2020 Blue Jeans Week 25

We have had a good week.  Adjusting to the situations at hand.  Trying to figure things out and make the best of things.  Reopening is kind of anxiety inducing to me.  Trying to educate our family more to be better neighbors to everyone and learning more about amazing black women and men in history.  We personally do not live in an area with a lot of diversity.  We are having some great family conversations about what we can change and do differently to do our part to make the world a better place for everyone.  I am grateful for time with my family.  I am grateful we live in a place where we have the amazing freedoms we do, and where we can work to make things better for everyone!  Take a look at our week...

Have been reading this aloud and finished it this week.  I love the whole series, but I think this is my favorite in the series.  Finished the book, and then watched the movie.  The book is always so much better, but they are good movies too!  Will see how many we can get through this summer before Miss E leaves!

Mr J and his friend recording a piano duet for a local church's services that will be online.  They did a great job, and playing with a mask on is not an easy thing!

Played a game with this cool kid today.  I won :)

Have loved seeing book lists to help us learn more about others and to help us better understand each other and help everyone.  These are "kids" books, but we have learned a lot from them.  Each person gets one page and an illustration page, and we read a few each day and learn about amazing black people in history.  Illustrations are so cute, and she also has one about women leaders from all over the world in history.  I requested that one too, and am excited to read it.

Our service project this week was helping a friend get her house scraped and painted. Mr J and Ben working hard on this side.

Miss E working hard on a different side of the house.  It is nice to be together and work together to help someone.

Saturday road trip.  Last Saturday we got out of town, and decided to do it again this Saturday.  We loaded up the bikes on the bike rack and went up to a big park in the city that has miles and miles of mountain bike and paved bike trails.  First time we had driven that far and been to the city since first week of March!   

After we had been biking for a few hours....so, yes I look a little rough :)  Real life here!  It was a nice day and nice to be someplace different!  The world is a beautiful place!  We took a picnic lunch and had a really nice day out!

Thanks for visiting!  Hope wherever you are that you are safe and healthy!  Stay that way and have a great week!

2020 Blue Jeans Week 24

Hope you are all healthy and safe!  So much going on in the world right now.  Prayers for understanding and equality for all in addition to safely for healthcare workers.  Who would have ever thought 2020 would turn out like it is?  So let's hope we can learn from it and grow together to be better!  We got outside this week, and we actually left our county, which we haven't done since early March!  Road trip to do some mountain biking.  We were the only ones on the trails, so easy to social distance, and so nice to be outside and do something different!  It was a good week!  Take a look...

We went and did some weed eating for a church member who was not able to get out.  Always nice to go do some service!

Got out of Dodge and went mountain biking on some trails about an hour from our house.  We had never been there before, and it was pretty fun!  Nice to go someplace different!

On the evenings when it is too hot and humid to go out, puzzles are a favorite quarantine activity that Miss E loves!

And the new normal when you go to the store.  Love our colorful masks!

These kids were awesome and washed our cars this week.  It was also a nice break from the heat for them!

My dinner helpers...once the kids started working I took over the dinner cooking again, but man, I sure enjoyed those two months of the kids cooking dinner each night.  But I always have good helpers for dinner.  These were my potato peelers tonight as we made Emily Blunt's English roasted potatoes.  Oh my.  Yum!

During quarantine, we did over two and a half months of playing a game every day, and then we took a break, but we still try to play games often, just not every day.  We played the classic PayDay this week.

Thanks for visiting!  Hope you have a great week!  Stay safe and healthy and treat everyone with respect and love!

2020 Blue Jeans Week 23

My older girls headed back to their college town beginning of this week.  It was so nice to have them here.  They are both just working this summer and hoping "normal" school starts in the fall.  No news yet on that.  We should know by July.  We had a great time with them here!  We even were able to squeeze in some family pictures getting taken.  Nice!  Take a look at our week...

This is in the back of our family room, and all the games and puzzles we have been playing are piling up!  This all represents lots of fun times at our house!

The new "Normal"....Miss E was asked to play a special piano number for a local church service which was recorded and then televised.  No one was there in person.  Playing the piano while wearing a mask is a new thing and the "new normal" now for church.  She did a great job. 

We squeezed in some family pictures while the girls were home....just a fun one of the many.  Family pictures are always everyone's favorite thing....not.

Learning life skills.  Ben and Miss E work on getting the oil changed in her car.

Making a mess in the kitchen.  I had a day this week when I was the only one home, so I really enjoyed messing up the kitchen. Made a batch of everyone's favorite waffles and then two big batches of different kinds of muffins.  Stocking the freezer with quick breakfasts now that everyone is back to work and needs quick breakfasts to grab.

Even though things are slowly opening up, there isn't much to do around here in the evenings, and especially when it is really hot outside, and we had some hot and humid days this week where outside was NOT the place you wanted to be, but Miss E is working on her knitting.  Quarantine activity!

Mr J has enjoyed breaking out his old Lego sets during this quieter time.  Ben reads to us from Harry Potter #3 while Mr J enjoys his Legos.

Hope you are all safe and healthy and well!  Such a crazy time in our country!  So much sadness and so much change needed to happen.  I love, love, LOVE this quote from Russell M Nelson this past week (I am just posting a little, it is much longer and all so, so so, good!  You can find it on his instagram for russellmnelson...."The Creator of us all calls on each of us to abandon attitudes of prejudice against any group of God's children.....It behooves each of us to do whatever we can in our spheres of influence to preserve the dignity and respect each son and daughter of God deserves.....Illegal acts such as looting, defacing, or destroying public or private property cannot be tolerated.  Never has one wrong been correct by a second wrong.  Evil has never been resolved by more evil.....We need to foster a fundamental respect for the human dignity of every human soul, regardless of their color, creed, or cause.  And we need to work tirelessly to build bridges of understanding rather than creating wall of segregation."  Russell M Nelson---AMEN!

2020 Blue Jeans Week 22

We had a wonderful week with everyone home!!!  What a blessing that was!  Enjoyed lots of great family time.  Take a look at our week...

Our 'church' this week.  Having some awesome discussions about ancestors and remembering those who went before.

Memorial Day picnic!

We played frisbee and the frisbee went into an overgrown stream, and it was interesting figuring out how to get it out of the water.  Luckily there were some long tree branches that had recently been cut down and we used one of those to snag it.

This boy had a birthday!  My baby is 15!  How did that happen?  He loved having all his sisters home for his birthday.  Made it extra special!

As birthday gifts, Miss A and Miss O made everyone tie dye shirts.  Pretty awesome!  It was a fun quarantine activity for them.

Mr J is our resident expert on smart watches, and so while she was home Miss O decided to get one, and she had a really happy helper to assist her in the process of choosing one and buying it.

One night for dinner we roasted hot dogs and had s'mores, but these s'mores were on homemade graham crackers!  Miss E made us a batch of homemade graham crackers and they were soooo good!  They made the best s'mores ever!

Thanks for visiting!  Hope you all had a good week and are safe and health!