Lego Decor

Since we updated/ Painted the front door this Summer/Fall, we've been having fun decorating the side window with mini Lego builds for each month. 

September 2020: 

 

This little window beside our front door used to be brown. It’s now white!!! And as an added surprise, I made little shelves from extra metal I had. Magnets hold the shelves up and they are just big enough for small lego vignettes. These are “Back to school” lego builds. Top one is me with a camera taking first day photos in front of our brown garage door, the bottom is us walking to school (ps-we didn’t do either of those things today).

*if you look super closely, the kids used lego life jackets as backpacks. Sounds about right for 2020!

October 2020:

 The kids made houses and then added trick or treaters to their lego mini builds but apparently I did not get a photo of it. bummer.

November 2020:

 I don't remember if they built anything for November or not...

December 2020: 

 

January 2021:

 

 

Lucius turns 11 years old!

Something about snow storms and this kid... 11 years ago it did this same thing on his Birth Day.

No one told me that when my baby aged from a decade to 11 he would look like a old octogenarian historian. So thankful everyday for this incredibly kind, huge hearted, and super snugly kid. Happy Birthday L! We love you more than you could possibly imagine.

 

To celebrate L's birthday in true Covid-19 glory, we went to Donut Hut to get donuts in the morning before school. For dinner we ordered dominoes pizza by request from Lucius.  Then after dinner we played a family screen time of lots of Mario Kart races on the big screen. For dessert we all tasted a wide selection of ice cream that Daddy brought home from the store special for all the birthdays. 

January 2021

Why the long blogging absence... well it was a rough couple years. 

Back in early 2019 we had the chance to get O into a new school. A school we hoped would be a good fit for them through 12th grade, without having to switch multiple times from Middle school to high school. It was also a smaller school who boasted of being LGBTQ+ friendly. Knowing how kids were starting to pick on O for being their true self, we thought it a good idea. September 2019 we had a few meetings with soon to be new school and their new teacher. The new school is a Montessori charter school which is different from the public schools we've had O at. Their old school was AMAZING and we had a brilliant team of people who had worked with O for years. We were sad to leave them but it was now or never to get into this new school. So O began their 6th grade year at Great River School.  It was a VERY rough transition for O in many, many ways I'd love to forget about. O started showing huge behaviors that were familiar with before we were getting OT for SPD. The new school was completely unprepared and unwilling to listen to our information on how best to work with O. It was infuriating, sad, exhausting, and traumatic. 

Needless to say we started OT back up in October, had multiple doctor appointments, and starting O on medication. By January 2020 we had finalized an IEP (Individualize Education Plan) through the new school for O as well. The whole year O struggled with behaviors but also we later found out O had been bullied by their new classmates. It was a real struggle for all of us. Many tears were shed. By March 2020 when Covid 19 shut down school buildings, we were actually quite glad of the respite. 

Lucius continues with sports when he can and he is the biggest sweetheart on the planet. It's been hard having to focus energy on O while also making sure he was alright through it all too. Having exhausted parents because a sibling was out of control can not be easy on any kid! We hate that he sometimes doesn't get our attention because he actually does his job and follows rules. 

Summer was spent healing from the past school year and enjoying being home full time. We didn't really do much of anything away from the house. We went on a few outing to local spots that wouldn't be populated by many others so we could stay physically distant to slow the spread of the virus. When school started up again in the fall we were beyond grateful that it started and has been distance learning from home for both kids so far. Which isn't without it's own stresses (especially on Jerimy who tries to work from home since March 2020 while also helping keep the kids on track). 

January 2021 is the start of this new year that everyone is so excited for. It feels much like last year in many ways, but we are hoping we might eventually be able to travel and take trips again in the future. We're thankful that we have not had Covid and have been able to keep to ourselves to help do our part to stop the spread. It's been lonely at times. We've continued to do a lot of work on the hose and yet we haven't been able to invite others over to share it with people. But we know someday we'll be able to visit again and that cheers us a bit.

O’s last day of school...

The school year that never should have been is FINALLY over!! Last August we were meeting O’s new teacher for the first time and the teacher told me during that meeting that they never wanted to be a teacher. A week or two later, First day of 6th grade, same new teacher called O a nickname... O does not like nicknames and was not thrilled. Months of back and forth about ongoing bullying that started verbal and became physical with multiple kids ganging up on my kid. Many visits to Doctors, therapists, OT and a psychologist. Medication, a formal IEP and maybe a few weeks we briefly started to see our kiddo reemerging from despair just in time to self isolate for a global pandemic. Distance learning and social isolation took its toll but mostly things were good- we were away from the bullying for the most part. Then racial injustices were brought to a head. O struggled, wanting so badly to make a speech that would help end the racism and hatred that plagues our country. While we watched and read about the turmoil, we thought about how we can help. We also learned last week that the artwork O created at their school this whole year was lost/thrown away/ or discarded. It was yet another piece of heartbreaking news, as O worked so hard on it all. Listening to the other kids on the last day of school zoom meeting rave about their school year, I watched my kiddos face become down right depressed. O had a miserable year and did not get along with the teacher and many of the students. We will look forward with hope but are also leaving space to remember the pain and frustration we have continued to process this whole school year.

Week ???

Today is Friday May 29th... Monday an African American was killed when a white officer knelled on his neck for 5 minutes. This shouldn’t have happened. My city has been protesting this man’s death at the hands of police and the fact that policeman is still free to do as he pleases. This white man was fired but the city did not arrest him till Friday morning. I see rioting and looting happening all over the twin cities and surrounding towns on the news. Most of the images are of white people doing crazy things because they can get away with it while the police are trying to maintain some order. The national guard was called in to help. Tonight the twin cities and my town of Roseville, MN have put into affect an evening curfew of 8pm that will go through the weekend. Our President tweets out that more violence should used to control the situation, instead of calling for peace or justice for this man named George Floyd. Our world is hurting and it makes me heart broken to witness the hurt my community is suffering. To know that my skin color has never made my life harder.

All this on top of a world wide global pandemic that has taken the lives of over 100,000 people as of this week. In MN we are at 967 deaths, reaching 1,000 deaths probably this weekend. Stay at home orders were going to enter phase one of the reopening for businesses on June 1st. They say that we probably haven’t even peaked in new case numbers, they estimate the peak around July.

Meanwhile this week we stayed home. I did not have to work and we didn’t really make the kids do too much with their distance learning this week. O’s teacher seems like he’s pretty much given up. Lucius’ teacher had told us that she would be lightening the school work this week.

With the cities in such turmoil this week I focused on yard projects. It’s been a large under taking but I’m making progress finally. Last Saturday Jerimy and I went to Menards to get some things for the yard projects. It was the first time I had been inside a store since March 13th.

**I'm posting photos from the process, long after I actually wrote this blog post. I spent much of the summer of 2020 picking rocks out of our front yard to transform it into our yard, instead of the yard my parents used to have. It was a lot of work but we didn't have too many chances to get away from our house this year because of Covid, so we made the most of being outdoors in our own front yard.

 

Life without school (week 8)...

Goodness... Who even knows what day this is or what week anymore. We've made it eight weeks without school.

Lucius teacher stopped by our house one morning this week to drop off a book for us. Since we kind of figured we were not going to be back in school the rest of the year, we took Lucius' "last day of school" photo with his teacher. It's totally a year to remember... face masks and physically distant teacher photo.

While talking with his teacher Lucius happened to see this cute family of geese in our yard. We watched them for a while, making sure they did not try to go in our backyard where we were sure the dog would have tried to eat a baby goose had she been outside.

On Tuesday, after I was finished with work the kiddos and I rode our bikes over to the library to pick up our new books we had on hold. We pick them up curb side, which means we don't get to go into the library. New books means we have to sit and read the RIGHT AWAY. So we took a short break to read in front of the library. Then we rode the 3 miles back home. It was a good 6 mile round trip and thankfully everyone loved the outing.

 

Once home the kiddos curbed up on the couch and read most of the afternoon!

Lucius has been enjoying some outdoor time with Daddy. They play tennis together on the driveway. They can't wait for the tennis courts to be open again for public use!

The kiddos have been LOVING biking this spring and a friend told us about a short dirt path in the woods near our house. I told the kids about it and they TOTALLY wanted to see it. They of course told the neighbors about it and invited them along. It's been really nice to have neighbors who we can talk too through the stay at home order. I ended up taking all four kids with on the exploration of the dirt path. It really wasn't very long but the kids had a blast riding on the dirt through the woods.

This week we also realize that Lucius needed a new bike. The old one was getting small, his knees were bent all the time and the seat couldn't go any higher. Its a 20' inch bike so I started looking for 24" bikes. I found a few but they all sold before I could even contact the seller. Uncle Hung is really good at finding things, so he offered to take over the search! He found Lucius a new bike. When he brought it over, it was practically the same size as the old bike, till I realized the new one we could raise the seat and it had gears. Hooray!!

On Friday's we've been joining the neighbors down the block for the MPR neighborhood sing at 5:55pm. This week is was "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong. I had both boys happy to join me in singing with our friends. 

I also made progress this week on my cross stitch... slow and steady it's getting closer. 

Life without School (week 7)...

This was my "on call" week at work, which meant I checked my email twice a day but ended up not having anything to go in for or to work on. So I enjoyed making sure the kiddos stayed on task and got a bit more done on my rock project, cross stitch and weeding the gardens.

It was getting warmer still and the kiddos decided it was time for water wars. I still thought it was a little windy/ chilly for ice cold water fights, but they had a few days of these battles. They enjoyed it immensely. 

Mormor was asking about the magnolia tree for a few weeks and finally it started to bloom. So I asked O to take a photo to send to Mormor so she could enjoy and this was the selfie she got.

My cross stitch in progress is coming along. I few mistakes and knots that I had to hide in the back but nothing is ever perfect and I'm okay with that.

On Tuesday on week 7 we had a virtual game night with a few of my co-workers and their families. It was a fun way to pass an evening. We played a game called Listology. It was a lot of fun for all the ages we had playing along.
 

A few of the garden beds that I was able to weed this week. I ended up burning all the dried weeds that were in this one planter, which was fun. I still have several garden boxes left to weed since I completely ignored them last year. 

The neighbors have been getting together on Friday evening to join in a neighborhood sing- a- long. This week is was the Beatles "here comes the sun". It was my first night joining. The kiddos stayed home to play video games. Maybe they'll join us next week?

Saturday was another round of "bring your own Umbrella party". They all ate lunch outside together with lunch trays I happen to still have from their younger years.

I decided it was a great time to just chop all my hair off. The kiddos thought I was going to go bald, but I was not quite ready to go that short. So here I am and loving that it's super easy to get ready every morning!