Merry Christmas 2020

It snowed in October, so we took advantage of the weather to take a picture.  Notice the Christmas tree?  And the feet?  I thought I could edit it out, so I didn't bother covering them up.  Oh, well.

Then we couldn't resist getting a picture of the boy as an old gristled back woodsman with his rocking chair on the porch.  Cute, huh?

 

Pretzel log candy house

 

Everybody was Ninja Fighting!

If there is actually a civil war, at least our family will be protected.  The current president and his supporters may be getting more violent everyday, but we have a die hard ninja living with us!  Watch out! 

I got this red ninja costume at a flea market a while ago, thinking the boy wouldn't be into it.  It's red and he's crazy about blue.  But lately, he's been practically living in it.

Here he is showing off his impressive skill in the HQ (under the big fir tree in our yard)

And here he is, a few days earlier, helping deliver packages to the UPS store.  He's been so into ninjas lately that our nightly routine has been altered to add a few minutes of playing ninja every night.  Husband is the white robot ninja, and I get to wear black and be the bad guy.  the game only differs from hide and seek/wrestle time in that we wear costumes.  The other night, as I helping him relax before falling asleep, I said: I love you, sweet heart.

He responded: Call me red ninja!

I said: I love you, red ninja.

He said: I love you, mommy garmadon.

Branch manager and the assistant branch manager

We went with a friend to the dog park.  Their dog is super active and the boy loves to play with her.  However, she is not very helpful with picking up large branches from the water.

We rolled up his pants and the water was pretty shallow.  His boots were still so full of water by the end, it was splashing out of the top as he walked.  Little buckets keeping in the water rather than keeping it out.

 

Coming full circle

 

We've gone full on remote learning in our school district.  The teacher asked to try and keep distractions to a minimum, so I decided to set up in the basement, and we just happened to have the right sized desk.  My sisters and I used to play school with it when we were kids, so it seemed appropriate for the boy to have real school now.

The joy of Autumn

 

Baby's first choux

The boy actually did a lot of the making of the choux pastry.  At least the stove top portion was all him!

 

Halloween 2020

 

A sorceress, two knights, and a big ass dragon teaming up to help save the world.

Autumn in the Rockies

 

On a "treasure hunt" in a park across town. It was a beautiful fall day, and we enjoyed walk through nature, wrestling with trees, and playing hide-and-seek in the tall grass.

Then on a rather long hike in another park, the boy declared himself king of the rock.  See the power pose?

A little sunshine was badly needed during this rather depressing era.  I hope the boy remembers these fun moments and less of the rather stupid current events.

So, something happened

This is the wall between the major road and our neighbor's yard.

And this is a peek into our yard.  See the tire?  It wasn't there this morning.  Also, the sunroof from the car flew over the fence and landed on the walking path on the second level, near the stairs.

Also, I made tried to make a cookie version of the library from my home town.  It didn't quite come together.  It suffered a ninja attack.

 

Punk rock in the making

stripped shirt

short pants

suspenders

turtle socks

 

The garden

 

Can you see the little bee on the top left, covered in pollen?

Husband and boy moving the latest load of woodchips.  Well, husband moving them and the boy catching a ride on the wheelbarrow.

One of the garden beds.  There are a couple spare honey topbars hanging for the bees to clean off.

A close up of ground cherries (left) and tomatillos (right).  Both are related to tomatoes, and have husks that grow first then the fruit fills in.  The ground cherries are surprisingly sweet and yummy raw.  The tomatillos are supposedly good raw but I only make enchilada sauce out of them.

new backpack

The boy needed a new backpack for school what with all the lunch, drink, snacks, changes of clothes and homework folders that have to go back and forth.  I found this one on FB marketplace.  The boy found a new use for it.

 

Kindergarten (gulp)

 

Doesn't he look so grown up?  He's showing off his strong muscles.

Playing a little tag while waiting for the doors to open.

Husband is part of a bowling league, and we went with him one night.  The boy wanted to be a part of it so much, he couldn't resist running up to the lane with his dad every turn.  He gets so excited when he sees other people play and have fun.

Happy 5th birthday!!!

 It was the boy's fifth birthday.  Incredible and surreal.  Even more crazy: he starts kindergarden this year.  He's growing up so fast, we threw a rocket birthday party.   A very tiny rocket party.

I made a cake.  Totally copied from a baker on youtube, but it came out okay.  The top is two giant cookies, one for the front and one for the back.  Held up by white chocolate covered skewers set into a lump of white chocolate.  Then the flames were made of crushed hard candies melted onto lollipop sticks.  Then the cake was a funfetti cake mix hollowed out and filled with frosting and strawberries.  The frosting, meant to look like rocket fumes, was vanilla 7 minute frosting.  Very light and meringue like.

I wonder if he's using the same wind we are using

life imitating art

Some how the boy has found out about minecraft.  We don't have the game ourselves, so he's made up his own version with legos.

And taking a turn on the xylophone at the new park.

The boy ransacked his wardrobe to come up with this outfit to wear while driving his jeep.  Not sure if he knows the implications of camo and tannish grays with the jeep, plus the floppy hat.

June fun (and a little July)

Many many years ago, I saved all the money I made one summer to buy the latest in word processing technology.  It came in useful, as I was in college, for writing papers, before such things as laptops and personal printers were a thing.  Believe it or not, it's still laying around the house.

Sometimes, when it's super cold or super hot outside, we have come out with games of our own.  Recently the boy has become interested in treasure maps, and treasure.  So, I oblige with a drawn map of the living room, complete with x-marks-the-spot treasures of m&ms.  Today, the boy made his own map for me to find toys.

At the bottom, you'll notice two figures: the boy holding his crayon and me, holding my phone.  In the center is the broom.  On the left, is the couch.  It's a guess that on the right is the rocking horse.  Cute, huh?

Look how excited the boy is about the fourth of July!

Happy Birthday, Granddad!

in the garden

The growing season is ramping up.  It's been nice, as it's been something to focus on and foster.  We're growing a few new things this year, including a three-sisters garden with corn (never grown that before) pole beans (never been super successful), and squash.  In fact, last fall, my brother gave me a couple pumpkins to compost.  We'd put them in the large compost bin we put on the big garden bed.  So now I have two volunteer pumpkin plants growing.  Fun!!

The weather has been hot, but mostly right in the ideal zone for growing plants.  And something else fun: a potato plant that had also volunteered grew a flower!  I've never seen a potato flower before.  Granted this is only my second year growing potatoes, but apparently it's pretty rare for potato fruit to form, and just as well, as they're poisonous.

"Last Day" of preschool

Actually, it was Tuesday, but I got around to taking the pic on Wednesday.  After months of online school, it doesn't really matter.  He's in the middle of saying "Happy Birthday", so obviously he has no idea what is going on.  Monday, we went to his old school with gifts we'd made for his team of 8 teachers and support staff.  We also picked up some of his stuff from the classroom.  It broke my heart a little when he asked his main teacher for a hug and she had to say no.  "Next week?"  he suggested.  But of course, there is no next week.  There may not be a next year.

It's on a day like this that I get so angry and frustrated by the belligerent incompetence of the federal administration.  A lot of stress and heart-break could have been avoided if someone competent was in charge during this national crisis. I've been struggling for months trying to decide if private pre-kindergarten was better than going straight to kindergarten.  If finding a private speech therapist would even be possible.  And now, no one knows what school will look like next year.  If the inevitable resurgence of this virus will mean that the boy will spend the whole year with next to no contact with children that he needs.  See, now I'm getting mad again.  

Evening walk

We're stuck in the house most of the time, the boy and me.  Husband has had to work 6 days a week for the past month, which has been tough.  So many other families stuck at home, ordering supplies online, because of this mishandled epidemic, means we spend that much less time together.  But Sundays, we get to spend together.  After trying to ride his bike around the block, the boy insisted we carry the bike for him while he pretended to fly like a super hero.

Physics for preschoolers

I bought an inflatable punching bag a while ago, so the boy could take out some of his need to push/punch/wrestle onto something.  It didn't work out quite as intended.  But today he figured out Newtown's 3rd law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

School work and summer fun

School has bee on hiatus, as has the world.  The teachers have sent weekly assignments and asked us to send pictures and videos of our work at home.  One day, the boy had been showing off his disguise game to his classmates online, then we decided to make apple bread.  Can you guess what he is?

A wookie spreading batter.  This doesn't look like learning, but the OT professional would point out the bilateral hold, the cross midline exercise.  Not to mention the speech pathologist would be interested in the conversation we had, and hopefully the psychologist would be pleased with the social skills being reinforced.

The boy saw a pile of watermelons at the store and insisted on getting one.  Since it's way too early for watermelon season, I didn't think it'd be any good, but as you can see, the boy thought it was pretty good.  That's a strawberry huller he's using to dig out the innards.

Easter 2020

I'd kind of forgotten about Easter coming.  Days are run together, and going to the store is a rarer occurrence, plus church hasn't happened in weeks, so all the usual signals are gone.  But the Easter Bunny did manage to make an appearance.  Instead of eggs, he filled empty juice bottles with treats.  He also brought a new pair of t-rex rain boots.  He must have been feeling whimsicle.

I'd kind of forgotten about Easter coming.  Days are run together, and going to the store is a rarer occurrence, plus church hasn't happened in weeks, so all the usual signals are gone.  But the Easter Bunny did manage to make an appearance.  Instead of eggs, he filled empty juice bottles with treats.  He also brought a new pair of t-rex rain boots.  He must have been feeling whimsicle.

Quarantine: month 1

The boy was cold, I guess.

Building a robot out of string.  The original idea was to create letters out of string, you know, like a creative learning type thing.  The boy had other ideas.

Husband created his first embroidery.

Cruisin' together

So I went on a cruise, unexpectedly.  A friend of mine decided to go as a much needed escape, and another friend decided she needed a break, too.  So I threw caution to the wind and went, too.  It was a whirlwind, to say the least.  My passport was long expired, I got an infection in my tooth, and that needed to be dealt with, plus I had to not only get time off but get babysitting while husband was at work.  It was an ordeal.  Fortunately, it all worked out (the passport office for the whole state is only like 10 minutes from my house!  Who knew?)

my first of many desserts: two different types of cake while waiting for our cabin to be ready.  For those wondering, we got a triple on the first level.  It meant a lot of climbing stairs to offset the food.

Our first day trip off the boat was to an island off of Honduras.  Excellent snorkling.  We saw a ton of fish and coral.  And yes, that's a coconut next to me that I drank. 

This is the boat we were on.  It's like an apartment building on the sea. 15 total stories tall!

The second day, we went to Belize.  The highlight of the whole trip was this: a series of caves that have been carved out of limestone.  We'd hired a tour guide to drive us there (don't ask me where.  I didn't arrange anything) and kayak through the flooded caves.  The Mayans had used the caves in their worship as a representation of the underworld.  At least according to the guide, and he seemed like he knows.

The entrance into the cave.  It's super wide in some places, and shallow enough, an adult could walk.

At the Mayan ruins in Belize.

We also went to Mexico, where one friend went scuba diving while the other friend and I went to a dolphin park and swam with manatees.  It was crazy cool.  I don't have access to the pics at the moment, so I'll have to add them later.

Some of the fancy food we had on the boat.  This is a crab cake with a guacamole-ish sauce on the side.  There was a lot of fancy fancy food on the boat, as well as a 24/7 pizza, a burger place, and a taco place.  Nevermind the buffet.

And then I came back home to a sick kid, a tired husband, laundry and real life.

I also got laid off.  According to them, they needed more than the part time position I was filling. And my "priority has to be with my family", so there you go.  It was sort of out of the blue.  They hadn't