Playing in a Creek, Memorial Day Parade, and Finding Toads

Samantha: 108 Months, Week 2
Aedan: 74 Months, Week 5
Owen: 32 Months, Week 2

During this whole stay at home time, days and weeks sometimes seem to run together, and with nothing really distinguishing going on, sometimes it's hard for me to remember what happened in a particular week unless I took a picture or video of it.

On Sunday, after watching online church in the morning, Ben took Samantha and Aedan to play baseball in the field at Dallas. This is something he wants to do more of because it's hard to really play much in our yard because of how steep it is. Samantha got a new bat and glove for her birthday, and we were hoping to have the kids in Little League right now, but because of coronavirus, that was cancelled. However, we still want to take the time to teach them some skills this summer while we have more time with school not being in session and most public places closed. He said they were pretty good at grounders, are better at throwing, but are not great at catching things in the air, but that that takes time. As Ben works on things more with them over the summer, hopefully they can gain more confidence and gain some athletic skills. Neither Samantha nor Aedan seem to express much interest in sports so far, which makes Ben sad because he is such a sports fanatic; however, I feel like if they are just exposed to more sports and play it more with Ben for fun, they will grow to enjoy it more.

While Ben and the older kids were gone, I spent my afternoon reading discussion posts and writing my responses for my online graduate class. I have reading and a discussion post due every Thursday, with follow-up responses due by Sunday night. Sometimes it's difficult to find time to fit reading and writing into my schedule with the kids at home doing school, general housework, trying to prioritize exercise, and just finding time to relax and spend time with Ben as well. I'm glad that I'm taking the class, and it's great because I get to take classes for free since Ben teaches at Wilkes, but it's difficult to fit everything that I want to do into my day.

With this weekend leading up to Memorial Day, a lot of people that live in Harvey's Lake, and specifically have houses on the lake, were coming back for the official start to summer. It was definitely much more crowded and busy than usual. Also, with more people enjoying the long weekend, there were fireworks set off every night from Friday through Monday night. It was a little annoying because the big booms right down the street from us scared our kids and woke them up from sleeping, and also really scared Izzy. I don't remember her being quite so scared last year with the fireworks, but she was shaking from head to toe, trying to climb up on our laps or even up above our heads, and she was panting so hard, refusing to calm down for most of the night. It was difficult having a little dog that was so nervous; poor girl!

Monday, May 25th was Memorial Day, so since the kids didn't have any school work to do, we decided to relax more in the morning and let the kids just play together. In fact, Ben and I were even able to enjoy our morning coffee out on the front porch while the kids played happily. Then, we decided to go out to Frances Slocum State Park to go on a short hike and let the kids play in the creek that we found the last time we were there. We brought water shoes and a towel so that the kids could walk through the water and on the rocks. After walking up and down the creek, we spent some time throwing rocks into the creek, getting wet, and having a wonderful time enjoying nature. It was the perfect way to spend the morning with my family. Here are some pictures from our morning.

I love Owen in his little blue baseball hat. It's so adorable.

Here are some cute pictures of my little 2 1/2 year old boy cheesing it up for the camera. I love his silly, cute personality so much.

After getting everyone dried off and dry shoes back on, we hiked back to the car and headed out to pick up lunch from Wendy's to take with us to watch the Memorial Day parade in Harvey's Lake. It started at 12:00, but we knew it was going the opposite direction from our house first, so we would have time. We parked outside of the Lakeside Skillet, popped the trunk, and folded down half of the back seat so the kids could sit and eat while we waited for the parade to come by us. The parade was just a lot of older or restored cars driving around followed by fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars. It was actually a lot better than we thought it would be, and the kids enjoyed it. We even got to see Aedan's teacher, Mrs. Weaver, who pulled in and parked in the same parking lot as us!

It was a pretty hot day, so once Owen woke up from his nap we had the kids get on their bathing suits, got the sprinkler set up, busted out the water guns, and had a fun water fight in the back yard. It was fun watching them run around and have such a good time, and Daddy is such a good sport in getting right in on the action with them. It was a great Memorial Day spending time outside and being together as a family.

Later that night as I was talking to my sister through Messenger, I realized that I have been kind of in a bit of a funk lately. I think I am just tired of it all and want the virus and the ramifications of it to just be over. With summer approaching, it's hard thinking about how we won't be able to do the things we normally do in the summer, like go to Michigan with Ben's college friends or go on the Toll family vacation. Plus, the kids won't be able to do Little League or the Hillside Farm Camp that we signed Samantha and Aedan up for at the end of July. It's just disappointing, especially as we were looking forward to exploring more of what made moving to northeast Pennsylvania more appealing to us: D.C. is four hours away, New York is 2 1/2 hours away, and we can even get to the beach by the Atlantic Ocean in a few hours. However, now a lot of those places are largely closed down. Even a lot of the zoos and museums that we would frequent over the summer, and the two that we have memberships to, we probably won't be able to go to at all this summer. I know it's selfish and petty of me to be complaining about these things in light of the pain and sickness that people are encountering due to coronavirus, but I agree with Samantha when she says, "If I had one wish, I would wish that coronavirus never happened." I also feel like it's been harder for us in some ways because we haven't even lived here for a year, and I feel like we were just starting to get to know people before the stay at home order happened. I have just felt very isolated, like I don't really know anyone and no one really knows me. Friday, May 29th, our county is moving into the yellow phase, but that doesn't really mean too much. It really only lifts the stay at home order, and more businesses will be allowed to open, but people are still encouraged to follow social distancing and groups of over 25 people are prohibited, so it really doesn't change our life too much other than allowing us to start seeing smaller groups of family and friends.

I have been trying to train myself to get up earlier again and spend some time reading my Bible, devotional, and write in my journal. It's so quiet and peaceful in the morning when everyone else is still asleep. The sun begins to rise at 5:30 here at this time of year, so it is bright and sunny in this video I took just before 7:00 as I sat on the couch, doing my quiet time, and hearing all the birds chirping around our house. I love hearing the sounds of birds in the morning.

Tuesday morning was back to our normal routine of school work. This was the second to last week of school, so we were in the home stretch. While I did work at home with the kids, Ben went grocery shopping because I had been the one going pretty much every other week, and he was needing a turn to get out of the house for awhile, even if to just go grocery shopping.

I don't want to spend too much time talking about myself in my blog because it's much more interesting hearing about the kids and what they are up to, but I do want to document that I was having a hard time just feeling tired all the time and crabby a lot. Now that it's warmer weather, I am realizing that I have not been taking care of myself or my health. Things aren't fitting how I would like them to, and feeling like that has really been wearing on my mind. I know that I need to make healthier choices, but my problem is just sticking to something. Plus, it can't be something that I have to spend a ton of money on, or that requires me to make something different for myself and a whole different meal for my family. I am part of an online program called The Balanced Life Sisterhood, and it is an online Pilates program with a whole calendar of work outs built in and a whole library of recipes using more whole food ingredients. My goal was to start by changing my lunch choices because that's where I tend to grab things that are quick and not as good for me, so I'm trying to have green smoothies, salads, or veggies and hummus. It's just so hard for me to not give in and take the easy way or to eat when I'm not really hungry, but just eating for comfort or out of boredom. Also, I want to stop having late night snacks after the kids are in bed, giving myself one night a week that I can have something. I also know that getting healthy is not just about eating better, and exercise has never been a consistent part of my life, so my goal is also to increase my exercise and make it a part of my daily schedule. I want to do my C25K running app, which does a mixture of walking and running for 30 minutes, gradually ramping you up to more running and less walking, and then do 15 minutes of Pilates on those days to help with flexibility, mobility, and strength building. Then, on the opposite days I want to do a longer 30 minute Pilates workout with a 15 minute walk on the hills around my neighborhood. But again, I have this plan, but I just struggle with consistency and sticking to what I would like to do and what I know would help me feel better and healthier. I also struggle with finding what time of day works best for me to exercise because I don't like taking two showers in one day. (I don't have time for that!) But I also have a hard time waking up early enough to get ready, go exercise, and have enough time to shower and be ready before or around when the kids come downstairs at 7:15. I am hopeful that  I can continue to use this time at home to integrate exercise and healthier eating into my daily life so I can maintain it when things get "back to normal."

Art for the week was coloring their favorite ice cream cone flavors. Aedan's has mint chocolate chip, rainbow sherbet, and chocolate ice cream. Samantha's has chocolate and peanut butter ice cream. This was an easy art assignment!

Later that afternoon, once Owen woke up from his nap, the neighbor girl, Carter, came over to our house to play. It was another warmer day, so the kids got their bathing suits on and the sprinkler ready to play in. They were all so excited to have another kid over at our house to play, as they have not really interacted with other kids since school was cancelled. Carter wasn't too interested in playing in the sprinkler, but she liked our sandbox, and here are the boys playing with her. Aedan was doing such a nice job interacting with both Owen and Carter. Her parents came over after a little while and we all sat around and talked for a little while, which was really nice. We would like to get to know them better and form a relationship with them, as there really aren't many people with kids in our neighborhood, and we want to be able to support each other and give our kids others to play with.

On Wednesday morning Ben had some music playing, and Owen decided to get up and dance. (Owen standing in his chair at the table is definitely a regular occurrence.) I love how he shakes his bottom back and forth when he dances. He has always danced this way, and it makes me smile and laugh.

The rest of Wednesday morning, the kids and I did school work, like we usually do. Here is some of the work Samantha was working on with the Education plan for her city, and her spiral review page for math.

Wednesday afternoon was a big deal because we convinced Samantha and Aedan to release the toad they had captured. They were keeping it in a cardboard box in the back of the yard, tucked just into the woods. They would take it out and play with it, let it hop around the yard, and put it in the water table to swim. (As you can tell in this video, Aedan is a little more rough with it than he should be.) It made that croaking noise anytime they picked it up. The cardboard box they had it in was starting to fall apart, and we didn't want to keep the toad so long that it would die in captivity, so we decided to take it down to the woods by the Lakeside Skillet to let it go live in the marshy area down by the creek. I want to support their love of catching and learning about living creatures, but I also don't want to starve the poor creatures to death by not giving them the right food to eat or by keeping them locked inside a dark cardboard box. Anyways, they played with their toad, who they named Hermione for awhile, and I took a few pictures before we took a walk down to free her.

Wednesday night I invited my friends from Bible Study over for a bonfire. They arrived about 7:00, and Ben was in charge of putting the kids to bed. Alysse, Grace, and Kaili came, and it was so fun to see people in person again, not just on a computer screen through Zoom. We talked, got to see Kaili's new baby, and had s'mores. They all stayed until around 10:00, and it was such a fun night. I'm glad they were all able to make it, and I didn't realize how much I missed talking to other women. It feels like so long that we have been under this stay at home order!

I can't remember anything much in particular about Thursday or Friday, we were just wrapping up another week of school and feeling very ready for school to be over. None of us were feeling it anymore, and we were just trying to push through to the end. Here is a tower made of out aluminum foil that Samantha had to do for Innovation.

After releasing Hermione the toad on Wednesday, Aedan found two more toads in our yard, I think the very next day. They put them in a different box, and on Friday I found this large terrarium being sold on Facebook Marketplace for $20. I figured the kids would really like having an actual place to keep the toads (and snakes) that they find in our yard, and Aedan was willing to give $20 of his own money to buy this tank to keep the toads in. Ben went to pick it up on Friday afternoon, and then Samantha and Aedan spent time getting their habitat ready and even filling this bowl with water for them to sit in. They were SO excited about this awesome home for their toads that they couldn't stop talking about it, even as they were laying in bed for the night. I'm glad that they are enjoying learning about how to care for animals, and they now have a safe place to keep them where they can get them in and out easily. Now we just have to decide how long we are going to let them keep them and how much effort we are going to put into keeping them alive. I don't want to do something wrong and end up killing them accidentally, but I don't want to squelch their interest in taking care of the toads that they found either, so we will let them enjoy their pet toads for awhile!

Do you see the excitement on her face? Collecting bugs, reptiles, and amphibians is right up her alley. Even though I don't particularly like those things, I'm glad that she has such interest and curiosity. She even researched online about what toads eat and what kind of habitat they would like.

Here are some pictures from Saturday when Owen woke up from his nap. He often wakes up very slowly and enjoys cuddling for awhile. I walked out into the kitchen with him cuddling up on my shoulder, and I asked Ben to take a picture of us because I love to see how he fits on me, how he is growing up and getting so big, but he still likes to be held in a familiar way, like he was as a baby.

Here's a comparison picture from when Owen was just 8 weeks old. Man, I can't believe how big he has gotten, and sometimes it makes me sad to look at these pictures of him so small and know that I will never get those days back again. They really do grow so fast, but when things are so busy and you are sleep-deprived, it's hard to really soak up all those moments. I think that's why I'm okay with still rocking Owen to sleep at nap time, holding him and carrying him when he asks me to, and keeping him in his crib for as long as we can. I also think that's why I have a longing to have another baby. These baby snuggles are just the best. There's nothing else like them. So I'm just trying to hold on to Owen's babyhood for just a little bit longer.

And last but not least, here are some pretty cool Lego creations that Aedan made that afternoon. You can see the two Stormtroopers bowing down to Darth Vader, and the Lego figure in the front middle is one Aedan designed to look like Yoda. I love to see how creative he is in building and playing with his Legos. It makes me smile to see what he comes up with.

(Blog about May 24-30, 2020)