School's Out, For Real

This week we marked the official end of school. It was a little strange, to say the least. The kids both had good-bye Zoom meetings with their teachers and classes, but it was not the same as a class party! I'm sad for them to have this void overshadowing their memories of this school year, an asterisk on their report cards, and little closure to the classes they've gotten to know over the last eight months. But no complaints, as it could be so much worse! They both got into a pretty good online school routine and soldiered on every week for 9 weeks through Zoom meetings, various school apps, and random assignments. So I thought they needed to have a little award ceremony to end on a positive note. Hadley was super embarrassed, but I think they were pleasantly surprised as we played "Pomp and Circumstance" as they came down the stairs to accept their awards. I just hope their 3rd and 5th grade years will be back to normal ASAP.

To top it off, we had celebratory Taco Party Packs from Taco Bell (thanks Oma!) and pool time at the neighbors' while they were out of town (thanks neighbors!).

This holiday weekend we also broke out our Slip-n-Slide. We might have to get a pool for the backyard, if the neighborhood one doesn't open soon.

We did some additional celebrations in the neighborhood too. We joined a car parade to drive by graduating seniors' houses in the 'hood and wave signs and honk. It was fun and brought a tear to my eye when I saw how touched some of them were. Talk about a weird ending to your school life!

In fact, it was so fun that we did two birthday parades the next day for some of the kids' classmates. It's such a small gesture, but it is pretty magical to see a community come together to spread joy.

Speaking of joy, H has really been enjoying watching the Kids Baking Championship. The kid bakers on that show are amazing! Anyway, we made banana pudding, and H made the meringue pretty much by herself with a hand mixer! We had seen several meringues made on the show, and now she knows just what it is and what "stiff peaks" means. The pudding was delicious, by the way.

On another occasion, Hadley presented me with a ticket for a very exclusive puppet show. I was so impressed by her initiative and creativity, since she usually stares at the wall if she doesn't have a specific task to do, person to play with, or show to watch. I will teach her how to entertain herself by the end of this quarantine, by golly!

Stir Crazy

What day are we on now? Quarantine day 60-ish or something like that. Phew... Kids are wrapping up school. It's the last official week coming up, which is usually just parties, end of year projects, and movies, so I'm thinking we're pretty much done with online school. Owen turned in his school device last week, and the district-provided "choice boards" are easy-peasy. Even Hadley has soured on them, "are we supposed to be learning stuff from these?" (The clever girl - we've caught her using Siri to record her sentences, then she cuts and pastes it into her assignments, because she "didn't feel like typing all of that". I hope she uses her powers for good someday!) 

Anyway, swim team has been cancelled, as well as soccer. The neighborhood pool is delaying (and possibly cancelling) their opening, too. Gymnastics is trying to start back up, but I'm not sure about the gym being very clean what with feet and hands going in the same places over and over again, so we're going to sit that out for a bit longer. As a result, we have a little bit of cabin fever, so one fine afternoon we picked up some CFA and headed to picnic in a neighborhood park.

We enjoyed scootering and walking around the pond, watching ducklings, and taking in some new scenery and fresh air.

More recently, we decided to take advantage of a sunny Wednesday (in a forecast full of rain) and get out for a field trip. Of course, the weather forecasters really have no idea what they are doing and that morning changed to say it was now going to rain all day, so we almost didn't go. But we reasoned that we actually like overcast days on the beach, it might keep crowds away, and we were itching to get out of the house, so we went anyway. Good thing, because it was a really gorgeous day at the beach! A neighbor had mentioned that they've been to Surfside a few times and the crowds weren't too bad. That was my home beach growing up, so I was curious to see what it was like these days.

The kids LOVED it. They said the water felt great and stayed out for hours just jumping over the waves. Every once in a while, they'd come back to dig in the sand or have a snack, but primarily they were out in the water. It was so nice to do something outside of the neighborhood and to feel a little bit normal for an afternoon, even though we were all very conscious of our distance to any other beach neighbors. We should have re-applied our sunscreen another time or two, but it was still worth it, in my opinion.

The weird thing for me was driving through my hometown to get to the beach. I haven't been back for two decades, except for one high school reunion 13 years ago! There was definitely a mixture of things that had and hadn't changed in that small community. The kids humored me with a short drive-thru tour on the way back, including the house I lived in for the first 18 years of my life.

Back home, we discovered a bird's nest while we were trimming the hedges. It's in a prime location to peek in on every once in a while, and the kids are pretty excited at the prospect of seeing baby cardinals hatching soon! I just wish it was closer to a window so we could be more discreet in our spying.

Outside of school, we've been digging deeper in our game cabinets for entertainment as temperatures start to get too high to play on the swings outside. Perler beads, play-doh, PieFace, and marble run have all had their time to shine. In other news, both Christmas bean bag chairs have had seams tear, and I thought the latest one would be a good opportunity to introduce the kids to some simple sewing terms and techniques. They were definitely interested in taking turns stitching, and I was surprised by their devotion to finish the task! I think they are thirsty for some new experiences!

Happy Bir-Mother's Day!

Every few years my birthday falls on Mother's Day, and it's all hands on deck to make my day special. This year was a wonderful day! Seriously, even with the state of the world. It started off with a full breakfast prepared for me. The theme was circles.

Then we had the first round of gifts for Mother's Day, which included such classics as coupons from Hadley (totally created on her own). She also knows that I have been sustaining myself on puzzles, so she created an original puzzle, drawn on a flattened TP roll, cut to smithereens, and stored in another TP roll with taped ends. Even the creator could not recall where all of the blue sky pieces went, but you get the idea.

My mother's day wish was to do something outside as a family, since it was a very lovely day. These days, weekend day passes for state parks have to be reserved weeks in advance, so we had to look a little closer to home. Luckily, we can bike easily to the George Bush Park Hike and Bike Trail, so that is what we did. I hadn't been to the boardwalk section yet, but it was fun and not too terribly crowded. We even saw an alligator in Buffalo Bayou!

Hadley's little legs were tiring (can't wait until she can get a bike with gears!) after about 3 miles, so I turned around with her to head back home. The boys wanted to explore some of the mountain bike trails and took a more circuitous route back to the house.

After lunch and some rest time, we headed back out to the MUD park to catch the Lone Star Flight Museum's flyover to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day. They were very high up, but it was still pretty awesome to see 20+ planes fly overhead in groups of 3 formations. (We had tried to see the Blue Angels flyover a few days earlier from our backyard, but there were too many trees blocking our view. We could hear them zoom by, but didn't want to miss another flyover this time.)

Then it was back home for cake! Costco makes a pretty amazing chocolate cake, FYI.

My birthday request was to watch The Princess Bride as a family, and then we did a Zoom call with the extended family before take-out dinner was delivered. All in all, a pretty great day!

Sending Fish Down the Gutters

Another week, another house project. We realized that all of this time at home is a great opportunity to continue our repainting of the whole house. This time it was the fishy room's turn. And, we had an extra can of paint leftover from the upstairs playroom repainting, so it's like it was meant to be - no trip to the store required. You can see why it was the "fishy" room; it had a weird two-tone blue paint job with aquatic murals everywhere. Hadley was kind of sad to paint over the fish, but I was ready for them to go.

The kids were excellent helpers. They both helped clear the room, which had a lot of stuff collected in it. Hadley taped off all of the baseboards and removed the outlet covers, while Owen climbed the ladder to take down the curtain rod brackets. Hadley also helped me prime over the fish and dark blue with our quart of sample paint, so Owen could finish his school report on Michael Dell. Then they both rollered all of the walls; H getting the lower half and O with the extender for the upper half. I only had to do the finesse work on the edges!

Once again, we didn't love this paint color and the way it changes in the light, but it's what we had, so we pressed on. I think it ended up okay. This room is our music/craft/cat room, so maybe the bland color will be something we can spice up with art...?

It was a hot day, and with the three of us working in that small west-facing room we could definitely tell it. Kona Ice was coming through the neighborhood, so I figured we had earned a treat. The best part was that it was right outside our front door! Mmm, neon-colored, frozen sugar water sure hit the spot! 

A few days later, we finally decided to bite the bullet and get gutters for the back of the house. Drainage in the backyard is an issue, and the rain splatter has discolored the brick and decimates any potted plants that I put around the back door. Plus, once we wash and repaint the siding, the gutters are supposed to keep the mildew at bay. It's not glamorous, but we were excited to add the gutters. I guess that's how you know you are getting old. Enjoy these before-and-afters.

A subtle change all along the back, including this corner, which will help protect the new fence, too.

Garage and walkway gutters will make this walk much more tolerable on rainy days. Now we really need to paint the garage door.

Not sure why they didn't combine these two downspouts. And like any improvement, now the new stuff makes the old stuff look even worse...

We had these gutters professionally installed by a local company that forms the seamless gutters out of the back of their van. There were some crazy long gutters! I'm so glad that we didn't try to do this ourselves!