Quarantine Week 6

We had beautiful weather this week and the kids were outside a lot, often for hours at a time.  After bike riding, roller blading, chalk drawing, and tree climbing they'd beg to get the hose out.  One day they pulled out the water guns, filled up a bucket of water, and went to town.  When that got old, they added soap to their water bucket and washed both cars.  Three hours they were out that particular day. Caroline kept popping her head in the house to tell me that she was having so much fun.  Best. Day. Ever.  When it was all done and everyone was inside, I expectantly asked the boys if they had a great time, too.  No.  They said it wasn't fun at all and that Caroline bossed them around.  It was like they were in two different days.

She looked so grown up lying in the grass.  

The kids were also outside a lot because their neighborhood friends moved out this week.  Todd and I sat outside in the evenings while they played and there were lots of moments of kids yelling, "6 Feet!!" the acceptable length for social distancing.  Our kids were sad to see them go.  They were trying to find ways to keep in touch and Henry came up to me with this proposal, "L [friend] said he has 200 friends on Fortnight.  But he said if I played with him, he wouldn't have any other friends." Poor kid.  He didn't know that starting the story with "my friend has 200 random internet friends" wouldn't work in his favor.

Josiah has been making my coffee most days and he's taken my advice to make it stronger.  I discovered that when he said he was using two scoops of coffee, he was using two scoops, but only 1/3 full.  I introduced him the heaping tablespoon.  He's got it now.  One morning I told him the coffee was really great and he said he used four scoops.  Yay!  He was very proud.  I was fully awake. Win-Win.  Once he had his coffee skills down, he opened his own cafe.  One morning we awoke to Josiah's Coffee Cafe.  Before entering the kitchen, we were able to see the shirtless founder.  It was a short menu, but it made for faster service.

That says, "toast."  And we've told him how to spell coffee a bunch of times.  Sigh...

In other food news, we were getting tired of eating repeat meals.  While we've had a lot of variety throughout the quarantine, we have ventured into the repeating zone and dinners were not quite so exciting.  Todd and I went through our massive pile of recipes ripped out from old magazines.  Todd found an old recipe that he was excited to try again.  It was the "Warm Chicken Salad Wreath."  Typically I write notes on recipes if we've tried them.  Usually the date we made it.  Sometimes it's tips for when we'd make it again.  On this particular recipe, that we first made back in April 2010, I simply wrote "Todd liked it.  Too mayonnaisey."  Code: I didn't like it.  A decade later, we made it again.  Todd and Henry loved it.  They ate both wreaths.  Caroline picked at a section of the wreath.  She liked bits of it.  Josiah and I had pb&j.  Todd's looking forward to 2030 when we break out the recipe again.  We'll have to have Henry home from college to help eat it.  Another day we had Egg Roll in a Bowl which was really good.  Variety has been helpful.

We finished up CC this week.  While I did not have the motivation to work on our egg protector, the kids were highly motivated.  Go figure.  We divided up this time - boys worked together and I worked with Caroline.  We watched a few videos about how to make it and then had a go of it.  Caroline and I will wrap up our real egg with coffee filters before putting it in it's little basket area.  The boys tried doing a square model, but ended up doing triangles because they were much easier to build.   Theirs is nearly identical to Caroline's model, though ours has longer sticks hanging off the corners to help absorb some impact.  This week we'll try to drop it from a second story window.

Josiah had his Faces of History presentation.  He had fun dressing up in character and telling his life's tale.  The kids had to guess who he was based on facts that he spoke about himself.  It was pretty much a giveaway when he said he sold Louisiana to Thomas Jefferson and that he lost at Waterloo.

Josiah's classmates dressed up.  We had (in order) Napoleon, Charlemagne, Robert the Bruce, Gutenberg, Joan of Arc, Beethoven, Catherine the Great, and Robin Hood.

The day after CC, Caroline and I went on a road trip to drop off small gifts for the kids in her class.  Just a have-a-good-summer-we-miss-you kind of thing.  We put the gifts on the doorstep and I'd text their moms so that we never had any contact.  We adhered to all social distancing rules.  Five of the seven houses were pretty much "in town," but two were not.  One house was 20 minutes into the country.  Another was 20 minutes beyond that.  It was wayyyyyyy out.  At one point, we were very far out, and the area had a lot of Live Oaks.  Caroline kept pointing out what good climbing trees they were.  Then we passed one that was on the edge of a plowed field.  She remarked, "THAT is a good climbing tree!  It's far out, but we could come back."  We could.  But we won't.  Live Oak:


With CC over, I was on a cleaning kick this weekend, namely getting the school room back in order.  Actually my original plan was to clean the whole downstairs, but I spent most of Saturday in the school room.  It was that bad.  It's a heavily used room since it has all the art and craft supplies.  Later, when the kids wanted to go outside or play video games, I was getting on them to pick up all their things beforehand.  We're going to have a clean house!  The boys claimed cleanliness had been restored to their areas of the house and got themselves set up playing Minecraft.  I walked by Josiah's room and it was most definitely not clean.  I made him go back and try again.  Twenty minutes later, Josiah said his room was clean and that the Legos in the corner were supposed to be there.  "It's my Lego Junkyard.  It's a scene."  He basically took an old karate board and wrote "The Junk Yard" on it in front of a pile of Legos.  Well played, Josiah.  Well played.

Last night, Caroline wanted me to play dolls with her.  We played dolls for a while, then she wanted to play Pictionary on her tiny little Etch a Sketch that makes it impossible to show any sort of detail.  We did simple things at first - girl, cow, ice cream, cake.  But then she wanted to make them more complicated.  She drew a picture.  It looked like a girl holding a doll.  It was not.  I gave many guesses, but finally gave up.  "Cinderella holding laundry."   Ah.  I was almost there.  

It was a good week.  Not too bad for a sixth week in quarantine.
Oh, and Josiah drew me Elf.  I actually asked him if he printed it out and colored it in or drew it.  He drew it.  The kid has skills.

Favorite Meme of the Week: