No School Week 4: Derrick's birthday and Easter

I almost could sum up April 6-12 with just this meme. 

Our days have started to have a Groundhog day repetitiveness to them. Just with different emotional outbursts and coping mechanisms.

Okay, maybe that's an oversimplification. There were lots of interesting things happening all week long. And actually this week did have two very notable days - Derrick's Birthday and Easter. So it wasn't that repetitive. Let's get looking at what happened. Just remember this is a highlight real. There were A LOT of boring and not so interesting moments.

First we have to look at these delicious donuts Brandon made on Sunday afternoon. Somehow I missed putting this picture on my last post. And that's a shame because these donuts were amazing.

I think a few of these next pictures were also from Sunday afternoon. This is the status of my puzzle after working on it quite a bit during General Conference.

And here is Derrick's tornado. This has been so much fun to play with.

He literally spent hours watching it.

And here are our Easter Baskets with the few little bits of sprouted grass. I had faith they would grow tall enough to look cute on Easter a week later. But I wasn't sure.

Monday April 5

Miss Emily came to help with Derrick on Monday, but none of us were really feeling up to school that morning. The kids had done so well with listening during Conference that it seemed like they needed a day to decompress. 

It was rainy outside so we couldn't do much out there. In the afternoon Derrick and Marsha got really crazy so I took them on a walk. Derrick had a great time clearing dirt and trash out of gutters to help the water flow better. He loves watching water flow. 

He was a lot happier by the time we went back home.

Someone dropped off four high quality chocolate Easter bunnies. This was so nice. It made me feel like someone cared about us.

We also received more birthday cards for Derrick. He had fun counting them all. 

Near the end of the day I checked on my phone and saw that the Idaho School Board had made a decision about whether or not we were going back to school on April 20th or some other day in the future. I was certain we weren't going back on the 20th, but I wasn't sure if they would change the date to May 1st or just cancel school through the end of the school year.  The decision was the cancel school through the school year - with the caveat that local school districts could potentially reopen if they had low COVID-19 cases in the district and worked with their local Department of Health. I was pretty certain we were cancelled.

When Brandon came home we had dinner, cleaned up, and then had the chocolate bunnies. The kids shared a few nibbles with Brandon and I.

Then I took off on a long walk. I was done being in charge. I walked and walked and walked. I was listening to Jennie Gaffigan's book, When Life Gives You Pears. It's all about how she dealt with the pear shaped tumor growing in her brain. I relate to this story on several different levels. My dad had brain surgery when I was 10 so listening to Jennie's story brings back memories from that. But I think the thing I relate to the most right now, is that her life was turned upside down by the surprise tumor. And I feel like my life has been turned upside down by COVID-19.

During the walk I got an automatic call from the school district. The person on the recording explained the State School Board's decision. Then he said that it was unlikely Twin Falls school district would reopen. Twin Falls county has the fourth highest COVID-19 cases in the state. He said to plan to continue distance learning through the end of the school year.

I figured this was coming, but there was still something somber about it becoming official. All the kids end of school year field trips and programs were cancelled. They wouldn't be going back to their classrooms at all. I knew I was going to have to come up with a longer term solution and schedule. But I couldn't quite wrap my head around that yet.

On my way back home I passed Veronica's kindergartner taking a walk with her three kids. She asked her how I was doing. I said, "I ran away from home for a few hours. I'm heading back now though."  She gave me a commiserating look and said, "I don't blame you."

I came back home and found the kids playing legos downstairs. I read them Harry Potter for a while. We are in the last quarter of the 5th book. It's getting exciting.

Here are some of the creations the girls made. Veronica made a "tool store."

Charlotte and Lydia made a "pet shop."

These are Veronica's pets.

The kitten area.

The whole shop.

The manager.

Bunnies

Hamsters

Fish

Lizards

Puppies

The food prep area.

And the delivery van.

And here's the grass by the end of the day. Still a little spotty, but coming along. We started putting it on the table where it could be in the sun all day.

Tuesday April 6th

Miss Emily doesn't come on Tuesdays and so there really wasn't an incentive for us to get going with school on Tuesday morning. The kids wanted to play Legos and we'd stopped Harry Potter just short of an epic scene with Fred and George so I let them play while I read to them.

Derrick entertained himself by pulling himself into his shirt.

When we finally did get around to doing school I had Veronica come outside and practice her sight words. She surprised me by writing about 7 words from memory.

Later I traced her and she held hands with her tracing.

We picked up lunch and came home to eat it. As the kids were doing that I started cleaning out the car. It had needed to be cleaned for a while, but the weather hadn't been nice enough to spend time cleaning a car. Today was a good day to do it.

The kids were helpful  . . . . to a point. Some of them just wanted to play. I kept going back and forth between thinking this was a high quality family activity and wishing they were all in school so I could clean out the car in peace.  My biggest problem was Marcia. The kids put her in the car, but she seemed to always be on the seat that needed to be folded down or up. I told the kids to get her out of the car. Next thing I knew she was in the road in front of my friend Kaymie's car.  Kaymie and her family were driving to the park to ride bikes. (She'd reached her breaking point at home.)  She could tell I was losing it and was very good about texting me later to see if I needed any help.

Somehow we got the car cleaned without any lose of life of limb. I made the kids watch a movie so I could finally have a minute to myself.

The rest of the day didn't go much better. When the movie was over the kids argued and got in trouble all afternoon long. I gave up on them all and got ready for work. When Brandon came home I basically ran out the door.

I spent two hours at work taking care of things. It was so good to have somewhere to go and something to do other than try to keep track of kids.

I was done with work at 7:00 and headed home. But I missed my turn and decided that I didn't really want to go home any way. I was driving east and I decided I wanted to drive out to Murtaugh Lake. So drove out there. I listened to Jennie Gaffigan's book the whole way.

I was hoping to walk along the shore of the lake and maybe see some pretty birds. Last time I was here in August was right before we bought the house. It was a stressful time, but the beauty of the lake and the birds that flocked around it had been very calming. I was hoping for the same effect. The lake was closed (not sure if that was a corona thing or a seasonal thing) so I just drove out to the lake took this picture and then drove back. Even though I didn't get to stand by the lake, the drive had been nice. I reflected on how Southern Idaho often reminds me of Texas.

My drive had taken an hour so I figured it was about time to get back home. When I pulled in the driveway I took a moment to catch up on the Marco Polos from my siblings. Our Marco Polos have become a major lifeline while we are all home. There is the usual amount of nonsense. But now our polos also include nearly daily confessionals from whoever happens to be having a hard time. It was my turn to talk about my bad day. 

Here's what I said. 

I was about to go back in the house when Brandon texted me. He was finishing Derrick's birthday cake and needed more chocolate frosting. He asked if I could get some before I came home. Yay a reason to delay coming home. So I backed out of the driveway and headed to Smiths. Turns out Smiths closes at 8:00 these days. So I went to Albertsons which I learned is open until 10:00. I got two cans of frosting and a package of gum and then headed home. 

The kids were in bed by the time I got back. Brandon worked on the cake while I vented to him about the day. He was very simpathic and didn't judge me at all for eating three heaping spoonfuls of chocolate frosting while talking to him. (He ate some too.) By the end of our conversation I was feeling better. Not great but better. 

Charlotte and Lydia were still awake in their room so I got them up to have them help blow up balloons for Derrick's birthday. 

Then we went to work on the puzzle again. We worked hard, but this last section was super tricky. All the pieces looks so alike. Finally we gave up and went to bed. 

Wednesday, April 8
Derrick's 8th birthday
Derrick was so excited to see his balloons when he got up in the morning.

During breakfast we brought his cake down from the top of the cupboard so he could see it. He was so excited about that too. Derrick is always super enthusiastic about everything.

More balloon excitement. 

And look at that grass. It was showing progress.

We went for a long walk to get wiggles out. Here are the kids by the school sign that says school is closed.

The grass was long and Lydia had fun laying in it.

Veronica copied her at another spot.

We came back home and Miss Emily came over. We did some school. Derrick had a hard time focusing though.

After Miss Emily left we drove over to the school to pick up lunch.

I let the kids take turns sitting in the front seat so they can take the lunches from the ladies. It was Derrick's turn.

Normally we take the lunches home, but I really didn't want to do that today. I decided we'd go on a picnic to a spot by Rock Creek here in town.  So we drove there and found a picnic spot.

It was really pretty with the weeping willow in the background.

Derrick had a great time throwing rocks in the water.

My friend Justine texted me to say she'd left "a very eclectic treat bag for Derrick's Bday" on my porch. She wanted me to know that it was safe to eat. When we got back Derrick saw the bag on the porch and started yelling, "my present" over and over. He was so excited about it.

The bag had an assortment of treats in it. Oreos, a can of sprite, cheeseits, etc. Derrick and the girls loved it all. I was so touched that Justine thought of Derrick. Kaymie had also stopped by with bouncy balls and some balloon for him. People are so kind.

Brandon had told me he was okay if we opened Derrick's cards while he was at work. So after the mail came we opened the cards. Over 25 people had sent Derrick cards. (And about 5 more showed up in the days after his birthday.)  Derrick loved every card he opened. We were all so surprised by the cards that held money. I hadn't expected that at all. Thank you to everyone who sent cards.

Here are all the cards. Later I put these up on the door in the hallway. 

Derrick wanted chicken noodle soup for his birthday so he helped me cut up things for that.  Then he ran outside and played. Brandon came home and we all had soup. Then we went in the living room so Derrick could open his presents. 

He'd asked for the movie Frozen II (he loves Olaf) and so my parents ordered that and had it sent to us. We bought him the movie Captain Underpants and a lava lamp.

He was thrilled about his movies.

We went back in the kitchen and got the cake ready. Brandon had the great idea to put candles in the center of the volcano so it looked like it was on fire.

Charlotte filmed us singing to Derrick.

He was overjoyed with everything. I love his enthusiasm. 

It really was a great cake.

Brandon cut the cake and we all enjoyed it. 

The kids went downstairs to watch Frozen II and Brandon and I worked on the puzzle. Charlotte came upstairs and helped us. We FINALLY finished the puzzle. I can't believe it took us a whole week.

I realized I didn't have a great picture of Derrick and the lava lamp. I tried to get a picture, but Derrick was really tired. He was zoning out.

Thursday April 9th

When Brandon's alarm woke me up in the morning I literally had no idea what day it was. I thought it might be Sunday, but then why was the alarm going off? I groggily asked Brandon what day it was and he told me Thursday. That didn't seem right at all.  

I don't remember much about Thursday. (I'd given up making notes for each day.) So we are going to go off the pictures to remember things.

My lettuce finally decided to sprout. I was so happy to see these little leafs. (Later Derrick tried to "help" water the garden and washed away all the dirt from this particular section of lettuce. I was NOT happy.)

Our wheat grass continued to grow. It was definitely looking like it would work as Easter Grass.

I'd been thinking of decorating for Easter ever since April 1st, but I just couldn't seem to work up the energy for that.  Today was the day I finally decided to do it.  And then I found out I didn't have to do much. Charlotte was so excited as soon as I got the flowers and vases out. She happily put together several arrangements.

Derrick spent quite a bit of time mesmerized by the lava lamp. I bought this from the same education supply website where we bought the tornado tube. I'd originally planned to buy it for Amazon, but the inexpensive lamps there didn't have good reviews.  This one was at least $5 cheaper than the ones on Amazon and looked high quality. I'm super happy with this Blab-a-lamp.

And the spot where Derrick is sitting was where the card table with the puzzle had been for over a week. We finished the puzzle on Wednesday, admired it for a bit, and cleaned it up Thursday morning. Taking the table down made the living room feel so much bigger again. 

Here's a picture of the flowers on the shelves. It was Charlotte's idea to hag the flower garland over the doorway in the same spot we'd had the Christmas garland.

Early in the day I'd dug out the kids sandals from the box where I'd stashed them last fall. One of my biggest headaches with the kids home has been from trying to keep up with their socks. When they were in school they wore one pair a day. But ever since they've been home they've been going through multiple pairs. They'd put on shoes and socks to go for a walk in the morning, but take them off as soon as they got home. Then they'd put on a different pair to go outside later in the day. Derrick was the worst at this because he'd put on a new pair every time he put his roller blades on. But he at least put the socks in the dirty sock bucket when he was done. Charlotte and Lydia would take theirs off in their room and the socks disappeared into that black hole.

So anyway, with the warmer weather I decided it was time to get out the sandals. I knew Veronica had outgrown hers at the end of the summer. And I was pretty certain Derrick's would only fit him for a little while. Derrick and Lydia ended up in a huge fight over who owned a pair of black sandals.  (Lydia had worn them all last summer, but they'd originally been promised to Derrick who decided to remember that promise a whole year later.)  The only way I ended the argument was to go online to Walmart.com and pretend to order a new pair of sandals for Derrick. I didn't really submit the order because I wanted to add some Easter things to it.

I was very ready to head to work at 5:00.  I was able to take care of a few things, but I didn't have a ton to keep me busy. I ended up leaving a little bit early and heading to Walmart. I decided it was just easier to pick up the sandals and the Easter stuff in person.

This was the first time I'd been to Walmart since social distancing started. I had to go in the specific "in" door, and a chose not to get a cart, but other than that I didn't notice any big differences. About half the people were in masks, but there were a lot of people like me who weren't wearing masks. I found the sandals, grabbed some much needed art supplies to be Easter gifts, and also grabbed a few plastic eggs. I used self checkout, but I've done that for years. I was in and out of there in less than 20 minutes.

Back at home I kept the gifts hidden when I got to the house. I hurried inside and made it onto the Online Meeting for my business class. Usually we meet on Sunday evenings. But between Conference and Easter we decided to just have a Thursday meeting.

The meeting/class was interesting. This weeks topic was "Growing My Business." I kind of laughed at the topic. Was anyone going to get inspiration to grow their business in this economy? And I barely had a business to speak of, so growing it seemed silly.

But I totally had inspiration.

We were instructed to take 5 minutes and silently write down any ideas for growing our businesses. I wrote a few ideas and then added "put together a guide book."  Instantly I had more ideas. Why not turn my blog post about Yellowstone into chapters for a guidebook. It would be just a matter of editing and laying everything out. Brandon could help me with the layout. We could publish it on Amazon.

Later I talked to Brandon about it and we decided to try to get the book together by Memorial Day. It felt so good to have a goal and a deadline.

Friday April 10

I showed Derrick his new sandals right after he came upstairs in the morning. He was so excited about his new sandals. He probably talked about them for 30 minutes. Miss Emily picked him up and took him to the office where they did an Egg Hunt that tied into some of his goals. It was so nice to have him gone for an hour. We decided to have her plan to do things with him at the office every morning.

Charlotte and Lydia spent a lot of the day playing with their Frozen Barbies. They played that it was Anya's birthday. I love the little decorations.

They even made a cake from two candies, left over frosting, sprinkles, and little bits of wood as candles.

Here are the presents. (Also that box is totally evidence that Brandon works in aviation.)

I'd been participating in the world wide fast for Good Friday, and had done okay skipping breakfast and lunch. But around 12:30 I started to feel some effects of being hangry.  The kids had wanted to go for a hike, but I was worried about doing it on an empty stomach. So we hadn't gone anywhere and the kids were getting on my nerves. I turned a movie on for them downstairs and tried to get some stuff done upstairs. But I was pretty grumpy. At one point I found myself muttering, "sh*t,sh*t,sh*t,sh*t,sh*t,sh*t,sh*t,sh*t,sh*t,sh*t," under my breath for no reason. I decided fasting was no longer doing anything for my spiritual well-being and decided it was time to eat. 

When the kids were done with their movie I told them we were going on a walk to the Jump Site hill. They were so happy. We set off and they all did great walking there. When we got to the hill. The kids had fun climbing the hill and sliding down.

 I realized that my family does AMAZING when we are in the outdoors. I decided that stay-home order or not we HAD to get outside every day. We were still allowed to do recreation and I needed to take more advantage of that. The kids and I talked about what kind of activities we could do and the idea for a schedule based around outdoor adventures started to take shape in my mind.

Derrick wanted to throw rocks in water, and we literally had nothing else to do so after we were done with the hike we drove down to Centennial Park where he threw rocks to his hearts content.

We got home and I made dinner. Brandon came home and I'm trying hard to remember what we did that evening. It must have been movie night, but I can't remember what we watched. Oh I do remember, it was Second Hand Lions.

After the kids were in bed Brandon and I watched Tiger King on Netflix. We'd signed up for Netflix specifically to watch Tiger King since two of my sisters, all my favorite podcast hosts, and nearly every other meme on my Facebook timeline kept mentioning the show. I can't exactly recommend the show, but I don't hate it either. It's definitely entertaining. It's also oddly inspiring. I told Brandon, "if these morons can pull all this off, I think we can have big dreams too."

I can't remember what night we started watching Tiger King, but after watching the first episode Brandon was scrolling through the rest of Netflix. It's been a long time since we've had time to watch TV together so we are very far behind on popular shows. He said, "hey there's some show called Stranger Things. That's a funny title."

I paused and said, "wait, what are we doing watching this Tiger King garbage if we haven't even watched Stranger Things?" I'd completely forgot that I'd had that show on my mental list of "shows to maybe watch with Brandon if we ever get Netflix again."  So we decide to watch Stranger Things when we were done with Tiger King.

Saturday April 11

Brandon had to work on Saturday morning for the second week on a row. The kids and I cleaned the house a little bit.

Here's the Easter Grass. It had filled in so much. The girls had added flowers to their basket handles.

The kids went downstairs to watch a movie and I got on the computer and started working on the new daily schedule. We'd been consistent with having school each day for 90 minutes so I wanted to keep doing that in the morning. We'd had trouble with deciding who got to be on the computer when, so I made a schedule for that. I decided each child could have 30 minutes on the computer - 15 minutes to be on I-station and 15 minutes to play on abcya.com. I'd given up on accessing all the other resources on Clever, epic books, google classroom, or any other online learning program. We'd just stick to I-station and call it good. When they weren't on the computer they would be with me working on some written things or watching the youtube videos that Charlotte and Veronica's teachers were really good at recommending. The kids really liked watching Mystery Doug explain science and watching celebrities read books through story time online.

I also decided to make a schedule for the remaining 6 weeks of school. I decided to play to my strengths and used the calendar template I'd made for last summer. I called it Mom Adventure School since Mom Adventure Camp had gone so well. I came up with a plan for every day of the week. Monday would be our long hike day, Tuesday would be our long drive day, Wednesday would be a day we played by the water (this had already worked on the Wednesday of Derrick's birthday), Thursday would be our stay home day, and Friday we'd hike to the jump site. The plan was to have school in the morning, and then pick up the conveniently packed sack lunches at the school before heading out on our adventure. It felt good to have a plan. 

We spent a little bit of time out in the yard. We have a bunch of "mystery bushes" in the back. I've been interested to see them bloom. This one has pretty yellow leaves.

A few weeks ago I dug out a giant clothesline post out the back of the yard. I'm not sure I ever took a picture of it.  So there it is laying in the grass in front of our back shed.  That shed is basically condemned. It's in pretty rough shape. It has a dirt floor and wooden posts that are probably rotting. I'm sure it would be super expensive to update the shed so we are just going to tear it down and eventually put a small green house in this spot.

And LOOK! The peas started popping out of the ground. I was getting worried about them.

Brandon went grocery shopping after work. It had been an almost normal trip for him, but he'd noticed that nearly everyone else had a mask. (Yes I know I could sew him one. For some reason I've been really adverse to jumping on the mask sewing train. I think I'm put off by how "trendy" it's become to sew masks and I'm not interested in following the trend.)

We put away the food and then Brandon cleaned out the fridge super well. 

After all that was done we dyed Easter eggs. We'd watched some youtube videos about clever things to do with eggs. One of them was to paint them so Charlotte and Lydia got the paints out. This ended up being much more fun than just setting eggs into dye. (Though we did that too.)

Another trick was to put hot glue designs on the eggs before putting them in the dye. Derrick liked trying this out.

Brandon painted one to look like the world.

See.

Someone put their home depot apron on Marsha. That dog is such a good sport.

After we were done with the eggs Brandon helped the kids add food coloring to the vinegar. Derrick loved watching the "volcanos!"

In the evening I abandoned my family and went next door to Diantha's house. She'd invited me and our friend Kaymie over for a social distancing chat. We sat 6 feet apart in lawn chairs in her driveway and talked for over an hour.  We all needed that time together.

When I got home Brandon and the kids were watching a movie. I stayed upstairs and made a coffee cake with a layer of raspberry jelly inside.

After the movie we set out the Easter Baskets for the Easter Bunny to fill and hide. I was so impressed by how well the grass had turned out.

Our across the street neighbor Karen, had brought over a grocery bag filled with plastic eggs for us.  She explained that normally she would contribute eggs to the egg hunt for her church. Since that wasn't happening she'd decided to give the eggs to us. I was so surprised. The kids and I had been talking about how we were sad that we couldn't have the giant egg hunt at Bestemor's house this year. Here was the egg hunt delivered to us.

Brandon and I had bought eggs and candy for a small egg hunt, but after getting this gift I decided we needed to do something to pay it forward. I talked about it with the kids. We decided we should take our eggs and tie string on them and put them in someone's tree as a surprise. So that afternoon we'd gone on a walk to case out some houses. We decided that two of our friends had yards with trees that would be perfect to hide eggs in. 

So that night around 9:00 PM Charlotte and Lydia and I took the car to go egg some houses. The first house was a bust. They had a huge window on the front of the house and hadn't shut their blinds yet. There was no way we could put anything in the tree without getting spotted. We decided to take all our eggs to the second house.

That house was much better. I put eggs in the tree while Charlotte and Lydia hung them in the rose bushes. It was fun to set up a surprise for someone.

Back at home the girls went to bed. Brandon and I stayed up. He cleaned our bathroom, and I put candy into the eggs I'd bought at Walmart. The kids had never seen these eggs so I knew they'd assume the Easter Bunny brought them. Then we filled the baskets and hid them.

The eggs looked so good in the grass. We'd all decided this as going to be a new tradition.

I'd considered making some sort of treasure hunt for the eggs, but both of us were so tired by this point. So we just hid the baskets in somewhat hard to find spots. Then we watched the third episode of Tiger King and went to bed.

Sunday April 12
Easter Sunday

The first thing the kids found was the Curious George Swings into Spring movie that I'd placed in front of the clock on the top shelf of the book case. They were so excited.  I love that they still love Curious George.

Then they went on a determined search of the house. The baskets were found pretty quickly.

The kids were surprised to find art supplies hidden with each basket.

Here's Lydia showing off her basket and new markers.

We tried to explain that the art supplies were probably for everyone to share, but I'm not sure how well that message sunk in.  In addition to the markers there was also a box of 96 crayons, a huge stack of construction paper, and sidewalk chalk.

The kids basically ate candy for breakfast. (And I put a note in my calendar for next Easter to make the baskets harder to find and to make sure everyone eats breakfast before giving them a clue for how to find the baskets.)  I basically ate candy for breakfast too because the coffee cake was so yummy.

Kids breakfast.

My breakfast.

After breakfast we got the crayons out and I sat down and drew with the kids. I drew a picture of the birds at Murtaugh Lake.

Here we are coloring together.

I also wanted to draw a picture of the moon rising over the lake. It's not quite how it looked in real life, but I really like how this turned out. I did it on black construction paper to make the bright moon stand out better.

We had a quick church service in our home. I wish I could say it was very spiritual, but it wasn't. Honestly, so far the day had been feeling a little on the blah side. It felt like we should be doing something BIG, but we were just hanging out - like we had been all month long already.

Charlotte and I set up a tiny egg hunt in the back yard with 12 eggs. Each egg had a piece of paper in them that listed something that Christ did between the Last Supper and the Resurrection. The other kids found the eggs and then we read what was written in each one. This went okay.

I'd thought we'd be fine celebrating Easter at home without extended family. We celebrated Easter on our own several times when we lived in Texas and Alabama. But we'd still been able to go to church and meet with friends those times. This was lonely. Everything felt a little bit forced.

Still we went through the motions.  After "church" we had lunch (we all desperately needed something substantial to eat.) Then Brandon and I let the kids watch Curious George Swings Into Spring while we set up the egg hunt outside. We hid all the eggs Karen had brought over as well as all the boiled eggs.  Then we brought the kids outside to go for a hunt. 

They zipped all over the yard and had so much fun finding the eggs.

This was probably the best part of the day so far. I was feeling very happy that we have such a fun yard to do an egg hunt in.

There were even eggs up in the tree house.

And on the patio.

And way back in the back.

Charlotte showed off her skills to get the egg on top of the garden shed.

At the end of the hunt the kids brought in their eggs and sorted them out on the dinging room table.

Later we went outside with the about 15 large plastic eggs and took turns hiding and finding those. That was fun.

But the day was loosing its charms. We'd planned a big Easter dinner with all the trimmings. Ham, Potatoes, Resurrection Rolls, etc. But I by the time late afternoon rolled around I wasn't in the mood. I told Brandon, "I think we've forced this Easter Thing enough today." Let's just have spaghetti.

So Brandon was able to take a nap instead of slaving over dinner and I went downstairs and watched The Sound of Music on Disney Plus with the kids.

Brandon made spaghetti and we took a break from the movie to eat that.  Then we went back to the movie. The kids loved it and Charlotte ran around singing Do a Deer for at least the next 24 hours.

Around 7:00 Brandon's set up a google hangout with his parents so the kids were able to talk to their grandparents. That was really great for everyone.

All in all it had been a decent Easter.

Before we wrap up this post I want to show you too more pictures. Earlier in the week the kids had been playing hide and seek. Lydia hid in the bottom of our hall closet in the area where I keep my boots. She liked it so much in there she didn't want to come out. She ended up moving my boots and putting in things to make it comfy. 

Whenever we wondered where Lydia went we would usually find her in "her cupboard."  She was really happy to have somewhere she could be alone. 

And that's the run down of the week between April 6-12.  I was hoping to get this post written by midnight on the 12th.  It's the morning of the 19th right now.  A whole week later.  I really tried to get this post done sooner, but I literally didn't have much time.  That's because the week of the 13-19 ended up being full of great things.  Mom Adventure School is working super well for us. We've spent HOURS away from the house each afternoon. And in the evenings Brandon and I started watching Stranger Things which has been highly entertaining.

Let's finish this post and I'll start working on writing about the next week.