Everybody’s working for the weekend

But first.....I forgot to include this in Thursday’s post. Andy and Ben stayed up late Thursday night and finished the puzzle.

And now, for the weekend wrap up.

DJ found me every time I sat down. We shared lots of cuddles.

Having slowed down, I have been able to appreciate nature. 

Like these 2 birds, which I wasn’t sure if they were fighting or mating. 

Survey says...mating. Check that off the list.

Which then made me remember these eggs so I went and checked on them. 

Look how full of nests!! 

I think this is year 3. 

We will have to clean it out after this year.

Andy snuck a pic of momma! 

We haven’t seen our duck back. Andy tore out the lilies she laid in last year. And the lilies from the original location aren’t tall enough yet. She was checking out the neighbor’s bushes, but I checked and didn’t see the beginning of a nest. I’m afraid her time with us is done. 😢😢

                                                            Maybe he’s born with it?

Or maybe it’s Maybelline! 

It’s been awhile since Abbie worked her magic on Ben. 

Little camera shy, but Ben is always down for whatever makes people laugh and have fun.

Andy and the boys cleaned the garage out Friday.

Then on Saturday, they started working on building new boxes for our garden.

On Sunday, Ben helped Andy rip out the old boxes.

They got 2 boxes in today. They will finish up this week. 

Meanwhile, I made my first homemade pizza. 

Andy always makes them, but I tell you what, mine was GOOD! 

Ended the day listening to the POTUS. He has extended the CDC social distancing guidelines through April 30th. 

Dark Cola

Biggest Manar news of the day was Abbie finally breaking me down about box coloring her hair.
She’s had highlights before, but never all over color, and certainly doing it from a box wasn’t my first choice. Nor was the dark color, but it’s a pandemic. No one will see her and no one will care.

So after a quick trip to our Dollar General, we began.

Before. And refusing to show her face.

Haha! Snuck one in during the processing.

Snuck a side shot after. 

It’s a lot darker, but she likes it so whatever. 

Ben was excited today to crush cans. Haha! He and Andy worked on cleaning up in the garage. They hung the crusher and Ben went to town.

When you’re bored, anything new is fun! 

In COVID-19 news, the cases just keep rising. I believe it was today (Thursday) that the United States took the lead for most cases in the world. Meanwhile, our brilliant POTUS wants everyone to get back to work and save the economy. He believes there will be significant improvement and we will all be able to end social isolation by Easter. He is absolutely nuts and 100% frightening to watch him “lead” our country through this pandemic. 

     

Whoa, we’re halfway there...

Sing with me!

Whoa, (we’re all) livin’ on a prayer.

Will and Ben started Wednesday off with a little science experiment on surface tension.

Which had nothing to do with his science homework, except that it involved coins. So I like that they were using their imagination and came up with something else.

This penny holds 21 drops of water. Later they tried it with other coins, then later clean versus dirty. It kept them busy for awhile.

Later, I went to help Will get logged in to his class Zoom meeting. I was hunched over the laptop, and then about peed myself when I looked down and saw this guy. 

This is Yoshi, Will’s gecko. He creeps me out a little. 

The sun came out and our eldest child decided to venture out of the basement. She and Andy worked on hitting. This would have been her first year of high school softball. I’m guessing we won’t see a game this season. 

The boys played some basketball with the neighbor boy. It was so nice to be outside in the fresh air. 

Tower Tuesday and other shenanigans

Tuesday’s Principal’s Challenge for our school was to build a tower. Will and Ben got to work with our toilet paper stash. Which I will note, was all purchased pre-COVID and pre-toilet paper shortage.

They tried super hard to get it taller than I did, but couldn’t do it.

The boys started a puzzle.

I worked on this laundry that had stains all over from Will leaving ANOTHER stick of chapstick in his pocket. One more time and he’s going to have a chapped bottom. 

Ben and I checked the live webcam with the elephant seals we visited in CA. last spring.

And then we watched a live cam at Monterey Bay Aquarium. These jelly fish were so cool to watch.

Abbie was alive. She only ventured upstairs for nourishment, and later to go driving with Andy.

Supporting local business

Monday night we had complimentary VDI, thanks to our friend John Barker. He decided he wanted to help small businesses while feeding his friends. He sent us a generous gift card and we had our first of many dinners. We sent him this picture to thank him.

On our way to pick up our order, this was on the radio. I can’t deal with a quarantine and Christmas music in March. People have lost their damn minds.

Just another Manic Monday

4:00 a.m. wake up call from Will.  "Momma, I think I'm going to puke."  

Okay, I'm awake.  At least he's holding a trash can this time.  So we sit in the bathroom, lay in the living room, sit in the bathroom, lay in the living room, repeat until 6:00 a.m when Andy wakes up.  No puke yet, so I think maybe he just had an upset stomach and freaked out thinking he was going to be sick again and bless his father with another volcano eruption of puke through the house.  I leave Andy in charge and go to bed.  6:30 a.m. and I am just falling to sleep.  I can hear Andy in the shower and my phone rings.  It's Will.  He's throwing up.  Okay...back to the bathroom I go.  He spends the rest of the morning sleeping.  It's sort of like groundhog day.  Yet, it's not.  

It's just that... I just did this. 2 weeks ago.  Why is he puking again?  Nerves?  Valid illness? 

We will never know.  

He woke up at noon, ate lunch, and is now asking for VDI or Short Stop for dinner.  Who knows!  He told Papaw it was bad food; as in an expired fruit roll up.  Uh, probably not. 

In between Ben's homework assignments, I facetimed this handsome guy.  I've taken to begging Aimee to give him to me.  She won't budge.  Instead, she is letting our dad (yikes) babysit him while she works from home.  This folks is sure to be a comedy.  Or a tragedy.  Either way. 

But again, desperate times call for desperate measures.  Sorry Karter. 

DJ continues to be bored.  He decided to shake things up today and rest in Ben's pajama drawer. 

Abbie was MIA this morning.  No one had seen her.  Andy ventured down to check on her this morning and look what he found!  

A true COVID-19 miracle!  She was doing her work!  Unprompted by us! 

The highlight of the day came while I was on the phone with Discover's Fraud Department.  Our credit card was compromised, which was not the highlight, but while on the call I spotted this girl!  Andy told me he saw her yesterday morning.  I had all intentions of rising early and looking for her, but then the puker struck and I was distracted.  But look, there she is!  She wandered around our front yard for awhile and then headed over to check out the neighbor's yard.  She has no idea what she's in for if she nests over there.  I'm hopeful she realizes they have a dog and she changes her mind, but she spent a good deal of time scouting their bushes.  This makes year 3 she has returned.  The only problem is that Andy ripped out the area she nested in last year.  I'm so mad!  I'm really hoping she goes back to the lillies she nested in her first year.  Fingers crossed! 

If there's something strange in your neighborhood...

Who ya gonna call?

Call Nona???

This technically happened Saturday night, but it deserves its own post.  Here goes:

Saturday night around 11:30 I wake up to my phone vibrating.  Like I said earlier, after 10:00 P.M. my phone goes on DND for all texts, and most phone calls, except for calls from certain contacts.  Such as Abbie. So I hear my phone buzzing and answer it, to hear Abbie tell me that Will and Ben think someone is in the house. I'm trying to process this, and at the exact moment hear the outside garage door opening.  Shit.  I'm waking Andy up and he is moving too slow.  I'm also looking down at my phone and seeing Paula had sent me a text 10 minutes earlier asking if I was awake.  Now I'm thinking maybe it's her coming, but then I'm hit with an all new fear that maybe something is really wrong with Bill, who has still been sick and doesn't seem to be improving.  This is all going through my groggy with sleep brain.  Andy is up and walking to the door and there is a knock.  Okay, yes, it's Paula.  She comes in.  Abbie comes up the stairs from the basement.  The boys are now standing in the kitchen.  Ben is sobbing and holding this wooden sword we got him while in Turks & Caicos....

Turns out the boys were awake in Ben's room watching some movie.  They are convinced they heard some noise in the living room and make attempts to replicate whatever the sound was that they heard.  Following the noise, they hear DJ meowing in what one of them calls, a cat alarm.  They send texts to both me and Andy. No answer.  They somehow decide the intruder had us captive so they wouldn't call us, in case the intruder answered the phone.  They called Abbie to see if she had been upstairs or heard us.  She calls me and Andy.  In the meantime, the boys have called Nona, not sure if they should call 911.  Paula apparently tries texting us and after getting no response, comes over.  The boys in the meantime were huddled, terrified in Ben's room.  Ben picked up his sword and devised a plan to hide under his bed, swipe at the intruder's feet, then stab him in the balls.  I have no idea what Will's role was to be.  Though, at least, now that it's over and they are telling the story, he is comforting his crying brother.  We all look at each other like we can't believe this just happened.  That my friends, was Saturday night.  All before midnight.  Can't make this shit up.  Day 1 of Shelter in Place has come to a conclusion.

Week 1: March 16-22nd

We successfully made it through Week 1 of home school and social distancing. We have many more to come, as Friday the 20th, the Governor announced a shelter in place directive through April 7th.  Our Spring Break was to be the 6th through the 10th, so at minimum we are out until April 13th. Yay.

Academically, there were some touch and go moments with Ben but it all ended (mostly) well. Will did a decent job of humoring us. He sat at the table for some lessons but mostly worked on his own in his room. Abbie downright refused to participate and says she completed her work each day. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ben on a Zoom call with his class. 

Andy spent his days mostly occupied on phone calls. He did ask me on Friday if he could go to Chicago for work. Yeah, cue the rewind sound...WAIT, what?!?!?  I looked at him like he was absolutely ridiculous, but told him to do what he wanted. My only stipulation was he self-quarantine for 2 weeks upon his return. He decided to stay and has set up compete shop in his home office. I have used the ‘F’ word more times than I care to admit in order to get the boys to quiet down while Andy is on calls. Desperate times call for bad words. It’s true, don’t judge.

Abbie has mostly kept to herself. Every once in awhile she comes upstairs to eat an entire bag of chips and complain to us she is bored. At some point during the week, she threatened to dig a tunnel to Bill and Paula’s. Andy wished her well in the event of a national shut down. I assume she has finally realized this is real stuff happening out in the world because she has thankfully stopped asking to go anywhere/have people over. Sunday she curled her hair for fun. Which has never happened so boredom is obvious getting to her. You can kind of see it here.

                                                           Man, she loves me!

I left the house a few times to go to the grocery store, post office, and Dollar General. Abbie and I even ventured over to Staunton to Bill's IGA to try to find bread.  No luck, but we scored a $3.69 pack of hot dog buns. One day I walked to the mailbox for fun. Not kidding.
Otherwise, I went to the school a couple days to see if they needed help with lunch meals, delivered some toiletries to families, and packed Blessings bags and delivered those to homes.

The cats are getting bored. They have been eating an entire bowl of food everyday. I think they are annoyed that we are home all day and they are on the brink of depression.

Just look at his annoyed face.

In other animal news, Chewy was laid to rest yesterday. He died sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning. The good news is he went out with a bang. Ben had him out Thursday afternoon showing his class on their video chat, and Will and Ben had him out that night. He made it almost 2 years, which apparently is a normal hamster life expectancy.

Here are some Chewy memories via photos. 

Coming home.

Returning to health

After our vet visit and near death 

His great escape

He never stopped trying to do it again 

Ben seemed to do okay with the death. He knew it was likely coming. 

He is now asking for a guinea pig. Blech!!!!!!