Cutie cousins: Theo and Davis.
Morning cuddles with the three little boys in our bed. Feels like a wrestling match.
First thing we did after James and Dixie moved most of their things out of the house is put new carpet in all the bedrooms. It feels so soft and nice and really changes how the rooms feel! Because it took a few days to get it all the way installed, and we couldn't install beds or anything we slept at my parents house with them for a few days. It was really helpful and we stayed longer than we anticipated. It was nuts to have one family moving out and one family moving in at the exact same time. We couldn't overlap as much as I thought we would, it was just easier to give Chris' parents space to move out without moving our things in at the same time. The kitchen was hardest because we needed to use stuff, so we had our kitchen stuff on one side of the room and kept it separate from theirs. It was tricky to separate some things, like toys since our things have gotten mixed as we lived together for so long. Dixie and James were both still working full time and didn't really start packing much before the day or so they had the moving truck. It was a tricky transition.
Mid-way through April, James and Dixie rented a truck to move all their things. This was in the beginning of COVID restrictions so they didn't tell all the neighbors who would've come and helped but just their sons and Uncle Bruce. We borrowed the truck when they weren't using it to shuttle stuff from our storage unit where we had most of our things for the past 9 months. We just piled everything into the downstairs playroom first, and then when the upstairs living room was cleared out, we stacked stuff there as well. James and Dixie wanted to do some MAJOR remodels on their condo right away so they pretty much left all their things in the storage room, shop and garage and all outside things untouched for a while until they had more space at their condo. They never charged us rent while we lived with them but the plan was to pay rent to them after they moved out until we sold our MS house but we weren't able to get a good system for paying rent for a little while and then we ended up buying the house from them in September. They've always been really kind and generous with us and put up with all our mess for so long.
Easter! Our winner this year was MAX! It was really fun to show grandma and grandpa how to do the egg roll.
Theo's crawling!! Its so fun to see him on his little hands and knees.
Spring Break 2020 - Pandemic Style. We made plans to travel the world without breaking quarantine. We let each kid pick a country to visit for a day. We ate food, did a craft, watched a movie and had souvenirs they could buy at the airport before boarding for each place. We set up an airplane downstairs and would ride in it each morning to our new destination. We'd watch an in-flight movie about the country in the air, and pass our airplane snacks. We made the kids passports with current photos and stamped their passports at every place. Alec chose California so we could watch his fav. TV show Psych. We had churros (Disneyland) and California rolls. and ate California pizza kitchen frozen pizzas (with chopsticks... which were supposed to just be for the homemade sushi rolls, but the kids had fun eating their pizza with chopsticks too) and dug for gold in the sandbox. Charlie chose New Zealand so we could watch the Hobbit. We (Chris) made a traditional dessert: pavlova and did a sheep craft. We also had our only outing as we hiked on the VERY BORDER of our county (Ok,.... so it was actually in the next county and therefore disobeyed the quarantine rules) to Paul Bunyon's Wood Pile. Chris just found a hike in the middle of now where. We didn't see a single soul... and it was FREEZING when we got there. We were utterly unprepared for how cold it was. Gwen threw a bit of a fit, but eventually got wrapped up in my baby' wrap, and wore my hat for warmth. Also, Freddy somehow got in the car without pants or a jacket!?! So we found an emergency towel somewhere in the car and wrapped him up with that. He was a trooper and never complained. We hiked for a while but when it started to snow and we were all so cold we just turned around and never made it to the actual wood pile. Making it to the car was a relief but things got scary as we tried to maneuver the van over and around the steep, dirt roads that were now slushy mud. We were slipping around on the mud and almost didn't make it up some of the hills to get out. We took a gamble and didn't go out the way we came because it seemed less treacherous.... we had to open a gate and stuff but eventually got out! Whew! what a memory. The terrain actually reminded us of locations out of the Hobbit so it went along with our theme. Freddy chose Africa so we could watch the Lion King. We made tribal masks, played bingo safari with animal crackers and had races carrying water buckets on our head with 'babies' strapped to our backs. We made Babotie, (an egg, curried, groundbeef, and raisin dish) and fried banana fritters. Gwen chose France so we could watch Beauty and Beast and Leap. We had french bread, and brie, croissants made croque monseiurs, (friend ham and cheese sandwich). We made our own museum with interesting objects to tell stories about and painted Lilly Pads like Monet. The whole week was really fun and helped give us some interesting things to plan for, and learn about and IT WAS A TON OF WORK!!!!!. I was exhausted by the end of the week and getting back to normal homeschooling/catching up on housework was hard for me the following week.... but it made for some awesome memories.
Conference Time! We tried to let Grandpa watch in peace so I was a little stressed about keeping the kids quiet. Conference is always a little chaotic for me. We had a beautiful vegi, cheese and cracker tray. Some other fun snacks we ate were soft pretzels (from the grocery store freezer)... Charlie in particular love soft pretzels. I tried to get the kids to think of some of their favorite snacks to get them excited and want to pay attention. Without all of my typical bingo cards and other conference tools it was challenging. Some things are hard to do in someone elses' house.
Typical home school scene. We made a schedule up like Math from 8:00-9:00. PE from 9:00-10:00, then Language Arts, then Art, then Lunch, then History/Science/Extra. So we were all working together on stuff at the same time and I was still able to get my morning exercise in. I feel like I HAVE to exercise if I want to be able to eat anything. I'm not keeping my blood sugars in the range they're supposed to be in and I exercise helps me produce more insulin so its a vital part of my day. We will take runs together (Me pushing the two babies in the stroller and the big kids running or scootering next to me) or we'll run stairs up and down by Lion's Park, or we'll do lunges and squats up and down the yard or an exercise video inside. At first it was fun to get out all together and be active, but I definitely have thinner patience for fighting/squabbles while I'm out of breath and tired so I'm easily grumpy when I try to exercise with all the kids. Alec has really struggled with focusing on his school work. He's super easily distracted with Max and Theo's loud and cute antics. Charlie was pretty self starting/motivating but he was also sneakily not completely assignments so we could be 'done' and just play. Gwen was very thorough and wanted to do everything perfect so if she didn't understand the directions, a huge tantrum would ensue and I would get yelled at. I got yelled at a lot by all of the kids, needing me to understand something to help them with an assignment, to figure out how to download and print off assignments, to help them take pictures to upload assignments, to figure out what the heck the teachers were talking about and where the link was to the video they wanted them to watch or what password they needed for the certain website/program they had to log into...etc Even just the practical technical side of things was hard juggling all the devices: 2 school laptop that won't show any youtube videos, one new touchscreen laptop we bought (the last one in stock at a store 45 minutes north!) one desktop, one old kindle, and my phone. Getting passwords for all the kids on all devices, figuring out which device works best to scroll through pages of PDF textbooks, to play a touchscreen Math website, to connect to the printer, to be able to show a linked YouTube video without hitting security firewalls. Kids fighting over the ones with more comfortable mouses, instead of touch pad. etc... Freddy couldn't read yet so I had to sit by him and walk him through all of his assignments. The teachers didn't stop requiring assignments for any kind of grace period. They extended deadlines but still required all the work get done. They each (I had 14 different teachers between all my kids) posted their information in different places sometimes we would miss things and find out later we had a bunch of work to catch up on. All through this, I had little Max and Theo needing me to do everything for them, feeding/diaper changing, putting down for naps. Also, Max played really rough with Theo and I would have to protect him and keep a close watch that he didn't get mauled too bad. And when they didn't need me they would walk around, creating havoc with Grandma's organ/piano, or Grandpa's stereo, or messing up/losing their puzzle or game pieces. And I felt like I needed to try and keep the house tidy and have dinner made for all the working adults when they came home so they wouldn't feel like we were a burden as we lived in their house for free. So to not be able to eat my favorite foods or use treats as a reward/escape and to try and limit and carb count EVERYTHING I ate and STILL not get good bloodsugar numbers was emotionally so exhausting. It was SO SO SO SO SO hard. I would cry most days, multiple times. I would run down to out little bedroom in the basement and cry in our bathroom on the floor. I was TRAINED to teach kids and I couldn't make sense of 1/2 of what they're teachers wanted. I expected to be really great at this distant-learning thing and I was a yelling, crying mess.
Gwen and Charlie did a no sugar challenge (for $10) for a month and were so excited to eat their first piece of candy.
