Will’s Quarantine Birthday

 

Will turned 8 last week. He was the last one in our family to have a quarantine birthday. His party last year was the last party, the last time we had people over to our house. 

This year we had cake and presents and ordered pizza. He got legos and some toys, a backpack, canteen and kid binoculars. He wore the backpack all week, except for when sleeping and bathing. He loves pretending he’s an explorer.

Then Sara and Kenny came over with Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate sprinkles which he said were his favorite and a bean bag chair for him. He’s been trying to sit in it during virtual school. They stayed and we visited in the front yard awhile, 6 feet apart with our masks on! It was great. 

They did this to the tree. Birthday tree. (I actually took it down few days ago. I considered announcing that the tree was down social media, in February. That would’ve been the only thing I’d posted there in years, I think. )  I think Patrick might be more enthusiastic about live trees in the future since we actually get the dead tree out of the house in a timely manner!

Quarantine day 322

Timmy started picking out classes for high school next year. (High School, I know!). I’m excited for him. He wants to take the theater tech classes(designing and building sets and stuff) the graphic arts classes, computer science for his language credits, and applying for avid for things like organizational skills and scholarship access(parents encouraged that one). 

Right now I’m supervising him doing virtual school so that he doesn’t try to go to sleep or start watching videos or something. This is getting old.

Will actually cooperated and wrote more during his writing camp class. (He wrote two sentences.) He’s very excited about giving Valentines to his classmates. We picked some out together on Amazon and he checked for the package daily and couldn’t wait to open it and get started. We’ll drop them off in the class bin in the school entryway next week and then go the following one to pick a bag of the ones for him outside in front of the school from his teacher. It will be his first time ever seeing her in person. 

He’s also looking forward to his birthday Monday and unrelatedly keeps asking me to take him on picnics, just the 2 of us. 

“Picnic time”

Here’s my reading plans for the near future. I’m really excited about this. Learning something new, feeling close to mom in a way.

 

Snow Day!

The kids often randomly and wishfully ask our Amazon Echo if it will snow today. Their dreams actually came true a couple of weeks ago! There were many snowball fights, several snowmen, snow cream was eaten, and our lack of waterproof gloves became apparent. School was even canceled.

 

Quarantine day 320

Time to catch up!

Hugh made buildings out of paper bags and pictures. He was very proud.

If one of Hugh or Will falls asleep on the couch, the other always wants to sleep there too because they always want to be together.

When Saturn and Jupiter were close to each other, we took the telescope outside to take a look.

It was clearer through the telescope than the picture. We could see Saturn’s rings.

Will loves his wrist compass and headlamp from Aunt Sara and Uncle Kenny so much, he’s been wearing them most of the time. Here he is during virtual class still wearing it.

Will learned about winter celebrations around the world during social studies. On the day they learned about Hanukkah, we talked to Aunt Sara and Will asked her some questions, mostly about food. He was really interested in trying latkes, so we spontaneously made some for lunch, and they were very delicious, especially with sour cream. He said they are his new favorite food.

 

Quarantine Christmas

Here’s some photos from our Christmas.

 

Will and I went for a walk and we liked this crazy dog house.

The kids used EVERY ornament to decorate the tree while we played a Disney Christmas carol special on tv. We just used our artificial tree from the attic this year so we didn’t have to worry about the virus on an errand to get a real one. Patrick’s mom gave us this one when they stopped using it in 2002 or so. We’ve used it 3 times now: that first year they gave it to us, two years ago when Patrick was gone all week in Cedar Park and the kids and I were still in Sabinal, and now this pandemic year.  I usually like to get a real one, for the smell and the outing. 

I started knitting a Christmas dress for Lexa in December last year. Of course I didn’t finish in time for last Christmas! I finished it last summer. (I’ve certainly done a lot of knitting during quarantine!)

We decorated the virtual school room where we spend so much time. It was very festive with a little tree.

Lexa made gingerbread cookies with help from little brothers. 

Hugh had a virtual preschool Christmas party.

Santa came!

Christmas morning

I handed out presents one at a time, and it was great. It lasted an hour that way. :)

Playing with their gifts:

Hugh asked for hats.

We quarantined for 2 weeks, Patrick took a few days off work to make it long enough,  and then we went to visit Patrick’s parents then my dad. We finally got Patrick’s parents to agree to stay home for 2 weeks. They were finally willing to do whatever we asked to see the grandkids at this point. 

Pat got a golf cart. He let the older kids drive it around with one of us in it around the field. They loved that. We had to ride in that cart with them so many times!

They were thrilled to reunite with one of our cats from Sabinal that Granny had taken pity on Timmy about when we moved and adopted. 

Opening more presents!

We always do fireworks at Christmas at Patrick’s parents house. Wanda always had fireworks at Christmas growing up and likes to continue that.

We also always have campfires there. 

Then we went to Grandad’s! It was so wonderful. We hadn’t been there since September 2019 when we went swimming on Labor Day, and we hadn’t seen him since February. It was such a nice visit. We went for a hike up the river and a bike ride along with him on his new trike. I also got to just talk to him for hours. Sara and Kenny came by a couple of  times too and visited outside. They gave the kids some really nice gifts. 

Here’s the fort building kit they gave them set up.

Time to go. Here’s Hugh on the climbing tree as Patrick packed up the truck. 

Here’s dad’s great pictures of our visit. I love how he titled it “The Christmas of no haircuts.” 😂  That’s perfect! 

https://bills-earth.pixieset.com/thechristmasofnohaircuts/