Day in the Life: March 21st

6:30 Up, showered, and ready to wake up the rugrats

7:00 My always and forever breakfast

8:00 Wrapping up a March Madness themed Staff Appreciation Week

9:00 Games with my best five year old

10:00 All the dishes

11:00 Momma's little grocery helper

12:00 Magnatiles are never not popular in this house

1:00 Catching up on emails

2:00 Squeezing in a workout during naptime

3:00 Snack time for the monkeys

4:00 Dinner prep

5:00 No clue what they are watching, but clearly Darrell is invested as well

6:00 Cleaning up dinner so we can head to....

7:00 Our nephew's basketball game!

8:00 Home in time for bed

9:00 All the prep for a busy day tomorrow

10:00 About finished!

Day in the Life: February 21st

It was one thing pressing "publish" on Matthew's post that was nearly a year old, most of which was written months and months ago. It was another thing to type up Garrett's interview and pull pictures for his very belated birthday post. But making sense of a random collection of photos taken every hour almost a year ago? This ought to be interesting.

6:30 Up and done with my workout (which, if I'm being honest, never happens anymore because now that Matthew is in school I just do my workout once I get them all dropped off. Perhaps not the best way to maximize my time, but I can't say I miss the early alarm)

7:00 Pretty sure this could have been a photo from today because I definitely still have eggs and toast nearly every morning for breakfast

8:00 Ugh. This. Our dumb legislature was considering a bill that essentially would have allowed people to seek criminal action against librarians if they as parents disapproved of the books their children were checking out (which effectively would have resulted in certain books being banned from libraries to eliminate the risk that "sensitive" books were checked out by minors). I had words to share with my legislators and the committee considering the bill (and while I know the bill did not pass in its original form, I'm pretty sure some pieces of it were passed into law in an effort to hold librarians more accountable, which is just silly because A) all of our libraries have self-checkout machines and B) parents--not librarians--should be the ones monitoring what their children read)  

9:00 Not entirely sure why Connor isn't at school, but I'm guessing he's recovering from an illness. And it looks like we're getting ready to play war

10:00 Costco run with neither Matthew nor Connor in tow, so I'm guessing Darrell was working from home so he could watch them

11:00 Grabbing a bunch of Ramadan books that I put on hold at the library because I embrace the opportunity for my children to learn about people different from them instead of feeling threatened by it (and while Ramadan books were never specifically addressed in conversation about the law that certain lawmakers were trying to pass, I can promise you two things: 1) I have checked out and enjoyed reading with the boys some of the children's LGBTQ+ books that were discussed and 2) Once you start the slippery slope of what kind of content is "offensive" and needs to be limited, it's probably only a matter of time before books celebrating Muslim holidays start making the list)

12:00 If only the groceries would put themselves away...

1:00 Always so many dishes

2:00 Aha! I spy a trash can by the couch. I'm guessing Connor had a stomach bug the day before and is also home this day as a recovery day (and apparently "recovering" means "making lots of messes" because oofta that room is a disaster)

3:00 After school show

4:00 I spy William with a trumpet and a violin, which is why he isn't riding the bus home

5:00 Cleanup time before dinner

6:00 Looks like my mom is babysitting and Garrett has decided that he's going to have her help him get started planting seeds for the spring

7:00 Getting a little work done organizing photos before Book Club (and not sure where Darrell is but obviously he had a commitment hence the need for a sitter)

8:00 Book Club fun (I spy "The Silent Patient"--that was a twisted one!)

9:00 Next time I'm going to hire a sitter who's also a maid so she'll get the kids to bed AND clean my kitchen (just kidding Mom!)

10:00 Not sure what kind of photo project I'm working on, but clearly it's still going strong

11:00 You know bad choices are being made when we're sharing memes instead of getting ready for bed at this point of the night

12:00 Oofta. Definitely bad choices. This is way past my bedtime

Garrett: Ten Years!

 Unlike Matthew's post, this one has been sitting in my draft folder with very little content in it. So I'll do my best to piece a few things into it between pictures and his birthday interview, but I'm also just reminding myself that done is better than perfect. Definitely not how I want to close the book on his birthday updates, but life happens and here we are. And I'd rather close the book with an imperfect tenth birthday update than no update at all. 

What is your favorite color? Blue

What is your favorite animal? Cheetah

What is your favorite book? I Survived

What is your favorite song? Firework

What is your favorite sport? Soccer

I know I said it last year, but man Garrett has really taken to soccer. It's so fun to watch him play 

What is your favorite thing to do with Mom? Go yarn shopping

Garrett now crochets, and while his pile of started projects is significantly larger than his pile of completed projects, every once in a while he actually manages to finish something

What is your favorite thing to do with Dad? Play football

What is your favorite thing to do outside? Play on the snow hills

Where is your favorite place to go? The beach

I'm not sure if he has more fun fishing or swimming at the beach, but it's always a week with no shortage of smiles

What is your favorite fruit? Grapes

What is your favorite vegetable? Cauliflower

What is your favorite cereal? Cookie Crisp

What is your favorite treat? Milk Duds

What is your favorite meal? Balsamic Zucchini Ravioli

What makes you happy? Crocheting

What makes you sad? When people are mean to me

Who are your best friends? Pravash, Adric, Jamesia, JC, Merry

He and Adric goofing around during an indoor recess

What do you want to be when you grow up? Carpenter

What was your favorite part about last year? Fishing at the beach

What is one thing you want to do this year? Go to Pierre (spoiler since I'm posting this so late--Pierre didn't happen, but he still got to go walleye fishing for his 10th birthday trip with my parents, which was going to be the whole reason for going to Pierre, and since he still ended up catching lots of walleye he was perfectly happy with the change of plans)

A photo from the trip this past August, which I know technically shouldn't be on this post because if I had actually made this post in a timely manner I wouldn't have had this picture yet, but I can't not include it. Not just because of the fish, but also, look at that hair. He started growing it out shortly after his 10th birthday and it's just glorious. We've had to trim it a few times to keep it tidy (and not mullet-like) but otherwise he's all in on the flowing locks (and he's got the head flick to get the hair out of his eyes pretty well mastered)

I know I'll forget lots of details and miss lots of important things about Garrett at this age, but I will say that I've enjoyed the stroll down memory lane to pull the photos for this post. And let's be honest, no matter when I typed this or how much time I poured into making it perfect, I could still never capture all the details and nuances that make Garrett Garrett in a blog post. These posts are just the tip of the iceberg, and I'm so blessed that I get to experience Garrett in all his depths of character and personality!

Always an adventure out hiking with this crew, and Garrett has started getting big on wanting solo pictures with Mom and Dad, as well as carrying a plastic bag so he can pick up litter (which, sadly, we always find way more of than I expect)

Garrett loves growing stuff, and he has taken over planting stuff in our deck boxes (which honestly I never even bothered with) and he even grew a cantaloupe this year (which was delicious and he saved the seeds so he could grow more next year!)

Still going strong with piano lessons, and we've added another violinist to the house

Garrett the reporter at the Sunday School Christmas Program. He was super nervous about "acting" in front of an audience but did a great job!

Tried waterskiing again this summer (with new water skis) and it went so much better!

Garrett and a classmate wrote Christmas letter books to help kindergarteners work on their letter sounds and they even got to use them to do a little lesson with some kindergarteners 

I swear this isn't child labor--he genuinely LOVES mowing

Garrett tried lacrosse at a summer camp, and like most things he picked it up pretty easily and said he wanted to play it more, but unfortunately there just aren't a lot of lacrosse opportunities around here

The first few times we went to the skating rink Garrett opted for roller skates and while he did fine with them, it was a game changer for him to get roller blades. He was zipping around the rink

He was a little nervous about the heights at first, but once he fell a few times and learned his harness would catch him, he LOVED playing around on these aerial activities.

I can't think of a better cake for this sweet boy than a fish cake. He's followed William's footsteps in a lot of things, but it has been so fun to watch him really start exploring some interests that are just his (like fishing, crocheting, and gardening). He's a maker and a builder and always full of great ideas, and while Mom and Dad sometimes wish he would close the loop on his ideas a little more often, it's always fun to see where his ideas are taking him next