Year 5: November 27th-29th, 2020: Nearing the End of the Year

 Wait, it's only Friday?! I thought it was Saturday! I think little guy was confused, too. He said, "This is the worst day of the year!" when Daddy was out helping a friend move and didn't come home until close to bedtime. Jared had also been working on the bunk beds all day. The kids and I did a tiny bit of school. I finally got up to the art museum and have tickets to Winter Lights next week for any time during that evening, not just a timed slot! Such a nice employee getting us all set up. Easy peasy, and worth the drive. It was NOT at all hard to get to either or get back up onto the highway. I was very happy about that. I was able to listen to an audiobook called "You Can't Make Me (But I Can Be Persuaded)" by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias which was helpful in a conversation later with Benaiah. While waiting for Jared to get home, I was able to do a little bit of Christmas decorating without getting into the big pile of boxes that are sort of blocked by his sawhorses and sawdust mess. I at least put away the pumpkin stuff. And my new under the bed foldable shoe storage boxes came, so I got to quickly do that and vacuum and everything. They have see through zipped tops so I can see my shoes and handles on three sides so I can pull them out either direction. It took me a while to figure out the right dimensions and I'm pretty pleased with the result. I think I have about 3 dozen pairs of shoes. That sounds like a lot but I have purged some over the years. That includes super dressy heels, like the red ones I wear with the red and white dress I can't wear right now but spent a lot of time purchasing for a wedding and want to wear again someday. That includes the Dr. Who blue converse shoes (and a red pair as well). That includes winter boots and sandals, slippers and sneakers, flats and causal shoes. EVERYTHING. I try to keep the kids shoes to under 6 pairs per kid just because they grow out of the or wear them out. We buy as they have needs. Jared probably has about the same amount, including his toe shoes, well, maybe more if you include his several pairs of heavy boots, so probably a total of a dozen. 

Anyway, at least the day was very productive and I got over my bad attitude this morning. Oh, it was bad. I couldn't get my body nor my mind to get moving. None of the words in my Bible study were sticking so I put that aside and just now came back to my desk. Not sure if I can do it tonight or not. So I was bemoaning that and my aching body. And I was severely annoyed and triggered by a text this morning. Nothing major. Just me and my mental inability to just let things go and then making mountains out of molehills. Nothing to see here, although Jared got to hear about it. And the kids, too. Sigh. 

At least the house in good order right now. Hopefully Jared will get more of the bed done tomorrow. He made great progress today. He had gone to men's breakfast (he hasn't done that in several weeks) so he was already up and going. I'm so glad he didn't go to work. For some reason he thought the building would be open or something. I don't know if it was, but his dad didn't tell him to go, and I've always assumed the Friday after Thanksgiving is a day off because well, most schools do and that's the calendar I think of the most. We did miss seeing our homeschool friends today. But I wasn't going to make a playdate knowing Jared would be home and it's what I call a "family" weekend. Again, I'm so glad we had no where to go. No parties, no social gatherings. Ok, Jared spent 5 hrs with helping our friends temporarily move for the month. But he had ridden with someone and didn't want to get an Uber back home. But whatever. It was what it was.

Wouldn't that be a conversation starter!

Make it gluten free and I'll try it! Yummy!

Now those look easy and fun to make! No more trying to bite through a caramel apple to eat it! You'd have to make them right before a party though or the apples would spoil.

Pretzel sticks dipped in caramel and then chocolate. I wonder if it would work with peanut butter instead of caramel?

Progress being made. This is not a stand alone set of bunk beds. He's screwing pieces directly into the wall.

And this is how we read history lessons today. Goofs!

I taught Abishai to play Uno! I love Uno and I'm pretty good at it. He was a very quick learner. We laid out his cards, and I showed him mine in my hand, so I could help him find the right ones. He won both games!

More progress.

I need hugs, Mom! This is his new comfy spot and he watched his tablet time in there.

This is what you do when the government sends you stimulus money. You buy things you would never normally buy. Like $30 advent calendars. I still bought the $1 chocolate ones, too. Spoiled brats. But how come it's so much fun to say YES and spoil them?!

Playing along to his sister's piano practice.

Has 8 slots but I double up some of them.

Second storage unit, and I doubled up my flats. I love that I can still see all of them and it zips shut. Most of the storage bins I found were two wide for the space alotted to this under the bed. We've got odd things under there plus extra wood propping up the bed (don't ask). There's one more smaller unit for 4 pair of shoes that goes in the middle of the underside of the bed. I just put my boxed fancy shoes in it for now, but I could put my winter tall dress boots in there, too. Oh, and those blinds were bought three years ago. Do you know how hard it is to put holes in paster?! Someday we'll have blinds. Someday not. Actually, I should just pull those over to sunroom. The windows are high up enough in our room that you can't see anything.

This is where my shoes originally were, but I had gotten tired of fishing for my sweaters in a laundry basket in my closet, so I put them in here along with some winter leggings. We have two of these, but only one of them fits under the bed at a time because they are too wide. They actually came with the bunk beds that are now the treehouse. Repurpose, reuse!

Oh, Hello. I forgot you were on top of my wedding dress box. Um, 20 years?! Try 37 years now. This was from a cd display in a bookstore I think. I did ask a few times if I could have their displays when they were done. Or I would buy them off of eBay. Sad to think I still have to wait a whole other year to see the 35th anniversary tour. But again, it's actually going to be now 37 or 38 years. Sigh. And yes, I did keep the poster right there with the box. It's heavier cardstock and doesn't fold well. That's why it isn't with my other posters that I will never ever get rid of. Those things are my favorite collections! Don't touch my music memorabilia! I purchased a good part of it with $3.50/hr babysitting money, thank you very much. In fact, I just bought three new t-shirts and a bag because there was a blow out sale. One of the t-shirts has the original date of my concert on it. The bag says, "Hawaii 2020" on it because there was a Michael W. Smith trip planned this year. Of course I can never go on those trips, but I think it will be a fun conversation starter someday as I watched the plans change for that trip. It's a canvas tote, so it's something I would use at some point. The t-shirts were only $5!!!!! They normally sell now for $25-30! So of course I snatched them up! Especially the concert one. I don't know if I'll wrap them up for Christmas or not. We'll see!

Well, I did it. I pushed the trigger and bought my new iPhone. $850 later....$150 for service plan for next two years. $50 tax. $600 for phone. And $50 for a gift card for apps? Not sure what happened there, but I'll figure it out. I need to restore my ability to purchase apps and get rid of ads on games and such anyways. I had it disabled when I accidentally bought too many power ups over a year ago. So, I will work on that. Maybe the $50 was supposed to be redeemed for the new phone, because it's in my account but not working on this current phone. Anyway, that price tag stings a lot, but it's been planned for 10 months. All is good there. Now, do I try to activate it before Christmas? Because once I do, I will need to be using it and if it's a Christmas gift....well, it's not really a gift and it's an out of the ordinary purchase. I'll have to keep thinking about that one. It wouldn't be a big deal but we are leaving for vacation the day after Christmas and I don't want to be activating it in the car. I don't know if I need another sim card or if I can just take this one out and put it in the new one. I might have to go to the Apple store to find out. So, no biggie, I'll figure it out, probably sooner rather than later.

And then I made the last big kid purchase as well. I went with a Kindle Fire, Kids' Edition for Abishai's new tablet. He can't get to YouTube and he likes the shows on Amazon Prime Kids. It's preloaded with lots of educational apps, parental controls, cameras and you can get zoom and all that. I don't want him on YouTube or the internet, so this is more like the Nook or LeapPad that Keturah had. By the time Abishai needs the internet, the software will be outdated anyway. So, there's that. Oh, and Jared bought himself a $200 extension ladder, so that's a big gift to himself. We've spent a ton of money, but it's because the money had been from the IRS refund and the Covid-19 stimulus money that we deliberately had set aside for retirement, and then pulled to put into an investment, and then just got back. Jared had put most of the extra money when I wanted to use it for these bigger purchases we've been waiting on, so when the money was back in the account, he took half of it for retirement and I've used a good portion of the rest of it to catch up on bills and these purchases and Christmas. Now we can settle down again and quit spending for a bit. The treehouse is done, the bunk beds are almost done, so the only other big project is the bathroom. And I'm thinking we can use some of that leftover insurance money from the tree limb falling on our house for that.We'll see. It will get done eventually.

Jared made major progress on the bunk beds today! He also planted 8 trees he got in the mail as well. He spent half the day doing that part and half on the bunk beds. It's slowly coming together. The bunk beds still feel rough to me, but we'll see. At this point, I'd just love to see them done and put the room together before Christmas. That would be incredible! Oooooo, I just thought of something! Benaiah should come and sleep over Christmas Eve! Yup! Ok, I've asked him now. Jared has worked very, very hard this Thanksgiving weekend and it makes my heart so happy. He can take the rest of December off and then we'll do the bathroom in Januray. Although we did find black mold under our bath mat. It's not pretty and I've cleaned it up the best that I can. I'll get a new one next time I go to the store. Plus a new shower liner. I was trying to wait until the bathroom was redone but I can't let stuff make us sicker. Not now. Not ever. Sigh. That was an expensive $15 bathmat. Poo! What else? Oh, I tried on one of my new pairs of jeans today, and yeah, it's a size 12s (short) and it fit like a glove and didn't fall down! Loads of stretchy material in the waist where I need it the most, and high rise, so lots of coverage. And I could sit down without needing to unbutton my pants. Woot! Woot! And they were the $16 pair. I'll try the other pair I was debating on tomorrow, or the most expensive pair of Levi's that I got for 50% off. Originally $70 jeans and they fit like a glove, too. It's well worth having half a dozen of pants that fit well. I'm tired of wearing just one pair and wearing it out in a couple of years. I'm pretty happy and I have a few to take back at some point. 

Kiddos did various things today, from playing outside, to screen time, to wandering around, to cleaning up, to helping each other. 

I took a lot of videos of the progress of the bunk beds, so here's the YouTube playlist for them:

Nov 28th-29th, 2020 J6 Home Videos 

When we finally got out of bed this morning, this is what we woke up to. Hiding in the fortress with all the weapons!

When Justin finally got up, I found these two laughing over memes together. See, they still can get along, for a few minutes anyways!

Cute idea on how to reuse a white pumpkin!

Oh, we got all the Christmas boxes out and put them in various spots so I can go through them and pull things out to put up. I didn't do much with them today, but we got a couple of things out like the big train set. Keturah kindly helped Abishai put it together.

After planting all of his 8 trees, Jared went to work on the bunk beds some more.

Yeah! More pieces in place!

Aww, all four of them hanging out together, getting along for a couple of minutes.

Another post goes in.

Quick 3 hr audiobook but worth every minute. I decided to go ahead and buy the paperbook version, although I borrowed it from the library. After listening to some of it yesterday, I was able to apply it right away with Benaiah. I finished an audio book in a week! Woot! Woot!

And we've got more crossbeams in place! Brackets courtesy of Aaron.

Great place to hang out, eh?

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Waiting for Daddy to finish the next pieces so we can scare him. It took longer than we thought. Hence all the little videos below.

I put up this tiny lights that are on a copper looking wire and are battery powered up on my snowman mantel cloth (that I can't use because our mantle doesn't work that way). I leave the cloth up all year. I used two light strings and put them on the fade in/out setting. There's a timer, so I started them up at 6pm and they will go off at 12am, and then go on again at 6pm. I don't even have to mess with it!

See how the lights are fading in and out a little bit? It's absolutely perfect!

Just waiting on Daddy!

Keturah joined in. Her hips are below the wood, so she can fit there. Justin's hips are right at the boards, so he doesn't.

Monkey!

Here comes the flat board that goes under the mattress!

Abishai helped by holding the board down in the corner.

And Justin had to hold the whole rig up while the pole was out of the way so the board could be placed.

Oh my goodness. It's coming together! Jared didn't paint or stain any of it. He did a light sanding where it needed it though.

First mattress on the new beds! And first new sleepy kid, too! I think Jared has a bit more screwing in to do though.

Justin didn't want to give up sleeping with the dog, so he put the mattress on the floor. This mattress will go back in the middle and then another mattress that is thicker will go here. The gap is on purpose so each kid has a "shelf" to put things on like water bottle, books, stuffed animals, etc. We'll need to get some rope lighting or something to go under there. I'll be searching Amazon again, I'm sure.

Awww, ready for sleeping time!

We are all proud of Jared's efforts this weekend! Now I have to make it up to him! At least I didn't have to push him along for once. That's a prize in itself, no nagging!

No jumping! And there will be more boards and another mattress on top of this! Triple bunk beds!

The bunk beds are complete enough that Abishai is sleeping in them! No more tent! Praise the Lord! I'm super nervous though because Jared did NOT put up a railing. I might go in there when Jared goes to bed and at least put some pillows on the outside edge. We'll see. Because it was a quick end of the day and we are exhausted from all the working and cleaning and Christmas decorating,  I decided to wait to give Abishai his new The Child pillow and blanket. I need to wash sheets, and technically, each mattress needs to be up a level. Benaiah says we shouldn't use the other mattress that is in the garage however, I'm still going to see what it's like when we lay it on the ground. Perhaps we will just throw it up on the top bunk as the extra. Or the toddler mattress until we figure out what to do with it. In fact, I just might throw other things up there to get them out of the way while we wait to have Jared put legs on the new Lego table and organize that stuff first. Stuff like the stuffed animals and posters and Justin's misc box of stuff we didn't finish. Once we get more stuff properly put away, we can finish the rest, definitely before Christmas. I can't wait! The room is going to feel so much bigger and nicer! Can't wait!

Benaiah came over for about an hour and we put up the Christmas tree. I will do the ornaments with the three younger kids later this week when we have time. I have appointments on Monday and we are out all day on Wednesday, so it will be a challenge to get ti all in. That's why I'm super happy that once I got started on the Christmas decorating, I didn't stop and it's all done! Wahoo! I didn't take photos tonight because it was getting late and I needed to clean up after Jared finished. I wasn't quite prepared for all that work and now I'm hurting. A lot. I'm exhausted and he's exhausted. Now I can give him the whole month off of major projects. Just the Lego table if he can and then finishing touches on the bunk beds. But the major pieces are in and we can rest. 

Jared and the kids went to Mahurins for church and I stayed home and watched Mt. Gilead's service. It was a good sermon for sure. And I didn't get triggered by my surroundings. In fact, I made tea while the songs were playing and I didn't feel embarrassed listening and writing notes while playing my phone game. I'm taking a break from the outside world this month, focusing on my family, and trying not to get involved in politics, policy, and people that are way different than me. I didn't say bad, I said different. I need to process why I get triggered, what I'm looking for, approval? Wanting to change people? Not having enough compassion? Self serving? I don't know but I'm tired of fighting. Fighting everything when I walk out the door. I don't want to be pursued by the outside world either. Just leave me alone to figure myself out before I do more damage to the ones I love. 

That's what we did today. Church, tree, bunk beds. Oh and Jared watered the baby trees. Yup. Done. No Crave or Small groups because of Thanksgiving holiday and Covid-19.

The actor who played the original Darth Vader died today. 85 yrs old I think. Pretty tall guy towering over some of the other actors.

Why yes, you can teach an older lady how to use technology! The Queen of England, Elizabeth II, on Zoom! Way to go!

No KP until the New Year and probably beyond that. Sad face!

All set up to get Miah when he walks in the door.

Getting 'Miah with our bombs!

I think it was the most peaceful tree putting up we've ever had. Awesome!

Santa hats!

Abishai was excited to see the Little People nativity that is is as old as Benaiah is. He kept asking where the shepherd was. Actually, I think there IS a shepherd but he might be in with the regular box of little people. I don't know.

I had checked all the lights before we began and they all worked and we had several boxes of unopened lights as well. Good thinking!

Keturah put the tree skirt under the tree.

Hm, I wonder what's in the bucket and what it's for?! And there's fake snowballs all over the place!

Putting on the first ornament.

Tickle time!

Checking out the new beds.

Last mug of this yumminess. It's a fundraising coffee, dark chocolate mocha. It was so delicious!

Oh yes, The Child, aka, Baby Yoda, deviled eggs! You just add a bit of avocado in the egg mixture or maybe some food dye, and then celery for the ears and I'm not sure what for the eyes. Maybe raisins, maybe squirts of icing, maybe whole cloves? But it's adorable!

Daddy's helper!

Abishai was very nervous about keeping still but he did a great job!

So much screaming came from over here on the couch because Justin wasn't letting Keturah see some of the spot it cards. Woah, Nellie, you've been home too much. Chill!

Abishai moved the nativity set to the table so remind us to "Always worship God at dinner." Ok, preach it! He moved the candy dishes I had out though. I watched him do it and he was very careful with the crystal/glass dishes. I was playing hard old Michael W. Smith Christmas songs with multiple key changes. Ugh, that man is hard to keep up with sometimes!

Then I walked down the hallway and saw that Jared was putting the mattress from Benaiah's old bed onto the new bed after removing all the stuff from Benaiah's old bed. Whoops. I didn't know he was aiming to get this part done today.

Temporary ladder.

Keturah checking out the "high ground" although she's obviouslly not staying up there. Yes, the kids will bonk their heads on the wood underneath each bed. However, they need to stop bouncing! Abishai thought it was hilarious that he kept hitting his head.

There will be a large piece of flat wood here to make cubbies for things like stuffed animals and water bottles. But for now, this is where Abishai's stuffed animals are.

Abishai is currently in the middle and Justin is on the floor.  I did buy some rope lighting to give the boys some more light. We improvised with a half broken string of Christmas lights for now.

Time for Bible stories, Dad! Just don't hit your head! But at least Jared doesn't have to try to get down and back up again off the floor. Yeah!

The End