Skip to main content

One New Stripe

We kicked off the week with a wonderful Sunday afternoon and evening spent with my parents. It was the first time that we had really spent time with them since last July. That's a really long time! But, we were being very cautious and following guidelines for safe visits with family. And, it was well worth the wait! It was so nice to be able to catch up on things, eat great food, and HUG! It was also a small birthday celebration for me....so there was yummy cake, gifts, and singing. Singing courtesy of the real people in the house, and also Google (thanks, Scott, for that one!)



I also met up with my college friend, Angie, on Monday night, and am looking forward to seeing her more frequently in the near future. I had an NPR event that I called in for on Tuesday night (I was really tired so I *might* have fallen asleep during it, lol...but, luckily, they recorded it so I can watch it later!) And then Wednesday night was the first day/night in several days where there weren't plans to rush off to...and it was so nice to do nothing. I have gotten used to staying at home over the last year, so it takes a lot of effort in order to get out and socialize with people!

G and Ava had an exciting Taekwondo class on Thursday night...they tested for their first black strip on their white belts, and they passed! It was a surprise test, but they both managed to demonstrate the next levels in learning. And more importantly, they are both still enjoying it and look forward to going each week. Looks like that activity is definitely a keeper!


I'm toying with the idea of signing G up for "Boys Tumbling for Athletes" this summer. It's directed towards helping boys in sports, which G doesn't do much of, but I still think he'd enjoy it. Community Ed is a great way to try out new activities for these kiddos!

With that in mind, I asked Ava if she would be interested in learning archery, but she passed on that one. It'll be interesting to see if she stays with baton after this year...

On Friday after school G had FOUR separate friends stop over to play. We were trying to relax before dinner so he had limited time with them, but it's neat to see that he has so many kids to play with in the neighborhood. On Saturday afternoon he's heading next door to play and enjoy the sunshine. I kicked off Saturday morning on our deck with a nice cup of coffee...I very rarely have a chance to do that, but when it all comes together on a beautiful weekend morning, it's important to jump on the chance!


Scott has been fairly busy this week with side work and helping out a friend with some retaining wall work. He's hoping to spend part of this weekend encouraging G to learn to ride his bike without training wheels. It'll be interesting to see how that goes...

I can't believe that summer is right around the corner. It's been such a weird year, and everything has felt a bit out of whack. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to enjoy this summer a little bit more, BUT, still keep in mind that it's okay to say NO to getting together. If there's anything that this last year has taught us (besides how to properly wash hands and stay healthy,) it's that our mental health is important too. And, that "No" is a complete sentence. It's okay to set boundaries and not always have a full schedule. And it's also okay for the kids to find their own things to do...we don't need to entertain them all of the time. I wonder what historians will say when they look back on 2020...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbye Sweet Spanky

This is a post that I'm not very excited to write.  As you probably know, our oldest dog, Spanky, had struggled with health issues (ear infections, seizures) his whole life, and recently, his health had severely deteriorated.  He hadn't been eating, his ear infection was so severe his face was swollen, he had a hard time getting up the stairs, and he very rarely wanted to play.  Last week we got a few tail wags from him, and he ate a few bowls of food, but it was a 50-50 chance that he would actually keep the food down. On Thursday, we made the decision that if he wasn't any better by this weekend, we were going to put him down.  I know Scott didn't want to make that decision as Spanky was a very special dog to him - he truly was his little buddy, following him around everywhere, wanting to be wherever Scott was, and howling his sadness whenever Scott would leave him. Throughout Friday night, it became clear that Spanky wasn't going to have a miraculous recovery...

Happily Ever After?

Lately, I've been adding to the Disney Princess movies in our collection.  Last week I bought Beauty and the Beast for Ava.  That was never a favorite movie of mine, but now that I've seen it several times in the last week, it's growing on me.  I figure this is a good chance for me to catch up on some of the stories that I missed out on! Watching all of these princess movies has me thinking about fairy tales...why is it that it's always the evil stepMOTHER?  Or the mom is dead, and no one has taken her place?  Very rarely is it the father who is evil, or dead.  This has actually come up as a topic in more than one conversation lately, and has me a bit intrigued.  Fairy tales are often not very happy - and usually someone dies at some point.  I was a giving an overview of Snow White to a friend of mine, and as I was going through the story, both of us were horrified at the message - mom dies, evil stepmother wants to murder her pretty stepdaugh...

26 Hours in a Day

Just yesterday morning, I was thinking to myself that I could really use a few more hours each day.  We don't sleep a whole lot, both work long hours at our jobs, try to play with Ava as much as we can at night and on the weekends, and then we have to do all of the adult-stuff...paying bills, grocery shopping, cleaning, work on side jobs, house projects, etc.  If there were only 26 hours in a day, we could: *Sleep just an extra 30 minutes - we need it since the dogs have been waking us up each weekend day at 5:30am.  What could be SO urgent that they need to get us up then?!?  You'd think we only feed them once a week, or something. *Spend an extra hour with Ava...we could go to the park every night, take an extra long bath, read a few extra stories, and just enjoy the giggles and chattiness. *Take 30 minutes to talk to each other about how things are going.  With Scott leaving for work each day before 5am, and then all of the craziness that ensues wh...