No School Weeks 9 and 10 - Finishing school

After my marathon writing session on Mother's Day I promised myself I wouldn't get behind on this blog again. But here we are. It's been almost two weeks since I last updated the blog. 

Actually the last two weeks haven't been that eventful. There were no decisions to change careers. And the kids and I were content to stay home rather than go exploring in the afternoons. We did celebrate our anniversary, but other than that the most exciting things that happened included the day the power was out and I couldn't make dinner. 

So this post should come together quickly. At least I hope. I want to get this done before the weekend. We are actually going somewhere and staying there overnight this weekend. We haven't done that for months. I think I might have forgot how to pack. But I'm pretty certain updating my blog before a big trip is part of the packing process so let's get cracking. 

We spend Sunday night in our backyard. The kids played out there.  Derrick told us he had to do his exercises and started doing pullups on the bar that holds the kids' swing. This led to all the kids showing how strong and fast they are.  

 It was a really nice evening.

Monday was Brandon's first day of work at the RV place. If you missed it in the last post (and I don't blame you because that post was dense) Brandon decided to leave his stressful job at the Jerome Airport. It was a decision that came after months of agonizing debate and soul searching. He found a job at an RV company that kept him at the same rate of pay and seemed a lot less stressful.

The first day went really really well. And so did the second, third, fourth, and fifth and so on. We are now on week two and there has been absolutely no drama.  Every day Brandon went to work in a good mood and came home in a good mood. He'd walk in the door like he'd just been on a pleasant walk or had been gone a few minutes to run an errand. He was so relaxed. He really likes his boss and his coworkers. And he likes working with RV's. Instead of worrying about 6 million dollar aircraft with lots of expensive and specialized parts, he's working on RV's and doing things like switching out the mini fridges and installing new blackwater tanks. He does do tricky things like fix generator engines or worry about electrical systems, but even then the stakes are much lower with RV's.

Meanwhile at home I got crafty. I wanted to have some sort of rug for our covered patio. At the same time I realized that we have enough old jeans to make another jean blanket. I put the two ideas together and decided to make a jean rug.

I'd cut out all the pieces the Saturday before so now it was time to lay it out.

And then sew it together. I discovered that the wind blew the corners of the rug so I had the kids stand on the corners when I took the picture. Later I added some rug backing to give it some padding.  That has helped hold it down a bit, but I still need to add some weight to the corners.

On Tuesday we were able to pick up the kids stuff from the school. We stayed in our car while the schools support staff handed us the kids stuff. Veronica's was in a giant clear ziplock bag, but the rest of the kids' stuff was in big black garbage bags. The people that handed us our bags said, "Have a good summer."  That was so sad to hear. This is not how school is supposed to end.

We came home and the kids opened their bags on the floor like this was school supply Halloween.  I gathered up a lot of the unused glue sticks and pencils to use next year. The kids were excited to have their crayons and markers back. 

Most of the teachers send home little gifts. Charlotte's teacher is retiring so she sent home some books along with some candy. Veronica got bubbles and candy. I can't remember if Derrick got anything. And Lydia got some fun slime.

She played with that for a long time.

Wednesday was rainy in the morning so I didn't go for a walk. But later in the morning I took all the kids on a walk to the area where I usually go.  It's an older neighborhood with lots of beautiful Arts and Crafts homes and very tall trees.  The kids loved walking around and looking at everything. 

Here' the rug after I added the back. Picking up the fabric for the back was new. I ordered it online and then went to Joanns to pick it up. I'd done this exact same thing at Christmas time. At that time I'd hadn't wanted to take all four kids into the store so I'd left the three girls in the car and took Derrick in with me. This time we had the option of curb side pickup. I just had to pull up in front of the store and then call the store to let them know I was there. They brought the fabric right out to me.  I was like, "Where has this been my whole life!"  I really hope all these curbside pickup options stay.

Wednesday afternoon the had a dentist appointment. And ti wasn't cancelled. This was the first thing in almost exactly 2 months that hadn't been cancelled.

When we checked in for the appointment the staff took all of our temperatures. Then they had us wait in the car for our appointment. The kids had fun taking turns sitting in the front seat. I set a timer on my phone for 3 minutes and they would rotate seats every time it went off. Everyone got a turn so I guess we were waiting at least 12 minutes.

This dentist is super efficient so we were in and out of there really fast. Derrick continued his "never had a cavity" streak. Veronica didn't have any this appointment either. Charlotte and Lydia each had small cavities. When we made the follow up appointment for those I was surprised that they had open appointments on that Friday. I'm not sure if that was normal for this office or if it was because of COVID.

I ran an errand or something on Wednesday night (I really have no memory of what I did) I do remember coming back and finding Brandon and the kids in the living room putting a bike together. We'd used some of our stimulus money to buy new bikes for the three older kids. For some reason Lydia's bike showed up a week earlier than the others.

She was so excited to have a 10 speed bike with handle bar breaks.

Brandon and I had also ordered a string of ourdoor lights for our patio.  We decided to put them up at like 10 at night. They turned out so cute!  It was so fun to put them up.  Brandon and I were in such good moods while we put them up. Here is a video of turning on the lights.  I did this on Marco Polo so the quality isn't great, but it's still fun to watch.

We got another fun package on Thursday. I'd ordered raspberry, blackberry, and strawberry plants for Nourse Farms back in February. They arrived via FedEx and I immediately went outside to plant them.

They were all basically sticks so they don't look that exciting now. But just you wait.

When I got home from work on Thursday there was a rainbow in the sky. 

Friday May 15th was the last day of Distance Learning for the elementary school kids. We hadn't really done anything with school all week so it felt a little anti climactic. Still it was nice to be "done." 

On Friday afternoon we went back to the dentist for Charlotte and Lydia's cavities. I took them into their appointment, but then waited in the car with Derrick and Veronica.  I'm not sure if I prefer waiting rooms or waiting in the car. It was kind of nice to not have to worry about staying quite and behaving nicely.

When we'd been at the dentist on Wednesday the TV's in the office had been playing the movie Abominable. The kids wanted to watch the whole thing so we ordered it at Redbox and picked it up for movie night. The kids also talked me into ordering pizza that night. So we had pizza and then watched the movie. 

I fell asleep for most of it, but from what I saw it was a pretty well done movie. I liked it better than Small Foot (which isn't much of an opinion since I also slept through most of Small Foot.)

After the kids were in bed Brandon and I watched another movie I'd picked up at Red Box, Ford vs Ferrari.  It was really good. 

We'd talked about maybe going somewhere on Saturday, but we are so out of the habit of going anywhere. So we just stayed home and puttered around.  I went grocery shopping in the morning. When I got home I helped Brandon and the kids clean up the house. Then I ran over to my friend Mary's to pick up tomato plants from her. 

She'd started a bunch of plants from seed as a way to keep occupied during quarantine. Then she realized she had over 100 tomato plants and not near enough room for them all. So she was practically begging me to take some of her plants.   I took them home and babied them through the last week of hardening off. 

I felt like I needed to document how my other plants are doing so I went around the yard and took lots of pictures.

Here's my mint.

My shade plants.

Another shade plant.

And another.

And the hosta.

Charlotte and Lydia have a little garden. Their pumpkins are doing better than mine.

We have this random garden that the kids love playing in. They wanted it to stay a big dirt pile that they could dig in, but I told them we needed to grow something in it. So I put a bunch of giant sunflowers in here. One of my favorite memories of my parents garden was playing with barbies under the giant sunflowers. So I told the kids they could do that here.

Here's what the sunflower looks like.

Lettuce and onions.

Beans. I promise they are there.

More onions. ( I bought a lot)

Pumpkins.

This is where the tomatoes will go.

And the peas.

Oh and we have a hydrangea bush and it's so pretty right now. I've always wanted one of these so I'm thrilled to have it.

We also have a huge rose bush. It's starting to bloom.

The berry patch again.

There are strawberries in here.

Blackberries. (They actually came with leaves)

And raspberries. Each stick came with over a foot of roots. The roots are where the new growth will take place.

Earlier in the week I'd moved some rocks back to the flower gardens in the front yard. I like how the rocks add visual interest while the tulips are dying back.

More pretty rocks.

The kids and Brandon mowed the lawn. When they were done I realized the lawn needed to be edged.  So I got out the shovel and started doing that.  First I dug a ring around the tree and pulled the grass back. I put mulch down and it looks so great.  I also edged the grass that was growing over the patio. In one place it was covering 10 inches of the flag stone!

I went into the front yard and edged the lawn there.  Most of it was hard work and the grass only came up in sections. The kids were riding bikes and having a great time while I was working.  It got late and it was time to put the kids to bed. Brandon put them to bed while I kept working.  He came back out to talk to me. The grass started coming up much easier at this point. I was able to rip out a whole bunch of grass without stopping.  Brandon hadn't realized that I'd already cut the section of grass. He was shocked when I pulled up a continuous stretch of grass. He said it looked like I was unzipping the lawn. The section was super long and looked like a snake. 

I finished up with the yard and Brandon and I went out to the patio to hang out.  Brandon was so relaxed.  He was also in a really romantic mood. He brought out a bowl of bridge mix (it's one of my favorite treats) and was holding our blue tooth speaker.  He said, "I've been thinking a lot about when we were dating. Do you remember this song?"  He started playing "Your Song" from the Moulin Rouge sound track. It was so sweet. He'd found our Moulin Rouge soundtrack CD and put the music on his phone. Then he played "Come What May" he said, I think this is our song.

I agreed. We spent a long time outside listening to the music and dancing. It was such a beautiful evening.

Sunday May 17 was our 13th wedding anniversary. Brandon kept teasing me about the fact that I'd been gone for our anniversary the year before. (I'd been in Zion National Park with my sisters because it was the only weekend that worked for all 5 of us.)  I teased him back about how he'd missed our anniversary for two years in a row thanks to the Army. 

We realized that actually this was one of the few anniversaries where we haven't had other things going on.  We've been on road trips for our anniversary (2008, 2009, 2010. 2011). We've been apart on our anniversary (2013. 2014, and 2019).  We've been either finishing or starting interstate moves (2015, 2017) or been busy with school/training/work (2016, 2018). The last time we were home doing basically nothing for our anniversary was in 2012. And considering Derrick was less than 2 months old and we had three kids under the age of 2 I don't really count that as a relaxing anniversary.  So year, basically this was the first anniversary we've really had a chance to slow down while celebrating our anniversary. 

We spent the morning relaxing. I took the kids outside to show them the final result of the edging. 

They thought the giant grass "snake" was amazing.

Charlotte and Lydia had spend much of Saturday building tree huts in the tree for their dolls to play in. 

We went outside and took pictures of those.

Our tree has filled in really well.

It makes the platform feel like its in the tree.

We had a little sacrament meeting at our house. While I was changing for that I could hear the kids playing outside. I peeked out the window and saw Derrick and Veronica sharing the hammock together.

After our little sacrament service we started getting ready for our anniversary date.  One reason we put so much effort into making our patio cute was so that we could pretend it was a fancy restaurant. This was actually Veronica's idea. She'd remembered when we'd pretended to go to a fancy restaurant for Valentine's day a few years ago. She suggested we do it for our anniversary. 

The kids were super excited to help get things ready. They helped me carry chairs outside and make everything really pretty.

I decided to wear the dress I'd worn to the military ball last year. It was fun to get all fancy. 

Brandon made chicken cordon bleu because it was the fanciest thing we could think of that we could make at home. We also had bread with garlic butter, craison salad, and cherry delight. We put everything out on a cart on the patio so the kids wouldn't have to worry about carrying it out from the house.

More pictures of how dang cute the patio was. 

We called it the Waterfall Grotto Cafe. The girls put that on the menus they made.

The inside of the menu. (Sorry it's upside down.)

Hey another picture of how cute it was. The table cloth is really a bed sheet and the chair ties are curtains. Those flowers are from the hydrangea.

All three girls were so excited about being our servers. (Derrick wasn't super interested in the whole thing so we let him watch Free Willy inside so he wouldn't be distracting.)  This was the entrance to the restaurant. The girls met us there and took us to our table.

They had so much fun taking our orders and filling our drinks. They were very polite.  Even when I asked them if they could take our picture.

The food was amazing.  I think this was the first time we've had chicken cordon bleu.

The girls realized that it was actually kind of boring once we had our food. So they set up more tables for more guests. Here's Antler and Cubby.

We ended up with lots of other guests. 

After we were done with the restaurant we went inside and hung out the rest of the day.  We really didn't have any other things planned. It was fun to just be together.

The next week was pretty uneventful. We were done with school, which was nice,  but I didn't feel like it was summer yet. I decided we'd just take it easy for a week and then make a plan for summer after Memorial Day.

The weather was rainy so we didn't do much each day. Mostly we spent time reading Harry Potter 6.  I wasn't sure if we were going to read that book or not. I remember it being really sad and dark. But the girls wanted to read it so we started. And actually it's been a great read. It's actually been a happy book for the first half. I know some rough stuff is coming, but it's been nice to have this bit of calm before the storm.

Oh and we also went to the doctor on Monday. Charlotte and Lydia have had sores on their faces for a very very long time. The sores come out of nowhere and they stay for a long time because the girls pick at them. I've asked other doctors about it, but they haven't been able to give me a good answer. The other kids don't have the sores so it's obviously not contagious so we've just done our best to try to get the girls to not pick (hence all the drawing and fuse beads.)

Well at the dentist on Friday somebody brought of concerns about the sores. That led to me making an appointment with the doctor on Monday. I figured "well we finally have the time to take care of this without missing school"  Our regular pediatrician was busy or not scheduled or something so we ended up with a different doctor than usual. But I might just switch to him because he figured out what the problem was.

He said it looked like impetigo.  I've considered that before, but ruled it out because impetigo is supposed to be super contagious.  Since the other kids haven't had any sores I didn't think it could be impetigo.  The doctor told me that he has one son who occasionally has impetigo flare ups, but none of his other 5 kids get it.  I'd never heard of that, but it certainly sounded like what we were dealing with.  The doctor prescribed the medicine that works for his son and said that should take care of it. 

Usually that would be the end of the appointment, but instead the doctor stayed and chatted with us about how the school year had gone and how bored everyone was. We talked about how his son was having a graduation parade that evening instead of a ceremony. I said I think that should be the tradition forever now.  I think it was the longest conversation I've EVER had with a doctor. I got the sense that he had no patients coming in after us. He said this was the first week they'd been open for appointments other than immunizations for infants and toddlers.

We hadn't been able to bring siblings so Veronica had been at my friend Kaymie's house. (Derrick had been at therapy.) We picked her up after we got the medicine.  She'd had a great time playing basketball with Kaymie's pre-teen boys. I realized this was the first time I'd had to find a babysitter for Veronica since Alabama. I'd either just brought her with me or scheduled things while she was in pre-school. 

Tuesday was a little bit of a rough day. I felt trapped from all the rain. Brandon came home from work before I needed to be at my work so I left early and went to Goodwill to celebrate the fact that it was open again. I found a sleeping back for Derrick for like $5.  When he saw it the next morning he was so excited. His old sleeping bag had a broken zipper and he'd been asking for a new one for a while.

He liked it when I cinched it up really small around his face.

Here's a picture of the kids playing with legos while I read. It's so fun. 

 Thursday the 21st was our official last day of school. The kids celebrated by watching Tom Moss the Prank engine videos on Youtube. Sigh.

 Derrick's therapist helped him make moon sand at the office. Derrick loved it so much he wanted to make some at home. He played with the moon sand for hours.

 We've talked about doing our own "Backyard Field Day" at home for several weeks. It was raining so much I wasn't sure we could do it, but on Thursday the sun shone for a while and we were able to play. Here are the kids doing a 3 legged race. This really isn't a fair contest. Charlotte and Lydia basically share a brain and so doing a three legged race isn't a problem for them at all.  They move in perfect sync and can almost run together.

 We also did a few races in the front yard. (Until it desolved into an argument over where the actual finish line was.

 The real highlight of the field day was eating popsicles in the tree house. Derrick wanted to take a picture of him "hiding."

 Here we all are hanging out. 

I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the summer. On Thursday afternoon both the skating rink and the city pool announced they would open up in June. So that means we'll have some options besides hikes for this summer.

Today though is just another lazy rainy day. Derrick hurt his foot right before therapy was supposed to start and was crying so hard that I cancelled therapy and let him watch Captain Underpants instead. That gave me time to finish this update. I'm sure we will spend more time reading Harry Potter.

And eventually we've got to remember how to pack. I'm looking forward to getting out of the Magic Valley for the first time in months. 

Thanks for reading.