Family
Our Weekday Quarantine Schedule
We are following a loose weekday quarantine schedule during the Covid-19 pandemic. Why? Since we are staying home can’t we cut loose when it comes to schedules and routines? The urge is there. Trust me. However, our household seems to function a little better with a bit of structure. Plus, things still have to get done while we are staying home. Handy Husband has to “go” to work. The kids have to “go” to online school. Blog posts need to be published. Oh, and we all need to stay sane. Minor detail. Here’s a glimpse into our weekday quarantine schedule. 6 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.: DON’T BUG MAMA HOURS My…
April Fool’s Day Humor Break
Does humor get you through tough times? It certainly helps me! Today I’m digging four years (!) into the archives to bring you an April Fool’s Day humor break. These stories, taken straight from the mouths of my little babes, still make me laugh. HUMOR BREAK #1: ACRONYMS ARE TOUGH (originally posted here) My daughter and son were playing some sort of game. I don’t know what it was. I just know they weren’t fighting and they had created costumes. These costumes involved using eyeliner to draw whiskers on their faces. The point is THEY WEREN’T FIGHTING. My son’s character (I’m fairly certain he was a cat) suffered a tragic…
9 Parent Tips for Transitioning Kids to Contacts
Disclaimer: I am not qualified to give you medical or health-related advice. I’m just a parent sharing our experience. My husband and I both have terrible vision, which means our kids had little chance of navigating life without glasses or contacts. Sorry, kids. My son switched from glasses to contacts at 8 years old. My daughter started wearing contacts at age 11. That’s young! Our eye doctor said it was less about the age and more about if the child was ready for the responsibility. My kids both got glasses in kindergarten, but convincing them to wear them was always a battle. I think at 6 years old, their vision…
Last Week Before School
My kids start school at the end of this week! I can’t decide if this summer flew by or was unbearably slow. Maybe a little of both. I’ve decided that in a mother’s mind, these two realities can exist at once. And that’s okay…as long as it doesn’t drive her completely batty. And look how little my son used to be. Time really must be flying because I swear he was just 4-years-old and now he’s going into 4th grade! AGH! To that end, I’m taking this week off to spend time with the kids, so that I will really, really miss them when they head back to school. Plus, I…
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Breaking In Our Colonial Farmhouse
I’ve heard it said that a new home doesn’t feel like home until you start making memories there. So that’s what we’re going to do! I’m taking this week off to make memories in our new home. Our first guests, friends from Oregon, are spending the week with us. We are breaking in this Colonial Farmhouse with BBQs, pool time and late nights on the deck watching the fireflies. And by “late nights” I mean I’ll go to bed at 10 p.m. and leave everyone else to carry on without me! HA! I’m not even joking. But! I’m the one who gets up early with the kids, so it all…
That Time My Son Broke a Window
It was bound to happen. The only thing that surprised me was that it took almost 9 years to occur. Since we’ve moved out of our rental and got our security deposit back (because priorities!) I can now tell you about that time my son broke a window in our house. It was what happened AFTER the window broke that has me wondering who learned more from this situation: him or me? How did my son break the window? With a ball, of course. *sigh* He threw a ball in his bedroom and with either extreme accuracy or supremely bad luck he launched that ball through a window. Now, in his…
Turning Nine and Twelve
We interrupt this blog’s regularly scheduled content for a special announcement. As of today we have a 9-year-old and a 12-year-old in the house! Whoop, whoop! My kids were born 3 years and 1 day apart, so May is kind of like Christmas for us. It’s magical and meaningful. It’s exciting and full of anticipation. It’s jam-packed with activities, presents and delicious food. It’s also…expensive! Haha! That’s what we get for having two May babies. For the record, they are totally worth it! I’d really hate to admit (so I won’t!) what percentage of my thoughts revolve around whether the decisions Handy Husband and I have made as parents are going…
Taking The Week Off For Spring Break!
It’s Spring Break in our house! Finally. Does it feel like a late Spring Break to you? It feels like one to me. Our kids won’t finish the school year until the end of the third week in June, so maybe it make sense. We do not have any Spring Break travel plans. Handy Husband has to work and the kids start spring sports this week. It doesn’t mean we won’t have plenty of fun on our staycation though. Although, I am not going to cross over a river on a pipe! I’ve done that once and don’t need to do it again. I hope you have a happy week…
An April Fool’s Day Story
Around the first of February my son spent quite a few days home from school with some sort of virus that the rest of us did not contract. It’s the first time in all my years of parenting that the school nurse called to have me pick my child up from school. Not once, but twice…in one week! When I break a streak, I really break it. And, yes. I felt the judgment of school nurses all over the land. It was during one of those ‘he feels fine, but hasn’t been fever free for 24 hours and I can’t risk more judgment from the school nurse’ days that I…
Maybe I Was Wrong About My Child Playing the Recorder
My son is in 3rd grade. If it’s been awhile since you’ve been in 3rd grade, let me refresh your memory. Being in 3rd grade means he’s learning multiplication and division. He’s spending time writing long stories. He’s no longer learning to read. He’s reading to learn. He’s also learning to play the recorder. If this blog had music that last sentence would be followed by a ‘dun, dun, duuuun!!’ sound. Handy Husband and I both recall learning to play the recorder in school at about that same age, so it has been part of school curriculum in many U.S. schools for a good long while. If you want to…
