperwork and paying unexpected bills. = (

later days

Everything Else

My final post of the day, all of the other pictures from my phone that didn't fit anywhere else. = )

The Sam's club near us closed down.  I went back a handful of times to see the stages of it closing, and it was sad, and crazy, and sad.

 

If I already posted about this in the blog (I don't think I did) it is really a very upsetting event for my weekly schedule.  Having to go clear to the other side of town to do my major shopping every week is not a possibility, so I'm having to rework all of my tendencies, in the middle of winter. = /

The kids really like the giant icicles.

Alice's friend Willow came to spend the night.  Everyone really enjoyed having her here. = )

There was a lot of dressing up the entire time!

The snow went away for just a few days, and it was a welcome change for my little ones to go out an play, even though it was still cold!

The twins write with opposite hands. G-J

But they make me feel very loved. G-J

The puppy was getting a makeover from the twins. = ) J-G

Emily went on a field trip to the hospital.  She thought it was pretty fun. = )

Alice did chores for me and Aunt Rocky, so that she could buy her new prized possession.

William looks so grown up these days!  Kindergarten round up is next month, and I can see him more and more as a kindergartner! = 0

There are giant snow piles in every parking lot.  This is not something they ever show in the Hollywood version of winter, so it is still surprising to me.  Understandable, and logical, but surprising.

Speaking of which, it's probably why giant stores have so much extra parking in them, it's occupied by snow piles in the north.  Oh, and all those road signs that say "pass with care" and "turn lane ends" are actually probably because you can't see the stripes on the road during this time of year here.  FYI.

My very busy Juliet:

I was super proud of William.  I helped him put 100 dots on the poster, and tape on the title, but he drew all the W's without fighting me once!  He loved the stickers too. = )

The instructions for the poster were not very clear, in fact, they were just a single line on the reminder for the 100 day food item. So, when we brought William's a day early, the other moms were a bit panicked.  I figured that I'd just overlooked the instructions in the weekly newsletter, but apparently that one line was the notice.  It all worked out though, everyone had their 100 day things the next day. = )  This time of year is so crazy for the teachers, with 100 day celebrations, valentines, count day, parent teacher conferences, and starting to look ahead to next year!

There are nights Alice is Johnny on the spot with her homework, and nights that she would rather pout against the door than to take care of it.  This was one of those times.

Avia bought Juliet a new nightgown, so she was waiting by the washer for me to clean it for her.

Did I mention that it snowed?

later days

What our snow days really look like

We had 2 snow days last week, one on Monday and one on Friday.  The Monday one is always tough, because it makes the week feel all out of order.  The Friday one was super welcomed though.  It would have been even better had Billy been able to stay home with us!

Obviously, snow:

Crockpot meals:

Baked goods:

Board games:

And lots and lots of laundry.

later days