April 2020

Life in quarantine continues. The weather has stayed pretty nice and we keep exploring Columbus.  We went to Homestead Park to ride bikes and I was impressed with how many laps Kaylee and McKenna could do. 

We had another lip sync battle with my family.  This time we decided to imitate a music video for the song Ashes.  Logan sent me a video of Kristi laughing so hard she couldn't breathe while watching it so I think it was a success!

The next thing we did for our weekly family Zoom meeting was recreate old family photos.  It was so hard to narrow it down to just a few and the girls kept wanting to do more. They ended up being very creative and fun!

Any chance we had to get out of the house, we took it. Richard wanted to grab a few things from his office since the lockdown went from 3 weeks to 3 months pretty quickly.  We decided to grab some Chinese food and eat it in his office.  We got the food and got all the way up to the building when he realized that he had not grabbed his office key. So we had a little picnic in the car and ran around the empty campus.  It ended up being a fun adventure and gave us a chance to get out of the house again the next week to actually get the things he needed!

Sharon sent us a fun surprise in the mail and the girls were so excited to see what characters she made for them.  She has had lots of time on her hands with her new job on pause and I was impressed that she used that time to make things for her grandkids.  She is so talented!

The girls enjoyed Battle Darby Metro Park so much that we decided to head there again. This time we got to explore a little further and only turned back because Brooklyn couldn't walk any further. My little explorers never seem to tire as long as they are the ones leading the expedition. Walking around the neighborhood is a different story however ;)

Easter was definitely different this year without any big events to go to.  But we still made sure to dye Easter eggs and did our traditional Resurrection Egg Hunt on Sunday.  Brooklyn's Primary teacher even dropped off some see-through eggs that she had put glowsticks into and compared searching for the light in the eggs to finding the Light of Christ. 

We went out to eat again and were planning on just eating in the car since the wind was a little chilly.  The kids wanted to sit in the trunk so we pulled down the backseats and popped the trunk and they thought it was the coolest thing ever to eat back there. In fact, they have asked us many times since if they could eat in the trunk again! Silly kids.

Richard really needed a fun project to work on. He and Kaylee decided to build a bench from scratch and they spent many nights working hard on it.

The girls were supposed to have their piano recital but since it was canceled, I had them get dressed up and perform for me anyway. They both had worked really hard to memorize their pieces and did fantastic!  Kaylee had a harder song than she had played before and was frustrated many times at the beginning saying she would never learn how to play it so I was very proud that she kept working at it and played great!

Our next family activity was recreating famous paintings.  This was harder to find ones to do but it was pretty fun trying to find things that would work. Some of the kids were more into this one than others but Kaylee and I had a blast and she kept asking if she could do more of them. I have loved doing these with my family and they make me laugh so hard every time!

Brooklyn wanted to paint some rocks and luckily she has a big rock collection in the backyard to choose from so we spent a morning doing that while her sisters did school. 

I also wanted a project to do and decided to paint Brooklyn's bookcase that I had in my room growing up. It was a lot more frustrating than I thought it would be but it turned out pretty well and I love the way it looks in her room. 

McKenna, Brooklyn and I went on a bike ride one evening and saw these ducks in the grass off the side of the road. Of course McKenna had to stop and see them and I was shocked at how close they let her get. They barely moved at all no matter what we did and she spent a good 15 mins just checking them out. I love how much she loves animals.

Holly had a brilliant idea to make a music video with both of our families. The original music video for Beautiful People shows a regular, awkward couple going to Hollywood and being surrounded by glamour and fame and not fitting in. So we decided she would be the glamorous family and we would be the awkward normal family. It turned out so amazing!!

I saw these cute chalk drawings people had done where they draw a scene or character and then have their kids lay down and it looks like they are part of the scene. We decided to try it out but it didn't really work out how I was hoping. It was way harder than I thought and the sun was so bright the kids couldn't even look at me to take the pictures. Guess we won't be trying more of these in the future... ha ha!

McKenna and I went for a long bike ride on a trail that winds through a park, and through a fun little area in between neighborhoods. It was the most gorgeous day and I had to stop at this lake and take some pictures. McKenna really seems to need one on one time more than the other kids do so it's been fun to have a bike big enough to go with her on these little rides.

The elementary schools had a read-a-thon day which my kids were so grateful for!  I think they really needed that break from schoolwork. Richard built them a pretty sweet fort and they spent the entire day in it.  Except for lunch, Kaylee and McKenna did not move from that fort from 9:00-4:00ish! 

I needed a break from constant noise and chaos so I went on a little drive and parked somewhere to just listen to the silence.  I think it was really good for my mental health and I came back very much refreshed. Sometimes the many rainy days in a row here can really get to me and it's hard when we can't get outside to escape the house when we literally can't go anywhere else.

While I was gone, Richard came up with a genius way to play the floor is lava.  Instead of just saying the floor is lava every time, he would change it up so they had to listen to what he said and race to get on that thing before time was up. We did have a little mishap where the kids collided and McKenna's tooth cut right above Brooklyn's eye. Luckily the blood made it look worse than it was and she was up and running again in no time. She is the toughest kid! It was a great way to get some energy out on a rainy day and we have used this trick many times since!