Day 2112 | Chase Turns Nine!

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This guy turned nine today. 9. I became a mom nine years ago today. Whoa.

We had a really lovely day of celebrating. Here are the highlights:

  • Remote learning in the morning (good thing we’re quick about school).

  • A stop for a triple chocolate muffin as a special bday sweet treat.

  • Kickball and four square in the backyard/driveway

  • Family presents before lunch

  • Playdate with his bestie

  • Lego-building time

  • Dinner with grandma, grandpa, and Uncle Brian

  • More presents from extended family

  • Brownies with chocolate ice cream for the official bday treat

  • A quick magic show (utilizing a bday gift) before bed

Not bad, right? We’ll do another little celebration on Saturday and then birthday season is officially over at our house. Such a fun [but relatively exhausting] few months.

Day 2109 | Lake Life

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We busted out of the big city for a change of scenery at the lake. A bit of fishing, lots of bird-watching, quality time outside. It was pretty great—and that’s before the temperatures go up 15 degrees tomorrow! We’re so grateful to my parents for sharing this escape from reality with us. After a [almost too] quiet spring break at home, we needed this.

Day 2108 | Library Walk

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The walk to the library is one of my favorite excursions from our house. It’s far enough that it feels like you’re actually doing something, but close enough that it doesn’t feel overwhelming (especially for the boys). In just two weeks, the downtown library will relocate while the building undergoes a 14-month renovation. I’m just crushed about it.

I can’t adequately express how much the library means to us. In a normal circumstance, we’d go twice a month (at least), collect more books than we could carry, and spend the rest of the day reading and reading and reading. Throughout Covid, we’ve become even more appreciative of what a gift the library is. We had to go without for several months and lately we’ve only been allowed to request books for pick up (no browsing). With two boys who love to read, we go through a lot of books, and the library (and staff) is a total gift. A total gift.

Day 2106 | New Van Day

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Out with the old (top photo) and in with the new (bottom photos)! We weren’t expecting to buy a new car this year, but things don’t always go as planned. I will say, though, new cars are really nice. Like, really nice. It might not have been planned, but it sure is exciting. There are lots of new bells and whistles to learn about and we even have heated seats now! That’s about as exciting as it gets for new cars in Wisconsin.

p.s. The boys sat in the car in the driveway for that photo. They normally ride in boosters but the car seats weren’t installed yet so we’ll go for our first official ride with them tomorrow. I just didn’t want you to worry. :)

Day 2101 | Whirlwind

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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. :)

Day 2100 | 2100!

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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…

SARA

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.

CHRIS

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?

CHASE

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.

ROBBE

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.

Looking back at 2100 posts

Day 2099 | A Senior Recital

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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!

Day 2097 | Piano Overload

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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:

Day 2096 | Solo Time

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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.

Day 2094 | Birthday Video-Gaming

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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.