May - Starting to Emerge from Quarantine

There was a frost advisory May 8th and May 9th... good grief!

M took the kids to Walt's "petting farm" and the kids got to play with the goats,
ducks, cows, bulls, horses and I'm sure other things too!  They were in heaven!
Even got to ride a miniature horse and our donkey! LOL!

S helped M get some decals put on his new dump truck!

We had an open house and the kids were put to work
to get the house cleaned up!

Everyone pitched in!

The kids have been getting so much screen time at home, that when we've been
in the car, they've been made to find something else to do!

S found these little snails and "saved" them all - ugh, gross!!

Mama Dove has been sitting up there forever!  This was the
first time we saw her "baby" and he is quite large now!  We
are wondering if there is an unhatched egg up there that she
continues to stay??

C and I planted these bulbs 2 years ago and they finally bloomed!

Blue aliens are now doing our yard work!

Baby ducks at the lake!

We had some friends up to the lake and the 
kids had a ball tubing!

S is doing great on the wakeboard!

They DO love each other - even if they don't
always show it!

Church started back up for live services - thank goodness!!

Social Distancing - Week 11 (LAST week of ELearning!!!)

Well, we made it to the last week!  Hallelujah!!!

Tuesday - We skipped school in the morning to go to Riverbanks Zoo.  When we got home, the kids finished their work for the day and I got dinner ready.  

Wednesday - I worked today so Hannah was with the kids!  They did work, ate pizza, sang karaoke and played games.  I met them at C's guitar lesson and then we came home and ate dinner!  

Thursday - Today was C's last day of school work.  Tomorrow he has a "virtual field day" which I don't think we will even participate in because we are just over it already!  Both kids finished their work in the morning and then we headed out - lunch at Panera, got a bolt out of my tire, grocery store.  We made cookies(well, we did break and bake cookies..LOL!) and the kids played outside before M got home.  The boys worked on the plane while S and I were quite lazy before bed!

That's never good!

It was crazy!  They wouldn't let me get out of the car "to limit
exposure" to COVID.  Sooo.. instead they felt it was "safer" for me to
drive the car into the bay in the shop and sit in the car while they
jacked it up!?!?!  I'm sure that is against every rule in their rule book!

Easiest cookies ever!  And they taste as good as the ones that
take a lot of time!;)

This poor plane has been through a lot with these two!  We will
see if their attempt to "fix" it worked!

Friday - C was so glad to not have any work today!  He spent the morning making water guns out of my cleaning bottles and canons out of matches(good grief!!) while S did her work.  Gavin's mom picked him up and he got to spend the afternoon at their house:)  S had a few missing assignments that needed to be turned in from past weeks, so she had to work extra hard and long today to get it DONE!  But, we made it and are so so so glad for the year to be over!!  

Making his canon

Emptied out my cleaners to make his watergun!
And that yellow Windex is NOT easy to find right now!
I had been to 4 stores just last week trying to find
some!

Busy, busy!

Bring on SUMMER!!

Riverbanks Zoo

The kids and I escaped for the day to Columbia and visited the Riverbanks Zoo that just reopened last week!  It was a cooler, drizzly morning but none of us minded!  They are doing timed entry for now and we had to pre-purchase our tickets which kept the crowds way down!  A couple of the exhibits were not open - namely the gorilla enclosure(but we could see a family of four through the door and out the other side) and feeding the birds(this was disappointing to the kids as they were looking forward to this, but I hate birds and think they are stinky, so I was okay with it!).  We loved feeding the giraffes(it was set up so only one group was allowed on the platform at a time, so we did have to wait, but not too long and it was nice to have the giraffes all to ourselves when it was our turn!), going through the barn, petting the goats in the goat exhibit as they tried to eat all of our clothes, watching the sea lions and seals play and then going out to the car for lunch.  When we came back in, the kids got much anticipated Dip n Dops, we saw all of the big cats(the lions were pretty active!), laughed at the pink baboon butts and the howler monkeys were very playful swinging and climbing through their exhibit and the bears were sleeping!  We saw the penguins and it must be mating season for the flamingos because they were so loud and fighting with each other with their feathers all fluffed!  It was a much-needed road trip and we are glad things are opening up so that we can do another adventure soon!

he was eating C's shorts!

Now he's eating S's shoelace!

There was another baby in there too, but the door is in the way!
They were just hanging out and probably enjoying time without
all of the people being in there messing with them!

Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend is typically S's dance demo weekend and it is really quite sad that she was not able to showcase what she has learned this year and spend time with her dance friends... sigh!  But, we made the most of the time that we had together!

On Saturday, the kids made us breakfast and then M took the kids to the lake to work on the dock and took them tubing on the lake.  I got a glorious day to myself and definitely found ways to keep myself busy - back to the gym for the first time since COVID shut it down, got my car washed, grocery shopping finished and a few other random errands!  After dinner, we lit some little fireworks outside!

Sunday we spent a very warm morning on the Swamp Rabbit Trail followed by lunch at El Thrifty, trailside!

Today, we took some time this morning to get some yard work done and then went to Table Rock State Park and hiked a beautiful two mile trail, Carrick Creek Trail and ran a few errands and were home in time to relax!

Kids made breakfast for us:)

I could get use to every other cardio equipment being used - I've always hated
when an un-showered, sweaty, garlic-eating person gets on right next to me!

No crowds this morning!

A very crowded Swamp Rabbit Trail

Accidentally took my picture while putting my camera away! 

We hit 90* today!

Table Rock State Park

We've seen a lot of snakes this year!  This was two cottonmouths(aka water
moccasins)!