31st May, 79th Day of Quarantine

The high today was a brutally cold 64F. 

I finished the masks for my friend, ran some copies, printed some pages, wrote some letters.

The kids played outside to help with bedtime.

I read some of my book, and also read how to use the German with Miss Mason and Francois.  So, I'm excited about the foreign language aspect of the fall now too. = )

For dinner I made stew in the slow cooker.  It was well received.

Everything is ready for tomorrow morning, and Sarah and I have an appointment at a different thrift shop at 10am.

Tomorrow marks the final week of instruction for my littles ones, and we are all ready for summer break!

And, after 5 months of daily updates, this will be my final intentional daily entry.  I'll continue to log the temperature and daily dinner choices, but I'll be switching to a weekly format for the rest of the year.

later days

30th May, 78th Day of Quarantine

The expected high today is 65F.  It was chilly inside our house this morning with all the windows left open overnight.

After putting in times for the kids summer reading logs, I found myself jealous of all the time they are forced get to read every week, so I spent my day reading Book 1 of the Witcher series.

We watched the first rocket launch from American soil in William and the twins' lifetimes!  Alice and Emily don't remember the last time (in 2011) so they were really excited to see history being made!

Billy ventured out and bought us Wendy's for dinner.

We (except Billy & Alice) watched Finding Dory.  Somehow I'd not seen that one, but now I have!  I spilled water behind the dresser, so Billy had to pull it out (for the first time since we moved in.) Naturally I cleaned everything out, in addition to the ice water mess.

One of my friends requested some masks for her daughter's first communion, so as my final evening activity I cut the fabric for all the masks, and finished her daughter's (just in case something crazy happens, I figure hers is the most important should I fail to finish tomorrow.)

I got in a few project pieces to help organize our supplies for the fall, but that will be a project for another day.  (The timeline is a little longer than the week window I have for the masks.) ; )

A good day, but I'm pretty tired considering I was far less productive than yesterday.

later days

April 11th, 29th Day of Quarantine, 9th Day of Spring Break

The expected high today was 57F.  It was sunny, and looked really warm outside, but it was a lie.

At Sarah's request I made 3 more masks for her to send out to her friends, and threw in a fourth one, just to keep it even.

The twins were super sweet and unloaded the dishwasher for me this morning!  I cooked up some bacon, and washed Easter dresses, in between steps on the masks.  I finished some time after noon, and got them all ready to ship out.

And, today was the day we cut Billy and William's hair.  It was tolerable to be outside, but not warm by any means.  William's looks pretty good, Billy's shows that I've never taken a cosmetology class, but it will do.

Grace took a picture.  = )

Billy's hair does not look professional, but it doesn't look awful.

After a dinner of tortellini, Billy and I had our fourth wine date!

We then stayed up way past our bedtime to rewatch episode one of the Witcher series (since the filming of, well, everything is currently on hold.)

It was a productive, busy, happy Saturday, at home.

later days

January 9th

Today was cold and brutally windy. Supposedly we hit a high of 45F, but the wind was so biting I'm inclined to disbelief. The sun came out a few times, and there was also a few drops of precipitation.

Before heading to MOPS this morning, I went through the carwash (even though Wednesdays are their $5 day, and today was $7) because my car was very dirty from the salt and snow on Wednesday. = (

MOPS was lovely.  Our table brought food, so I made a crock-pot taco soup, that I cooked overnight. My kitchen smelled so when I woke up!

We were invited to dress up and we watched videos, heard inspirational New Year ideas.  I broke out my "2020 dress" that I bought for this summer.

One of our mentor moms brought bags and bags of clothes for us to peruse.  I grabbed several pair of pants for Emily, a Unicorn nightgown, a skirt for me, and one pair of pants for William.

Our activity was to write cards that would challenge us to "have more fun!"  This is the one I wrote up.

The one that I received said "pretend our house is a restaurant and be the waitress and serve my kids."  I feel like I do this on a regular basis, but I think I can still make it fun.  My idea right now is to have a cereal and ice cream theme, but I'm still working on it.

We toasted the new year with sparkling grape juice in very fancy cups.  = )  Also, I managed to get a trivia question correct and then won the raffle for an amazon gift card!  I felt so special.  <3

We were also on clean-up, so I rushed to help as much as I could.  But I had to dash out the door at 11:30, because I was subbing for Emily's class.  Between absent students and some students being assigned to "help" other teachers, I was only responsible for about 15 students!

When we came home I was carrying the twins' backpacks, as usual, but I also had all my things from the morning, since I didn't have a chance to run home.  Billy's game had a sound byte that made me laugh when I hear it, so I have since adopted it: "My hands are full, your items are on the ground!"  I said this to my children in jest.  Then, when I went to dig out my keys, I dropped my cup on the ground.  Apparently I had hurt Juliet's feelings, because her response was: "now your item is on the ground."  I laughed so hard, then messaged Billy.

During William's piano practice, I was sitting on the sofa, while Grace was playing with one of my German dictionaries.  She opened it to the very back paged, and asked me what it said.  When I was looking at the weights & measurements, I was surprised to see that an American pint and a British pint are different volumes?!  I confirmed with google, then sent it to Billy, and apparently this was also news to him.  hmmmm.*

For dinner we had tortellini alfredo (well, my family did, I couldn't' help but have another portion of my taco soup.)

later days

*my first ever meme creation.

Witcher Watching Party

Billy really enjoyed playing the Witcher 3 video game.  He'd tell me about it, and spent ample time researching stats when he'd play it.  So, when Netflix announced that they were creating a video version, he was excited.  He tried hard not to be, in case it failed to meet his expectations, but the closer it got, the more he talked about it.

So, I decided to throw him a Witcher watching party.  I invited Amber and Will (and their crew) and set to work on making it as close to that world as I could.

I think I went to a record number of thrift shops collecting steins and dishes.  One of my favorite finds were some aged wooden trays and some ceramic goblets.  I also snagged an ice bucket that was meant to mimic wood, and I put our "water from the well" in it.

My favorite project was the potions.  I stopped at a liquor store (at like 9 in the morning because they don't have blue laws in Michigan) and asked for the prettiest little bottles they had.  This is what the cashier and I came up with. = )

I took a before picture, in case someone actually wanted to drink one.

It took me about an hour to get off the labels, and once they were off I made my own.  Thankfully there are databases dedicated to the video games, so finding the names of potions was not too tough.  Fisstech will 'knock the user out immediately' so that label went on the tequila. = )

I also made some plum jam from plums!

Sadly, the pancakes that were supposed to have the jam needed to be cooked in my oven, which went out the day before I needed it.  = (  I was so sad.  So, I didn't make the pancakes, and I think I was the only one who tried the jam.  It was very flavorful, but not very sweet.  According to one recipe that I read (when I was trying to decide whether or not to skin them) I needed to pick ones that were a little riper than what I chose.

On the day of I dropped by Panera for some full loaves of bread, and then headed to our favorite BBQ place for a growler of ale.  Billy usually likes the Brown Ales, so that's what I picked.

One of the recipes was "Elf and Onion" soup.  They recommended beef in the absence of elf meat, so that's what I threw in.  But to help with aesthetics bought some decorative ears to toss in.

At our MOPS meeting last week, we made some signs out of stained wood and paint.  Mine reads "Bill of Fare" in Lithuanian.

Billy was very surprised, and I loved having Amber and Will over while we watched a brand new show the night it came out!

later days