Owen has been asking and asking and asking for a specific iPhone game and we finally told him tonight that the answer was no (and explained allllll the reasons why). Of course he’s not happy so this is the note he handed me, telling me he wanted me to write him back.
Owen: I’m sorry about today and I’m a jerk and it feels like you’re being mean and you don’t want me to get Terraria.
Me: You aren’t a jerk. You’re a kid who didn’t get what he wanted. You’ll be okay. I love you. Love Mom
Our library was having a virtual Lego challenge—you had to built a Lego scene with real life objects in it. Owen built a baseball field complete with baseball posters in the outfield! Katie added a fan eating a sucker!
We went on yet another walk in our new neighborhood today and the homeowner was outside in the garage and we quickly debated introducing ourselves or not…and I said WHAT THE HELL and long story short she’s super awesome—she was excited to meet all of us, reiterated that she’s thrilled the house is going to a nice family, and she let us show the kids the back yard.
She also told us she was leaving two additional TVs (one in the wet bar and one in the gazebo), that we were welcome to start bringing stuff over to leave in the third garage bay, plus, after we exchanged numbers, invited us over for a house tour and a drink on the deck!
Both kids are super excited about the gazebo.
We also got to scout out the back yard again to see where we could put a small shed so that was good.
A neighbor took the kids on a bike ride to the river the other day and that’s ALL they can talk about. They went back a time or two by themselves and really wanted to show us (mostly so we’d let them go by themselves once we saw how they could get there without traveling on the main road)…so we finally agreed.
First you ride through the church parking lot. At the far back corner there’s a strip of grass that you ride across which connects to a dead end neighborhood cul-de-sac. Then you ride up to the front and hop a curb and ride on some grass untill you reach the sidewalk then take that until you reach the next street and then you ride all the way to the end in another cul-de-sac where there’s a…creek. River is exaggerating a bit.
It is pretty back there… Can you see the kids? They are on their favorite rocks. Owen calls one of them his thinking rock.
Underneath is more fun… traipsing through the water in their rain boots.
This is exactly the kind of place I’d have loved to explore and play at as a kid so I get the fascination. I just wish they’d found it before we were ready to move. They’ll just have to explore the new neighborhood…
Today taking a trip around the park to spin some Pokestops. We close in 24 days! 😱
So she got this all ready herself!
So….this is how Katie left the front porch (and driveway, too!) today while she’s off gallivanting around the neighborhood. After, you know, we’ve told them 2,638 times to PUT SHIT AWAY. So not only has their shit exploded inside the house these days (as we’re trying to organize and clean to move next month), but shit has now exploded onto my front porch.
They skip steps all the time. Never finish anything without prompting. Because they’re kids. But it’s just sooo frustrating because it seems like it’s all I’m ever saying! I wanted to throw all of this away but Tom intervened and sent Owen to bring her home. She apologized (but it won’t change anything) and then she “cleaned” it up by stacking it all up under the bench. Sigh,
And this is what the sink looks like after I told both kids to load the dishwasher. TWICE. After I’ve told them every single time when they load the dishwasher that they need to check the sink. But heaven forbid I didn’t follow behind them and watch them so they didn’t do it.
Oh oh oh! And this is what the living room always looks like because they pull all the pillows and blankets off. AND LEAVE THEM ON THE FLOOR.
I emailed Katie’s teacher to see if she would be willing to take an end-of-year photo and she was! (She actually lives about a minute from us so we went to her house!)
And the comparison between start and end of year.
She bugs me to wear lipstick all the time and I usually hesitate because I know she won’t want to deal with taking it off. But today I let her as a special treat because we were going to be seeing her teacher.
The application is all hers—I didn’t help one bit (color me impressed!!) but she did whine a little when I told her she needed to do three layers AND put on gloss. (And later in the day she was positive it was coming off and I assured her it was not.)
Katie is more excited than she looks as she picked this route. She just wants to go play in the gross water and was mad at us for making her take a picture.
We went for another walk in our neighborhood today—we wanted to see how long it would take Owen to walk to school. Turns out it’s about 15 minutes door to door! (We have no idea how long the bus route will take but we figured at least it’s a backup!)
Anyway…there were a TON of lilac bushes among the whole route. I finally stopped to take a picture with some. These were white but there were all colors!
After our walk on the way home we stopped at the elementary school where I had seen a gigantic lilac bush and had been wanting to go back and snip some for a bouquet. Unfortunately they were mostly dried out so I only got a few small sprigs. Katie wanted to hold them and then turned into a ham.
I guess I could attempt to do the whole graphic like mine…maybe next time.
(No she’s not in SeneGence makeup…yet. Though honestly she needs the LipSense because the lipstick she put on got all over her shirt and her face yesterday.)
Friends bought the same slip and slide so we decided to have an outdoor playdate and hook them together. The kids stayed far enough apart for me to not worry too much.
Of course after a while it devolved into this game:
Owen’s teachers planned a goodbye meeting at a local park. People were really good about having masks and/or keeping a safe distance…
The kids were all really excited to see each other and actually talk to each other.
The teachers walked around to see everyone and say goodbye, and I was able to take the end of year pic. Not quite like other years…but definitely one for the memory books!
Since Covid-19 has thrown everything out of whack, a scouts weekend camping trip was turned into a backyard campout. The boys had a schedule to follow including camp setup, meal planning, zoom calls, computer check-ins with photos, and games!
FRIDAY
We borrowed a small tent from friends and both Owen and Katie LOVED hanging out in it. We put it up in the morning and they pretty much spent all day in and out of it, sometimes together, sometimes alone. They were coloring and listening to music and who knows what else.
And of course Owen loved starting a fire!
Katie really wanted to sleep outside with him but he wanted to do it himself. We were slightly unsure he’d last all night, but he said he’d be fine but asked if we’d leave all the lights on…so it was basically daylight out there.
SATURDAY
The night went fine and he stayed out all night!! Tom assisted with getting the fire ready for cooking breakfast but Owen did most of the actual food prep!
Both kids LOVED cooking over the fire… Katie—who generally says she doesn’t like hot dogs—cooked and ate TWO!
Owen decided to let Katie sleep with him the second night and she was over the moon. They had another official 9:30 lights out but she says they stayed up really late! And again, as bright as day out there.
SUNDAY
Overall we were really impressed with how much Owen enjoyed spending time in the tent and prepping and cooking food! He’ll be even more ready if and when actually camping weekends start again!
It took them a day but they finally have the hang of how to really maximize their runs! Now we need to make sure it doesn’t end at the fence!!
Katie picked out this fancy dress to go to school supply pickup. Of course she hadn’t showered in three days.
She missed her last class Zoom meeting where they were going to share their goodbye posters so I posted it to the school’s page and sent it to her teacher.
School supply pickup was more emotional for me than I anticipated. I might have gotten a little teary-eyed as we drove away. I asked Katie if she was okay and told her I was sad so it was okay if she was. She said she was a little sad but she was okay. Leave it to Mom to be overly emotional.
Then we had to go through a huge garbage bag of Katie’s stuff…including…a lunch bag. Thankfully it was empty!! We were all thinking we’d have to just toss the whole thing. Phew! Oh, and we had an outfit change!
Then it was time to take Owen’s pictures—-and he hadn’t showered in awhile, either. But Tom had given him a buzz cut.
Normally last day of school pics are just me and the kids…
…but since Dad is working from home, he got in on the action. #gonnamissthisbench
A friend told me that green onions would sprout in water so we tried it. And whaddya know? It worked! It’s not enough if you need a bunch of them, but if you just need a few tiny pieces for a garnish, this is perfect.
Their words, not mine!!
Testing our new Norwex masks for a kid-size face. There was a tiny learning curve—he had it upside down at first.
Everything water-related is either out of stock or listed online at price-gouging prices, so when I saw this $18 slip and slide at Walmart I grabbed it. Of course the kids loved it.
Getting good news on our house purchase!
Dealing with ungrateful kids who refused to clean their rooms so I’m tempted to burn everything they own so they have nothing to clean.
He tried our first ever deep dish tonight and holy hell it was good. Pepperoni for the kids—and onion, homemade sweet pepperocini, and leftover chicken apple sausage for us!
Here’s the pan we used if you’re interested. We had been looking at recommended deep dish pizza pans and they were like $40! This one worked fine!
Of course we had drama over it, too. Katie—who loves pizza—picked at it and then refused to eat it. She’s a pain in the butt when it comes to food and frankly we weren’t surprised but we’re so exhausted with her over it… So we asked what she didn’t like about it. Silence. Asked again. Silence. Asked again, saying we want to make something she’d like the next time so she needs to tell us what she doesn’t like about it. She doesn’t like deep dish pizza. BZZT. We call bullshit. She likes it just fine—it’s got to bed SOMETHING ELSE. Silence. This went on for a good five minutes. I finally told her to to get ready for bed then (it was almost 7). Of course she didn’t want that. After more discussion and prodding, do you know what it was? The freaking parmesan cheese Tom sprinkled on top after it came out of the oven. We gave her a new piece and she gobbled it up and asked for another. Ugh. Frankly we call BS on that, too, since she has sprinkled it on her pizzas before… We just can’t ever win and it’s exhausting.
She won’t even get to see her at school next year because Sophia is in dual language which is moved to Intermediate for space reasons.
She pulled out this Lego project she had started a long time ago but had gotten taken away (most likely due to sass or whining of some sort) and she put it together like a champ. The only bad thing is now we have leftover Lego pieces all over and she loves to actually play with it so it’s still out all over the place.
It’s Teacher Appreciation Week and…end of year I guess?! Mrs. Hansen got some beauty goodies from me and, well, since it’s Cinco de Mayo she also got margaritas (plus Katie’s memory book to write in). She only lives about a mile from us—and probably less as the crow flies.
Lest you think I forgot Owen’s teacher…I delivered hers last week! That was a story in itself. I transposed her address so I actually dropped off the gift—and Owen’s book!—at the wrong house!!! There were a few moments of panic on my end because Owen’s book is irreplaceable and I kept thinking WHAT IF… Plus with the Corona thing, it’s not like she could just go knock on the other person’s door! And I felt horrible that I screwed it up. Well, some quick googling got me property records and a name which got me to LinkedIn where I recognized the guy who had been inside the screen door at a desk (I had just assumed it was her husband) and his posted resume had a phone number! I called and left a message explaining everything…and he called back almost immediately—he had been talking to her! She had walked down and they had a nice chat! In a bizarre turn of events, his daughter’s name was Heather and she was a teacher so he just thought it was a gift for her and didn’t even think anything of it! But he was very nice about it and even joked about enjoying the margaritas!
Okay, we’ll share for a bit.
