Another weekend down

So we hit another weekend. I tried to make this weekend, like a normal weekend. The one thing i noticed we were missing was deep cleaning. Like the little things like sweeping the floor or picking up toys was being done, but cleaning bedrooms, picking up the basement, working outside, and such was just not in the schedule.  So I decided after working outside, we would do some inside work to start with. Also it was pretty chilly this weekend, not sure what that was about. I work on starting laundry and deep cleaning the kitchen. Tee kids helped by cleaning the bathrooms and their rooms.  My mom came over when I was in the middle of deciding to rearrange the living room. We need more room for schooling and schooling stuff.  Also the kids have their big barn set up and while we have a baby gate to keep Grady out of it, they didn't fit in the area to actually play.  So I did that while Mom folded my laundry.  It was nice to get a lot  done with many hands.
I found out that i could get some stuff from my gym so i ran out to get that. Once i got back, i decided to clean up and rearrange my basement to make room to actually work out. That was a bigger undertaking than i realized it would be.  So that was pretty our day..spring cleaning!
Sunday, is getting to be the hardest day of the week. I was never much of a church person until I met Josh. Even then i struggled with going EVERY week. When Josh died, I though, who cares...I'll go when it works and it will be fine. Well in the last couple years, with the help of church choir, I enjoy and WANT to go every weekend. Now not having that reason to be able to go out and go, is making the day sad.  We did get out and run to the grocery store quickly. THe kids got to wait in the car, not in the store.  Oh yeah... So we woke up to our smoke alarm beeping saying the battery was dead. Cole and Pepper freaked out. Cole spend most of the night outside and morning, so he got chilled and i had to warm him up because he was shivering. My dishwasher was acting funny, so i took it apart and then fought to get it back together. So leaving for a few minutes was nice.  Spend some time outside and being lazy before we headed back out to pick up edging for the yard...another project of mine to get done.  It was at least a nice night so we got to enjoy it before it was showers and bedtime. Gotta go to bed early on "school nights" Btw my kids did inform me that since school doesn't start until 9 they don't have to go to bed early.

 Monoply Jenga

 Max recording the daily announcements for school. he was very proud to do this.

 I did the weekend workout.. it was a challenge as i raced against the cake being done, and crazy dogs and kids

 Look at how Pepper is doing.. she's slowly getting use to Grady

 We made play dough preschool style.. the kids love it!

Week three... nearing the end?

Grateful 5!

1)  Wonderful weather...Hello Spring!
2)  Our Dogs are adjusting to the new puppy
3)  Zoom Workouts
4)  Kids willing to help out with yard work
5) Packages in the mail.

So the idea of writing each day, was to do just that, write each day. In true fashion, I've fallen behind. Part of the problem is the days all run together. Weekends are the days that i don't see my coworkers online.  Weekdays are the ones where my kids do work and meet with teachers online.  Also there are fewer of my friends to chat with as they are busy with work too.  I can't believe that we are nearing the end of our 3rd week.

The weather turn nice for us. We spent a good amount of time outside on Thursday and Friday. We started picking up around the yard and raking. OH the raking is a much bigger job then I realized it would be. Thankfully on day two, Max decided to help. He saw how much more we were able to get stuff raked working together even with Grady breaks.  We also got the chicks up in the yard too, which keeps the dogs pretty entertained. 

The kids have been having zoom meetings with their teachers. Max loves his so much!  Bella enjoys hers too. She's working so hard on all her work.  Max is getting to the point where he picked his favorite things and that's all he wants to do.  So school is challenging these days and praying to start anew next week .

Grady is doing well. He's adjusting pretty well to our house. He loves to nap and be with people. He has his favorite toys. Grady is a lazy little puppy, which is totally like the rest of our animals. Cole really seems to enjoy the puppy. Pepper is tolerating him. She's not 100 % happy about the puppy, but she's getting better. We also give her plenty of time away from him, and lots of loving without him around.

Me I"m here. I"m  getting through the days and having good moments. I do have moments where i feel like  I'm not doing enough. There is so much that i want to get done and figure out but not enough time to get it done. Funny though we have a lot of time these day. I need to get my time management figured out, along with some sort of list of what I NEED to do and what i WANT to get done.

I have some ideas of how i want to move forward and hoping that this weekend i can get some things in motion to help me be in a better place. If i'm in the better place I can help my kids be in a better place too. 

 Cooking class was making grilled cheese sandwichs

 The boy going to get the rake...this was the first day and he wasn't a fan of raking

 Bella was finding all our of little trees from the weeds

 End of day one

 We left Grady alone while we ran our to get supper.. he curled up with cole in the kitchen.

 THe cat makes math even harder for Max

 We took him with for a car ride. We hope he will like car rides like Cole and not be like Pepper

 Fish fry from Crawfish junction!

The kids found a bale eagle's nest across the pond from us. A photo from the telescope of both parents.

Week Three midweek..right?

Happy April fools... though we are totally living the worst fools day prank ever!
5 things to be grateful for:
1)Modern Technology..I"m able to be on the go, but still connected to everyone.
2) Unexpected wait meant i was able to actually was able to get a shopping errand done that I  didn't know how i would get it done.
3) Supporting Local Business is very yummy
4) Taking some time one on one with my kids to try to help better understand how they are feeling through all this
5) Being able to get outside whenever we need to burn some energy.

Today was a little crazy. Coming off my birthday which was all sorts of off schedule goodness,  we had to bare down and get back to it.  Bella and Max both had Zoom meetings with their classes, which i'm so grateful for, too.  We then took the dogs out for a bit before we loaded up to head to pick up my mom from her appointment. I'm glad i was able to get her from her appointment.  We had decided to visit PJ's in town to get pizza to go, but didn't plan to well, as we had to wait 25 mins for our food to get ready. So I took advantage of stopping at Walgreens to get vititams for my mom. Then i saw the easter stuff and realize i had to help the bunny out.  Blessing since I had no idea how i would get stuff since I normally end up doing it last minute. 
After that we grab our pizza and headed home. Max was done, as these days we are struggling with is emotions.  I got the pizza cooking and lunch done. The kids did some rest time before it was time to get ready to take Grady to the Vet. Unfortunately the kids couldn't come, so I loaded him up and prayed for the best.  I discovered that Max struggled with being with his sister, but Grady did great. Our vet now has carside service, so i spend some time alone with my music in the car. 
I headed home and spent some one on one with my baby boy. I was trying figure out what is going on.  Poor Guy is just expressing what the rest of us are oppressing. We both felt a little better afterwards.. I let him pick a choice of a game between just me and him or all three of us.  He picked just us two and so we played War.. that was a hard one. I was conviced he was going to win and then we set a timer and i squeaked out a win in the last 3 mins.
We managed to get some supper in  and an early bedtime.

Happy Birthday Warpdown19

Happy Birthday to me! So yeah not how i though the day would go. I had hoped to have the day off of work, get my hair done, do a fun supper with my kids and cake with my mom and maybe some friends too. My weekend was suppose to be off to see Wicked with friends and hoped to see my family too.  Then Covid-19 showed up and that all went out the door. ....

5 reason to be grateful:
1) All the wonderful Birthday wishes I got today
2) All the texts and phone calls I got
3) friends who bring you ice cream so our kids can trade pokemon and see another human face
4) Being able to see go out to the drive-thru and my kids eating my choice of restaurant.
5) Tax refunds :)

So yeah i woke up and didn't feel the greatest. I couldn't sleep as fears over the COVID-19 virus reaching my house and what would we do. Also the cold, windy and damp weather is kicking up all of allergens, along with being in my house that we have been deep cleaning stiring up dust, dander and such, so the slightest  sniffle, stuffy nose or drainage sends me into a panic.  I also had some pretty scary dreams on top of that, so waking up to function wasn't great. The kids though weren't going to let me escape the day. They came running in with gifts before i even made it out of bed. I love that my family makes sure that I send end up with a gift for my birthday even though my kiddos are not old enough to have their own income or go shopping on their own. To be honest, I wasn't expecting anything since my kids haven't been allowed in a store in the last three weeks.
We got our day started because the kids still had meetings for schools and school work to do. I also wanted to make sure some stuff was clean. I called my mom and mentioned that i would like to go to Burger King for lunch and needed to go to the bank to deposit a check. I thought maybe she would like to come along and we could do cake afterwards.
So Mom did come over and we went to get some lunch and left poor Grady home alone for the first time.  Good think i have a camera in the house.. i got to watch him and he did pretty much ok.  He had one accident and that was it. Of course having Cole here, helps too. 
We did cake and then mom headed home and the kids got to work on some school work/rest.  We decided  to get out and do a walk to burn of some of that study energy with the puppies.  When we got back to the house after chores and such, it was time to do birthday burpees with some of the members of my crossfit gym. One of the coach's also had a birthday today, so it was fun to all get together from our living rooms via Zoom.   After that little work out, i was ready to try to do the 400 meter walking lunges.. so yea that is from my garage to my garbage cans and back.  That was a lot harder then i thought it would be. Thankfully on the end of my walk, a friend called to say they wanted to bring us ice cream and let the kids do some pokemon trading...but we would keep our distance to 6 feet apart.
So like good wisconsin people, we sat outside in my garage, in the cold 35 degree weather and ate ice cream and the kids traded.. True friendship there. <3 p=""> The kids and i ended the night with just being lazy..which was ok with me.

Week Three...We made it so far

So I missed the weekend for blogging. Honestly I don't feel like it was much of a weekend. I really struggling with the idea of a weekend. We had a a few crazy days last weekend, so tired to play catch up on the weekend. Of course naturally that doesn't work but it's slightly comforting because that seems to be hw our life always goes. The only thing that i'm really getting frustrated with is not getting stuff down around the house.  I need to just set time to do like we have set time for everything else.  I think we are now getting more into the groove, its time to make sure this time isn't wasted.

 So Grady is fitting in quite well..he's very laid back and lazy..fits with every other animal we have

 Both Grady and Cole enjoy the chicks.

 Max made a raft for the lego challenge.

 We take a lot of walks... Grady will do his business on them, so walks we do :)

 We made homemade bread. Max enjoyed it the most! He even eats it, which is a bonus.

 The most he's gone in his crate.. that's a goal coming up. He needs a safe place and Pepper needs a break from Grady

 yummy!

 Brinner .French toast and bacon!

 The closet they have all gotten to each other!

This pup wake up and then goes back to bed an hour later.

5 Things to be Grateful for on Monday:
1) The warmer weather
2) Breaks  from Home
3) The ability to still do work in this crazy time
4) Surprise early pick up of groceries
5) online lesson in my email for my kiddos to take the guess work out for me.

Ah Monday Monday Monday..  We woke up and tried to get to our schedule stuff. But I had a staff meeting at 8:30am, so that made it a little challenging. I should have been better prepared.  So the meeting went out, but then we tried to get school stuff done in a short time. Max had a zoom meeting with his class and he loved it.  It was so good for him to see if classmates and teacher. I feel bad for my kids and missing that daily interactions with their classmates. The learning is important too, but the social is just as important. 
My mom showed up and suggested that I leave. Ok, mom, but where do you go? So i went to work... safe place and faster internet! That's one big struggle around here..our internet was slow before, but now it's even worse! Thank you to getting unlimited data on my phone last year... i complained about it and the price, but now i'm so grateful!
So I got work done and my kids had fun playing with my mom. I got home and we attempted to get things back to normal routine. We got a walk in and supper, then mama was done.

 Making Bread...he did a great job!

 Grady is his puppy, so he does what he has too... when asked

 Yes we were social distancing except for the picture

 Max always laps us in our walks

 Superhero day:  I'm a technology whisper and Bella is a superhero!

 Hanging out with his class..Such a big kid