The J6 Journey: Year 6, March 22nd-25th, 2020: Spring Break 2021

It was a gorgeous start to Spring Break. Warm, 65 degrees, with a little bit of wind and clear blue skies. I turned off the heat and opened the windows to let some of the moist air come in since everyone was complaining that it had been too dry. But now I can feel the tickle in my throat of more seasonal allergies. Bummer! But it was awesome to send the kids outside at various times. Jared tried to wake everybody up and I was trying to ssshhhh him because I wanted to let grumpy Justin sleep in. Jared (and Gary later in the day) didn't remember we were taking spring break because of Keturah doing the Love Your City volunteer thing. I think I've told both of them several times that we were taking the break. Oh well, yes, we are on break. And it was a calmer day overall. Justin and Keturah started in way before Justin even got out of bed arguing over who gets the last biscuit. Keturah wolfed it down before Justin and I could stop her. Anyway, and then Abishai complained about having to do educational apps before his other TV shows on his tablet during screen time. Well, you've watched enough Transformers buddy. Back to why I bought the tablet, for school.

But, we did manage to watch about 2 hrs more of the Gettysburg movie and have 1 hr left. I was hoping to finish it tonight but then Jared took Abishai with him to cut down the fallen branch in Gary's yard. And Abishai seemed interested in the movie, so I didn't want to do it without him. Perhaps tomorrow night instead. Keturah will be gone from 8am to 6pm Tuesday-Thursday this week so I can't do any school things with her gone. Well, I could have her watch the last hour by herself and go ahead and finish the 1 hr with the boys tomorrow. Then it's onto the 8 hr miniseries Roots!

The middles and I discussed their clothing needs and Keturah went through her shorts and sneakers. She probably could use some more shorts. Justin needs socks, underwear, gym shorts and gym pants. Not a lot, but a few more. Both of them are at the point that we don't need to do a whole wardrobe seasonal switch because they are both approaching their final heights and weights. I don't want to go over board for Keturah because I don't want her to end up like me and have way too many clothes. I just have too many clothes now because they are different sizes. I should go through them and pack them up to say, "When you reach 150 lbs or 140 lbs, then you can wear these again." I have very few clothes that actually fit me right now. So, I might not get that done this week, but I'll put it on the summer project schedule. And I do have to switch the long sleeve and short sleeve and long pants and shorts kind of thing. I'll do Abishai's major overhaul sometime later this week.

I did my Bible study, listened to Rifles for Wattie, listened to my audio Bible, and exerciseed by doing squats as I picked up sticks in the yard. My thighs were burning! There's a ton of sticks out there and I didn't even get them all! We did laundry and kept the house picked up. Bills are paid. Photos are backed up. I'm caught up on my videos from bloggers. And I'll work on my other projects as the week goes on.

Oh, we did go to the office and brought home Grandpa's balloons and cake. We saw Mrs. Debbie and Mrs. Ellen. Keturah went with Abishai and I because she wanted to get Dad to put the password into her phone for Disney Plus. So far so good, no further hacking has happened today. Yeah! Benaiah stopped by to drop off Grandpa's old desk chair for Justin and he said that Grandpa saw obscenties on the user names on Disney Plus Saturday afternoon. So weird. We are keeping a closer eye on all our accounts to see if it was just a one off thing or a device thing. We'll see.

And then I almost fell asleep on the couch. Time to watch TV and go to bed!

Hand cut stone. Just laying around. Ah!

Gary got a nice surprise at the office today. The ladies decorated it for his birthday and brought in some yummy cake!

We brought home the balloons that people left in Gary's office for him for his birthday. Abishai had to dump them right in the middle of everything, but that's ok. We eventually got them back in the bag and put them in the sunroom. We suggested for him to play with them on the trampoline but he didn't want them to float away or pop.

I'm guessing our neighbors went to the food pantry or something but they shared it with us again! Two gallons of milk and 10lbs of red potatoes, too! We were just about to go grocery shopping tonight, but this should carry us through a good part of the week! Yeah! That allowed Jared the time tobnight to go cut down the huge branch that fell in his dad's backyard.

Jared wanted to know how many Hot Wheel cars we had and how many spaces we had left on this Ultimate Garage. Well, I didn't go back and count the number of spaces in total, but there's only 4 spaces here and two in the airplane. That's IT. This are ALL Hot Wheel brand. Nothing else. Good grief!

Ultimate Hot Wheels collector lives here.

Apparently we had so much fun today that I didn't take any photos! Actually, I was on the phone with my sister for 2 hrs, then the boys had screen time, and then we got haircuts, went to Meijer, and bought Chick Fil A for dinner! Keturah had a good day at her event, planting flowers, cleaning windows, and playing at Rascal's Fun Zone. There's about 20-25 kids, so the group is small so I'm hoping she will develop some friendships with the girls. In any case, at least she's not lounging in her bed. In my day, during workcamp week, we worked for 8 hrs a day and only had one 1/2 day to go swimming or something. Nowadays, they want to entertain the kids as well as teach them. I don't think that's the wisest move, but I'm not in charge. I just know that kids like Keturah focus more on the play and what they ate than on the serving part of the week. It's only an introduction into serving and not really a mission trip. We need more high school friendly mission trips like when I was a kid. Maybe when Covid is over. Less talk and more work. Less play and more work, just like in the real world. But I guess they have to start somewhere.

I took the boys to Meijer for socks and underwear for Justin and a new toy for Abishai in order to "treat" them because Keturah is getting to have fun going ice skating and to the movies and an arcade type place with go karts. So, I guess that's being hypocritical in a way. Or, I just want to treat them to treat them. You decide.

Chick Fil A was super busy with two lines, briefly feeding into one lane and then back out to two lanes! I knew Benaiah was working a 10 hr shift today, too. That kid is working 50-55 hrs at CFA this week! Crazy! I'm glad he's making bank while he can!

Yup, pretty normal around here. Stefanie and I talked about a lot of things pertaining to health, from all aspects, because we have similar enough issues and understanding about them like the ADHD. It was a great conversation, that's for sure.That just leaves me with doing my projects on Thursday if I do decide to take the boys out for some fun on Wednesday afternoon.

By the way, didn't you know that a 7 pack of men's Hanes underwear cost $30????? And a pair of nylon off brand pants cost $30? At least at Meijer they did. I'm going to go to Wal-Mart tomorrow to look for sugar cubes, so I'll look there for shorts because Wal-Mart had an ad in the mail today advertising $13 men's gym shorts. And that's what I expect to pay. Inflation much? Our Meijer bill was twice what I thought it was going to be. I had picked up a few groceries (we had some coupons to use!) and fun treats, but still, good grief! It's shocking! No wonder people want $15 to be the minimum wage, but if you do that, profit margins get slimmer so companies raise prices and the cycle continues. Only competition brings prices down. Or if there's too much demand.

Ok, enough of that. Some guy shot 10 people in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado so there's a renewed discussion about gun control today. And I got involved. Just after I had written in my Bible study that I needed to stay off of social media to be at my happiest. Sigh. One point for Satan. Thankfully this is an easy post night and I can finish up and move on.

Tomorrow, I pick out new glasses!

Well, maybe they were just getting their instructions on how to clean the windows of a local organization that helps underserved groups. But you can always recognize Keturah because she always wears that hoodie!

Awww, that's so cute!

What a stupendous day! I treated the boys to Rascals Fun Zone, where Keturah went with her group yesterday. I actually had gotten a coupon yesterday as well, perfect timing! It was a big splurge and I wouldn't have done it on a whim like that, but, God has blessed us again with a large IRS refund and the Covid-19 kickbacks (they were nearly the same amount!) that it was time to splurge a little. It felt good to just not care how much I spent. I mean, I was smart, but not have to worry about it. We got 2 hr all you can ride tickets, and then I purchased some tokens for Abishai to do the arcade games. Justin spent most of the time on the big boy go carts. It would have been fun to bring a friend along, but also exhausting for me. The place isn't that big, so Justin was able to go off on his own without a phone and then we'd look for each other to check in. No big deal. It was busy, but not overly packed, thank goodness. I'll write more under the photos below, but Abishai rode his first go-kart alone! And he was so adorable! And it reminded me of when Justin did it, too, in that very same spot like 8 or 10 years ago! I'll have to try to find some photos on Facebook to add to this post. But we'll see. I have a packed at home day tomorrow.

We started the day with me going to the eye doctor for my annual exam. They've got some cool new technology that measures the cornea and sees where the astigmatism is and all that. Dr. Heidi Rich said that my corneas are pretty thick, which is a great thing. Yeah! At least my eyes are healthy! But, we did tweak my prescription. She said it's common for 35-40 year olds to have a bit of a tweak and for reading to get a little bit blurry. So, I will buy new glasses in the near future. I didn't today because she dilated my eyes and I couldn't see things clearly enough to decide. The lenses that I will get will be about $250 (for both) because we are adding the blue light filter, glare resistance, and they are going to have this new type of lens that is the precursor to bifocals. I'm not afraid of having bifocals, so sure, bring them on. I just want to see and I don't want the headaches. I don't care what it costs because I'll have them for awhile I'm sure. I'm spending enough on medications and oils and such to keep the headaches at bay as it is. Plus the down time to rest my eyes. It's actually pretty excited to have an easy answer to a simple problem. I did have to get a pair of those sunglasses type filter because I couldn't see to drive home. I wore them again on the way down to Rascals because it was still pretty bright. No big deal, but I'm sure I looked weird. Oh, the frames will probably cost around $200 so probably all told, it will be $450. Ouch! It's a good thing we have our tax refund!

Then on the way home I stopped at THE Wal-Mart. Yes, the one and only ghetto Wal-Mart that was featured on the news reports because two women fought over shampoo in the shampoo aisle. It creeps me out every time to go in there, so I rarely go in there. BUT, they had men's nylon shorts for $13 and pants for $17. I can't beat those prices! Plus, they are the only store that carries the sugar cubes, and I grabbed their last two boxes. I also picked up peanut butter to make my cookies and found a reduced sugar smaller bottle of ketchup to replace the nearly empty but gigantic bottle of ketchup that always falls over in the fridge. We left it upside down so we could easily get the ketchup out. I'm the only one who consumes ketchup, so I figured the low sugar one would be fine. I've had the no sugar one and it was just like tomato paste. Blech. I spent $100. I had spent $144 the day before. Rascals was about $55. And then I treated the boys to a bite from McDonald's for $8. Plus the Chick-Fil-A on Tuesday. But I'm done. We are staying home tomorrow and just have park day on Friday. No appointments next week! We'll just have to make a grocery run when we run out of protein. We are good on everything else, praise God! And I'm working on sending payments for the medical bills and getting that off my chest. Then we can discuss what to do with the rest of the money. Savings for projects. Retirement. And a big chunk to charity. Can't forget that piece. Usually it's 25% of the total. I don't think we did that at all last year with IRS or Covid money so I want to be sure we do it this time. We'll see! But I survived the dirty, not well stocked Beech Grove ghetto Wal-Mart, even with my eyes dilated.

Then it was home for lunch and get the boys off of electronics. And then we went to Rascals and had fun. After Rascals, I got Justin a chocolate Sunday, I got a caramel Frappe' (I only drank half of it today because it said it was 510 calories!), and Abishai was hangry again, so I got him a McChicken instead of the ice cream. It's not a big fan of ice cream and was obviously hungry. I thought he ate enough before we left, but I guess not. Keturah gets mopey when she is done at an event. Justin gets growly. And Abishai, he gets HANGRY and starts to have melt downs or acts up or has extreme emotions. But once you feed the beast, it's perfectly fine, fun, and an angel again. So, 2 hrs was just long enough.We came home and had some leftovers. Then I had Bible study, which was fine. Most of us walked to Bible study because it was so gorgeous out! The sun had just set on our way home. So, I got some extra steps in, yeah! I did rub my thighs a ton during the sermon video for our Bible study and got the knots out of the right one. I'll do the left one when I watch my videos in a few minutes. But you can tell how one muscle is smoother than the other. The front thigh muscle on the left has ridges and waves. It's fascinating but ouch. It's like mountains and valleys. It's from those squats on Monday and I'm still feeling them a ton. Nothing else hurts though. I didn't dare try to get on my exercise bike and make it worse. I'm so lame, so out of shape, ugh. But, I tried. I'll try again. I did just vegetables for dinner because I had chili for breakfast with two cornbread muffins. And I wasn't that hungry because of the frappe, but now I'm feeling it. I'm hungry, too. Time for a little bit of a snack.

So it was a great day, and needed as well. Justin had fun despite not having a friend to tag along. Abishai and I had fun doing things together like putt putt and he likes taking selfies with me. We were all tired, overwhelmed and ready to go home after two hours. It's very loud at Rascals! Keturah had a good day but she's moody because she's spent a lot of time with people and she's tired from working. Plus, when I went to find her latchhook in her room, I saw clothes stashed everywhere and I couldn't get in the closet to find my shirts and you couldn't see any part of her floor. It was a disaster, fire hazard, mouse hazard, you name it. So, she wasn't allowed any screen time until she gets it cleaned up. She didn't have much time to work on it tonight, but I don't care. She created this mess and if it takes her three days to do the job, then so be it. She can't be a slob like this. It's unsanitary. I let her have as much freedom as she wants in that room, but it's just not safe and really just a closet when she does that. We are going to get rid of her bean bag to clear some space. She just needs to put things away and use shelf space, drawers, and containers wisely. She hasn't figured that out yet. And I refuse to help because I've helped and then it's undone in a day. So, sorry, I don't want to put this on you after a long week, but you did it to yourself. She put a lot of the clothes in the laundry. I just did laundry today. The basket is now full. She's just postponing putting it away because most of that load will be hers. Oh well, it's gotta be done.

And that's it. It's late, I'm hungry. So I'll load some stuff and finish up tomorrow.

Playlist for Rascals Fun Zone with Abishai and Justin

This sounded like a great idea so I bought some for the kids, although we've had a TON of sugar lately.

I came home from my eye doctor appointment to find this! I had given Abishai some root beer in his CFA cup and told him to leave it in the kitchen and NOT take it to the living room. Well, he spelled it, didn't make a fuss, and therefore, Justin, who was sitting just a couple of feet away and no clue what happened. Good grief! You're the babysitter, Justin, you are supposed to pay attention and not drown out the world with your headphones and loud game talk. I had given them permission to have screen time while I was away because we would be gone the rest of the afternoon.

We went to Rascals Fun Zone and the first thing Abishai saw and wanted to do was bowling. Well, he didn't realize that we would each have to play 5 turns, lol. Somehow, only one bumper was up, but we used it to our advantage. It was small pins and balls. The bins were on strings!

Abishai somehow curved his balls and saved them from the gutter. He had a great score and the game went fast!

Not bad for 5 frames.

Wait, what?! My kid is old enough to ride a go-kart by himself? And we just immediately hopped in line and off he was without much talk about it. He was pretty cautious at first, but concentrated the whole time, even looking behind him to see if people were going to crowd him. He went 2 1/2 times. On the first set of laps he did, the kart ran out of power, so the attendant put him in the front of the line for the next round. He attendant wasn't very communicative but I think it's just because he was a teen doing a job. But hey, that was nice of him at least.

I bought some tokens so Abishai could try out some of the arcade games. This was the one he wanted to try first, of course! He did a great job! The whole thing shook a bit, too. I thought he'd be scared but he wasn't. He seemed to know what he was doing.

Justin spent a good part of the time on his own and got to do the go-karts over and over. He was pretty fast and loved it!

Abishai and I played a game together, too.

He's barely big enough to reach the pedals on these games! But he had a ton of fun with them. And I'm grateful that they were only 90 seconds long.

Big boy feet.

Not bad for 15 players I think.

Ah, now we understand. Play games, get tickets. Except, not the games he wanted to play. They don't give out tickets.

Time to tranquilize or kill the dinosaurs! Jurassic Park!

Cutie guy. He was getting antsy and hangry at this point.

He knows he needs to start here, but, he push along the golf ball instead of actually hitting it. I tried to teach him to do a stroke, but he wouldn't listen and was getting hangrier.

He liked the dinosaurs along the path. I'm sure you weren't supposed to sit on them but no workers were around so I let him.

We went under a "stone" bridge and he quickly ducked to the left and found a hidey hole.

At least one of my kids likes to take selfies with me. I had no idea what this photo really looked like because of the glaring sun, lol.

Abishai and I got to do one more ride together at the end. Bumper cars! They giggling from him was insane! And I was having fun being aggressive. Great release for anxiety!

I had paid for 2 hrs of unlimited play as well, but never got to use the go-karts. Oh well, next time I'll just pay for the attractions individually or something.

The mini karts line was shorter than the big go karts line and we had less than 10 minutes left, so Abishai got to do one more set of laps. I love how he looked over his shoulder to see who was going to pass him next. A lot of kids passed him on his first set of laps but by this third set, he was keeping up with them better.

We stopped by Daddy's office on the way home and Abishai wanted to scare Daddy when he opened the door. Also, I fed the hangry beast as soon as I could after Rascals. I offered to get them ice cream and Abishai denied it for a fried chicken sandwich with just pickles. He gobbled that down in record time.

We haven't done this in awhile. Abishai looks so much bigger now!

Aww, at least Daddy feels well enough to go outside on the trampoline with mini man for a bit.

Well, hello, happy doggie. Handsome old man.

The kids and I agree. We will never have enough photos of his handsome guy. Hi, Socks!

Yes I'll pet you while I'm standing on the deck and you are a few inches below me.

Sweet face.

Speaking of sweetness, the only store around us that sells sugar cubes is Wal-Mart. What a mess our Wal-Mart is, but anyway. I'm going to show the kids how to make igloos with these things! Woot! Woot! I let Abishai have one to just melt in his mouth. Yes, pure sugar!

Well, I was much slower at working today than I thought I would be. I had a list and I got just a couple of things done. Mainly Abishai's clothes. I think there's a couple of more boxes in the shed with clothes he could possibly fit into, but they are probably just a tad too big, too, and he has enough. But, when it gets a tad warmer, I'll take a Saturday and have Keturah and Justin help me rearrange that part of the shed putting the boxes I need next closer to the front and burying the ones that we are done with. It was a bit of a pain to look at the box numbers today, but I came up with a couple from my original cards with numbers and descriptions on it. I haven't looked at those cards in probably a year or so. But I still have them for instances like this. I'll have to thoroughly redo them the next time we move, but it's good to have them for a reference on the boxes that haven't and will not change, like keepsake boxes. Anyway, I wrote that project down for another day. Abishai cooperated only because I let him have more screen time on Fortnite.

I also took a shower and did a little bit of Bible study. Whoops! I totally forgot I had cooked roasted veggies in the oven and because we ate leftovers, I wasn't hungry for them and they are still in the turned off oven! It's now 10:15pm! Whoops! They are a mixture of root vegetables and I have no idea which ones. Some were a little squishy when they really shouldn't have been, so it was way past time to cook them. But I used the fresh spices I bought and man, the smell was incredible!

And I lounged on the couch, answered homeschool questions, went through email, wrote a lecture to Jared, and finally let others know that I will not be going on the Israel trip anymore. That's a relief. Probably a disappointment to many, but I just didn't feel I was up to it and nor did I trust myself to be up to it in a few months.

Keturah came home cranky again, so I'm somewhat glad it's over. Her ice skating didn't go as well as she had hoped. She had a lot of trouble with her skates poor thing. I tried not to be all over her with responsibilities and I plan to let her sleep in tomorrow, but she also has to finish cleaning her room, read her school book, and put away her laundry. Hopefully this will remind her that it's better to maintain an area every day than wait to do it and have a bigger project on your hands. Back to normal next week.

We finished watching Gettysburg while Jared was at Bible study. The men have switched to Thursday nights so more men can join them again. And man, the feels that musical score and that movie brings! The way they portray General Lee is supberb! And makes me so mad that now we've torn down his statues and taken his statue out of the Capitol building. Can we not just remember his good qualities? He was a excellent and caring general. He was a Christian fighting for states' rights those that each state could decide on slavery. He probably owned slaves but he wasn't fighting for just slavery. And the bravery of soldiers on both sides. The PTSD. And of course, with this movie, the filmography. You can tell when they had a camera on a boom on the back of a truck and feel the camera shake has the tires made the truck bounce. There were no CGI puffs of smoke or "copy and paste" armies. Those were real reenactors on the real fields of Gettysburg, 1,000's of them, all in costume. All carrying a rifle with a blank in it. So much coordination to make those scenes work. So much drama behind the lines. And General Lee's character asking the question, "Why are we even fighting? Does God even care who wins?" 53,000 men died on that field at Gettysburg. That's a large town like Charlottetown, PEI. That's half the size of Manchester, NH. That's more than the people that live in Concord, NH. That's a bit less than the population of Terre Haute, IN or Idaho Falls, Idaho. You get the point. That's a ton of men of all ages, and boys. In ONE battle. The PTSD these men most have had was probably unreal.

These men fought for states' rights or the reunification of all the states. They died for the Constitution to be upheld. What an incredible sacrifice. And yet, we as a nation, don't understand that Constitutiton and the rights that states have vs. the federal government and we just follow like the dumb sheep we are. From another mass shooting this week where the president is calling for more bans on guns (people kill people, not guns by themselves) to mask mandates to homeschool freedom. All this just this week. We had a lady sit on a bill hearing today in our state legislature making sure that someone was there representing the homeschool community. The bill was about school funding. We don't want funding. Because with funding, comes rules and regulations. We don't need them. We are a self regulating bunch. And the governor of our state changing the mask mandate to a mask recommendation and letting businesses decide for themselves. But our city mayor says they aren't changing any mandates in the city limits. Wear the mask all the time and restaurants can only be at 75% capacity, etc. and none of that will change until the crisis is over. It's been a busy week out there. And I have my opinion and Jared has his. And the rest of the family does, too. But off comes the mask on April 6th and I'm not putting it on again until next flu season. I'm not sick. I'm not making people sick. I don't even have that potential when I'm not around people .I suppose I'll do it when I'm at a doctor's office. Maybe. It depends which office and if I cant get away with it. But definitely in stores and restaurants and church. Off it comes and stays off April 6th. End of flu season I said. It's the the end of flu season. I'm ready to breathe again.

And there ya go. Weird week. Tomorrow I will start tackling those books and we have park day. We don't have karate because you could only sign up for 3 out of 4 nights (to insure proper distancing and smaller class size). See ya!

Kind neighbors gave us 4 tubs of this stuff but only two people might eat it. Hm,...time to share with our other neighbors.

When you can't squat down enough or see around a corner, you take photos of the labels on your totes and then view them and zoom in to read them, lol. No uese in moving a whole row of tubs in front of it if it isn't the box you want. A good majority of these totes still have their original numbers and descriptions from our move to Canada 9 years ago because they've always been storage of clothes or keepsakes. I still have my original cards, too, and they came in handy today to identify what I might be missing. I'll set up a time to dismantle a few rows of totes and rearrange them in proper size order so we can grab the right clothes as Abishai keeps growing.

Keturah is out of this burnt orange yarn! The yarn I got her doesn't quite match. It was made with Orlon, which was a company that went out of business in 1993. So, I've posted to some latch hook groups for help. They said etsy or hershners or something. Grandma will take Keturah to look at Hobby Lobby and Michael's tomorrow. I've already tried Meijer and Walmart. Jo ann fabrics is an option but it's further away.

Yup! Although I've procrastinated on it this week. I'm fine. I was waiting for IRS refund anyway, but I had started thinking about it March 1st.

I asked Abishai a question and this was his response. "I don't know why I have to have all the crackers out at once." And btw, he can open a chip bag by himself the right away without tearing it. Go Abishai!

Today's roasted vegetable medley is composed of: root vegetables I bought that I hadn't tried and now I don't remember the names because I bought them several weeks ok. This one had knarly bits on the bottom and still had a bunch of dirty on it.

I'm thinking this was a type of beet.

They look like watermelon slices!

Fresh herbs are amazing! They make a dish go from blech to incredible! I didn't realize Rosemary might be related to the conifer family with it's needles, even it's smell. Then parsley and thyme. Yummers!

Abishai builds the most elaborate and creative headquarters on the planet, complete with beds and computer stations and places for guns and helmets. Sweet!

Nice sign over the door!

Computers and beds.

Weapon storage.

The outside of the police station.

Mt. Carmel melted! Whoops! So the kids didn't want to eat it. Jared nearly destroyed a butter knife in the process, but he pried it up in one piece and held it in front of his nose sniffing it. Why? Because he won't consume it because it's pure sugar. After that, the plate and bowl were very easy to clean. No one wanted to eat the bird nests so I put them in a tub and froze them in case I needed to take a treat somewhere.