Easter 2021...

Along came another holiday and we again couldn't see family because some of the family were under the weather. I believe Jerimy was the first to show signs of the weather changing with some sinus congestion. Then Thursday before Easter, Lucius woke up to vomit. He didn't go to school but chilled on the couch all day. Since he was sick and Jerimy was also not feeling well I stayed home from work to watch Lucius. 

I made a sign for our front door because O asked me to text everyone that we'd be keeping our distance. And I didn't feel like texting everyone, I figured the neighborhood kids could read my sign. 

Lucius was feeling better the very next day but O came down with the same yuck on Saturday. So we officially told everyone we couldn't visit on Sunday to keep our germs to ourselves. Jerimy and O took Covid tests on Saturday afternoon (thankfully O was already feeling better) just to rule that out. We got results back on Monday evening that both were negative for Covid. So Lucius and I only missed two days instead of a couple weeks if we would have to quarantine. 

Thankfully I was able to get to Target Saturday as well to grab Easter Basket fillers (which I had forgotten about till the day before Easter!) Thankfully Target still had a few non-traditional Easter things to put in their baskets, like Northern Soda, a hoodie, a can of Pringles and a lego mini figure. The Easter Bunny also hid plastic eggs around the living room, but the kids would like the easter bunny to "hide them harder next year". I didn't get any videos or photos of the egg hunting because this bunny was tired and slept in. 

Where'd March go...

 And just like that it's already 6 days into April. 

We were able to go one more time swimming at the community center in Shoreview during Lucius' and I's spring break. I remembered to bring my waterproof phone case to take underwater photos with. I think they turned out pretty fun! 

I bought two donut pans and made several batches of a variety of donuts while home from spring break. That was super yummy! 

Mormor and Morfar came over the Friday of spring break to eat lunch and sit around a fire. They stayed till almost dinner time. It's been a whole year since we've spent that much time with them. It was so nice to hang out and see them again. 

I've been spending most of my weekends cleaning and organizing the barn in our backyard. Yup- this two story barn/ shed. My dad left a lot of his wood scraps and some misc odds & ends in the barn when he moved out. So I cleaned out the cabinets, and started taking them down. Then I move that old kitchen island and found some wood that was hidden behind it- crazy! When I moved the island I found a mouse net, but haven't seen the mice yet.

After three weekends of cleaning and disassembling things, I had a more open and organized space. I was able to get the snow blower out of the garage and under the stairs in the barn, moved bikes out of the shed and into the garage, and finally put all my tools into the barn in one spot!! When O walked in after I took this photo, they said "WOW! It looks so much bigger!". That was music to my ears.

 

Then since I had SOO much scrap wood myself and now with the nicer pieces my dad left behind, I decided to build a wood scrap organizer. I manage to build this with only things I found in the barn. I didn't spend a dime. Little did I know that I would fill it completely full and still end up with two milk crates of smaller wood pieces that didn't fit. Oh well, I hope to build more stuff soon to shrink the pile!

 

Before:

After:

Towards the end of March the kids decided to have an outdoor nerf gun fight. SO we set up their obstacles. Unfortunately, the battle didn't last very long. It was over before I even finished inflating the blue and red things. 

I bought a bike trainer from market place and told the kids they were going to drive with me. As soon as we pulled out of the driveway O was already asleep and slept through the whole hour and 20 minute drive there and back. I guess they weren't feeling 100% but were fine by the next day. 

Using up the wood scraps of dad's that weren't worth saving we've been having more backyard fires. And what's a fire without a little dessert to go with it! O loves roasting marshmallows. 

This is Aiko, our white cat and he just LOVES Lucius during the day and sleeps as much as he can with O during the evenings. He's such a good cat!

And this is Mr. Ted, my aunt Melanie's dog. He came over to visit a few times now and O just loves animals so much, they had to go on a walk together. 

A Year with Covid...

We're officially made it to the end of our spring break. Last year on this Sunday of spring break we were waiting to see what schools were closing. We followed the stay at home order pretty well and did a whole lot of not much this past year. Now that the weather is warming up again we're spending more time outside and trying to walk off a few of these lazy pounds we've accumulated. 

We took a walk on a new to us boardwalk one Saturday afternoon. The kids wanted to walk on a frozen lake, which freaks me out, but we did walk on it a tiny ways just to get a photo of them standing on the lake. Then we went to the grocery store and bought ice cream, cause well it sounded yummy.

Lucius continues to play chess and spends a great deal of time sitting just like this to play online chess or watch other chess masters play their games. He's quite addicted and we have to hide the tablet from time to time to get him away from the screens.

Jerimy found us a new game to play and ordered it online. We played it one evening once it was dark because you have to turn off the lights to play it. It was really fun! You have to move this lantern around the board whiel the other players try to hid guys behind the trees. They can only hid in shadows and if the light of the lantern finds them, they become frozen.

Our first real covid risk outing was to go swimming at the Shoreview community pool. We had to make a reservation, so I knew there could only be a limited amount of people there. I was still worried, but for the hour we were there, we had most of the pool to ourselves. The kids even got to try log rolling. O was pretty good at it right away, probably thanks to their practice and balance on their stand up paddle board.

The kids have been enjoying their new scooters they got from Oma for Christmas.

The beginning of spring break we went on a nature hike with Auntie Mick and her crew to Reservoir  Woods. That was quite fun. O had school and stayed home to do zooms.

I have more photos from spring break but we're glad that we've managed to stay safe for a whole year and do our part to lessen the spread of Covid 19. It'll be wonderful to be out adventuring again this summer, but for now we enjoy the outings we can do.

House Project: Entryway

There was a lot of work we put into the house when we purchased it from my parents in June 2019. Some projects took a lot longer than others. The entry was one of the last projects we completed and it wasn't quite done till Fall 2020, but I knew I couldn't go another winter without an organized front entry closet. 

I had painted the entryway back in December 2019. I painted the brown interior side of the front door to be white and the door to the garage a dark grey. Then the walls I used the yellow from Lucius's bedroom accent wall and the same light grey that is in the living room. I took down my parents mirror, mailbox thing and put in an ikea shoe storage rack. It felt brighter already! 

I started doing the stairs in July 2020. I sanded them and refinished them in a dark Grey stain.

With the stairs done, we decided not to replace the old railing at the top of the stairs because it just seemed to be a collection area. We talked about making a half wall. After a pinterest search for some ideas, I settled on what I thought would work nicely and set about trying my best to create it. 

The white cubbies are also Ikea and I like that we have additional storage. One advantage we discovered was that the heat & AC from the vent right there no longer went straight down the stairs, instead it circulated in the livingroom. BONUS!

I still needed to finish the top of the half wall but I had to figure that out first and it took me a while.

Then, once the stairs were sanded and stained and the half wall mostly built, we set to work redoing the floor. The slippery white tiles we knew we wanted to get rid of and we looked for something to replace them with that would have a little more texture. No one wants to enter someone's house and fall down on the first step in the doorway. Jerimy started by chipping away the tile. It was really stuck on there good and wasn't breaking easily, so he rented a chopped thingy to speed things up. Then we had to get the black tar stuff off the flooring. That took a while but the process speed up once we realized we could heat the tar up first with my dad's heat gun. 

 

Then Jerimy started to lay the new tile down. I think he finished it late summer/ early fall 2020. 

While he worked on the floor I took the front door off to paint the exterior side of it. It was still brown and I wanted something a little more fun. 

As long as I was painting things, we added a pop of color to the old black railings! 

November rolled around and it had already snowed once. It was time to focus on the closet. I went back and forth on how I wanted it laid out several times, but once the new floors were in I knew I wanted it to be a walkin closet. So I drew up a plan, bought some wood and started building. I had already removed the one shelf and one hanging bar that were all that was in the closet, as well as the bi-fold doors that used to be there. Lots of painting and cutting later... and we had an organized closet where all out outdoor/ winter gear, shoes and boots could live.

At times it was too cold in the garage so painting moved to our dining room.

Lastly a little decoration on the wall: 

I am so happy with the end result. We have plenty of space for everything we own. I only wish we could have company over to show it off.