We're still hanging out at home all the time. School ended this past week. It ended a little earlier than normal so summer came early for us. It wasn't always pretty, but we survived. Here are a lot pictures from our recent home adventures. Scott was supposed to take a working from home picture for work. We snapped this one really quick with a fort the kids had made. Scott's bosses ended up using the picture in a division wide power point.
Grant learned how to make a candy dispenser out of Legos.
It even accepts coins.
John had an assignment to make a Lego bridge for school that could hold a certain amount of weight. Then he was supposed to write a paragraph about it. This particular assignment caused much sadness. Not sure why. I thought he would enjoy building with Legos.
John's bridge
Getting John to do all his work at home has sometimes been a struggle these past few months. Many nights he hasn't finished his work until after dinner. He is in first grade. He got better toward the end, but at first he would just dig in and refuse to continue working when he felt he had reached his limit.
Eventually he did the work, but sometimes there were tears. He missed his teacher and his class too.
Toward the end of the year I think I learned how to make things easier for John. We tried to work real hard in the morning so he could finish sooner. And it seemed to help if he clearly understood how much work he had to do each day. Here he is working on a knock knock joke writing assignment. This day his work went well into evening time. Scott picked up Chick-Fil-A take out for dinner since I was still helping him at dinner time.
We finally finished for the day.
Another day making origami and writing about it
We finished earlier that day. Hooray!
Emma has a big appetite for learning but only a little bit of preschool homework, so it has been a challenge keeping her engaged. She wants to feel that she is working as much as the older kids. Here she is doing some preschool homework.
Another day she was supposed to plant some grass seeds for homework.
That took up only a few minutes. :)
Here is John ready for a zoom meeting. All the kids had zoom meetings with their classes. John also had his speech therapy over zoom.
Here is Grant finishing his end of year biography project.
Grant recorded a little video in lieu of an oral presentation in class of himself as Albert Einstein
The wig was from an old Santa costume and his mustache and eyebrows were made from cotton balls. He worked hard on his paper and did a good job.
I hurt my hip in March and have been taking some time off running in hopes that it gets better. I've been biking and hiking as cardio alternatives. I don't enjoy biking as much as running. When I'm running on the running path bikers have to swerve around me and going through all the gates and crossing streets doesn't seem like too big of a deal. When you are biking the runners, walkers and roads all seem to come up really quickly and you can't ever get in a good exercise groove. Instead of running together Scott and I will sometimes go to the path and I'll bike while he runs, then we meet back at the beginning at the same time. Somedays I've gone with Matthew or Anna. They can go faster than me but poop out too soon. I'd rather go for a little longer. So I haven't fallen in love with biking yet. Hoping to get back to running soon.
Emma writing notes for Grandparents.
From Emma to Grandma and Grandpa. I love you, I miss you.
Anna trying to put bird seed in a little bird house she and Grant made. There were newly sprayed chemicals on the lawn so she was trying not to touch the grass.
All five kids put on a puppet show one evening.
Anna got "heart attacked" from her young women's class.
Quick Elsa braids
Not going for perfection here.
We got to see the F-35s flyover our house
Playing Googly Eyes with Emma and John
Emma drew a whale
Pokemon mania continues in our house
Emma was proud of herself for learning to make a PB&J all on her own.
Grant has been trying to train me. Every day he tells me he wants "the usual" (toast with honey, cut in half and a glass of milk). For a while I was still asking what the usual is but now I remember. He has successfully trained me, I guess.
We've hung a few pictures on the wall here and there. It's still a work in progress. Here I am trying to figure out how to hang things on Emma's wall.
We got a new sofa, love seat and ottoman in our front room and hung some pictures. They all came at different times. The ottoman came with the wrong kind of feet and we have spent many hours on the phone with customer service trying to get the correct feet. I talked to customer service a few weeks ago and explained the problem and a week or so later we got one foot in the mail. You need four feet - one for each corner. We called back and after waiting on hold an hour or so talked to a person and explained what happened. A week later we got one more foot in the mail. We called again and really stressed that we still require TWO feet for this ottoman to be functional. The person on the phone clearly understood, but I am expecting a package to arrive with one foot in it any day now. We'll see what happens.
We also ordered a new bed frame. We have had the mattress for about a month and just been sleeping on it on the floor. So its nice to have the whole thing now.
The kids think the bed is so tall and exciting.
Our school area with new pictures on the wall.
Cardboard boxes from the new bed frame are in the foreground.
Emma's room with new curtains and wall decor. We are still working on the dresser and floor mess.
Emma's wall art
Grant and John's room with new curtains and wall decor
The boys pics - its all a work in progress
Our new big bed again
And we've been working most weekends in our garden.
First we spent a long time pulling weeds that had grown through
The whole family worked on the weeds
Pulling the last big weed
Scott and I covered the front half of the garden with black fabric.
The back still has the covering from last year with weeds growing through the pumpkin holes.
I let each kid adopt a raised garden bed.
Grant planted some raspberries, strawberries and boysenberries.
Anna cleared this bed out and has plans to grow some different vegetables from seeds.
John helped clear this one. There are some blueberry bushes from last year and an old dead raspberry. We are still trying to figure out what to do here. Last year a lot of volunteer tomatoes came up here.
Emma planted one blackberry plant. Hers is 5% plant, 20% fairy garden and the rest dirt.
Matthew picked some herbs to grow - thyme, basil, oregano and lavender. He also wanted rosemary but we couldn't find it at the store. I tried to push sage on him as well or cilantro. We may add a few more things.
Half of Grant's bed
We need a plan to protect his berries from critters. We need new netting.
And a yet to be weeded bed with some survivor strawberries from last year.
Meanwhile in the front yard, things I planted last year are coming back! This is a Rose of Sharon in the foreground with a rhododendron in the background.
Lilac on the left and echinacea along the front. Two echinaceas didn't come back, out of 7 plants. So I replanted some new ones there.
Hearty rudbeckia (black eyed susan) on the bottom left. I planted two of those last year and they win the prize for strongest comeback. This is only one of them. Another echinacea is on the bottom right. The smaller plants at the middle/top of this picture are hydrangea that are coming back. I planted three of those. They really suffered in the heat of summer last year but two of them are coming back up pretty well. The third has some little green new leaves but isn't really growing. I haven't given up on him yet, but it doesn't very look promising.
In the middle of this picture is the third, sad hydrangea. Maybe not meant to make it here. On the right is the other strong rudbeckia, a few more echinacea and a volunteer tulip or daffodil from the previous owners. I think I need a taller bush in the back since the front flowers have the potential to be tall. Probably won't get there this year. We'll see how it goes.
Our Japanese maple survived the winter and is looking very beautiful and happy. Hooray!
And the flowering Rhododendron. Scott's dad brought us this from Oregon. I was sure we would kill it immediately with our dry climate and alkali soil, so I'm glad it has lasted this long.
This a patch of grass Scott added some topsoil to last year. It was kind of a ditch and we wanted to even it out a bit. We had to add new grass seed and it actually looks like its coming along nicely.
One piece of sod donated by the neighbors.
Last week we pulled the remaining weeds from the garden and this week we covered the rest of it with fabric. Then we cut holes for the pumpkins and planted them. The kids all helped plant.
Here's hoping they grow. Maybe I am underestimating the ability of things to grow here. I kill a lot of plants, but many of the things I've planted have survived winter and started to grow again. Plus our pumpkin patch last year was very hearty. This year we spread the holes out farther, so hopefully that's better. We'll see.
The day after planting it got super windy, of course. But we learned a few things after last year and no black fabric has been pulled up yet.
Just flapping a little in the breeze.
This is the front flower bed last year. I'm learning what comes back well and what doesn't. The salvia and cat mint (cat mint not yet planted in this pic) both came back strong. Dianthus also came back strong. The yellow coreopsis has yet to come back. So there is a lot of purple and pink in this bed but no yellow.
Here it is now. I haven't cleaned it up yet, but I'm glad to see some of the plants came back.
Emma wanted to touch some of the plants.
I will work on weeding this little by little. Maybe I'll have time now that school is out.
Or maybe not.
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