Author: eaumaison (Page 20 of 207)

My weekend project took an extra two days, owing to problems with my sewing machine. I battled and overcame, and here it is!

How appropriate that Sam is wearing a dragon shirt today. He isn’t outgrowing his love for dragons – unlike his clothes!

I’m still a beginner quilter. This is only my third ever. Now that I’m sorting out my machine malfunctions and quirks, I sort of had fun! I might even be able to actually “quilt” the next one, using top stitching instead of tying. I’m already thinking about ideas for some Halloween prints I’ve got in storage. But first- more COVID masks!

We are surprised and delighted by the success of our new vegetable beds.

So far we have harvested green beans three times.

The strawberries are infrequent, but a tasty treat that the boys fight over.

Our carrots taste good despite their petite nature.

We have enjoyed cucumber slices a couple times and have several ready to pick – I might turn them into refrigerator pickles.

The arugula was good while it lasted- the bugs like it too, and it’s all going to flower quickly once the weather got hot. This green lettuce is going strong and we’ve had several harvests.

There’s two broccoli heads coming in and more on the way. They have aphids and it’s a daily fight. We tried poison, diatomaceous earth, and even tried 1,500 ladybugs. The aphids keep coming back. I tore out the worst affected plants and leaves and just check it every other day, dosing with more diatomaceous earth.

We have okra that’s only now starting to grow pods. It’s been struggling between the shadows of the towering broccoli and the tendrils from pumpkins and cukes – I’ve cut off their strangling grasp a few times.

Onions are doing something. I’m mostly ignoring them. We also have pepper plants. They’ve been stunted by the crazy green beans and carrots. I recently staked back the beans to give the peppers more sun, hopefully I can get some before summer ends.

Finally, there’s our pumpkins. We got two good gourds forming that the kids excitedly check on every day. “The pumpkins are so big!” They tell me over and over. They keep trying to call dibs, but I tell them we will see what survives before deciding who gets to carve them. Last week I installed slings made from repurposed supportive wear. I read you should do that if they weigh more than 5 pounds. It cracks me up!

(I’m trying out the new wordpress editor, still figuring out how best to share photos with it.)

One of the last things we did before the shelter-in-place order back in March was a visit to the zoo. They opened to the public again last month. I got a reservation for us to try them again this week, as a fun change of scenery for the kids. While Ben and I run errands regularly, the kids have been mostly home, day in and day out, all summer.

The zoo website said they had a lot of precautions in place for safety: reduced crowds, staggered reservation times, masks required for everyone (this was before the governor made masks mandatory in public for Colorado), all indoor spaces were closed, pathways are all one direction now, and extra sanitation stations and portable toilets set up everywhere.

It was fun overall. The kids say they had a good time and were glad we went. But I felt like it was not a great success. Mask use was pretty good, I’d say over 90% wore them well. But there was still the occasional family with noses and even mouths exposed. Anyone walking while eating and drinking had the mask off too. Also, it was more crowded than I would have liked. Because of the one-direction traffic flow, there were lots of clumps of people around visible animals, and traffic jams when someone stopped in the pathway.

I don’t think any of us were at risk for infection. The kids were excellent at keeping their masks with filters on on their faces. They didn’t touch handrails or signs, and asked for hand sanitizer when they made a mistake. We swerved away from people whenever possible.

The other problem was, of course, it was the afternoon of a hot July day. Can’t be helped 🙂 I packed water and hats and a cooling towel. We took lots of breaks to rest and had ice cream and juice to stay cool and hydrated. No matter, it was still sweltering. There weren’t many animals out because of the heat.

So it was a fun change of pace, but I don’t think anyone is clamoring to return until the weather cools and the crowds thin.

Just wanted to drop a url that links to Jack’s part in the piano recital, in case you don’t want to watch the rest of the kids.

The youtube embed link keeps messing up, just copy/paste this url, or go to timestamp 1:30:06 on the video.

“https://youtu.be/dFtxYPJttPw?t=5406”

Celebration was low key at our house this weekend.  We had cheeseburgers and put out the inflatable pool and slip n’ slide.  We watched Hamilton (along with many other people, according to the glitching while streaming).  That show is still amazing.  Jack watched it with Ben and me, and I think he got a lot out of it.  He says he liked it!  I need to show him more musicals.

Jack’s music school put together a video recital for the summer.  He plays two songs in it, but I don’t know where in the program they put him.  Here’s the information if you are interested:

2020 Summer Virtual Recital YouTube Link

First of all, we would like to thank all of the students who submitted a video for our first ever virtual recital! They all turned out great and we cannot wait for everyone to see it!

We were not able to upload it to Facebook, so the video will “premiere” live on YouTube only, tomorrow night (07/02/2020) at 7 PM MST!

We will be leaving it up on YouTube for two weeks after it airs.

This video will be a private video and can only be reached through this link! Feel free to share this private link with your family and friends if they are interested in watching with us!

You can click the link before 7pm tomorrow night and it will put you in the waiting room and count down until the video begins.

Enjoy!

Earlier this month I took the kids and my sister to Grand Junction for a little escape.   The kids have been deprived of friends, family, playgrounds, and pools. We set to remedy that with a long weekend visit.  Everyone had loads of fun.  With the Masons they built LEGOs and went for a hike.  With the Waterhouses we went to the book store, ate pizza, and went to a rock shop.  Jack expanded his rock collection and Sam found a sweet green dragon figurine to add to his dragon collection. Looking through my photos, it’s mostly pool, pool pool 😀

Cranky boy getting the hair out of his eyes.

Sam BARELY went down the slide.  I don’t think it counts when it’s slow motion and you get handed adult to adult.

We looked at some nebulas through the telescope.  No planets, maybe next time.

I saw several shooting stars though, and we saw lots of satellites. 

Sam lost his first tooth today!

Phew!  It’s been loose for weeks.  I thought for sure it was gonna come out every day this last week.  In the end, he was eating lunch and yelping in pain.  Jack took a look and saw the tooth was completely sideways.  Even so, I had to give it a tug with a tissue to take it out.  Sam was shocked and relieved.  He lost the tooth AGAIN on the way downstairs to show Ben.  We found it using a flashlight on the stairs and he proudly showed it off to his dad.  Jack kindly offered his little box to Sam to keep the tooth safe until the fairy comes.

He already made a note asking for Skittles too.

I feel like this is the last milestone of childhood.  (Nothing left to celebrate until adolescence…and we don’t really want to celebrate voice cracking and hairy armpits 😉

Man, that tooth had a good long run!  For fun, I looked up my blog post about his first tooth.  My chubby little baby is so grown up now!

Saturday night we hosted Jack’s birthday party online.  It was a smashing success!  All 11 friends came for a night of snacks and trivia.

The kids and I assembled party packs for the guests to pick up earlier in the week.   Each had popcorn, Skittles, Sprite, a cupcake and candle, a LEGO minifig blind bag, and the Visual Round and answer sheet for trivia.  I think this really helped the kids feel united, like they were actually attending a party and not just logging on to chat with friends. (They all randomly ran off to get Harry Potter costumes when they started seeing each other. I dunno what that was about.)

I put together 8 rounds of trivia, with 6 questions each.  I was aiming for about 80-90% correct answers from the kids, so they felt successful.  Jack hardly missed any questions, I might have tailored it to his interests a little too well 🙂 I put the trivia in a slide presentation, that also showed the rules and the teams.  You can see it here if you are curious.  I removed the kids’ names.

We used the style of trivia we know from Geeks Who Drink, and we used the virtual trivia method we have been playing with out friends since March.  In Zoom they have a feature called break-out rooms, where you can privately discuss answers with just your team mates.  Instead of electronic answer submission (like we do in adult trivia), Ben popped into each breakout room to repeat questions as needed and collect their answers verbally.  He was mission control, organizing break-out rooms and tallying scores.  I was the emcee, presenting the questions and answers, and prompting Ben when to pop into groups based on the chatter I heard upstairs from Jack.

We used the Main room, with everyone in it, to open minifigs, light cupcakes and sing, and go over questions and answers.  We changed the teams every two rounds, so each kid got a chance to see most everyone else in small groups during the night.  It’s so hard to visit on zoom with more than a few screens at a time, I think this party made it extra fun and social for the kids.  The team changes also leveled the competition, so everyone got to be a on a winning team (Jack’s) at least once.

Jack has really great friends.  Smart and kind and funny.  They all sincerely had a good time playing together.  Jack was on a high all night and raved the whole weekend about his party. I was relieved not to be hosting people in my house.  It took a lot of work to coordinate and create the party, but I think it paid off big time – and no house mess to clean up afterward!

Our lifestyle is slow and easy these days.  It turned out to be a pretty great time to recuperate from surgery, with so few obligations.

After getting out my stitches, the incision is painful when shoes press on it as I walk.  So I found a style of sandals that won’t even touch my owies.

Sam has his very first loose tooth.  He’s been working on it for over a week.  The perma-tooth is already halfway here, but the little guy won’t dislodge yet.  It was really bothering him at lunch. I hoped he would knock it out with food, but no luck.

He’s been getting up around 6 AM, sometimes earlier, to play video games and watch cartoons.  This is the second time he’s slipped into a nap.  Maybe I need to tell him to knock off the early morning TV to encourage him to sleep more.

Jack has been working on magic a lot.  Here’s another video!

I’m working to get Jack’s trivia party all set for tonight.  I think it’s going to be really fun!

Animal Crossing is still a daily treat.  Last night Amanda’s island had a meteor shower.  I went over to make some wishes (to collect star fragments the next morning) and Andy was there doing the same thing.  At one point we were all just standing there, making wishes, so I snapped a picture of us three Waterhouse kids playing together.  Turns out, Amanda and Andy took a picture too!  So here we are playing together, miles apart.  We can all be sentimental 🙂