Frog of the Day

This month I'd been dong the "Swallow the Frog" routine. The idea is that each day you do the toughest thing on your list. This was mine today. Had to say good bye to my well loved car!

Sunday Bliss

I love Sundays at home. I don't know if I'll ever be able to give this up. I find having the freedom to study whatever I want to study and for however long absolutely inspiring. I love not having to rush off to church, to listen to people apologize for being unprepared as they start their lesson or talk or for having to bite my tongue. LOL

Today we had sacrament together, listened to a broadcast, read a lot, took pictures, visited with the neighbors and just enjoyed the day. What could be better?!

One picture from Peirce and Jill's photo shooting adventure

French-style dinner again today with different courses. My favorite is always the cheese course. Delish!

Lucky!!

Today we took my new car in to get a new windshield. Allen made the appointment last week. When he went in, the guy in front of him was getting stuff for a dealership. He paid for his invoice and then also remembered he wanted to buy some windshield cleaner. There was a conversation and the worker said he didn't want to print another invoice so he thought he'd just give it to him for free. There was some glee and joking around in that moment. Then it was Allen's turn to approach the counter.

I didn't go in, because, you know, social distancing. When Allen got in the car he had tears in his eyes and told me this story: The guy turned a camera on him, slid a paper in front of him and asked him to read it. It was early Saturday morning so it took a couple reads. Finally, Allen looked up and said, "Does this say the windshield is free?"

They were giving everything for free today! They said they were doing it to give back to the community in a hard time. That was quite a gift for us. A $300 gift!

What a feeling!! It made me want to go out and figure out what I could do - which is probably the point.

When we went back to pick up the car, we stopped and bought a case of beer for them. That was funny too. Allen said he went in and said he needed some beer. The guy asked him what kind of beer and he was like, "Uh......" Finally Big Rock came to mind and so the guy was able to give him a little more direction. I think he was surprised to have someone come in with such a simple request and so little knowledge about what he wanted. LOL

When we picked up our car we ran into someone we know from church. We hesitantly asked him if he got a free windshield today (what if we got ours for free and he didn't?!) Turned out he did and we had a fun conversation celebrating our luck.

There are some good people in Calgary!! If you need a windshield, definitely go to Windshield Surgeon!

Happy Birthday Peirce!

Today Peirce turned 18! In our family, we usually get up and open presents first. This year Allen had ordered some things which have not arrived yet - so he started scouring Kijiji for fun gift ideas. He got Peirce this little printer that prints small pictures. I think Peirce loves it! He printed a ton of photos.

We had a fun dinner of Pad Thai and cake from La Diperie. It was the best ice cream cake I've ever had!

Tonight, Jill surprised him with a drive in movie! She got Peirce's friend Sophie to coordinate setting up a drive in movie on our driveway. They projected the movie on to the garage door. Friends came and Jill had marked out spots for chairs on the driveway so that everyone would be social distancing. Peirce's friends even made a friendship slide slow for him. He has some great friends!

We sure love Peirce. Right from the beginning he's always been an easy going and kind-hearted boy. He sure has been a joy to raise. We love you Peirce!!

Double Blessings

I am part of a group on Facebook where you can post stuff and give it away. It's the best way to get things out of the house quickly. I posted our fridge and it turned out that someone I know in the church was desperate for a fridge. I had promised it to someone else though. In the end, they couldn't come pick it up so I was happy we could pass it on to my church friend. A blessing for her. Tonight the guy assigned to be her ministering brother came and picked it up. Our kitchen seems so roomy now!

We decided maybe we should put a picture of our old fridge inside our new fridge so we always remember how good we have it now. :)

Look at that beauty!

I'm Okay

This pandemic is interesting. Many people are really struggling with having to be home all the time. I actually don't mind. I like to be home. Maybe I'll tire of it after four months of it - but I kind of doubt it. It's not such a bad life. I just might get caught up on the housework. I have more time to read. Commute times are zero. I'm working hard - but I don't mind working hard. It's not so bad!

Busy Day!

Wow! We did a lot of big stuff today! Besides a serious boat load of work and walking 5 km. We bought a car, got it insured and registered. It's going to be my car to drive and I'm quite excited about it. Pretty fancy! It's a Dodge Stealth.

We also bought a new fridge! Buying a fridge has a domino affect. Of course, there's the cleaning behind the old fridge (man, there were pounds of dust back there!) It was too big to come through the door, so we took the door off. While the entry way was all cleared out I did a real good cleaning of the tile floor, then noticed the walls and cleaned those. Putting the door back on meant it had to be cleaned too. Eeeesh! Exhausting!

 Missing door.

 Oh there it is!

The new fridge. It's a beauty.

 Ran out of time and energy to get this emptied out and put in the new fridge so for now we're styling it up with an extra fridge in the middle of the kitchen. Yeehaaa.

Sunday Bliss

What a great Sunday. When you're home all day there is so much more time to read and study and plan and write and think. I've had a fabulous day. I've started to use some of the things I've learned this week for school for seminary.

The weather was beautiful today. Neighbors were out and we chat over the hedge and over the fence. It's lovely. We have little barky dogs on one side of our fence. They're cute....but pretty yappy. Frank had enough of it today. They were out there barking while he wandered around the yard. He sauntered over to the fence and peed on it, right in front of them. LOL

...but they're so irritating

Tonight we watched a fireside (or is it called a devotional now?) with Hank Smith, John Bytheway and Meg Johnson. It was so great. I'm in awe of their ability to speak and motivate. Loved it!

Stories and Thoughts and Ideas

One thing about me is I'm definitely a morning person. Saturday mornings are some of my favorites because most of my family sleeps in - which means I can have a little more time to read and pray and putter and whatever else I want to do. This morning I did a little reading and then got working on seminary. I was feeling worried that I was neglecting some things with seminary because with school being so demanding this week. My patriarch blessing talks about how I should record stories and thoughts and ideas and that they will bless my life, as well as others who read them. This morning I was thinking about how much I miss seeing my seminary kids and how distant I feel from them. I was thinking about how I could have more contact with them and it struck me! I could use some of the things I learned this week and apply it to seminary. This was the product. It's a mash up of direction from my patriarchal blessing and a hope that I can give a daily reminder to my seminary kids about how important I think it is to be in the scriptures every day so that revelation can be received and also so that they know I'm thinking about them and care about them. It's not perfect. I'll learn some tricks along the way. I don't think it's too bad for a start though!



Today I went and gave blood. I think about my brother a lot whenever I go do that. They did a CT scan last week and his tumors have grown. They are pushing on some of his organs and causing pan that radiates up his back. This past week they did a nerve-blocking procedure to help him with his back pain. Hopefully that will help him sleep.

Friyay!

I have a goal to blog daily - and I felt like I was humming along - but man, this has been a rough week. Years ago I worked from home. I was grateful for it because it meant I was home with our kids - sort of. It also meant I worked a LOT of hours. The work is always there when you work from home. This teaching from home is like that. As someone described, we are learning to repair the airplane while we're flying it - only, we're not pilots and we're not mechanics. Bottom line: There has been a STEEP learning curve going on. All in all though, I think it's been a good week and I'll be a little better at it next week.

Today, to celebrate living through the week, we decided to order food in (really, the only option to eating out and avoiding cooking LOL) It was a lot of fun! We got dinner from one of our favorite places: Cactus Club. Yum!! We invited Grandma to join us too. :)

Some things that are bringing us joy:

• dogs
• cheese
• good food 
• friends...especially ones who bring cookies!
• games

After dinner games

 Frank just can't.play.anymore!

Routines Coming Along While They're Continually Changing

I'm starting to get a groove with working at home. I'm still getting my walking in in the morning - although, I feel like I should be able to get in more steps than I am. My regular life involves being on my feet all the time and this life is way too sedentary. I have been trying to pay close attention to my fitbit to make sure I at least get 250 steps every hour - but that sure isn't much. I should really go take a quick walk around the block every hour - but I can't seem to tear myself away from my computer and lose moment on things I'm working on.

Peirce is getting way more hours these days. Next week they have scheduled him for 36 hours! I was really surprised at that and not quite sure how I feel about it. In some ways, working might be a good way to make him use his time more wisely. In other ways, he's 17! Should he really be working that much? I guess all we can do is see how it goes. These are strange times, for sure.

Tonight we did some test runs with all my book club ladies to see if we could do book club on Zoom. I kind of felt having to do a test run was silly. Of course it will work. However, most of them have not had any experience with Zoom type platforms so it was good to show them the ropes a bit. I would have never thought I'd get as much experience as I'm getting with Zoom, Google Meet, Office 365 video calls, etc. I have 2 or 3 a day - and I'm not even doing them with students yet!

My mantra, it seems: These are strange times, for sure.

Here We Go!

Today was our first day of real school in a our new reality. I don't even know what to call it. Home schooling? Not really. Distance learning? Well, sort of. Teaching online? Not exactly. My assistant principal described it quite well - it's like trying to build an airplane while you're already flying it - only you don't have a pilot's license and you aren't a mechanic. Today was one long and hard day full of mostly problem-solving. It was exhausting like the start of a school year - only different. I haven't experienced anything like this. One thing is sure, I'm glad I have had the experience of working from home. I learned a lot of things in those 12 years. One thing that really helps is being comfortable with learning things on my own. I have learned that computers can do pretty much whatever you can think of them to do - you just have to explore and figure out how to get them to do that.

No pictures today. It's been a long and hard and very focused day.

One new thing is that Jill started a new job. She has a long term goal of becoming an occupational therapist. A friend of hers works in a senior's home that uses a lot of occupational therapy and told Jill they had an opening there. It is in housekeeping - but it is full time and it gives Jill a chance to meet occupational therapists. She said when she went there she had a really good feeling, like she was where she is supposed to be. I hope she is right. There are a lot of stories in the news of senior's homes not being safe places so I made sure she asked what they're doing to keep everyone safe. It does sound like they're doing what they need to do.

Happy Easter!

Our day started out with Easter Bunny treats. Allen is so funny. Since his stroke, he is NOT a morning person, except for days like this! He went out and bought surprises for everyone, which meant he couldn't sleep. Luckily, most people in our house are early risers so he didn't have to wait too long. There were new shirts, a jean jacket, beautiful scarves, and of course, candy.

Frank wanted some treats too - so we got out the special dog treats. LOL

We had a pretty quiet day with plenty of time to read and visit with friends. Jill did a call with all her soeur friends - which sounded like it was a lot of fun. I made pita bread today! I haven't made it for years and was pleasantly surprised to remember how easy it is. I'm always so amazed to see how it puffs up and makes a perfect pocket. It's like magic! (You can tell how super proud of it I am. I took more pictures of my pita bread than anything today! LOL) For those of you interested in doing the same thing, here is the recipe.

Peirce worked today from 8-4:30 and so when he got home we had our Easter Dinner. We had green salad, ham, potatoes, carrots, zucchini, waldorf salad and peacan pudding pie for dessert. Allen is a big pie fan. Me, not so much. I need to work on my pie skills though because he sure appreciates a pie now and then. We had our dinner French style again, with the salad course first. I am starting to really love having dinner that way. Everyone seems to eat slower and enjoy the food more and visit more.

We were super pleased to hear that the NAckroyds really loved the bunnies. Somehow they figured out that it was us. Actually, they had a hunch and just straight out asked if it was us. :) Apparently, last night when Allen and Jill dropped them off the girls were already in bed. It was a great surprise for them this morning! I love that the bunnies got carrots on their plates :) Also, one has a shirt on and another has a hat on. Fun!

Out and About

Peirce got a job at Safeway this year and it even though sometimes I worry about him being out and interacting with people, it sure is a nice reprieve to be able to be out and interacting with people. They have hired a number of new people who are around his age so that has been really fun for him.

Time for a rabbit hunt! We have a thing going on with the NAckroyds where these dinosaur skeletons show up in random places.....like tied to my car! LOL They dropped these off tonight at their house and are excited to see what they think. Typically, we'd have Easter dinner with them so we are sorry to miss that this year. We hope they love the rabbits!

Masked, Halleujiah!

We have masks! My friend, Laura, made them for us. Actually, she made them for a ton of people. What a great service! I'm happy to have them. Seems like the right thing to do to wear them while we're out.

We are gearing up for Easter! Frank loves hanging with the new family members:

Jill and I had a wonderful time tonight watching a rebroadcast of the Tabernacle Choir performing Handel's Messiah. I loved it so much, even though it went way past my bedtime. Lately, I seem to need more sleep than usual. Stress sleep? Not sure. I just know by 10 pm, I'm so tired!

French Dinner

Jill really loved the French way of meals. They take longer to eat. They serve dinner in courses and have more conversation. We thought we'd give it a try.

Our first course was Ceaser Salad. Jill made home made dressing. It was delicious! Start off with a plate full of salad seems like a good way to start a meal. I had two servings!

The main course was chicken breasts and broccoli. We cooked the chicken super slow and it was juicy and delicious. I've been tracking my food lately. I should eat more broccoli. Much more bang for the buck!

We then had a cheese course. When Jill first brought up this idea she mentioned a cheese course. That sold me right away. She got some special French cheese from Springbank Cheese. It was deliscious!

We finished up with an old family favorite that we call Moose Poo. Not very fancy and not very French. Oh well.