2020 wasn’t all bad

An incredibly popular ice breaker question that comes up whenever someone is trying to be deep without being too deep is “What in your life would you change?” The theory is you look back at your life and find this moment you deeply regret and say, “I would do this instead,” or some such like that.

I hate that question. I know Star Trek V is a trash movie, but it had one scene that taught 10/11 year old me an important lesson.

“I need my pain.” It’s what makes me who I am. My alcoholic father, my painful shyness and inability to transition to Texas so I retreated into books, my Mom’s car accident, my Dad died when I was 23, my miscarriage, and a dozen other wounds I’ve suffered. All of that makes me who I am now.

As do my joys.

How do we know what the highest mountain or the sunniest day is like if we don’t have valleys or stormy days?

We need more than moments.

With that, here is why I’m thankful for 2020 

 

The memes have been amazing!

Life can be hard. My reaction to difficulties is to look for the laugh, and there was plenty to laugh at this year.

After having several of my shared memes deleted by FB, I started screenshotting the ones I particularly enjoyed to save for later. I rather want to make a 2020 meme book. It would make me smile and laugh for hours.

I enjoyed laughing about apocalypse bingo. Or trying to predict the crazy things people were panic buying.

I laughed at the comparisons made to different events.

 

New friends were made

This is going to be hard to explain, but I’ll do my best.

 

Our church, like most churches, divides kids by grade and gender. Going into the quarantine we had tried mixing the girls up from time to time to try and break up cliques and break up kids who distracted each other.

After lockdown, we had assigned groups. I was assigned the quieter, bookworms and musical fans. This suited me perfectly and over the course of 8 months, we’ve created a great group that supports each other and spurs each other towards God.

I don’t think that would have happened without lockdown. We would have kept on with our non-functioning plan, trying to make it work.

My boys built a community of nerds among homeschoolers. They’ve got a thriving Discord channel that is filled with memes (YAY memes!) and lots of inside jokes.

The school year began with a looser lockdown, and our co-op was able to meet in person, to a limited extent. Since our co-op is mainly meeting at parks, it’s all out in the open.

BUT, there’s been a huge influx of high school boys, and by huge I mean the number of boys possibly doubled, and my boys just added them all to their group of friends.

They run a D and D group of boys that’s probably 10 or so kids, and it makes me smile each time the boys talk about it.

 

We learned new things about ourselves

 

I actually deleted what I first wrote, as I reread the post because I realized it wasn’t mine to share. My kids have all learned things about themselves and who they are as people. They learned things I’m incredibly proud of them for learning at 14 and 15 years old, but it’s not mine to share.

And what I learned I’m still not sure how to say in ways that make any sense. Having written yet another long statement and deleted it.

 

I’m thankful for 2020

Sucky year that it was, I’m still thankful for it. I’ve seen God do some amazing things during this year, and I’ve seen how people responded to each other.

Yes, there was a heck ton of idiocy, and a heck ton of people being horrid to one another. I occasionally had to back away from the social media world and limit what I watched or listened to because people became so hateful. But I’m happy for this year, and all it held.

I’m updating this post to include my memories from 2020

January

I almost didn’t include the picutre of Princess pulling Mac, because I’m just sitting here crying as I type this.

But, at the point I took this picture, Mac wasn’t walking too well, but he loved being pulled in the wagon as we would take him on a “walk. Sadly we had to put Mac down a few days later because he wasn’t eating and was in a lot of pain, and that was super hard for all of us.

Yeah, that sucked.

A lot.

But, on to more cheerful things.

For our New Year’s Eve movie marathon this year we watched Firefly, and then finished it off with Serenity. Of course, that was long enough we watched it over two days. I spent the time watching it sorting through my fabric stash because….

I joined the Murder Mystery Quilt Club, and I’m having a lot of fun putting together my quilt block for the month and choosing the fabrics for the quilt. Of course, I put that together on the 8th, so technically it’s in the second week, but I was sick on the 7th and so I’m writing this on the 7th.

New Years Day we had the cousins over, and the kids got to see that babysitting toddlers is not all fun and games. They’ve babysat a baby and enjoyed that. They’ve watched their older cousins and enjoyed that. But a toddler…. that was not the fun they were looking for.

Princess led an event for American Heritage Girls, a mother/daughter tea party. It didn’t go quite as smoothly as she wanted, neither her, nor I, were quite as organized for putting something like that together as we would have preferred. When she volunteered to lead this in August, it didn’t seem crazy, now it was a big stress for both of us.

And the final picture in the lower left, last semester we didn’t keep up with all of the labs in our biology class. We all agreed with Mac’s death we weren’t up to jumping full throttle into school, so our first week of school is scheduled with lots and lots of labs.

Like 7 chapters of labs.

No really. I started with lab 3.2 and we’re going all the way through lab 10.2.

Of course, Monday was the day of Princess’ event, so we didn’t get labs done. Then Tuesday I was sick. I didn’t even leave my room. I pretty much slept all day long. During which the kids slowly worked their way through the labs using prepped slides.

Yep, while I lay in bed sleeping and miserable, the kids did their school and figured out how to do the labs we hadn’t done.

It was pretty awesome.

February

The funny part of having teens is sometimes they randomly take your phone and get pictures. Like that top left picture. I’m assuming that’s Princess under a pile of blankets, but I honestly have no clue who took that or when.

We had a random cold snap this first week, and so I was having fun texting the kids a joke about Elsa making Texas cold. However Princess is now at the stage of “Frozen is stupid,” so she didn’t think it anywhere near as funny as I did.

Speaking of Princess, for our Writeshop lesson (check out my Writeshop review) there were to interview someone for a memory. The advice was to make the person you’re interviewing feel at ease, which means she made me a pot of tea and we sat and talked. It was quite well done.

While out and about we saw that middle picture where they had some problems with homophones. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have a pet rabbit.

I still need to deliver (as of writing this on February 16) the Encouragement hearts to the 8th grade girls. I’ve got them all printed off, but haven’t brought them to church.

We watched Hidden Figures since we’d read the book the month before. I opted to make snacks based on the time period rather than the book because it was hard to think of good snacks for the book. One snack we made was Party Mix, apparently Chex Mix was wildly popular at the time.

That last bottom right picture is from the youth retreat we went on that weekend, which was a nostalgia fest for me because I went there when I was in junior high and the bunk rooms are completely the same from when I was 13. The retreat had an amazing speaker, my only downside was not being able to go on a hike.

March

It’s probably an indication of how long this month already feels that I saved this week as week 3, instead of week 2.

This would be the week everything went crazy in the world. When everyone went from Coronoavirus is something on the news far away, to the Coronavirus is on the news and it might be in your town.

We started off the week with an international meal. I had each of the kids pick a different country to gather information about, and pick a dish to make. Superman made a delicious fried cheese appetizer from Greece. Batman had a dickens of a time finding a main dish from Netherlands that wasn’t using intestines or stomach of a sheep. Finally, he found something that was essentially a variation on chicken fried steak, or that’s how Jeff and I thought of it.

Batman did not appreciate that comparison.

I don’t like chicken fried steak, so I wasn’t excited by his meal. We finished off the meal with some cookies from Denmark Princess made, they tasted a lot like a peanut butter cookie with a glaze on them. (the pictures in the bottom left are from that meal).

The kids are helping me go through some new curriculum to let you know about them, and that center picture is Superman looking at his science curriculum. It’s a welcome break from their Biology, except for Princess who doesn’t like change. She is letting me know just how much she hates this. Which is QUITE A LOT.

I’ve taken to ordering loose leaf tea online since the local tea shop I had been buying from closed, and I got another big shipment in this week, I greatly amused the kids when I grabbed a random kitchen knife to open the box, “Mom! You can’t use that knife to open the box!” I completely ignored them and happily got out my Brigadoon tea that won’t be sold for another 4 years when Leap Day comes back.

I got a quick picture of the picture books I used for our study of Oklahoma, and I’ve decided I really want more literary coffee cups to pose with books. Because that’s always a great reason to buy a new coffee cup….

Those top two lefthand pictures are of my local grocery store on Friday as everyone suddenly panicked and went, “Oh no! I have to stay home for two weeks. I better buy ALL THE TOILET PAPER and ALL THE CANNED GOODS!” Seriously, I’ve got about a dozen pictures of all the craziness in the store. I wandered around different aisles just to get better pictures of it all.

Finally, Princess and I went camping with her American Heritage Girls troop. We worked at the campground on different service projects, and cleared brush and rebuilt a fence. That small picture with all the girls together is a picture of all the girls in our group working together to carry a dead tree the Dads had cut down.

And that’s week 2. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in week 3 with everyone in mostly voluntary quarantine.

April

Honestly, I don’t super remember this week. I was struck by one of the absolute worst migraines last Wednesday, and it took me several days to recover, and then I found a new book series, the Mercy Thompson books by Patricia Briggs (I’ve linked to the first book in the series). I finished the twelfth book yesterday after lunch. The kids have been teasing me mercilessly at my relentless reading goaded on by Jeff, who is having a blast teasing me. I have ignored them and finished the series, and now I’m reading the short stories collection. There’s a companion series, but I only bought the first one in that series in case I don’t like it as much, and as she got later in the series she was a little more willing to stray from the PG-13 content, and occasionally have some R rated content.

I like my books at the PG-13 or lower, which is why I tend to read YA, since adult fantasy all too often feel the need to show they’re adult by throwing in lots of sex or graphic violence, neither of which do I enjoy (hence why I never read or watched Game of Thrones).

But, back to what happened in our house this week. Having older kids is quite amusing. I texted my daughter a picture of the full trash can she was supposed to take out and forgot, she replied saying she’d take care of it. Then there’s my son who stacked my empty Dr Pepper cans that I’d missed putting in the recycling, that was my bad, but it was a funny response.

We’ve continued playing Code Names a lot because it’s such a nice quick game. Princess was even willing to play a few rounds, which let me get some pictures of people playing.

I’ve been toying and slowly working at creating enough ideas (with pictures) so that a church could have enough activities for two full hours of Sunday School from preschool through elementary age, maybe even middle school depending on how they run it. That top right picture is the take-home bag. I’ve had the supplies for the bag for months, but I’ve been putting off taking the pictures, even though I knew it would take all of 10 minutes.

Yes, it was that ridiculous. Now to get the next ridiculously fast job done. I don’t know why I am the way I am.

We finished off our history review, and the kids took their final Monday. Tomorrow, or today if you’re reading this on May 1, I’m going to have them correct it. None of them took their studying seriously, so they get to retake the test.

Middle right picture is my notebook. I’m working on revising a book I wrote, and a random bug decided to check out what I was doing, so I took a picture because he amused me.

And finally I continue to text random memes that amuse me to my family. This time a hilarious meme of a conversation between a husband and wife.

This finishes off April. I’m glad it’s done, and we’re heading into May. Today Texas is starting it’s soft open, which as long as people obey the rules of the soft open is a good idea, but the worry is they may be so excited by the opening of stores they won’t hold back and we’ll have this huge crush of people.

We’ll see. I’m looking forward to the attempt, and hope it goes well.

May

The funny thing is, most of these pictures are from the weekend as the month ended.

You know what’s not from May 29-31? The picture of my kids heroically hanging off of the car as Jeff moves from the driveway into the garage. They think this is hilarious and fun to do.

I think it’s hilarious my boys are so tall they had to duck to get into the garage.

In my new attempt to be more productive, I decided to try a version of batching, so I spent all of this week working on a whole slew of Creation story projects to add to my Creation story unit, and turn into a product to add into my store. I created 10 different projects, and took so many pictures and created so many different things. As I finished each idea, I came up with new variations on that idea. It was kind of funny. So, that top middle picture is of Creation prayer stations.

We started off the weekend watching Sense and Sensibility, I always forget how very much I enjoy this production of the story.

We’ve been trying to work on projects around the house each Saturday, and this week I slept in as Jeff and the kids did yard work. I woke up and Jeff was working with Princess to fix her swing. He had to buy the heavy-duty swing hardware because she’d worn out every other type we’ve tried.

That afternoon we had friends over again for playing more Shadows of Brimstone. My assassin, Stub Yoto, who works for Wam Yo Shins, has been very frustrated to see the Village Market blow up each time she attempts to go to there. Hopefully the third time will be the charm and I’ll make it there. She needs some nice walking sandals to improve her mobility.

Today, Sunday, I finally got the quilt block for my Murder Mystery quilt done. I got a few points off, but otherwise, I like it. Then Princess and I dropped off packages for the 8th-grade girls for a Bible study we’ll be doing later this week. I’m eagerly looking forward to a study on Lydia. I finished off the day going on a walk with Jeff at a local park. It’s the park we’ve been going to for park day with our co-op, and there was this statue I’ve noticed all month long, but it wasn’t anywhere near where we went, but today we walked right by it. I was going to take a picture of the statue when Jeff offered to get a picture of me with the statue, which made me smile quite a lot.

And that’s the end of May. June is going to be fun, our church is starting in person events, slowly, very slowly, and we’re going up to Dallas to get a new puppy! I can’t wait to meet her!

June

For the less exciting stuff.

Typhoon Texas opened up, so we started our summer of swimming with spending Tuesday there. It was a lot of fun, and no one ended up sunburned, so that’s always a good thing.

Oops, I totally forgot to put that picture in, but for our No Technology Night, we took part in a Harry Potter Digital Escape Room, which is kind of no technology, but it was a lot of fun to go through and we got through it pretty fast.

It’s only allowed to be up during the Quarantine, or that’s what I’ve heard, but we had fun with it.

Superman made soup for dinner for everyone, and that didn’t go quite as well as you could have hoped primarily because I didn’t have a recipe card for chicken noodle soup, so I had to seriously help with a freaked out teen. Eventually dinner was made but he had to learn quite a lot about that.

Finally, WE GOT A PUPPY!

Her name is Leezard, after a family joke, and she’s so much fun. The kids are going crazy about her, and we’re working hard to train her.

She’s not too helpful for schoolwork, but the good news is we are in summer schedule now, so it’s not too hard to work in playing with a puppy.

July

I’m only writing this a few days late, it’s July 26, and I’m still trying to remember just what I did last week.

Sigh, my brain is like a seive.

A couple of years ago Jeff got a game called Seafall for his birthday, it’s a legacy game, and we started to play it, and then it got put on the shelf, now we’re trying to play through it regularly, and it’s rather amusing to see how the game has changed. Also, I’m having a blast naming all of the advisors.

LIke I named one the smuggler John Hancock.

Actual conversation:

“Mom, why did you name the smuggler John Hancock?”

“Because John Hancock was a smuggler?”

“What?”

“Yep, the first president of the Continental Congress and first signer of the Declaration of Indepence was a well known smuggler.”

Isn’t that brilliant?

Finally, the next Dresden Files book, Peace Talks, came out and I carefully counted down the time until midnight when I could download the book, and then read through it in less than 12 hours. I was done about 10:00, after falling asleep at 2:30.

Of course, it was only about 250 pages, so not super long. The next book comes out at the end of September, and I really can’t wait.

In other, more earth-shattering news, the boys officially have their learner’s permit, and they’ve been driving us all over the place. We’ve done a fair amount of detouring to less busy roads, but they can drive us almost anywhere we would normally go as a family that way.

We did some repair work in the backyard on the sprinklers, and Leezard happily helped with digging holes, which covered her in mud. Washing her off was rather amusing.

I’ve been researching history like crazy, most mornings I go out for half an hour to an hour to research more of the history lessons. It’s been interesting and very much keeping me busy.

And the last two pictures, first is one of our Cooking Around the World meals, and second is one of the review questions for the government class.

“Colony that was viewed with contempt by many Americans. They were viewed as troublemakers.”

This was seriously quite amusing to me. 

Oh, and the boys and I got plague doctor masks. I’m threatening to go out in public with it, but I’m not quite sure how people will react to it.

And the kids started their science and writing this week, which they have all let me know was really not fair.

They did not agree to this.

I really didn’t care.

August

We started the week with Jeff going up to Dallas with Princess, so the boys and I spent the weekend playing Shadows of Brimstone for two days straight. I took my brand new frontier doc, Lottie S. Laughter, and leveled her all the way up to level 4!

Leezard got into a bag of chips that was vaguely within her reach, so of course, I had to get a picture before rescuing her and taking it off her head.

I’ve got all of my blog posts planned out for the next calendar year, in theory, maybe kind of. I’ve still got this theory of an awesome October 31 day series, which I haven’t written a single post about, so that may just be a crazy pipe dream I have.

Yeah, that feels like a pipe dream.

That bottom corner is what school looks like for me right now as we discuss history or government. The kids are spread out over the couch, and we have fun discussing.

Mostly, at times comments from the peanut gallery are a little overwhelming.

Continuing on, Jeff and I met my brother for a movie. Actually two movies. We saw New Mutants, Thursday night, and it was quite fun, much better than I expected. Then Friday we saw Bill and Ted Face the Music, and I loved that one. I kind of want to go see it again. It was a blast.

That night, we went to Princess’ Court of Awards for the year, and the boys wore their plague doctor masks, much to her chagrin. She was awarded the Presidential Service Medal again with 100 hours of service total.

And that is all of August, and I am tired.

Not a good way to start the next school year.

September

We started off September with a bang and had our monthly game club with our homeschool co-op. It was a blast to have them all there, but it was a tricky part where I had to keep reminding the giant horde Jeff is working from home.

Leezard thoroughly enjoys disemboweling her toys, so I gather up all the stuffing and bring it upstairs to stuff a giant pillow I’m making with various scraps. you can see all that’s left of her stuffed emu in that bigger picture.

The first week of September was primarily raining off and on, and I ensured it didn’t rain by taking my brand new unicorn umbrella with me. Of course, that only worked for a few hours that day, because it was quite wet by the end of the week.

We’re learning about Austria in geography, and it was kind of amazing how many of the classical composers come from Austria.

Continuing on, we watched Tale of Two Cities after reading the book, the kids truly despised this version because it was boring. None of them particularly liked the book, but they’d rather read the book again than watch that movie. It had all the right details, but none of the heart. It was a great lesson for them to learn you can have all the right details, but none of what is really happening. That crazy picture on the side is the kids posing so I can have a picture of someone reading Tale of Two Cities.

Our co-op had our annual Not Back to School party and there were SO MANY new families. Unsurprisingly many people have chosen to homeschool rather than deal with virtual learning, which means lots of new homeschoolers.

Someone pranked our neighborhood and filled it with bubble bath. I sent the kids down with the dog, but she was not as amused by it as I was.

And finally, I remade a very old recipe, chicken teriyaki, in my continued attempts to update old blog posts.

October

I’d seen news reports of a Dr Pepper shortage,but it hadn’t hit my local HEBs until that first week. That great big empty space is the empty spot where my Dr Pepper should be. It was very sad, no matter what my kids tell you, it was very sad.

Leezard figured out how to get up on the counter and happily ate the butter that was out on the counter for random use. Then the picture right next to it, is a random piece of rubber (I think) that I had to pull out of her mouth as she ran like a crazy dog around the local school playground. And that final picture of Leezard is her peeking in the window from the backyard to see if she’s finally allowed back in now.

She wasn’t.

That middle picture greatly amused me as Corona beer told me to make sure I stayed socially distant to stay safe from Coronavirus. It made me laugh and I had to share it with everyone.

That giant mob of people is a picture from the battle scenario Superman created for his “hands-on project” for the American Revolution.

That final picture of a person is Batman driving for the first time on I-35, which is a big deal because that road is crazy scary to drive sometimes.

And the two memes made me smile, or in the case of that blue one, made me think.

Galveston!

Jeff needed out of the house, desperately, and spent much of the summer looking around trying to find places where we could go that wouldn’t be closed whenever we went there, and finally we rented a house down in Galveston for a week.

Leezard was a lot of fun to watch in the ocean. She loved it, but the ocean did not love her, and so each time she was in the ocean she ended up throwing up.

A LOT.

So, we had to carefully watch her when we went down to the ocean. The kids had lots of fun playing in the water and building sandcastles.

We alternated between a day at the house, and a day out and about. So, the bottom half are pictures of our mini-golf excursion, and then a visit to the Moody Mansion in central Galveston.

The bottom corner is a picture of the very cool map I made for the gaming campaign I ran, which we still need to finish off, but everyone enjoyed the campaign, and I had to laugh because they solved all of their problems in a way completely different from how I expected.

One of my favorite things about visiting Moody Mansionwere all of the “Do not touch” signs. Whoever was in charge of their social media and interactions has a great sense of humor. I laughed at every single one of them, and took pictures. It was brilliant.

Interesting, the pictures on here are all out of order. So starting with the lower left hand corner.

That is the picture of the normally completely dry path to the beach. We were in Galveston when Tropical Storm Delta came through. It was kind of amazing to see how the wind and the rain whipped through the island. We only caught the tail end of it, and it wasn’t huge, but they were kind of scary sometimes.

I found a Civil War card game, whose name is currently escaping me, that was an interesting variation on a trick-taking game, and I played it with Jeff and the boys and did horrible at it. I think I’ll do better the next time we play.

We like to give Leezard empty bottles to use as a chew toy. She chases them around the house and slowly chews them into a little bitty pieces of plastic that fits much better into our recycling bin. In this picture she’s trying her best to lick the remains of the apple juice out of the container.

Right underneath it is a picture I drew 19 years ago when I taught 1st grade as part of a Me on the Map unit, I’m trying to decide what I should do with it.

And all the rest of the pictures were from our trip down to the Strand in Galveston as we wandered around. Which reminds me I still have some candy from that trip, I need to eat…

November

You can see the progression of Leezard’s cone, it’s quite hilarious, at this point there are giant pieces of it missing, and about half of it is made of duct tape.

But, the week started off pretty cool. I had an outing with the 9th grade girls wearing our best dresses, and then we went out to eat at a fast food restaurant, and it was a blast. That was a great start to the week, we all had lots of fun.

Then that night Superman and I got into an accident while he was driving, the sun was at just the wrong angle and we couldn’t see and as he was slowing down he hit the truck. Thankfully everyone was okay, and aside from bruises there were no injuries. Sadly, the car was totalled, so we are currently a one car family as we try to decide what we will do for a new car.

I’ve been continuing work on the quilt block, I’m over halfway done with the block and it’s really starting to look like a scarab. It has been quite a challenge to put together.

It was Princess’ birthday on Friday and we went out to eat for her birthday, and she got a free cookie/ice cream thing that was DELICIOUS and so much sugar. We followed it up by heading over to Ceramic Lodge to paint pottery, which was a blast. We followed it up with a family birthday dinner and the cousins spending the night.

December

The next weekend we headed up to Dallas for Christmas with my in-laws. We played lots of card games and attempted to show them Disciple Detective, which sadly they didn’t like. The boys each got an awesome new board game. Superman got World of Warcraft Smallworld and Batman got a Lord of the Rings game, which I can’t remember exactly which one.

We finished decorating our traditional Santa cookies on Christmas Eve Eve, but I realized after I’d baked them we were out of mini chocolate chips, so we added blue gel icing for the eyes, but they ended up looking scary as all get out.

The kids had decorated some of the presents with their cousins, which made for a few very odd decorations, but it also meant they got decorations they loved, like the Among Us themed present up above.

Our Christmas celebrations were so much fun. Jeff got me these amazing socks saying, “If you can read this… bring me a cup of tea.” I LOVE them.

We got a whole slew of games, Jeff got me two expansions to Clank and Star Trek Flux. Peter got a Roman gladiator two-player game. I bought Jeff a game based on Death on the Nile, which we haven’t had a chance to play yet.

Princess got an iPad and a subscription to Skillshare so she can learn all of the awesome materials she wants to learn.

And the other couple of pictures are of family. I found matching Christmas pajamas, including one for Leezard, who really didn’t mind wearing it like we thought she would. The picture makes me smile. Right above it is a picture of all the cousins together.