When we moved into this house 7+ years ago the oven didn't quite close all the way. But it worked well enough for us to keep using it a little longer. I discovered a few years later that if we used the back right burner to boil water or cook anything that had a lot of steam it would cause the electrical panel to glitch and cause an error that shut down the oven and stove for 10 seconds to 10 minutes. Easy enough to avoid. Finally this month the door handle fell off. It looked like something we could probably fix pretty easily, but I took it as a sign that it was finally time for a new oven.
The black top is so much better because you can't see every splatter of dirt quite so easily. And the convection oven works and I can use any burner I want to cook on. But I don't because it's a habit to avoid the back right burner.
The kids were impressed that the oven light works so we can see what's cooking without opening the oven door.
Ryan decided to take his (stuffed) dog for a walk. He rigged the dog in his dump truck, attached a string for a leash and walked him all the way to Grandma's house, then walked him back again. Just the kind of pet I like.
With quarantine officially lifted Sunshine Swim School was able to open for swim lessons and swim team.
B, Sammy, and Megan got in a class together, combining two levels. And since 3 is the max class size it worked out pretty good. Megan has impressed me quite a bit with her swim skills this year. She looks so good swimming, she has really made a lot of progress since last year.
We got the other kids signed up for swim team. Annie and Ryan agreed to it because Jared and Eloise were going to be doing it, but when Rachel heard that everyone else was doing it she was willing to join, too.
I always thought she would be great at swim team, but she's never been willing to try it out. Coach Garrett told me yesterday he thinks she's the fastest one out there.
All the kids are enjoying it so far, but they really do work them hard. It is an exhausting hour of swimming lap after lap after lap. And treading water (picture above). They're building up some good endurance. They'll be pro swimmers by the end of the summer.
I'm still trying to exercise regularly even though it is getting hotter. I just got my bike tuned up and it is amazing how much more smoothly it runs. Zoom workout group every Friday is always fun, too.
Saturday Todd's family went on a bike ride and invited any of my kids that wanted to join them to go. All the kids except Rachel wanted to, so I felt like I had to go, too, in case Megan needed to turn around before the rest of them. About halfway through the bike trail we decided to just go to the end and have Jacob come pick up the little kids, instead of turning around and having to go back uphill with the tired children.
4 of the 7 kids hitched a ride with Jacob, and B, Annie and Ryan decided to bike back with the adults. Annie got pretty overheated on the way back, so I had Jacob come pick her up at Valencia, about a mile away from home. She made it 7 miles, and Ryan and B ended up biking 8 miles that day. The other kids did 4 miles. It was an impressive ride as we didn't start as early as we maybe should have so it was a little warm for a bike ride. But they persevered and did great.
We returned home and had a dance party that Ryan had been planning for a few weeks. Savannah brought over her rainbow ribbons and they had a grand old time getting jiggy.
We had a nice low key afternoon before taking them to swim team that afternoon. They burned a lot of calories that day. And slept really well that night.
The next day we had church at our house. Megan and I just happened to both wear striped dresses. As people arrived we noticed more stripes, zig zag, and checkered patterns, so we had to snap a picture.
Not to be left out, the flower girls got their own picture:
For Memorial Day we had a bike 5K/10K. Sammy and Megan rode one direction on the Julian Wash Trail, then Jacob picked them up. The rest rode back to the start to complete the 10K and all did amazing without complaint or getting too tired. Super fun.
Rachel has been contemplating switching from percussion to trumpet for band next year. She decided she wanted to work on that for one of her #StriveToBe goals this summer so she'd be ready to play trumpet in 7th grade with all the kids who played trumpet for all of 6th grade. I checked at Bookman's (a used bookstore that also has lots of instruments) for a trumpet after I went to Costco one day. They had one that looked good, so I bought it for her. I got home and texted Grandma or Savannah to tell her I got a trumpet. Before I was unloading the second load of groceries she was home having come immediately on her scooter to check it out.
She is already pretty good at it, having borrowed her friend, Chelsea's trumpet several times throughout the year and having been tutored on it. She spends lots of time on the trumpet practicing every day and she's coming along really well.
Megan lost her second front tooth in less than a month. She told me, "I'm all ready for Halloween! I can be a vampire!"
The kids are still rotating through making dinner once every other week. We've let making lunch for everyone fall by the wayside. When school was going and we were done at noon, it was easy for one person to make lunch for everyone because they were all hungry at the same time. Now they snack at different times throughout the morning and sometimes some kids are at Grandma's or Todd and Savannah's when someone else is ready for lunch, so it just makes more sense for everyone to just take care of lunch on their own.
I realized after Ryan had made French Toast for us for dinner last week that learning how to make French Toast was actually one of Ryan's #StriveToBe goals. Bonus accidentally working on a goal!
We've still been eating out for lunch once a week, which the kids love. Last week we needed to take something in to Jacob at work, so I took the kids along and we at at Costa Vida. They had a good time being out in an actual restaurant for the first time in a long time. There were only 2 other people eating in when we got there, but by the time we left there were 2 or 3 more tables occupied.
Always practicing:
We hosted our first non-family playdate since the pandemic hit last week. We set up the kid car wash and turned on the sprinklers and had the Reimanns and the Allens come play.
Luckily Annie had left all her swimsuits at Grandma's house, and when she went to get it Grandma offered for us to bring all the kids over to her backyard for more fun. It turned out to be lots of fun.
With the trampoline, swimming pool, and slip and slide there was plenty for 19 kids to stay happy with until we all got hungry for lunch.
We put in an order for new carpet a week or so ago. It should be installed mid-June. Which means we have a short window to get any painting done that we want to without worrying about dripping paint on the carpet. The girls' walls have been hammered and push-pinned and gotten dirty so much that it was definitely the right time to paint it. I actually bought paint for their room months ago, but after painting my bathroom I was not really in the mood for more painting, so never got around to it. Ordering carpet was just the push I needed.
Before:
So much pink. When we moved in Rachel chose the dark pink as the color she wanted her room. I chose a lighter pink for most of the walls and let one wall be dark pink. We're going with blue this time around.
The girls really like their bunk beds not stacked, which means there is very little space in their bedroom. And when we pushed all the furniture to the middle of the room there was still hardly any room around the edges to stand in to paint the walls. But we managed.
Rachel and Annie both pitched in prepping the room and painting. And Grandma Knight came and spent all morning painting with me. It was super helpful.
Here's the after picture:
It's a bit darker than it looks in the picture, but not too much. A nice change from the pink. We're leaving most of the books and nicknacks in the office or the closet shelf until after the carpet is installed since we have to move everything then, anyway.
Last Wednesday we got together at Todd's house to watch the SpaceX launch, but it had to be postponed because of weather, so on Saturday we went over again and watched the launch. It was the first human heading to space being launched in the US in the last 9 years, or something like that.
Afterwards I read the kids the picture book Hidden Figures and invited anyone who wanted to watch the movie to come see it. So we watched a couple of guys get sent to the International Space Station, then we got to watch a movie about the black women who helped make it possible for the first American man to orbit earth. It was a good, spacey kind of day.
After folding clothes that night Megan was all about some selfies.
She looks so cute with her front teeth missing.
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