We celebrated Labor Day by grilling burgers and had a long video chat with my brother’s family. They are in California and the air quality made it unwise to go outside, so we “hung out” for most of the afternoon. The kids are getting better at interactive video chatting, I think.
The rest of the week was quite rainy. One day we got five inches of rain in an afternoon, and the kids spent “recess” outside in the rain. I wish we could send some of our rain to California and Oregon.
We are into week two of distance learning. The eight year old seems to be very much into music, art, and PE. Friday, the carbon monoxide detector went off in our house, and I hustled the kids outside. This was in the middle of class, but luckily, you can get wireless signal on our back patio. Turns out it was just a battery issue with the alarm, but it wasn’t terrible to have class outside. The mosquitoes made it not a practical long term set up, but I can absolutely see us doing this again. A mom in my mom’s group gave me a tip to spray down an old shirt with repellent and just have that near by rather than spraying down the kid. That, and running a box fan seemed to minimize the mosquito bites, but they are still a lot of them. I think more than the weather, it’s the mosquitoes that keep me inside some days. I am intrigued by the idea of a bat box to help alleviate the mosquito problem in our back yard.
We’ve signed the 8 year old up for dance and basketball classes. Being home by herself has hit her harder than I had thought, so I took a look and decided that there were a few activities that I felt okay with enrolling her in.
On that note, I’ve been sewing masks so that she has enough for her activities. I’ve been trying out a couple different patterns to see which ones fit best.
This week I finished repairing and re-installing the screens for the sunroom of my parents’ house as they have renters coming in soon. Replacing screens is one of those things I would have never thought to do myself, but the Husband looked it up on YouTube and said to me, “You could totally do this!” And it did turn out to be pretty easy. Basically the screen is held in to the window frame by a piece of rubber tubing (called spline) wedged into a groove. So all one does is remove the spline and pull the old screen out, then lay down new screen and use a special tool to put new spline in. Definitely worth doing myself.
In and around these activities, I’ve been doing some art with the three year old, taking walks when we can. The baby hasn’t been sleeping super well lately. A couple nights she was attached to me pretty much all night. Maybe it’s molars?
Some delightful food things:
There is a great garden haul of basil (see above). I blitzed up a heap of pesto – made with sunflower seeds since we don’t have pine nuts. Also some of the basil is going into America Test Kitchen’s Thai Chicken Basil this week.
My pandemic snack addiction is Welch’s fruit snacks. Each pack is a unknown combination of flavors and the anticipation of ripping open a pack to see what it contains is one of the small joys in my life. Then the careful contemplation of what order to eat them in – I like to eat from least favorite to most favorite – raspberry, strawberry, orange, peach, grape. Then there is a calculus I do in my head if there are more grape then orange or peach, maybe I will eat the grape until the numbers even out first…. It is a process. This week, I got a perfect pack:
Random picture of the kids’ lunch one day. So I’ll remember what they ate. The 8 year old made her own sandwich, while the 3 year old and the baby got mostly snack food and leftovers. The cucumbers are cream cheese with furikake, a Japanese rice seasoning which the 3 year old loves – I do too. I like the nori, sesame, bonito combinations the best.
What We Ate:
Saturday: Steak Salad – Husband cooked and this was tasty.
Sunday: BBQ Bean Tacos with Pineapple Salsa. Made some coleslaw on the side (Cabbage, lime juice, a touch of mayo). Coleslaw seems to be the unexpected hit of the summer.
Monday: Grilled Burgers and Eggplant
Tuesday: Drunken Noodles (from Dinner Illustrated)
Wednesday: Pasta with Zucchini, Tomatos and Broccoli. Basically an eat down the veggie drawer meal.
Thursday: Sausage Kale Soup. This was Irish Dance night for the eight year old, so I needed something I could make ahead of time.
Friday: Pizza and Movie. It was the three year old’s turn to pick. He chose Fireman Sam and then Nature Movies. It was a little stomach turning to watch animals being eaten alive onscreen while having dinner, but I guess we remind ourselves that it’s how life works.