Update June 19, 2020

Hi All! Happy Juneteenth! Good, but busy, week around here. On Friday evening, I watched an episode of Psych, Season 3 with the family and then went through my mother-in-law’s pictures from 2015. My favorite is:

Saturday morning we chugged through our to-do lists, and then dug out rocks in the afternoon. Aaron played Diablo III with the kids for a little while and then read from the second Fablehaven book. I went through pictures from 2016. Only 4 more years (including 2020). Favorites:

Sunday was “family day” and we hung the bird house the kids made at their grandparents’ house.

Then we set up the slip and slide and let the kids have fun on it.

We finished by watching a bit of our family show – Psych.

Monday, as usual, was my day to clean my parents’ house and run errands for them. I came home mid-day to enforce reading time on my poor, unsuspecting stepchildren.  Then I performed yet another atrocity by taking them to the park. I try to get them to read every weekday, and go to the park when we can. Otherwise, they’ll sit on their screens all day every day.

After the park, my dad wanted to take us to Olive Garden. It was his first chance to eat out since the restaurants opened for indoor seating. Unfortunately, they only seat 6 at a table, per state regulations. We had 7. So we let the kids have their own table.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were uneventful, but busy. I got lots of things checked off my to-do list, including hours of telephone calls and housecleaning. Aaron, D-10, and I watched a couple episodes of Once Upon a Time, and Aaron, M-8, and I watched a few episodes Troll Hunters.

Wednesday, D-10 had her first Outschool class on film editing, but we were left in the dust because I downloaded the wrong software. So the teacher was nice enough to transfer us to another class starting in July. In the meantime, I will play around with the software so that I have an idea of how to use it, too.

Thursday, I got a bit miffed because I had reserved a company to take down some trees in our yard before we built our retaining wall. They agreed to come in mid-June. So mid-June rolled around, and I emailed them to ask when they were coming. They waited 3 days to respond, and said end of July. Problem is that we plan on putting up the retaining wall in August, so that is playing it really close. And if they decide to put us off again, we don’t get to put up the wall. He apologized when I told him late July wasn’t soon enough, and offered to come out on a weekend sooner rather than later. Aaron says “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…” So I emailed him and said “nevermind.” He said he’d come out next weekend. We’ll see. We have another person coming on Tuesday for an estimate, just in case our reserved company doesn’t pull through.

Friday didn’t really go as planned. Usually I would spend time at my parents’ house cleaning out their basement, but that didn’t happen. J-16 got some yardwork done, and I sat around and tried to rearrange my calendar to fit in regular park visits for the kids and exercise for me. I’m rather obsessive about my calendar and my to-do list, because I have so much going on that I get overwhelmed sometimes. Spending time rearranging my calendar helps me relax.

Sometime this week I told the kids “Maybe I’ll have the scrapbook pictures ready for next week.” I’m nowhere close. Why did I say that? So I’m spending my aloneish time with Aaron to sort through pictures. I figure if I’m ready by Friday, that’s still “next week.”

So here are my favorites from 2017:

Aaron got his college degree in 2017 and is really proud of it. So this is my first favorite.

This is my favorite of M because it’s the only one from the entire year where he is fully clothed AND looking at the camera.

And this is my favorite of D, because of my shocked reaction when I suddenly came across a picture of myself.

And here’s evidence that J used to hang out with me socially.

Favorite pictures from 2018:

And, finally, favorites from 2019 (I decided I’ll look through 2020 next year when we’re updating the kids’ scrapbooks. That, and I’m getting exhausted of looking through pictures.)