Back to School Daze - Here We Go!

Our church hosted a Back 2 School Bash the weekend before school started, so Addison had a great time - the boys decided they were "too old" for such tomfoolery (so sad!!), so they decided to stay at home but Addison loved it!

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Once on the church property Addison is allowed to poke her head out of the sun roof to get a better view of all the upcoming fun!

Who knew you could make little kid balloons!?

And the the dunking tank - she nailed it on the third try!

And then a foaming machine- this was just the cat's meow to a little girl!

Addison and Elin

And two other friends - Alison and Lele

You can see her delight in her smile can't you!  Love you little girl!

And to top it off, Jeremiah's ice!

The next weekend we had a drive-through at the school to pick up school supplies/iPads for the boys etc.  Addison was over the moon excited to see her kindergarten teacher Mrs. Gomberg

School started on Monday August 24th.  After being out of school practically since March 15, we are out of practice to say the least.  We are going virtual for the first part of the year to reduce the risk of being exposed to Covid and then giving it to Amy's Mom as she is still recovering from her surgery.  We want to do everything we can to help her gain strength without any hurdles.  The nice thing is that the school is letting kids either be face-to-face or virtual, and then you can switch back to face-to-face later if you feel like it is safe enough at that time.  About 40% of the kids at the school are doing virtual so far.

Knowing that this is really hard for life to be so different with Covid, and wanting to make the first day of school as special as possible, Amy splurged and got Dunkin Donuts (thank you Uber Eats!) delivered that morning as a surprise (never happens, we never have donuts in the house!) and decorated with signs and balloons.  It was a good first morning, but the day was rough with lots of technical issues with Zoom (apparently there were national Zoom failures) and then our house power went out halfway through the day!  AHHH!  We are getting a house generator so that doesn't happen again - with working from home and school, we just can't be without power like that.  But, the following days got better so we are thankful.

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8th grade, 2nd grade and 6th grade - growing WAY too fast!

We have also worked over the past month to get desks and update the boys rooms.  Zachary has a soccer theme to his room and Kaleb's is all about Legos. Addison's little desk is out in the foyer where Amy is working (at the dining room table) so that Amy can help be sure that Addison is on task (she was a little distractible in the Spring!).

Amazingly enough, he didn't want to get rid of his baby pictures, so we kept those and just added some sports items to his walls along with an Aguero poster and a trophy shelf

Three new shelves on the walls to hold all of his Ninjago Legos!

Random pictures:

Only one roller shoe on - such a crazy girl!

she has had 4 teeth pulled in the last month - her poor mouth is tiny so there just isn't any room for the adult teeth unless we pull the baby ones out!

Um, there seems to be a problem here

And I am pretty sure these aren't conjoined twins!  That shirt is sure stretching to fit!

And last is an update on our guest room!  We had a very bright green, not decorated, no furniture guest room before.  plus there was a small wooden cabinet door on the wall that opens up to the backside of our TV/fireplace in the living room so that they have access to wires etc, but how unattractive is that!?  We wanted something that would be a finished room that would be a lovely oasis for our guests when they come and stay (which we love when people come to visit us!)

Our starting point (in the process of being pulled away from the walls to paint)

Now it is ready and waiting for visitors!

We just got this artwork for the wall with the heart and cross - we love it!

Play Dates & More Birthday Celebrations!

 With Covid-19, the company has been trying to save money by having salaried people take PDO over the summer.  Amy ended up taking a week off, but got the remainder of our holidays in by taking every Friday off (wow, that was SO NICE! - so many things done and time for play too!).  Every Friday, we arranged a playdate with Elin for the girls to get together and play.  They played in the pool, had tea parties, dress-up, played Uno and we also got them all out on the lake in the afternoon - once with the Cochrans able to join us as well!  Super fun!

Erik, Elin and Addison

All of the kids got up and did knee boarding - Addison was their "teacher" - they all did great!

Devin, Elin and Addison

We have also had a few "play dates" with Jeff and Niesha - where the girls watched a movie at our house and the boys played X-Box over at their house.  And then there was another week day when Jeff came over to play - he had gotten four person games (ie. Olympics, racing games etc) and man, everyone had a great time!  There was lots of laughing!

Karis apparently is really into these games too - never too old to have fun!

The men in the bonus room playing - what fun!

We also had a Sabbath fun get together with our friends the Reiners and Johnsons - it was an afternoon for boating and then we ate together. The kids had a great time - we realized that we hadn't been doing as good a job for Addison's age group of play dates, so we have been trying to have the younger crowd over a little more often this summer!

The Johnson parents got out there too!  Their expressions were priceless!

It started to rain.....so we didn't stay as long as we would have liked on the water.

but they got enough tubing to have a fun time for sure!

The three little beauties!

And at our house, they had a great time "digging" for gems from one of Addison's birthday presents

We also had several birthday celebrations in August - one for Kieran and Erik, and then one for Addison, Elin and Devin.  We have shared birthdays now for their whole lives, so we didn't want Covid to wreck that!

Amy found a box that had a party helium canister that she bought from years ago, so the boys helped blow up balloons for the younger kids' birthday!

The three birthday kiddos!

Devin had an ice cream cake, Elin was a gluten free trifle, and Addison's was a regular cake decorated as a unicorn...

Happy 8th birthday little one!

After supper the kids had fun in the pool and then we had worship with songs and Bible charades.

King Solomon with the baby dispute...

And the week before we were at the Js house for Erik and Kieran's birthday cakes, and more swimming!

Happy Birthday boys!

Masked ladies - a little cold after their dip in the pool!

Care Packages & the Local Farm

 Amy's Mom has been on a journey the last year with breast cancer, and her reconstruction surgery was scheduled after a long-Covid delay at the end of July.  We weren't allowed to see her after she took the Covid test (to avoid potential contamination) so Addison and Amy put together a care package on Sunday and did a "drop and run" at her house - so we talked from afar!  It was quite fun, and to fast forward, her surgery went well and she is on the uphill for recovery, regaining her strength.  She lost a lot of blood during the surgery/recovery period, so it will take a little while for her strength to come back, but we are thrilled at how well she is doing.

Here is our package, after we went to the store for some comfort items!

Addison rang the doorbell and then ran back to the sidewalk where Amy was waiting

And then we watched and chatted while she opened her gifts

We also had a very fun experience in which Jennifer introduced us to a local lady who has created a 4H experience in her backyard - complete with all kinds of interesting animals!  You can go in and do a petting zoo type of experience - it was all quite fun!

Bert the emu

This was a favorite - a baby miniature goat!

Feeding the llamas carrot sticks

Miniature cows - these are just sweet babies!

Lots of feeding opportunities which make this little mama very happy!

Fun riding the horse (with a trainer leading the horse)

And they got to "paint" with crayons this little Shetland pony!

Even Amy got to hold the miniature goats - tiny!

It was a super fun Sabbath morning - so glad that we got to go!

London and Addison had a great time!  And this is a very cool tree!