8 weeks in

Hard to believe it's been 8 weeks since school was cancelled and all this craziness began. We've been doing more the same these last couple weeks. My to-do list is getting very short! I haven't pressure-washed the porch yet. That's the last thing on my list, for now. I did finally break down and clean all the blinds and windows, and I weeded the yard again this morning.

We've been playing games, and I've been listening to books and doing puzzles. Every Sunday night Greg and I have been playing games with friends over Zoom. It's been a great time to connect with our friends and laugh a lot. It's how we ended up with this giant roll of TP from the Pates, a joke from one of our Zoom game sessions. One evening we played a bunch of outdoor games with the Wilsons at their place--corn hole, basketball, jump rope, giant Jenga, shooting, horseshoe, and trampoline. Greg even made a scorecard. Jen was the ultimate winner, with Kari taking 2nd place. 

I put together my first iMovie of all our "virtual church" times so far at home. The kids are better at this stuff than I am. This last week Greg played bass with the worship team at the church office, and when Grant saw Greg on our TV livestream, he said, "Daddy is famous!" 
I decided to clean the oven last week and ended up dismantling the entire oven door, trying to get to the glass inside to clean it. Greg came down for lunch and found me struggling to figure out how to put it back together. :-) I didn't start with a plan and had screws all over the place. He helped me, and we figured it out together, with the help of YouTube, of course. We're all so amazed that we can see through the oven door now. Cleaning can be so satisfying!

It was an end of an era here last week when we passed our doll house, doll furniture, and Barbies along to Ellery. Aubrey, Kate, and Grant put all the right clothes, shoes, and accessories on the right dolls and got it all ready for her. Bye-bye dollhouse, hello more space in the bonus room.

Joel was saying one night that he never got to wear his "band" pants (black dress pants) that we bought back in December because of his broken ankle and cast in the winter and because of coronavirus this spring. Turns out, they wouldn't have worked this spring anyway. He couldn't sit down. He had us laughing pretty hard with his "tight pants" singing and dancing. "My tight pants are the tightest in all the land!"

The most exciting thing that's happened recently was that Aubrey got her braces off! She was supposed to get them off in April, but coronavirus made that impossible. She was one of the very first to get her appointment rescheduled on May 1. We had to call when we pulled into the parking lot, and she went in alone. I had to wait outside out in the car. We got Jamba to celebrate afterwards and had caramel apples that afternoon. She's a happy girl.

The kids started making a Rube Goldberg machine one Sunday, just for fun, not for an assignment or anything. They worked on it all afternoon, and it grew and grew, eventually making its way down the stairs and into the front room where a ball was supposed to be launched into a bowl. They worked on it for hours without a full successful run. By Wednesday morning, I needed it to be done (wanted my house cleaned up again), so I stepped in to help. I even skipped my webinar class that afternoon to work on it with Joel. He was determined to make it work. It was unbelievable how many times we set that thing up. I spent hours on it with him, setting it up over and over again, tweaking one part, only to discover another failure point. I became the Jenga/domino engineer and got that part dialed in. Finally, when we were about to give up around 4pm, we had a successful run! We jumped for joy, yelling and screaming with relief. And then we cleaned it all up. :-)

silly cat

Greg planned a date night in for us one night last weekend. He order gnocchi from Boccelli's, and we had dinner up in the bonus room and watched a show while the kids made nuggets and watched shows downstairs. It was great!

Our vanilla wafer pudding trifle dessert one night. We're still doing a lot of baking and cooking.

The girls did some more acrylics painting, and I finally did the oil painting I've been wanting to try. I followed Miss Mustard Seed's landscape tutorial and got lost in my painting for a solid 3 hours. It was so fun! I learned a ton and made a big mess, but I like how it turned out. I'm going to frame it!

I bought a case of Kirkland toilet paper eight weeks ago, one week before all the coronavirus craziness started and it became scarce. Just this week, we reached the TP numbers that start making me nervous, and I was forced to buy a pack at Fred Meyer. Now I know that our family of six, three males and three females, goes through one case of Costco toilet paper in a little over 8 weeks when we’re all home. Helpful information, don’t you think? Didn’t know that before! 

We've still been going on daily walks. Sometimes Greg goes on his own at lunch, but most of the time I join him. This week we've been going on a walk after dinner, too. The weather has been amazing. We've been blessed with beautiful spring weather this year--one of God's gifts during this strange time we're in.

 
This was on Kari's stories on Instagram--beautiful sky at sunset.