Wednesday, June 15, 2022

First half of April

Evelyn is back in action. Nathan is on his second day of being down and out. Today he doesn't seem to have a fever, and he is interested in a bit of company. Both are good signs on the road to recovery.

Matthew and I went to pick up some used shelves. We tried for a "safe pickup" and stayed outside AND wore masks...hopefully we didn't spread anything.

The next day Matthew wasn't feeling so good! He and Philip were the last two having a turn.
I spent a lot of my recovery time reorganizing things. My brain felt full of fuzz, and I'd feel full of energy (in spurts) so I cancelled school and focused on my clutter and mess. These three sections were 3 out of 6 of  my new shelves. They fit in the library perfectly. I think.
Pretty much all of our existing bookshelves still needed to be kept, as they are FULL still. The books moving onto the new shelves were all the ones laying sideways on top of the books or on the very tiptop of the shelf.
Evelyn working on another painting.
Jennifer doing some colouring.
Green grass starting to grow! And still you can see a pile of snow by the rink.
Now that the books are reorganized and relocated, they need to be reinspected.
Melanie's quilt is coming along nicely!
Since everyone recovered from covid (and all my reorganizing was done) we had no more excuses. Time to get back to schoolwork!
My students are eager to be back at work. :p
Work? Matthew, that's a computer game! And it's 10am on a Wednesday morning. Don't you think your schoolwork should get done first?
Yes, I had said I had 6 "new" shelves. This cute little corner one fit in our foyer perfectly. Like it was meant for us.
And the bigger corner shelf fit in the "piano room" even better. Because the bottom shelf has cupboard doors, and the back material was really thin material easy to open up for wires....so we have our wifi router and other rats nest of junk tucked away out of sight. And all our mementos and knickknacks are now up for display. Yay!
The playroom is turning into a greenhouse again, as is per normal in the spring.
Jennifer doing her math. She often does her work in her room, but will come down for help sometimes. Also for company. I think.
Nathan needed a photo for some other purpose. I may as well reuse it! (after all, they are getting rare)
Daniel often has to spend time in the evenings (and on Saturdays) working on math corrections. He doesn't really enjoy it, but believer or not, he will get through all his material soon. We are both looking forward to it being finished!!
Jennifer completed a skirt for herself.
The library got a lot of use...the game table was especially a hit! Nathan just uses headphones when he plays his organ at the same time as a game is going on. He says the sound is better, actually, more "organish" or something. ;)
Another rare person to have pictures of. Philip is still here. He survived covid too, and is as busy as ever.
Matthew trying to work out a computer program for his lego contraption. It is supposed to be able to climb stairs. Now that is a challenge! He didn't get it to do a full staircase, but he did get it to climb a step or two.
We'd decided to move the sewing room from upstairs to the main floor, where our school room used to be. Because we hadn't done enough reorganizing. So, clearing out and emptying the room was first.
It turns out that the old filing cabinet that was in the school room, if used with file folders is, first of all the most efficient storage place for medium sized bits of scrap fabric AND it's size and shape is ideal to put in our long line of sewing machines. This cabinet was one of the few pieced of furniture abandoned in the house when we moved in. And the other really cool piece of furniture was a sewing machine table. Just for us! Amazing!
As part of the reorg, Jennifer inherited a beanbag from Melanie, and her floor lamp. They go together, because the lamp is an unusual height. Good for bean bags. Too tall for a desktop. Too short for a regular floor lamp.
The old sewing room had become a huge disaster. And then on moving day(month?) it got even worse. It was well and truly time to sift through (and toss out! :o ) some things.
What a mess! We stacked up a heap of things for extra dramatic effect. Evelyn is hoping to have this as her very own bedroom in September. Which makes total sense as it's the biggest room and she's the smallest kid. :p  In the meantime a friend has moved in, and even though he is really tall, the room still looks really big and empty.

Monday, June 13, 2022

Evelyn turns 9!!

Evelyn wanted to spend her birthday at the zoo. But it was fussy with rules still. So we opted out. And then an indoor playground we've been to before. But it was closed. So we found a new one. Smaller. Cleaner. Less broken things around. She had fun!.

It's hard to catch pictures of the kids running through the play area. ;)

She had some friends join in the celebration. They all kept plenty busy running around. We stocked up on food and water.
It was a pretty decent sized play area. It worked well, and made the birthday girl happy.
Home again, we had some cake. Which she decorated herself.
They played some whacky games with weird challenges. This challenge was stacking four dice on top of each other (with a timer going!) with cups on your hands. It's not easy!
Matthew enjoyed all the hilarity that the game brought out.
Melanie organized a small sewing class. Chicken bean bags. The kids whipped together a chicken each.
And tossed them around.
Evelyn is, unfortunately, proud of being weird. So she usually honours the camera with a weird smile.
She enjoyed opening gifts from her siblings. Daniel completed a set of wooden dinner plates for Evelyn's dolls. (It just might have been a project too hard to complete for December that he was encouraged to finish this time.)
Evelyn. Nine years old. Goofy. Fun. Loves to play games. Especially board and card games. She's growing up!
We're thankful for having her for nine years!
And what can you say to a girl who writes a birthday list out for herself, with items like "slingshot, watch, jackknife, rope, basket for bike" among other items. It's hard not to say yes to some of the items on the list....personally, I couldn't say no to having a rope to use "out back". What a great idea!

Second half of March

The second half of March would have been worthwhile skipping. We spent a day of spring break visiting a friend. It was a great visit, but we all regret the dinner we had at the restaurant. Only Daniel, Jennifer, Evelyn and I went (and ate there) and all four of got sick, with very typical food poisoning symptoms. Daniel:

Evelyn:

Jennifer:
Me. Finally feeling good enough for Jello. It was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. I can still remember how delicious it was. Amazing.
Feeling weak...the kids sat in the sun soaking up vitamins while I did my best to read out loud to them...I couldn't handle it for too long though.
Felling better! :) Yay!
So nice to see the kids pick up their energy and interest in life (and books--especially the Bible!!) once again!
Evelyn got an art wall started on her side of the room.
I had to move my houseplants over to make room for my outdoor plants.
Yup, they are taking up a lot of space.
And since spring break was over and we were feeling ok, it was time for schoolwork again!
Hard at work!
I spent a lot of time in March reorganizing things. Wow! Look at that neat arrangement! Often things get out of hand, so it's nice to remember when it isn't that way. ;)
After that break of good health. Evelyn got sick. This time it was covid. But we didn't know right away since the test said negative.
After a pretty high fever she was up and at 'em again soon.
Keeping busy! So nice to see her recovered...again.
Spreading germs...oops...I mean playing a game together.
Daniel hung on to his bowl for dear life when his turn started. I tried convince him that it was a different kind of sickness, and he mostly just had a fever, but he wasn't convinced.
Melanie looking healthy. For now.
Next one with the fever. :( Jennifer did manage to get some reading in...it's only her third or fourth time reading this book, so I guess she doesn't need to concentrate too hard. ;)
The rink was officially finished for the year, so I let the water out at the end of the month. It was a good skating year. I only resurfaced the ice once, maybe twice. It stayed frozen most of the winter!