Elisablog: May 2020

IT'S THE LAST WEEK OF E-LEARNING!!!!!!!

There will be much rejoicing in our house when Elisabeth is finally done with e-learning.

The other two girls are on their summer schedule for schooling, so this is our last official week of the 2019-2020 school year.

There hasn't been much going on here. The kids are outside as much as possible with the weather being lovely and that being the only place they can see real life friends. Also, Batman is known to patrol the streets for us now and then.

There was much hulabaloo the other evening after dinner when the neighbor's outdoor cat was seen with a baby bunny in his mouth. This cat is notorious for killing baby bunnies, squirrels, and other small creatures in the spring, but this evening he accidentally dropped his poor little victim and the kids hurried to save the baby bunny.

They scoured our yard for the rabbit's home, tried desperately to convince us to keep the bunny as a pet, and, after many tears of concern that the neighbor's cat would just recapture the bunny, the cat's owner took pity on the kids and volunteered to take the rabbit and care for it. I truly have no idea what she did with it, but the kids were satisfied that it didn't have to be let go at night.

How does breakfast go down at your house? Here's how it goes at our house:

The boys wake with the sun. Sometimes I can go and cuddle Thomas back to sleep until a more decent hour, but we're all in agreement that it must be after 6am before the boys can be up for the day. They usually play in their beds together until they hear Vivian wake up, then those three traipse downstairs where she pours them all a bowl of cereal and they watch tv.

They get a second bowl of cereal after an adult wakes up. They often will also beg for toast or a bagel as well.

After this second round of breakfast, they holler/play for an hour or so until they need a third breakfast, which is always about an hour before lunch. It doesn't matter if we offer eggs, waffles, an entire breakfast buffet--there is always three rounds of breakfast and each round seems to coincide right when I have a nice hot cup of coffee I'm ready to savor that is then left to get lukewarm while I feed my hobbit children.

I'm in the process of cleaning every inch of our basement and one of the things I really want to make more organized and available is our game shelf. The boys are right on the cusp of being able to participate in games without eating, ruining, screaming, throwing everything.

A part of my cleaning led me to find a bag of chalk paint from the dollar section at Target a few years ago! The children were very excited about my find.

David decided to use said paint to give the fire hydrant and his bike a fresh coat. He's so handy.

This plant that my dear friend gave to me to care for when she moved to Michigan is finally growing new leaves!!! It's only been three years! When I sent a picture of it to my friend Rachel (house plant extraordinaire), I told her it now has pigtails, and she informed me that the name of this plant is Ponytail Palm!!!

Evan is still making us sourdough bread, which we used to make grilled cheese and now I am spoiled for life to ever using any other bread for grilled cheese.

Another basement find: Evan's collection of antique cameras!

Junior high friends in the time of quarantine.

We've decided to let the kids bring friends into the back yard. Isn't it so bizarre to have to make such a decision that would have never even crossed our minds to think about a few months ago? Well, we feel like with our state getting ready to go into phase 3, which means the opportunity of being around people in groups of 10, we could slowly show our kids what we mean by keeping our numbers smaller than before. We have us with five kids, a neighbor two houses down with two kids, a neighbor around the corner with six kids, and a neighbor across the street from them with two kids. Usually, that's our neighborhood crew and we all have the kids in and out of each other's yards and houses without too much thought otherwise. Now we're saying no kids inside and not everyone in one back yard at a time. The girls have been really great about listening, but I think they're so excited to be around people (even if we can't still hug them, as Vivian, who is usually the least likely one to want to hug others, has said sadly many times over these 73 days).

We've been getting a lot of yard work done, which make Thomas excited because he loves to ask gobs of questions and try to steal the shovel to dig places he shouldn't and he loves to help us water the freshly planted things.

Right after that last picture, he totally sprayed me with the hose and I screamed shrilly. Evan was shocked I was surprised he'd turned on me.

This past Sunday's Dinner Party spread:

We finished watching Lego Master Builders on Sunday and we all realized that we've watched one episode of it every Sunday since this all began, so we've been home bound for ten Sundays.

David has been earnestly trying to catch birds and rabbits. Here he is trying to stealthily catch a bunny in our neighbor's yard:

He also has decided it is time to learn to climb trees. He's cautious, but very proud.

Also helping, but would NEVER spray his mother with the hose.

The kids all seem to be growing at the same time right now (except for Elisabeth, who is at her maximum height of barely 5'3"), which means a lot of eating (a lot...like, wow), quite a bit of disequilibrium for the ones not physically growing (February kids) and extra sleep for the ones growing out of their clothes as we speak (the June kids). David even put himself down for a nap today, which he hasn't done in ages!!!

We're planning on making a trip to Pekin in June to visit (and hug!) our families. The kids are so excited it's almost all they talk about. We've got June birthdays and Father's Day and it'd be nice to spend it with people. We're also excited to see friends! Ooh, and our parish is opening up Mass daily to ten parishioners per day until June 7, and I was able to sign up for this coming Saturday. I can't even begin to describe how excited I am to get to go to Mass. Hopefully we'll be able to go as a family again, but for now, we'll be going slowly with probably a few of us at a time. So, right now, it's just me.

We went to a new-to-us forest preserve yesterday for Memorial Day, so be prepared for another post tomorrow all about it!!

Our fifth Forest Preserve!

On Saturday we went to a preserve the kids and I have been to every year with our friends for a few years now. Normally we go and play in this one area where the creek is a good place to splash and swim in. We and our friends pack a lunch and spend a few hours there, usually in late May or early June when school is finally done for the year. We've talked about still doing this once we can all meet up, which I really hope we can make happen!!!

Anyway, we decided to take Evan to Sewards Bluff because he's never been with us before. We told the kiddos we weren't going to swim or play in the creek, but to go for a hike. The kids all brought along these cute nature bingo cards my father-in-law sent for them.

It was so green! And the weather was perfect!! There were too many people near the part of the creek where we usually go, so we kept driving until we found another less occupied area.

Look at these flowers!:

I have no what they are, but they were lovely!

One of their favorite finds was a tee-pee someone had constructed from fallen branches. Not only was it well built, they all declared they could count it as a tent and marked it off on their bingo cards.

It had rained during the week and there was more rain in the forecast for Sunday, which always leads to the best moss on the trees!

The kids were very excited to see all of these horse tracks.

I told the kids that this is where Peter Pan went through to get to Wendy's house and NO ONE KNEW WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT! So, obviously, it is time to reread Peter Pan with them.

We made it to the creek, that was very quickly flowing.

It was so, so lovely there.

Someone is always on Thomas duty to avoid him doing reckless, like trying to go into the creek.

In case you were wondering, Elisabeth is always on frog lookout. She had found one and was trying to show the girls, but Julia noticed something else that made her gasp...

horses!

She was so excited! She wanted us to knock those people off and claim their horses as our own. Now you know whether or not Julia would have been a horse thief in Wild West. Yes, yes she would have been.