It was a weekend filled with family time capped off with a birthday celebration for my mom (including the family Zoom bingo game pictured above). Nothing makes you feel more appreciative for the people in your life than the last year. Am I right? I’m just so happy to be back celebrating together again.
Look what showed up in our garden box! Robbe spotted the tulips poking through and was so excited. I am, too. It might actually be spring!
The boys joined forces and drew this sweet family portrait yesterday. My head is a bit wider than I would have envisioned, but I’d say everything else is pretty spot-on.
We’re in a bit of a predicament with our van right now. We either foot the bill for a sizable repair or trade in. Awesome. Just awesome. Bright side? The boys got to take their first test drive today. That’s something.
We’re waiting for some final number crunching and then it’s decision time. Adulting is hard.
It’s been a bizarre extended weekend for us. Chris has been off work since Wednesday (because we were supposed to be in Mexico). We had lake house plans and plans to visit his family (my mother in law got her second vaccine!). I’m not going to go into details but the weekend turned out very different than we expected and much more stressful. Tonight, I’m trying to feel extra thankful for my health and am hoping things look sunnier in the morning.
Unrelated to any of the crazy weekend, here’s this adorable photo of Chris and Robbe. Enjoy. :)
My posts have been a bit sporadic lately as I inched toward the day 2100 team update. These posts always take so much more thought and time than my normal ones. I can’t believe I’ve done 21 of these updates over the years (every 100 days for those keeping track).
Without further ado…
FAVORITES: Fostering cats (it's pretty much the best thing ever), sitting in the sunshine, downtime at the lake house, reading (I just finished The Immortalists...it was excellent), clean bathrooms (not cleaning bathrooms, for the record), watching (and feeling!) spring arrive
POST-COVID TO-DO: Catch up with friends. Texting and calling just doesn't cut it sometimes, you know?
CURRENT CHALLENGE: Figuring what our life looks like this summer. Somehow balancing lake time, summer school, summer sports (baseball + swimming!), travel (fingers crossed!), etc. It's a lot.
FAVORITES: Winter ending, talking video games with the boys, bringing the mail in (he's always so on top of it), working from home (it doesn't happen very often, but it's grown on him), puzzling, planning for lake house water activities
POST-COVID TO-DO: Travel. We're all done with Wisconsin.
CURRENT CHALLENGE: Loading and unloading the car after weekend trips to the lake. How can we possibly need to schlep all that stuff back and forth constantly?
AGE: Almost 9
FAVORITES: apples, chocolate chip pancakes, video games, movies (pretty much anything on a screen), re-reading books, candy (Bottlecaps, in particular), Legos (you knew that one was coming), practicing skateboarding, reading the newspaper comics
POST-COVID TO-DO: A two-night slumber party with his best friend, Jack.
CURRENT CHALLENGE: Preparing for four-days of school again (starting April 3). I'm pretty sure he'll have less school work than he does now, though. Homeschool can be tough.
AGE: Freshly 7
FAVORITES: french toast, yogurt and berry parfaits, dreaming about gardening this spring/summer, playing Minecraft, being outside, switching best friends every couple of weeks, any sweets (suckers, in particular), graphic novels, Legos (always), sending emails to his friends
POST-COVID TO-DO: Playdates with friends. Lots of playdates.
CURRENT CHALLENGE: Waiting for warm weather. Robbe was promised an outdoor playdate with a friend as soon as we can do it outside. He asks about it almost daily.
We got to see these two beautiful young women perform their senior vocal recital tonight. We’ve missed so much of Skylar’s (on the left) junior and senior year activities that we were overjoyed to attend this one. About 15 people (invite-only!) filled the school’s auditorium so we felt totally safe and comfortable.
It was a lovely showcase of their talents and the boys even managed to stay focused. You know it was good, then!
After a weekend of sunshine and spring-like temperatures, more snow arrived today. Based on the forecast, the snow will be short-lived so I’m handling it ok. The boys even played outside for over an hour. The first and [hopefully] last snows always make for the best playing.
The boys have been working overtime on learning piano pieces for the WMTA State Piano Competition. I think it’s safe to say that if we knew how many [unintentional] curveballs this competition would throw at us, we probably wouldn’t have signed up. It was a lot (A LOT) of work for them (and me). But they did it. They each performed three memorized pieces and took a written theory test (proctored by me, of course). In a normal year, the boys would play these pieces and take the test in person at the local university, but this year is no normal year (obviously). Instead, we recorded the six pieces and had to upload everything to a website for judging.
Their hard work absolutely paid off. I’m proud of these tiny humans and all that they’ve gone through to put these pieces together. We’ll hear how they did officially in a couple of weeks, but, you know what? I could honestly care less. I’m just so happy to be done with this whole thing.
As an upside, because the competition was virtual, you can listen to the video recordings. Settle in…this can be your culture for the day.
If the embedded videos aren’t working, you can use these links:
We found out last week that Chase will be going back to school four days a week starting in April. I’m happy he’ll get back to a more “normal” existence, but I am going to miss our solo time. I think he’d tell you the same thing, actually.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: one of the best unexpected side effects of Covid is the quality, solo time with this guy.
Somehow these two have turned into big kids without me even realizing it.
After talking about it for months, we finally did it. We rented out a movie theater downtown so that the boys could play video games on the big screen. Awesome, right? It’s Covid, what else can you do to spark birthday joy? Thankfully, we’ve got family who enjoys video game outings as much as us. Eight people in an entire theater is pretty fantastic—only during Covid. This will definitely be a birthday to remember.
That’s the big one helping the little one tie his shoe (apparently we need a refresher course after living in boots the last five months). I didn’t even have to ask him to do it. All together now: “awwww.”
Just working on our sweet skateboarding skills over here. They’re getting pretty good. I hope the interest lasts. We definitely need more reasons to be outside as the weather warms up.
It was *kind of* a big day around here. The little one is already 7. And somehow, even though we’ve had practically zero days off of school this year that weren’t holidays or virtual learning, today was a legit day off. We made the most of it, as you might imagine.
Here’s what a day of celebrating looks like for our new 7 year old:
A morning tv show (that never happens!)
Poppyseed pancakes for breakfast
Mid-morning present-opening involving a sweet new Lego set and a skateboard
Lego building (no time to waste)
French toast and berries for lunch
Video game virtual hangout with one of his friends from school
A walk in the sunshine to give the new skateboard a whirl (both boys did great!)
A trip to a thrift store for some treasure-hunting. I think it’s been exactly a year since Robbe was last there. And it was a good hunt with the bonus of grandma coming along!
Another quick gift opening to reveal marshmallow shooters. That kept everyone occupied until dinner, obviously.
Mini pizzas for dinner
A final gift opening with a few family FaceTime calls
Brownie sundaes for dessert
A family marshmallow shooter bedtime battle (mom + dad vs. Chase + Robbe). Epic.
It was a really good day. Probably the best it could have been under the circumstances. Our little guy felt very loved and spoiled all day long. What more could a mom ask for?
This is what all parents do on birthday eves, right? Right?!? Just remember…the things you do one year turn into a tradition. Haha.
The boys love coming down on their birthday morning to see doorway streamers and their photo collage and their birthday mantle. Also, a stack of presents.
I’ll let you in on a secret: I love it, too. My babies!
Great news! Potato and Gravy got adopted today. It was another sad set of goodbyes, but now we know that we’ve had two great experiences in a row and are just excited about the next friend (or friends) that will come along. Potato and Gravy were really so much fun to have around—playful, snuggly, curious, crazy. It’s going to be much calmer around here now. I hope the new family is ready for all the excitement.
After a week of exhausting back and forths with two different car service shops (I’m talking 20 phone calls, no joke), we finally have the van back. Long story short, we’re hoping Honda is going to cover a big fix that’s going to need to be done in the next year so we’re trying to get everything together to make a solid case for the fix.
Talk about a lesson in appreciating your privilege. Turns out life is much harder with just one car. Not to mention, this little van hiccup has consumed SO MUCH TIME over the last week. I’m thankful to have the flexibility to be able to manage all the running and phone calls and emails, but what about folks that can’t?
I’ve just never appreciated this minivan more.
Robbe decided he’d rather write about me than his actual writing assignment for remote learning today. I don’t think it had anything to do with him trying to make up for the fact that he fought me on every assignment and was feeling a little guilty. Either way, I’ll take it.
You read the subject right. Chris and I managed a kid-free weekend thanks to my parents (and the Covid vaccine). Man, it’s been awhile. We tried to come up with something really epic to do, but it turns out it’s still Covid and none of the options we brainstormed were quite right. We stayed home instead and did a day trip to La Crosse. It wasn’t terribly fancy (the city or the outing as a whole), but it was lovely. And quiet. It turns out the boys fill a lot of the silence in our house.
We really appreciated the solo time and I know the boys were thrilled to be at grandma’s and grandpa’s for their first sleepover in over year. Thanks again, mom and dad!
small city | BIG DAYS
home | about | meet the team | work with me | contact
