My neighbor texted to say that her kids wanted to hide some eggs for Owen and Katie. They had a blast hunting for them and discovering their spoils!
Surprise egg hunt!
Author Archives: Jen
It’s 5:00 Friday!
I finally got through my inventory day which is always a nightmare (I swear I keep good track of everything, but…) so this is my reward. It’s my very last bottle of my favorite Strawberry Lime.
My first time out shopping in 18 days.
I was really struggling about if I should go out shopping or not. One part of me thought it’s stupid to worry—we’re healthy. Even if we were unlucky and did get it, we’d likely be okay. But the other party of me says why chance it? We can live without 100% of the things on my Sam’s Club list. But if I’m going out for a “must” (I guess milk is a must since the kids eat so much cereal) why not get the other stuff as long as I’m there? It’s one less trip we’ll have to make in the future.
I’m in my little bubble—I haven’t been out in 18 days, Tom 13 (minus a drive by pickup). I have stayed off media for the most part. I’m really more concerned with other people. Like I wonder how stores are? Busy? Lines? People being awful or good? Like I wouldn’t mind going as much if I can walk in and walk out. If I have to stand in line with 100 people who are not social distancing I’m gonna lose it.
I went back and forth discussing with Anna—and eventually decided that I was making myself more crazy worrying about it than if I just went out and did it. So off I went to Sam’s. This is what it looked like.
They were only letting in 100 customers at a time. It took me 20 minutes to get inside the store. I wasn’t rushed but I did want to get in and out as quickly as possible. People kept their distance for the most part. I ended up getting more things than I planned just because I could. I didn’t check on toilet paper because we didn’t need it, but they were entirely out of pasta (all kinds) and spaghetti sauce (I normally don’t buy jarred sauce but Owen uses it for his instant pot dinner).
I’m glad I went but now our clock is reset at zero days.
On the positive side? I picked up some new margaritas since I’m all out of my old favorites that I stocked up on last year. Fingers crossed they’re okay.
Katie’s love notes for the animals.
I think her sticky note habit is getting out of control. We found these stuck to the walls by their food dishes.
Playing with the Portal
We got a Facebook Portal and are LOVING IT. I can easily conference call with friends for work. And our good friends got one, too, so we call to chat all the time and it’s awesome. And it’s tech so of course the kids love it, too.
Neighbor jam session!
Owen decided to play his sax on the front porch. There was no one out to listen to him but he didn’t care.
The next thing I know I hear an electric guitar…and look out to see this. I was at once happy (that they figured out how to play together safety) and sad (that they had to).
They played for probably two hours. Katie was sitting with a sign asking for donations to buy sanitizer for people who don’t have any. (So later we had a talk about that being a wonderful idea but how could we make it better. We landed on donating to the school’s food drive.)
Death by 1000 cuts…
I am so tried of every single little issue that I have to take care of or referee. Poor Tom gets an earful every time he ventures up for a bathroom or coffee break.
- Katie’s videos don’t have sound on the desktop
- Owen can’t login to his google meet
- such and such google doc is missing
- Katie can’t figure out 9+4 even though she knows how
- Owen makes so much noise while he works (feet tapping, humming, singing, gum chewing, etc.) and it drives me and Katie crazy (which then causes them to argue)
- they are both watching videos on their separate devices and can’t hear because they’re loud so we have to hunt down headphones
- a friend calls their device to chat so they both jump up (its now muted)
- I get asked all morning long if it’s time to watch science videos (we do have a schedule for this reason)
- the doorbell rings and they both jump up to answer it
- Katie’s website doesn’t have sound again
- if one is watching a video the other one migrates over
- Schoology is down then up then down then up
- I have to keep track of emails and texts and websites and assignments
- and on and on and on while also trying to do my job…and I can’t seem to get anything done.
I know it’s just the start and we’ll get into a rhythm, but for now, it’s exhausting. I don’t know how parents with more kids or a full-time job are doing if I’m this much of a stressball.
And then there are fails…
So I was all excited to do another eye look after my success yesterday… Hahahahahahaha. What a fail. At least the ladies in my group got a kick out of the live demo!!
One of these things is not like the other. I think it’s my hair. Right? If my hair was down it would look better. And lipstick. I need lipstick.
More bedtime notes from Katie
For me
For Tom (he had issues with someone at work today)
What diner memories do you have?
A friend recently talked about her love of classic diners and if you’re like me, as soon as you hear those words you instantly think of one from your childhood or young adulthood. Mine was
Mine was Dawson’s.
It was on the main drag of our tiny town. I could walk there from my mom’s office or the middle school. It had the long counter with spinning stools that ran almost the entire length of the building plus it had about 8 booths. One side was the eating and the other side was the shopping. I think it was a five and dime or maybe a drugstore? That part is hazy but I for sure remember looking at comic books and candy and getting Push Ups in the summer.
I also remember having a real fountain Cherry Coke there before Cherry Coke was a real thing (then vanilla at a later date). They had things like a grilled cheese or egg salad sandwich for $2.30 and even back then I knew that was cheap. And if you ordered a shake you’d get the whole silver cup with the extra in it—as a kid that was THE SHIZ.
That was a loooong time ago and they’ve since changed names slightly and removed the five and dime part of it (and added more seating and a museum) and I’m realizing it’s been too long since I’ve been there and our kids have never been so this summer–hopefully this summer if we can travel–that’s where we’re going. I can already taste it.
I don’t do April fool’s often…
But I did get the kids with this today! (I also got their friends, since they were on a video call with them. But the friends called me out within a minute or so.
HOLY SHITBALLS!! Look what I did today!
Since there is no chance of needing to go into public and worrying that my eyeshadow was absolutely horrendous, I just totally winged it…and it turned out pretty damn good! (It’s far from perfect, of course, but I’m proud of myself for going outside my box.)
When I walked downstairs, Owen saw me and his eyes got really wide and said “Wow mom. You look exotic!” Tom even said he really liked it!!
The funny thing is that it felt absolutely INSANE while I was doing it—and it even looked a little crazy in person—but it appeared mostly normal in pics?! So I could probably get away with this on a more regular basis!!
I took probably 100 pics trying to get something decent so here are some of the best…and funniest. There was also a lipcolor change mid-day.
It’s my 3rd SeneVersary party month!
🎉💚3️⃣ If y’all like parties with a side of freebies, games, and prizes…you might want to come check out my group this month where I’m celebrating three years of my SAHM side hustle. At the very least it will be a nice diversion from everything 🦠.
As a bonus, I’ll start all new people off with 50 bonus entries!! 🙌🏻🙌🏻
I got my own Katie love note tonight!
After Katie’s note to Tom last night, I teased her that I felt she wanted me to have a bad day…look what I found on my phone charger tonight. 🥰🥰🥰
I’m a rising star!
I rarely get recognized for any of my work accomplishments since I have no true working upline (and my “official” upline leader is the CEO of our company due to people dropping off… which sounds cool but is effectively useless)… I have been taken under the wing of an amazing leader, but I’m not in her back office (since I fall outside her dominion) but she still tries to keep tabs on me. Soooo she posted this in her 8000-member group today.
A calculator is(n’t) a game.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Owen told me this is how he gets around using (limited) screentime game minutes—he makes his own game on the calculator since those are free minutes. He just does +1 or +.5 and then just hits = over and over and over and over (seen here in a brief snippet).
REALLY?! You’re that desperate to look at a damn screen?! 臘♀️路♀️藍 Creative for sure but damn annoying as well. This is what I have to fight on a daily basis. This is why I take technology away. This is why I hate them having to use it every day for everything.
It’s official. Distance learning is going to break me.
I’ve created a pretty good schedule—learning in the morning (broken up into subject blocks) with all afternoon for creative play and outside time. With time planned to check media and chat with friends. And I do know that the schedule isn’t hard and fast so I’m trying to be lenient.
But I just can’t deal with Katie arguing that 11-3=2 (she knows better, she’s just really stubborn and refuses to admit she’s wrong) and that you can make the word CAME from CAMPING. She’s arguing that her workbook isn’t school (no, technically it’s not from school but it IS schoolwork). And she’s lost her laminated login/password sheet which we obviously need…and she’s “looking” for it by sitting at the computer and staring at the monitor… Until I tell her to keep looking until she finds it…and 2 minutes later she’s doing something else. 😒
Owen is better overall…but once he got online for his Google class meeting, all was lost. I let him finish his blocked time and let him know he needed to wrap it up… But almost 45 minutes later he was still chatting PLUS he decided to play his recorder and sax for his friend (there’s that noise I posted about earlier). I know he’s excited to talk to his friends, but it makes me stabby when he’s just ignores me.
I know everyone has different schedules so I’m trying to be forgiving but I’m losing my mind…on Day 2, hour 2. 😭 This is something I didn’t even think about as going to be challenging.
I know this is new for ALL of us and it will likely get better but until then… Sigh.
The calm before the storm.
Happily working on her workbook before she lost her bananas…
Science experiment!
Look what happens when you don’t wash for a full 20 seconds!
Bedtime surprises!
Katie left this for Tom on our door. How sweet, right? To me it says she couldn’t give two shits about my day tomorrow.
Owen left this on my side of the bed. Not sure what this means. Maybe I should sleep with one eye open.
This is our third school schedule.
I did a daily schedule the first week we were out of school. It worked pretty well. The kids knew what time blocks came next and pretty much stuck to it on their own.
Then came the week of spring break and we got off the rails a little. I revised the schedule a little in preparation of the anticipated actual distance learning… Only to have the teacher’s schedule sent out after I had finished so I had to revise a little. After a day of no one really even following it…I came up with a new schedule that put all academics in the morning so when it was lunchtime, that was the end of school. I had been trying to break it up throughout the day but I kind of think it made it harder, so…we’ll see. I actually hate having a schedule at all, but if we didn’t have it, every day would be a dumpster fire as no one would do any schoolwork but they’d beg for tech all day.
I already see some minor changes I want to make, and I’m sure this will get edited a few more times before we get settled into our new learning routine. We have at least a month ahead of us…
I’m appreciative that we are able to do distance learning and that I am actually able to be here for the kids and it’s not a hardship for us…but it is frustrating that ALL the hard work I did to get the kids detoxed from tech has all been wiped away within two weeks.
We tried the totwaffle!
It all started with this viral Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/506801921/posts/10156771865371922/?d=n which starts like this:
So we decided it had to be done.
And Tom was in charge and I was busy working so I didn’t get any more pictures until the end.
Aaaand…it took much longer to cook than we thought, plus Tom didn’t fill it full enough to start so had to add some more tots halfway through. This pic is after we took some off for the kids.
We also made the syrup/ketchup mix (read the linked post for details) and it was yummy. The tots were crispy but I’d like them even crispier.
In short, they were good and a nice change…and the candied bacon and cheesy scrambled eggs were good sides…but I probably wouldn’t do the totwaffle again. I’m perfectly happy to expend way less energy and effort and just have tots.
SeneGence sanitizer?!
Look what SeneGence sent with my recent order?! They made their own hand sanitizer and are donating tons of it to local charities and businesses!! We’re hoping they will have (or eventually make) enough for us to sell it!
She had to prove me wrong.
I just told a friend yesterday that the dog was the only animal that ever used this particular bed. And then this happened—and she stayed in it for HOURS.
I’m going to be counting rainbows.
Cleaning out my work armoire on this dumpster fire of a still-sheltering-at-home/first-official-day-of-distance-learning Monday, I found this lovely gift from a friend that got hidden away. I figure now is the best time to open it and get to work remembering everything I have and am grateful for.
To that end, as I was standing thinking about the journal, a really great song came on Alexa so I started crazy dancing which got Katie dancing which eventually even got Owen dancing!! We must have sounded like a herd of elephants to Tom working downstairs in the office, because he came up you see what the hell was going on.
Katie was one happy poop face.
I gave Katie some new face paints awhile back and she’s been begging to use them but she didn’t want to do it herself—and Owen wouldn’t let her paint on him—so today Tom promised he would paint her face. And they decided on a poop emoji.
She was so excited when it was done and she loved it so much she could barely stand still.
After this she did get Owen to paint on her arms…and eventually it led to getting paint all over the couch so that wasn’t fun. But I got it mostly cleaned up so all was well.
Owen really needed a trim so Tom was called to duty.
Making our own pseudo corn dogs!
They turned out okay and everybody liked them but I would probably do it differently the next time. We had to lay the hotdogs down because they were too tall to stand upright but it was a little weird just having a hotdog in the middle so I would probably actually cut up discs instead. I might also make them more bite-size and use smaller tins.
Quarantine Day 15. You’re welcome.
Our new way of hanging with friends.
So this is how we hang Covid-19 style with friends… playing Evil Apples and having drinks.
Our kids were in the basement video chatting as well!