My dad's twin sister is one of only two of his siblings left.
We had a great visit with all of them.
After the wedding, we still had two days to spend with family up in Utah.
We went to a park to meet up with my brother and his kids.
Played a little pickleball. It was a first for Daddy-o and I, and unfortunately, didn't end well for Daddy-o. He was trying to take it easy since his ankle is still not 100%, but must have been favoring his left leg because he ended up pulling or snapping something in his right leg. He heard a loud sound and felt instant pain. He was gobbling pretty badly for a couple days, but can still walk, even if he can't drive.
We spent New Year's Eve at Uncle Jeff's place,
playing card games, Jackbox games,
watching fireworks in the backyard, and eating way too many treats and snacks. It was so fun.
And then, we went over to Cam's house for New Year's Day--had brunch, and played more games, and exchanged Christmas presents.
We love all the time with cousins.
We love seeing these kids!
And even got to talk to Bug while we were there, so he got to see everyone, too.
Even though there is a pretty big age span between all of these cousins, they have so much fun together.
And we got to do another Christmas!
This cute girl loves opening gift bags! And she has the best facial expressions when she sees what's in the bag.
We got the kids some fun gifts, but maybe the most fun thing was leaving behind almost 100 tiny plastic ducks, hidden all over their house. Just before we left, they started finding them, and then, when they realized what we had done, the kids went crazy looking for them. I think they will be finding those things for a very long time, haha.
Friday morning, it was time to drive home. We got lucky with the weather--mostly blue skies with only a little rain in the beginning and end, but no snow, despite the storms on both sides of us. It's a long drive, but Bean and I did it (so glad she was with us! I hate doing that drive alone.)
Warning: These first couple of pictures are disturbing--no blood and gore, but still hard to look at if you don't like that sort of thing. So scroll past if you don't want to see!
This summer/fall has felt like it largely revolved around Bug leaving us, but we have had other things going on. Starting with the biggest thing--
Daddy-o took a nasty fall off a ladder at work and ended up spending a day in the ER. It ended up not being broken, just a severe dislocation which they had to put him under in order to reset.
The doctor told him he was lucky that he didn't die since a lot of ladder incidents end up much worse. He was about 8 feet off the ground when the ladder slipped down the wall it was balanced on so he had about 1 second to try to figure out how to land to inflict the least damage (and have the smallest chance of hitting his head), and he did fall pretty well, just got his left leg tangled up with the ladder.
Orthorpedic surgeon decided he didn't need surgery, just a boot and physical therapy. Swelling was so bad at his first PT appointment that they couldn't really do anything. Over a month later, it's still swollen, but not nearly as bad. His orthopedist is really happy with his progress (he's walking in normal shoes already!) and has hopes that he'll recover full range of motion, but he's got a lot of work to get there. We're just glad it wasn't his right ankle so he's been able to drive the whole time.
Peanut had an awesome swim meet where he got three PRs, which finally broke through a plateau he'd had for a while. He's got a new coach, and is swimming 3-4 times a week now and it seems to be making a difference.
Property news has been frustrating. There should be a house in this picture on the right, but this is still what it looks like (but at least there was a nice sunrise!) We are waiting on the final permits and they have been sending us back with something to change over and over. We've submitted the final change they asked for, so we *should* have our permits any day now, but I'm not holding my breath.
I couldn't get a great picture, but all three animals were snuggling together the other day and it was just so sweet. We kind of can't believe that the guinea pigs are still holding on. They're both about 5.5 years old which is about as old as they get. We've already started talking about what we're going to have to do for Poppy when that day comes--she'll miss her piggy friends.
Pool time ended with some weird days--Bug's last day of lessons was totally raining. I showed up to swim laps during his break, but there was thunder and lightning, which is really weird for us.
Science classes have been going pretty well. Chemistry is a fun topic with some good labs we get to do this year and a lot of the kids are pretty into it. (and shh. . . don't tell anyone, but I have a couple favorite classes for sure--it's just so nice when they can follow directions and really seem interested in what we're doing.)
Nature hikes have also been fun. We've got a smaller core group this year, but the families are a lot of fun.
We're revisiting some of my favorite topics since none of my current families were around when I first started. So we learned about woodpeckers and returned to the redwoods.
The banana slugs there were a hit. And I had to laugh, but also felt really legit when a random hiker stopped to listed to me when I was talking about the redwood root networks with my group.
I went to see the movie release of the new Taylor Swift album. After missing out on the Eras tour and regretting it, I decided I wasn't going to take any chances. I'm loving the new album, and it was fun to see the making of the music video.
And in other music news, Peanut and I went to the symphony at Temple Hill in Oakland for the Star Wars night.
The music was great and we got to watch a friend from church in her inaugural night as the conductor.
It was fun meeting up with homeschool friends and pretending that we're still living that life. I think that once you're a homeschooler, you're always a homeschooler.
And finally, I got out for a hike after dropping Peanut off for his Ranger Explorers day today.
It was a gorgeous morning and I did the new trail which has some incredible views. Also got to hike with deer, watch a white-tailed kite hovering and diving for food, and a red-shouldered hawk take off with a gopher in its talons! All in all, it was a really great hike and I still had time to spend the rest of the day with gimpy Daddy-o ;)
January always starts in this weird place--it's the beginning of the new year and with that comes a fresh start and renewed interest in goals and checklists and getting things done. But it's also still the holidays and with kids on school break for the whole week after New Year's Day this year, there was a heavy emphasis on lazy vacation days as well. Lots of movies watched, books read, and mornings spent sleeping in this house, which felt pretty natural with all the rain that kept us from some of our normal activities.
The boys and I did get out between storms to check out the creek and while we expected a lot of water, we were totally shocked at how changed the area is. The path the creek used to take in the area where we had park day is now a big rocky island between two branches of the creek. The high water from the weekend storms has carved new paths, worn away the bank, and totally flooded the higher grassy plateaus which are littered with debris now. It's hard to even recognize the area and will be interesting to see what it looks like when the water finally slows down, but that's not coming for awhile.
With all the water, we're getting some pretty cool mushrooms right in the neighborhood.
Bug and I found a few on our walk back from the creek (while Peanut ran home because it had started to rain again and we were walking too slowly, haha. I'm still not in running condition with the ankle so I just have to take it slow even if it starts to rain.)
One goal that we did kick off right away was to increase our daily vegetable consumption, so dinners have been looking more like this, which I'm hoping balances out all of the sugar that is still around our house. We had a lot of leftover sweets from Christmas and still more that people want to make, so that hasn't gone away yet.
I pulled out a science kit that the kids got a couple years ago for Christmas that they'd never done and got the boys a little interested in figuring out "who done it," in the forensic kit.
They ran through the fingerprinting and ink chromatography activities, and then ran out of time and left it all set up to finish later. . . for days. Which about sums up the level of laziness that we've had going on this week.
There's been a whole lot of this going on--even while eating dinner, since we couldn't use the kitchen table for a big portion of the week. I wish we hadn't run out of firewood (and the place I usually buy it is out, too) because it would have been the perfect week for sitting around the fireplace.
This week also brought a doctor visit for this one, who must want to be just like her mom because she injured her right ankle while out for a run near that same creek the boys and I had visited. It ended up not being a break, but a sprain that she couldn't walk on for a couple days. Good thing I still have the crutches and boot I'd borrowed for my ankle. They've come in handy. And good thing you heal faster when you're young. She's already walking around much better and not in much pain.
Bug's school vacation was weird this year--their last day was the 22nd, which felt really late, and then they had this whole week off, without the excitement of Christmas. He did work on a project, spent a day playing D&D with friends, and got to do a little pleasure reading, which is always a nice bonus since he usually has too much homework to read anything for fun.
And speaking of reading, I've been on a roll--as of January 8th, I've finished 8 books this year. I'd already started 3 of them before the new year, so I had a head start, but I realized I was finishing one a day and decided to keep it going all week. Too bad that's not realistic for the whole year, but I don't have 4 or 5 hours a day to read once work and homeschool and everything starts back up.
We did manage a couple chores as the week wore on--this kiddo got a haircut and was very happy with the results (and seems to be having fewer headaches since then--we've started to wonder if his motion-sicknesses is so extreme that having long hair moving around in front of his eyes leads to headaches and mild nausea. Is that even possible? I don't know, but I feel like we're seeing some correlation.)
Another testament to our attempts to eat more fruits and vegetables. This wasn't even all of the grapefruits consumed on Saturday. Bug apparently ate 2 whole giant Costco sized grapefruit alone. I told him he needed to pace himself because I didn't realize the bag was only going to last for a day. Should have bought more than one.
And we FINALLY got to take down the Christmas decorations. The kids put up a really good fight and so it didn't start until Saturday, even though I was feeling the itch to get things cleaned up by New Year's Day. They have really latched onto the memory of the year we kept things going until February, but I keep reminding them that that was the 2020/2021 holiday season and we were locked down, no one going to school, or sports practices, or really getting to do much of anything and we needed something to make us smile. And that year, it did. But this year, with a return to very busy schedules looming over us, and so much rain in the forecast that I may have to move science classes indoors this month, I was desperate to get the house put back in order as soon as possible.
Of course, as we started, we remembered that the box for our new tree is so big, we had to send it to the electrical room at the storage facility (where we send everything that doesn't quite fit--I don't think we even realize how much stuff we now have living at work, which probably isn't a good thing, but it is convenient for things like holiday decorations.) So the clean-up ended up stretching on for a couple days until we got the box back, and as I write this, the box is still sitting in our front entrance, waiting for a day when it's not pouring for the move back to the office.
And finally, Peanut has been working his way through all his Christmas gifts, so we WON'T have things sitting around unused 2 years later. He made us dinner Sunday night from his Yummy Crate from Kiwi Co. I think this might be his favorite Kiwi Crate he's tried. The STEM boxes are fun, but he likes to cook and this one mixes the science with the food.
Color-changing noodles and Asian inspired salad and chicken. It was good, and watching the noodles go from purple to pink was fun--pretty ingenious to use cabbage juice, which is a great pH indicator to cook the noodles and then an acidic sauce can make the magic happen.
And the actual final item from this week of both lazy and productive activities--the kids' Christmas short for 2023. This one was actually a 2-year project. They didn't get last year's filming finished, so it carried over, but it's also a longer, more involved movie than the previous ones. And the production quality keeps going up. I'm always impressed by the creativity that these kids come up with. So enjoy their spoof on some of our favorite Christmas movies. (And make sure to stay for the credits--they're one of the best parts!)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
