May 2022 in review

Oops, I forgot to get it started and here it is May 30, and I need to write up a whole lot of went on. This is made all the more complicated by the 2 million pictures I took on our 20th anniversary trip. Either way, it’s been an awesome month.

(there are affiliate links in here, games were played)

May week 1

Okay, we started off May with my reading Teach by Dennis Dinoia so I could write a review of it. I had fun making the kids take pictures of me reading and then pretending to get a picture of Leezard reading it. She was not as amused, but was quite happy to eat the food we were holding to get her to look in the right direction.

We learned about a few countries, I know that strange-looking flat food is from Djibouti, where my essentially banana pancakes did not turn outright. Wait, I apparently mentioned this in April as well, so it must not be Djibouti. I recently had 4 different countries with strange banana foods I tried to make that did not turn out how they claimed it would. My accelerated geography lessons mean I’m losing track of what country had what food.

Also, whole regions with banana as a major food source I wouldn’t have expected them to.

I made everyone take pictures with me for Mother’s Day, which was then spent playing games together and I was thoroughly happy.

I played Scythe with Jeff and the boys, which sounds insanely complicated as people are telling you about it, but is not as bad as I thought it would be when I learned about it. It’s an area control and worker placement game. I liked it more than I expected.

I was also rather amused by the countries included and it led to us joking about who would pick Poland to make sure they were never carved up by Russia (I’m watching you Russia, you won’t get me).

And I finished up my Bible buildings (I can’t remember if I wrote about them, wait no, I did in the Create a Bible Village post) so I could then go and a week or so later finish up my Jesus at the Temple unit. I now have a whole slew of Bible posts to write.

Week 2

I volunteer for the parking team at our church and this particular Sunday it was raining like crazy, and a nice couple lent me their umbrella and as they were leaving church they gave me a slip of paper saying, “Give us a call when you’re done to return the umbrella when you have a chance.” After church, I called her, and she tried her best to convince me to just keep it until next Sunday, and I finally convinced her to let me just return it to her house, which was less than 5 minutes from the church. It was a really neat story I wanted to remember, so I drew a picture of it.

Batman had one of those super long days and fell asleep on the couch with Leezard cuddling with him, and it made me happy so I stole a picture of it.

We’ve been having odd shortages, and this was one of them, they were out of oolong tea.

And this is the next banana dessert, and it was terrible, they didn’t really turn out, and I was almost certain I had ruined the mini muffin pan, but thankfully after soaking for quite a long time and a little bit of scrubbing I was able to get all of the bits and pieces out.

Week 3

The top left picture is of The Artist’s Court of Awards and she earned the Presidential Service Award gold level with over 200 hours of service. Yes you read that right, she had over 200 hours of community service this year.

That happened right before Jeff and I headed off for a 2-week 20th-anniversary trip. We drove all the way out to South Carolina, stopping along the way at every welcome center and stopping at all sorts of really cool places as we traveled.

It all ended when we reached South Carolina and went to the wedding for the daughter of one of my best friend’s from high school. When they still lived in Texas we got together all the time, and her daughter babysat my kids, and she stayed at my house a time or two over the years, so it was a really special thing to be able to go to her wedding.

This first week of our trip we went by Washington, Arkansas and saw where the Bouie knife was created, it was a really cool historical village. The next day we went to Franklin, TN and toured the battle site there, that was fascinating.

We drove for an hour or so and toured the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s home, which was one of the few places I specifically wanted to go because I went as a kid and remembered it was really cool, and wanted to visit it again as an adult, and I was right it was really cool to go through.

Then we drove on and reached Pigeon Forge, TN and toured the Alcatraz museum, which was not as cool as I hoped. It was over-priced, and was a lot of general Wikipedia level information.

Then we went to the Biltmore and I got so many pictures there. I’m planning on turning them into some writing prompts.

Week 4

After the wedding, we spent a couple of days in Charleston to hang out with my friend, and did all the history stuff. I finally got to visit Fort Sumter, which could have used another 30 minutes there, AND I got to visit the Hunley museum. That was a fascinating 3 hours we spent going through it, listening to a talk from one of the docents theorizing why the Hunley sunk (we still don’t know).

We left South Carolina and through Georgia, then down to Florida, where we spent a day or so in Saint Augustine and toured this 200+-year-old home/boarding house owned by a series of women. Jeff and I went to Saint Augustine for my family reunion when we were first married, so there was also a bit of fun as we got to go to see it again.

We were going to take more time driving home, but Jeff and I were both not feeling great, and it was raining. So for the final part we didn’t stop as often. If most of the things you’re thinking about going to are outside, visiting them in the rain is not fun.

We got home and for the final few days of May we played a few rounds of Dominion with the boys. Our second game really showed how much the cards you get determine how much fun the game is. We had a grouping of cards that just were not fun together and did not play well together.

Oh, and I didn’t get any pictures of this, but as Jeff and I were traveling each night we played through 1 game of the Harry Potter Battle for Hogwarts game. After we defeated book 7 we played through the expansions starting accidentally with the second expansion, Charms and Potions, and then cycling back to the Monster Book of Monsters expansion.

All right, I’ve now spent way longer than I intended to writing this up in one sitting, so I’m going to go get up and take the doggo for a walk.

How was everyone else’s month?


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