Silver award

 Mimi is working on her Girl Scout Silver Award.  One part is to post a video on-line to explain her award to the world.  To keep it somewhat anonymous she made a drawing of herself to post with the video...

Thanksgiving Weekend

 We kept it pretty simple and yummy.

Yoda made apple pie, Mimi made chocolate meringue pie, and Parker made 2 kinds of cranberry sauce. 

Greg made the turkey in our countertop turkey roaster, it's great because it frees up the oven!  We have it sitting here at Yoda's remote learning desk.  Greg did a fresh, local, fancy turkey, with a wet brine.   I made or assisted making the sides, we split the work on the gravy and I bought the rolls.  At the last minute Greg saw the white potatoes that I bought on a whim and he went for it. 

Happy Thanksgiving, a little more guitar

 

Among the many things we're thankful for is guitar lessons! Can you see Yoda 2nd from the left? 

Greg and Yoda 10+ years ago.

Greg and Yoda today!

All the Legos, all the masks

The kiddos have received many Lego sets over the years and each child plays with them so differently!

Parker liked the mini-figures, Mimi prefers to have a set to put together, leave it alone or take it apart and put it together again, but Yoda is crazy-town, he is constantly taking pieces from different sets and taking them all over the house.  After a while I stopped cleaning them up and just let him go nuts without me chasing after him.

BUT since 2020 has been a total pain and we are inside so much, Mimi would like different sets to work on.  Getting new sets is out of the question, so I decided that I would recreate a few sets for her to keep in her room, untouched by her little brother. 

This is just a taste of what we've been doing...

 

 

And here's some of our masks...  I like our funny little clothes line to air-dry them sometimes.  I've made a bunch, and bought a few.  None feel perfect, but some are better than others. 

And here's our latest way to keep them sorted.  Up high is fresh/clean masks, ready to go, 5 hooks for 5 people. 

And below that is a few hooks for a mask that was only worn for a few minutes or an hour or something and can be worn again.  I can't for this nightmare to be over and I'm gonna burn them all.  That vaccine can't come soon enough. 

I wanna Shasta!

This was a total impulse buy.  

But I thought we had bad weather moving in, so we'd need something to do to stop from going crazy.  But... then it's been amazing outside, so I thought this would never get finished.  But... it was one of the quickest puzzles yet!  And so funny to look up old soda commercials on the internet.  

Voting/photo booth

 This made me laugh

Happy belated Halloween / UPDATED a little

Mimi was a YouTube personality (below on the left), Yoda was a classic Ninja, and Parker was a character from Avatar the Last Airbender (below on the right)

Later on we added a few more bits of yellow to make his costume a little better.

.   

I handed out candy dressed as Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  I set up a slide on top of a table, I'd grab some candy with tongs and send the candy down the slide.  I wish I had taken a picture. 

Doors

I've been slowly taking care of some doors in the house.  I blogged about painting the front door a couple weeks ago, but I've also painted most the interior doors.  While we had doors on the brain, it hit me to finally take down the shower door in our bathroom.  

We've talked about our little bathroom before.  It's very small, which is fine, I don't want/need a giant bathroom to clean, but this one is a little silly how small it is.  

Here's the makeover we did a few years ago.  

And here's when we hired a guy to build new walls.  

Both great progress, but... that shower door was so awkward.   

It was too narrow to walk out of comfortably.  A new, swinging shower door could work, but it was a tough solution because the guy said he'd want to peek in the walls to make sure he was securing it to a sturdy enough structure.  Great idea, but it sounded expensive.  And who knew if a swinging door would get past that toilet?  A shower door that had 3 panels instead of 2 would make the opening bigger, but again, I didn't want to spend $700 or more on this silly little bathroom.  Then - DUH!  Shower curtain!

I tore out the door, scraped all the caulking, cleaned up the shower and for less then $100 and a weekend of time I hung up my new shower curtain.  

We got a tall stall curtain, it pulls all the way to the side and we can walk out with ease.  Such a simple solution!  Sometimes there's a few drops of water on the floor, but not much more then the shower door let escape.  Also, it's just Greg and I that use the this room, and we're grown ups so we clean up after ourselves. 

In 2020 it's all about making things work. 

First Day 2020

We switched to a hybrid schedule a few weeks back, I grabbed a photo before they took off.

   Mimi, Freshman in high school!

 

Parker, Senior in high school!  

Mimi and Parker attend seminary at home over the computer and then drive off to their little high school together.  Halfway through the day they drive to the big high school for Orchestra.  

Poor Mimi has to go back and forth 2 more times during the day to get to all of her classes.  Fortunately we only go to school 2 or 3 days a week, so it's not that exhausting for her.  Parker did similar things his sophomore year.  It's a short drive though. 

Parker takes 3 classes at the big high school so he just stays there.  Then they drive home together.  Sometimes he'll have to stay for play practice, or he drives home early because he doesn't have a class.  If he does that then I go get Mimi at the end of the day.  Mimi's last class of the day is Latin and that teacher seems very funny because she always has good things to talk about!

Yoda, last year of elementary school- 5th grade! 

 

While the weather is good Yoda rides his bike with a buddy down the street a (Greg goes too because people on their way to work are TERRIBLE drivers and we want to make sure he's safe)

The front porch

The front porch needed a change, we got to it during this annoying summer.

Here's a before photo from a few years ago...

 

And here's a close up of the redone porch...

Greg tore down the railing and detail up top.  (We noticed a few neighbors had done it and it looked like a good idea.)

We "wrapped" the pillars with a pvc material--no more painting!

Moved the furniture from the back of the house to the front so we can all sit up front.

Simple macrame hanging plants in colorful pots.  

New door color!  A beautiful blue from Benjamin Moore. 

I accidentally caused 3 of the 4 boxwood bushes to die, so I moved the one live one over to the side.  Then I dug up all the pachysandra and re-planted them throughout the front mulch bed.  I also moved the stepping stones around so they make more sense.  Also added some top soil so hopefully everything will grow strong.  

I bought some string lights from Ikea, we've only used them once.  But they're so cute. 

There are some new house numbers along the side of the door as well. 

The smallest detail that we changed but I liked a lot is the peephole.  I bought a new one and replaced it in seconds! And no paint splatters on the new one! 

Tearing down the railing opened up the porch so much and now we spend way more time out there.  It's funny that such a small change made a big difference. 

Just out for a walk

 The park was pretty crowded on this pretty day so we masked up

Me - a mask from Target.   Greg and Mimi - masks that I made this weekend during church at home. Yoda - a mask he made with me a few months ago.  Parker - a mask from his most recent high school play that he was in (more about that play soon!)

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.