Shannon Beckstead, Linda Reece and I formed our own Secret Book Club. Its been fun! They both live in Hawaii, so Zoom is truly the only option anyway.
The cicadas are making an appearance. Their exoskeletons are all over. Apparently these are 17 year ones. Lovely.
Lee sets up his Zoom meetings in Amy's room. The blanket is his 'green screen' so he can superimpose his Star Trek background.
Lee and I celebrated our 16th anniversary. We are so low-key it's laughable. We each chose one thing we love and we do that. His is always eating at Outback (curbside to-go during this pandemic) and mine is bike riding. So we ate and then rode. It was a perfect way to celebrate!
We were at our local park- but had never seen these before. Look at these weird benches! They are so curved you can hardly sit on them. We were very confused- I mean, what is the point?
We paid to have the upstairs drywall mudded. Best money ever spent. Originally I was going to do it myself (with Dad's help and instruction) but when our stimulus check came in- we knew how to spend it. It was done in a week and way better than I would have ever gotten it. I'm so, so happy we spent the money on this. I know one day I'm going to look back on these photos and say, "I can't believe it was ever unfinished!"
I worked on the irritation system one day. I should have done it ages ago, I just never did. I discovered the art of "creating your own hose" and it's been wonderful. Who knew you cold cut an existing hose and then add the nozzles to make it exactly what you want!? Genius.
Amy was a huge help! ha!
We've had the most glorious, long spring. Really, it's been wonderful. But then it got hot. And given we all have to stay at home, the kids can only watch so much tv. We usually get a membership at the pool for the summer, but that is (so far) out this year. So we did the next best thing- I sent Lee to Walmart to buy the $25 inflatable 10ft pool. The kids have been having a blast.
(The neighbor ,Tristan, joins in as well. He also has one so they run between the two. Which is funny.)
Another Zoom call. This one was with my old youth group church friends. It was my favorite. It was SO fun to see so many of them. I hadn't talked to most of them in years and years.
We got these Summer Bridge Activity workbooks and we are loving them. The kids do them every morning without argument. It's 2 pages, front and back, every day, and touches on all the subjects.
We've had a great monarch season. We raised all of these from itty bitty- can hardly see babies and they grew and grew and ate and ate. They are all now in their chrysalids. They should emerge next week.
Boys playing on the front porch.
Another zoom call. This time I took the picture because Amy's "away" picture cracked me up. She's so funny.
One of our eight.
Watching them eat, go into J and form their chrysalis was a daily joy around here!
Tyler found this cute bird just sitting on the fence. It was a baby and just kept looking at us. We could hear it's mother squawking in the trees. We left it alone, but the next day we found it dead a few feet down. We aren't sure of it couldn't fly, if the neighbor's dog got it, or if it was just abandoned. It was so cute!
Madison- who was our FLOWER GIRL 16 yrs ago is graduating high school this year. We wanted to do something fun for her so Amy and I wrapped up money in a bunch of fun ways and stuffed it all into a box. I think she'll be excited when she opens it.
I built a table for the front porch. Truthfully, I bought the wood forever ago. I just finally got around to building it. Which made Lee happy because the wood was always in the way.
Lee and I have been walking every morning and evening and now we've added in workouts. I was trying to show all my sweat, but I don't think it comes across very well in this picture. It is fun to workout together each morning though.
The finished front porch table.
We had a light rain for several days, and it brought in a visitor. It was a really big turtle. He was the circumference of a 5 gallon bucket. That's certainly bigger than we've ever found before. Amy and Lee took him back to a nearby creek. I'm sure he will be happier there. Although Lee has a theory that it just wanted the 'good food' in my garden.
While Amy and Lee returned the turtle, Will was inside watching tv and Tyler was outside playing in the rain, and yes, inside the pool. That sentence perfectly described each of our children's personalities. haha.
No comments:
Post a Comment
.