- COVID Diaries: Week 10 -

[In my best Alice Cooper shout/scream...]  SCHOOOOOOOOL'S OUT! FOR! SUMMER!

Done done donezooooo.

We kind of "let loose" with our routines this week and really settled into the ultra relaxed schedule that will be summer break.  Add a little quarantine into the recipe, and we're over here like:

Many of the details of last week have already slipped my mind, but the photos prove that we syringe fed our ants on Saturday afternoon...

...and also took baths and probably had some sort of family movie night on Saturday evening!

Sunday [all] morning was for wearing PJs and sipping coffee and giving manicures!  We've used these nail stickers from Wal-Mart a few times, and the kids love them.  #weekendvibes #girlmom #nailart

The entire weekend was chilly and rainy, but chicken and broccoli casserole with rice and banana nut muffins really hit the spot! Yummmm to one of our family favorites! :)

Monday evening was Rozalyn's 5th birthday parade and garage party!  Happy birthday, sweet girl! 

Made official on Tuesday at 2:00pm: we have a preschool grad in 'da howseeeee!  We are so proud of Harper and all she's accomplished this year!  Congrats to our very favorite Little Jay!  [More to come on this in another post...but for now...check out the video here!]

On Wednesday evening, Dana and I talked Brian into getting a mop buzz in her yard!  While I finished up scissor cutting the top of his hair in our master bathroom, the kids stayed occupied in the living room with a movie and popcorn!

Thursday was a full day at the hospital for me...

 

...and Friday was a full day of fun for all!  We hit up the bicycle shop in town to [finally!] buy Scarlett a helmet.  The store wasn't open for browsing, but there was a worker manning a card table outside and she happily brought toddler helmets outside for Sissy to try on. 

The choices were yellow with lightening bolts, lime green with monsters, or neon blue with planets and stars; Scarlett chose yellow without hesitation!  I think it's pretty fitting, too, because as soon as we got home she was off like a lightening bolt and she's been making laps around the subdivision on her balance bike ever since!  If you see a bright yellow streak buzzing through the subdivision, it juuuuust might be Scarlett! ;) :)

Cheers to the weekend!

- Mother's Day -

Omgoshhhh, 2020 shall go down in the books as the BEST Mother's Day ever!  Wahhhhhh!

Besides having to share every other bite of that delectable [and GIANT!] cinnamon roll with the little beggar to my left, breakfast in bed was a real treat!  Harper even filled up wine glasses for breakfast, because WE FANCY on Mother's Day!  I am so head-over-heels in love with these two tiny humans who made me a mother! <3

Later on, we had my parents and brother over for a visit to celebrate Grammy Resa [we broke social distancing real hard for 'dis, but no one seemed to bat an eye!].

 

...and then had a little salon session...

  ...and MANY games of Twister!  And the Twister champion is...

...[always] Harper!  That girl can twist/fold/bend her body in more ways than I even imagined possible!

The following night, we had Brian's parents over for an ice cream social to celebrate Grammy Ann!  It only took 15 tries to get a decent photo of the three generations... :) #thisishowwewerein2020

And lastly, I want to wrap it up with this tribute/photo collage:

To my beautiful mom...
To my two beautiful grandmas...
To my beautiful mother-in-law...
To my beautiful godmother...
To my kids' two beautiful godmothers...
To the two beautiful kids who made me a mother...

...I am blessed by all of you!  HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all!  May you always know the very special place you have in my heart!

- Quilling Through Quarantine -

I've always loved the paper flowers that I've seen other crafty peeps making, and I finally sat down last month and taught myself how to make them!  They are SO fun and so easy [if you have a Cricut at your disposal, that is], and the kids were even able to help me put together the Mother's Day gifts this year for Grammy Resa and Grammy Ann. <3  Paper art quilling for the win!

^^ We loved the Mother's Day shadow boxes so much that we decided to just keep going with gifts for Teacher Appreciation Day, too!  Harper picked out all the flower colors for her teachers' boxes and actually did about 75% of the quilling herself. 

As we were driving to Ms. Leah's house that morning, I said, "I hope Ms. Leah likes what we made for her!" to which Harper immediately replied, "She will like it, I already know.  She always loves everything I make her in class." :)

Cheers to mothers and teachers -- AKA a handful of people we love so much and could never get through life without!  We hope you special ladies enjoy looking at your flower boxes for years to come! :)

- COVID Diaries: Week 9 -

Just another day week in paradise!  

JUST KIDDING.

Truth be told:  I hit my limit this week, and I'm a hotttttt mess express to the MAX!  For the past 9 weeks, I've just been quietly processing and swallowing allllll of the emotions and reactions that are new to me re:  COVID-19 + sheltering-in + remote learning + working the front lines of a global pandemic + trying to stay calm and collected so as to continue raising a little family through it all.  This isn't to say that I didn't relish in all the small joys along the way; but two months of said process clearly took a toll on my mind, because today I'm really "feeling" all those foreign-to-me emotions and letting them fizz right up to the top of the bottle.  I'm also bubbling up over the layoff announcement from work that came last Friday and Harper's last day of preschool that is this Friday [today], and gosh!  My brain is officially sick of functioning in overdrive and I think a niceeeee long vacation to the beach -- or maybe to the moon -- would be really perfect right about meow.  [Maybe just a lobotomy would do, too.] ;)

Wahhhhh.

Shaking up my fizzy-soda-bottle-brain like 3...2...1...........

On Saturday morning, we spread out alllll the crafting stuff we own [or that's what it felt like, at least!] to finish up Mother's Day gifts. We've been making these adorable little photo cubes every year since 2016, and I can't wait to give them to the grandmas and great-grandmas again this year!  Brian also busted out another stack of supplies in his maiden voyage of helping the kids use the Cricut to make a Mother's Day card for me!  [I could hardly believe my eyes but quickly diverted them so as to be surprised on Sunday!!!]

After finishing up crafts and cards, we went for a bike ride through the subdivision...

...and eventually parked the bikes in the grass to take a nice, long stroll through The Secret Garden.  We love this serene little place as well as the neighbors who tend to it!

Later on Saturday afternoon, the mailman delivered the ants for our ant farm!  [I'm not a bug girl, but Grammy Resa was sold on getting this for the girls immediately after we released our butterflies!  We just had to wait a couple weeks for the little critters to arrive in the mail.]  The kids were really interested in preparing the farm and have been great with feeding/watering them as necessary.

Also!  Thanks to Harper for snapping some pics of us putting up the crown molding on Saturday evening! Her selfie game is always on point! :)

Sunday was Mother's Day, and it truly was the very best day!  I'll write more in another post, but let it be known now that I'm soooo very thankful for all of these beautiful "mothers" in our lives [and also the beautiful little girls who made me a mother]! 

I was furloughed [AKA forced to stay home from work] on Monday, but the kids and I kept busy with laundry and house cleaning.  Also, we couldn't believe how busy our ants were from Saturday evening to Monday morning!  :O

After marveling over their tunnels for a while, Harper put a little grape slice inside their habitat and they all swarmed right to it!  The kit said they eat bread crumbs, cake, small pieces of fruit, leaves, or "really anything."  I feel like they'd be starving with the amount of food we put in there, but the instructions are very insistent on NOT overfeeding the ants!  We shall see how they fare.

We also made slime on Monday morning...

...and it was a HUGE mess that I never plan on bringing out again.  Check that off the bucket list -- done done done.  Whyyyyy is it that kids are obsessed with slime!??! So gross. 

After the rare unicorn that was BOTH kids napping...

...Scarlett helped me clean out my car while Harper and Brian went to Home Depot in pursuit of a home for her fairy garden!  She was so proud of the pot she chose.

On Tuesday morning, Brian left bright and early to help pour a concrete patio at Uncle Garett's house.  The rest of us couldn't quite get our sh*t together for the day, so we played a few math puzzles together in lieu of doing "real schoolwork"... 

...and binge-watched TV while Scarlett took an extra long nap... 

...and overall, just gave ourselves a much needed break and a little bit of grace!  Like I blabbed on about at the top of the post, Tuesday was the beginning of a rough few days for me.

Wednesday was a little better in the motivation department, but I totally forgot about logging on for Harper's weekly Zoom call with her preschool class.  Oops!  We did dip our toes into the Pre-K unit of the week, which was "Camping!"  We enjoyed making a list of things we'd pack for a camping trip as we made popcisle stick tents and glued them to a camping scene made of things we found in the craft drawer.  We also FaceTimed Grandma Penny to poll her on what items she'd take if she went camping!  She and Harper both agreed that a toilet would be a necessity [I can't disagree -- add it to the list!]. :)

At lunch time on Wednesday, we drove over to the Kloss Furniture warehouse to pick up our LONG-AWAITED entry way table -- and man, do I mean long-awaited!  We ordered this thing in mid-January, and it was supposed to arrive to our home in 4-5 weeks.  I've been itching to put a lot finishing touches on our house, and home decor and furniture stores being closed throughout the pandemic has really cramped my style!

However! Thankfully the warehouse shipments were back in business this month, and my handyman husband agreed to snap the table together so we didn't have to wait a few more months for Kloss to do it themselves...

...and voila!  [Now if only At Home or Home Goods would open back up so I can find decor for the tabletop...hah!]  I'm also thinking we need a potted plant to go on the floor to the left of the table, but I'm NOT a green thumb by any stretch of the imagination and I also know not one iota about indoor plants!  If anyone has recommendations of what plant may look good in this space, please send your thoughts my way!

Between part of the day at the office and part of the day on labor and delivery, Thursday turned into a 7am-7pm shift for me.  When I got home around 8:30pm, Brian and the girls were partying it up in the kitchen to the brand new sound-activated LED lights he installed behind the crown molding!  The kids were loving it and singing "Let it Go!" at the top of their lungs; of course, I can't decide if Brian is passive-aggressively trying to turn our new house into a man cave or if he maybe has ALSO hit his breaking point and just needs a little excitement away from 9 weeks of being quarantined to working from the basement.  Maybe I'll never ever know.

Friday [today] was Harper's last day of school.  She dressed herself in her preschool T-shirt this morning and we snapped a photo on the front porch before lunch.  I honestly didn't even know today was the last day until I read an email from the teachers with a sentimental blurb and video attached, LOL... I thought the last day was Monday as originally planned before COVID messed everything up!  Harper said she was "a little sad" that it was the last day, but she would only really miss her teachers because otherwise she likes being home every day to play with her family.  Bless her sweet little heart!  We love our Little Jay and can't wait to see what the future holds for her!

Going into the weekend and also sliding into summer break, I've decided that my goal is to focus really hard on being "present over perfect."   During these uncertain and unprecedented times, as we're stretched in ways we didn't know we'd have to bend in and especially as the counties and states may begin opening back up, here's to asking God to give me a gentle grace so I can be ever-present to the people who love and need me the most!  May my husband and two sweet little babies never question how truly adored and loved they are!

And now!  I'm off to the store for groceries [with s'mores ingredients at the top of the list, as requested by Harper to cap off camping week and also to celebrate the last day of school! Maybeeee we'll even set up the tent in the back yard tonight since it finally quit raining. ;) :)]

To be continued...