Thursday, December 24, 2020

Happy Holidays 2020!

What a strange year it has been!  We are thankful for our health and our time together as a family.  We proudly present our memorable quotes of the last year!  Please also enjoy our photoshopped Santa picture from this year!

December 2019 - During the extended family Christmas with Benharts, Isaac was helping get dirt pie ready for the birthday people. He snuck a gummy worm for himself, snuck one to Meg, and then handed a handful to Deewee (one of the birthday people) and said, “congratulations on still being alive.”

January - We have really been working to help Isaac focus and get tasks done quicker. Things like getting dressed should take you 5 minutes, not 10. After several weeks of this I asked him to go make his bed and pick up, saying, “now do I want this to take you 20 minutes?” He replied with, “No... 25?”

February - Sam asks if ramen noodles are a Romanian dish.

February - Isaac and Sam discuss what our former pets are doing in heaven. Sam, “I bet Ellie is chasing Lily and Lily is running for her dear life!” Isaac, “but she doesn’t even have a life!”

February - The boys are discussing with Josh about how if he poops at work he gets paid to poop. Sam, “I guess poop is a currency” and Josh adds, “I guess we have a real sh*t economy!”

February - Isaac tells me about music “you have your bass, tumor, alto, and soprano.”

March - Sam and Isaac have a hotly contested debate over whether God allows gum in heaven. Sam, “well there is no gum in school so it’s probably the same in heaven.” Isaac, “dude it’s HEAVEN.”

April - We have all been doing our best with remote school. The teachers have been great too, trying to adapt to having kids participate in lessons with items from home. One day, I listened as Sam added a video for a recent science lesson, “I know a wine glass is not magnetic.”

April - For the first time, Noah joined a zoom karate class. He was using my laptop in order to join. I had last used my zoom account for a happy hour with friends the previous night. I had left my background as ridiculous Cher costume picture. The 12 year old was not pleased to be joining his karate class with Cher.

April - Noah realizes he was saying "ricochet" wrong his whole life, as “rich or riot.”

May - Isaac and Mike work on an art project for school, and Isaac tells Mike “yeah this is like real construction paper like they usual on real construction sites”

May - Isaac comes down with his iPad asking me to add an app for him. One that Sam has. "You know, that shopping spree app." He is referring to the amazon app.

May - as the great debate of ding dongs versus ho hos rages on, Isaac says “well I guess I’ll eat ding dongs if there’s nothing else left in this house.”

August - As we begin the school year remotely, I listened to Isaac share information about himself to his new 2nd grade class and teacher. He showed a pic of his brothers to his class, “This is my oldest brother Noah. He already had his growth spurt and he is almost a teenager. This is Sam and he’s real bouncy.”

September - Sam was locked out of his roblox account. He was stressing and trying to reset, etc. I had an exchange with customer service that revealed he was flagged for inappropriate language. I lectured him about the importance of appropriate online behavior and how playing roblox is a privilege. We finally got into his account and could review the flagged language. He had typed “doooogggooos.”

October - Isaac asked me about the sport of cross country. “They probably get super tired running all the way up and down the whole country of America.”

November - Mike lays on the couch and asks Sam to rub his head. He tells Sam that he’s losing his hair and going bald. Sam pauses and says in his best therapist voice, “and how do you feel about that?”

November - Isaac plays a game in which your avatar falls and takes damage, and it displays your injuries. He tells me all about a “hammer gauge” which is WAY worse than a concussion he claimed. We discovered he meant the term hemorrhage.

December - Our advent toy calendar this year is a Pokemon themed one. Sam shares, “bulbasaur isn’t quite Jesus but he almost is.”

And that's it! We hope you are all staying home and staying safe and looking forward to a better 2021!

Sunday, December 20, 2020

We made it to the holidays!

Life around here continues to be interesting, even if mostly homebound.  I spent the week after Halloween in quarantine due to a close contact at work.  Lots of bird watching from my bedroom office with my sidekick, Molly.  Fortunately I got the all clear!
My coworkers had a little fun with my zoom presence in one of the classrooms.
The boys were able to attend school in person 2 days a week for about a month, which was great and exhausting.  Here's a post from Isaac's teacher showing the layout of their classroom.
Matching pajama pants for the win!
First snow of the season, only lasted a couple hours before melting, but we got out there!
Kitty investigations of said snow.
Thanksgiving week was nice a low key, I had some mashed potato helpers this year!

Lots of time to play D&D.

Back to remote school for the month of December for the boys.
We made our lists for Christmas gift lists.
 My annual day after Thanksgiving ladies luncheon was virtual this year, but still so much fun!
We enjoyed a new way to make ornaments.

Sam had the honors of topping the tree this year!
Yes, Noah is now taller than me (that makes him probably 5'9" at the age of 12).
Someone was awful judgey about my amazon spending!
Hot cocoa and pokemon hunting!
At home school lunches aren't so bad when you have company!
Early Christmas gift from the cats to the boys - pillows with their pictures!  The boys enjoyed them while watching the season finale of the Mandalorian!
Isaac's sense of style has been rather...unique, lately.  Sam gave him some tattoos recently that read "memes" and "yeet."

School spirit week included "dress to impress day" which obviously Isaac took very seriously.
Of course there was PJ day....
And "favorite color" day - can you guess what his is?
Now we move into winter break (thank goodness) and start up some baking projects!  We won't be sharing treats this year, so we may have to adjust our quantities.  So far, so good!

Looking forward to a restful break at home!

Saturday, November 7, 2020

Halloween 2020!

We have been staying home for the most part and staying safe.  We have settled into our schedules with a lot of help from family!  Even Molly has started to appreciate Bamma being around (a high honor from a cat)!
Fall around here did not disappoint - we had some beautiful trees and we have had some great weather!
Noah seems to get older by the second.  He is still rocking the pandemic mop on his head - no haircut since March!
Princess of the blankets!
We celebrated Kjersten's birthday!
Bamma brought a form for a Halloween House and the boys had a great time decorating (and eating) it.


I finally bought a robot vacuum which Sam and Isaac have name Oliver. 
One of Mike's longtime family friends made us a table, it was so exciting to see it coming along in his workshop!
Zoom lunch with 2nd grade!
Zoom karate tournament!
Bamma moved and we were the recipients of some very nice pieces, including a new dresser for Sam.  He took no time to claim it as his own.
Working from home help.
We celebrated Molly cat's 2nd birthday!
And Isaac and Sam carved their own pumpkins, Noah decided to abstain this year.

Jack Skellington
Bat symbol!
Sam was able to connect with Calvin in order to play Minecraft together.
I had the strangest Halloween in my career.  I was in preschool for the day, one day later we were all quarantined.  Thankfully, everyone is ok!
Zoom Halloween costumes!

Noah opted to "dress up" for Halloween on zoom.
The table arrived and we are so so happy!
Halloween was different this year, we opted not to trick or treat.  But we put candy out and we had a TON of candy here at home!
We did put on costumes for a bit to run around while eating lots of candy and watching Nightmare Before Christmas, it was a great night!

Noah was able to go hang with his squad of Ari and Maya - they wore their matching hoodies (cooler than costumes).
The end of the night was a little sketchy due to sugar overload - but we survived!
I spent election day in line for a COVID test!  Everything turned out fine, but if you had told me that I'd be spending the first week of November 2020 waiting for election results in tandem with waiting for testing results I would not have believed you!  But, it seems that everything turned out great!  I'm renewed with a sense of hope for the future.  Things are tough right now, but we move forward!