Hitting the Trail Again

Greg took the kiddos off on another long hike.  After the last hike we asked what they wanted to do differently or the same--they all wanted to go again, they wanted to switch around who got what backpacks, and go for a shorter hike.  But they went on a longer hike, I think it was by accident. 

They did a TON of prep and planning before hand, they went for 3 days, 2 nights, and had a pretty good time over all.  They may go again if the weather holds.  (I stayed home and did a bunch of painting and stuff around the house and didn't cook the whole time!)

Here are some photos, before, during and after the hike...

 

Ramen in a bag! 

There's their little camp stove on the right. 

Buckeye!

Playing in the dirt.

We bought a 3rd hammock for this trip.

They are saluting Mimi's last apple squeeze, so silly. 

Angry teens...

...happy teens.

On their way home. 

1058 and All the Puzzles

That's how many blog posts I've done over the past 13 years. Just saying.

We've put together, shared, loaned, mailed, gifted and been gifted so many puzzles the last few months, it's been fun to keep track. 

Washington D.C. puzzle in January, pre-pandemic.

Mimi got her very own Suffragists puzzle for her birthday in February.  I had to hold back from working on it while she was at school!  

When the lock down hit, Mimi found a few puzzles to do on her own. 

These are a couple of space ones from Nana. 

My sister got me this as an early birthday present.   Very cute. 

Yoda got this one for Valentine's Day, but didn't put it together until lock down.  Then he decided to flip it.  So silly.

Video

By May it felt like we'd never get to go anywhere, so we started doing quite a few puzzles.  Here's our 2000 piece that we usually keep to do over New Years break. 

I got this cute, boat one for myself for Mother's day.  

Mimi and Greg picked out our new hardest one for my birthday, it was beautiful but very difficult!  Van Gogh's Starry Night.  We started it on my birthday and didn't finish until the next month.  

Then we needed a classic, quilts on a summer day, ahhhh... (this was a birthday present from my sister either last year or the year before.)

 

I used some of my birthday cash to get this puzzle of Fallingwater.  It's double sided and Yoda couldn't help himself, he flipped it over and over again! 

 

Greg got me this puzzle for my birthday as well.  It's got all sorts of our favorite things: quilts, s'mores, snowshoes (we did that once a million years ago, it stuck with us), hot cocoa....

Now that the kiddos are busy with remote school at home I don't know what to do with myself.  I can't really get into cooking, cleaning or a project, because of the noise.  Or because if I do, someone will likely need my help, usually there's something wrong with the computer or something.  So I got myself a new puzzle to do when I need to keep myself quiet, but busy.  Mimi jumped right in.  She loves camping, stars and learning about astrology lately. 

Apples and Peaches

We went to our favorite fruit picking place and came home with so much produce, it's been hard to eat it all.  

We've made: apple sauce, apple slump, peach syrup, peach cobbler, apple coffee cake, apple turnovers, pork chops with cinnamon apples, and probably something else that I can't think of since I'm all jittery from all the sugar :)
 

 

First Day 2020

(sorry this is very late) 

Just trying to keep things together amid this nonsense pandemic.  First our school district was going to be hybrid, then we were told we would be all remote until the end of October.  Now we are planning to go back at the end of Sept, we'll see...

For now this is how the kiddos are doing their school work:

Yoda is in this little nook between the laundry room and the kitchen table, we moved out the cubbies that held coats and stuff.  He is using a table we bought when we first moved into the house (off of Craig's list).  It's purpose changes all the time: game table, puzzle table, now a school desk.  He's using the computer that we bought specifically for school work and Skype a few years ago. 

Mimi is on the comfy couch in the living room, on a desk that we lucked out finding on Craig's list.  I wanted something pretty, not a folding table.  It looks a lot like the table Yoda is using.  Her computer is a loaner from school that she usually gets, even without a pandemic to help her with her reading and writing. 

Parker is on our previous kitchen table in the office/dinning room, it keeps getting moved around too.  In the spring he and Mimi were both using it in the living room on that comfy couch, but that was when video chats were rare.  Now that they have classes all day they need to have some space between them.  We brought back the little comfy couch that used to be in here years ago.  And he's using Greg's laptop.