New Life- Week 15 (It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood)

What can I say about this week?  It was beautiful!  Warm on some days, but always beautiful.  We spent the better part of most days outside.  We rode bikes and scooters, we had "water bomb" fights, we played in the sprinklers, and we played Legos on our neighbor's porch.  The big highlight of the week was when the neighbors had a John Deere Gator here that they are shipping to their grandparents' farm in Hawaii.  The kids got to take turns driving it.  They were in heaven!  Each day we were outside by 9:30 or 10 and, other than a break for lunch, played outside until 4:30 ish.  It was a beautiful week of fun in the sun.

Other than our great outdoor adventures, the big event this week was Merrick getting his braces off.  Merrick has been waiting for this day for a long year.  He looks as handsome as can be.  I am sure he hopes he has a nice long time before round two of braces starts. 

New Life- Week 14 (Pacific City)

Jeremy had Friday off work this week (for Juneteenth) and we decided we all could use a little getaway so we thought a trip to the beach would do us all some good.  We typically go to the beach at least once every summer and typically we hit up Cannon or Seaside.  The truth of the matter is there is a lot of the Oregon Coast that we have yet to explore.  Friday we decided to try out Pacific City.  Merrick had gone there a year ago for a friend's birthday, but none of the rest of us had ever been.  I really enjoyed it.  It seemed more "beachy" than Cannon or Seaside, where the main attraction is the beach rather than shops, restaurants, and arcades.

The beach itself was not very crowded where we were.  Where the trail spits you out onto the beach there were several groups but if you walked 100 yards in either direction, there was no one.  The water was of course cold, because it's Oregon, but we couldn't keep Merrick out.  Elsie on the other hand was a sand girl all the way.  Carrigan fell somewhere in the middle.

 

At one point Jeremy decided to walk the older two kids to a big 100ish foot sand dune about a mile away.  It was a trek and quite a workout climbing to the top, but everyone really enjoyed running down.

We got home at bedtime and everyone was exhausted.  It was (almost) the perfect day.  Unfortunately, some of us came home with a little souvenir.  Jeremy definitely got the worst of it.

 

New Life- Week 13 (False Alarm)

Ok so last week I said we were going to potty train Elsie this week, well we didn't.  We gave it a valiant effort on Monday and she was starting to make some progress.  By Monday evening we were all out of underwear and both ready for a break so we decided to put on a diaper and try again on Tuesday.  Tuesday she woke up and refused to put on underwear or use the potty.  I was in no way willing to engage in a battle of wills so we are not potty training right now.  Its super annoying though because while she won't go to the potty, she no longer tolerates a wet diaper, and wants to immediately be changed when her diaper gets wet.

Since we weren't potty training, we were able to spend more time outside playing in our neighborhood this week.   Our neighbors got a new golden retriever puppy and the kids are obsessed.  They play with her everyday.  They also had fun this week playing Legos on the patio of an elderly single women in our neighborhood.  We haven't real gone anywhere, expect a very quick run into Walmart to grab two things (see Elsie strapped in and masked up).  We are making the best of our time at home playing magna tile, playing outside, playing legos, doing puzzles, just trying to keep busy.

New Life- Week 12 (Last Day of School)

Every week I write the blog and wonder how much longer I will continue to write under the "New Life" title.  It occurs to me that it's not going to be a switch flip kind of thing and everything will be back to normal so I guess I continue to write under the title until life it more like old life than not, I am not sure that is happening for our family anytime soon.

Anyway, this week brought about the last day of the school year.  To say it was a strange year is definitely an understatement.  Carrigan's year was destined to be rocky one from the get go.  She started the year with a teacher who was pregnant with her first baby and more than a little checked out.  Her teacher ended up having the baby much earlier than planned and this led to two different long term subs to finish out the year.  Her second long term sub was in the class for 5 days before all of our worlds were turned upside down.  We finished the year the best we could with distance learning.  I am relieved to be done, although I would feel a lot me relieved if I actually believed they would be going back to school as usual in the fall.

In any case, we made it through the school year and the amount of growth both kids have shown is undeniable.  I am proud of what they have accomplished this year and I know it's just the beginning of a bright future.

We ended the year with a drive through parade celebration at the school and then a picnic lunch at the park with the cousins.  Yesterday we also drove 40 mins to the closest In and Out Burger to our house and waited 1 hour and 40 mins to get our food in honor of wrapping up the year.  I guess a strange year deserves to be celebrated in a big, strange way.

Not to be out done, Elsie did some major growing this week too and started riding a scooter on her own.  That girl learns something new everyday.  This coming week we are starting potty training so more to come on that...