Birthdays week

So this week we celebrated Evelyn's birthday 9th birthday.  This spunky kid loves to read, loves to play with Seth, loves to talk and talk, loves when she receives praise, loves to hug, loves learning new songs on the piano, and is a cute little ballerina.  I got her a stuffed Dobby, illustrated stories, and a lego set.  My sister, Janelle, got her a Go nuts for Donuts game.  It's super cute and very easy for different ages to play together.  Sharon got her a simplified Disney movie music piano book.  She was thrilled that it had the Lava song and the theme song to the Incredibles in it.  Evelyn wanted a Turkish themed birthday.  We got her Turkish delight after she insisted.  I told her that I didn't like it and she ended up not liking it either.  But the other kids liked it okay.  We also went to the Greek n Go food truck, which is the closest thing that we have to a Turkish restaurant.  We left the house and she had to pee 6 times in the 20 minutes that it should have taken to go and come back. So.... another UTI.  At this point I'm pretty sure that she's just forgetting to drink and getting dehydrated.  This is the third one since starting to homeschool.

Memorial Day/my birthday we went on a visit to the Little Sahara sand dunes.  I love it.  I don't think I'd ever like this during the really hot months, but we have fun playing in the sand, digging, and just laughing.  It was the perfect social distancing day trip too.  There were very few people and we were very spread apart.  We saw lizards and mice.  I remember my Grandma Ellis showing me what the animal foot prints looked like when we were younger.  We took sleds, but it wasn't cold enough to really use them.  Mostly the sleds were used to carry stuff up to where we set up our shade.

They made me a birthday "throne".  It was so funny and surprisingly comfy, but the minute you move at all you're stuck in that new position.  They were all cute helping each other make it.

Sam really wanted to bury everyone, so they dug a very big hole and I helped bury them.... then dig them out again after.

We filled the boy's shirts up with sand.  They looked like they were carrying sand bags around.  It was so funny.  Sam even hiked up a sand dune and back with it in his shirt.

Jer brought sticks to play pig sticks with the kids.  Seth and I cleaned up our lunch area while these guys played.

Uncle Seth invited us to go star gazing with the Wilcox cousins.  That's always fun.  He bought a really cool telescope too.  You put in two points of refence and the telescope can find anything from there.  My mom found this tandem bike at a yard sale for $50.  McKay's family is currently staying with them during quarantine and they've been making good use of it.

Jonathan, Ellie, Aubrey, Millie, Walter, Amy, Mariah, Ada, Seth, Sam, Evelyn

Last treatment gong!

On Friday we got to celebrate Judy's last day of radiation (YAY!).  The Hansen cousins and us put together a welcome home for her.  Now she just has to get her drain removed and do some recovering.  She did extremely well and we're so glad to see her on the recovery side of things.  We all had masks on and got to hug her for the first time in almost a year.  That was great.  We'll still have to be careful, but now her body can start recovering and we're excited for her.  Since we were there together, we brought donuts to celebrate Evelyn's birthday with the cousins that we haven't seen for months.  Especially Millie.  Evelyn loves Millie so much.

A couple other things from this week?  We had to get rid of the bees that decided to make their home in our siding and had started coming into our laundry room and bathroom.  We called to see if we could get them rehomed because they were honeybees.  They said that they couldn't because of where they were building their nest, so they said to just kill them.  Jer took care of the ones outside and the 8 or 9 that made it into the house got closed into the laundry area until we could get them all.  By the time we got back to them, they were all dead.  Either the cooler was too cold for them or the sun killed them through the window.  Evelyn has started back at her dance class for the first time on Monday.  It's a little different, but honestly she does best focusing with fewer distractions around. Our dog getting out of the backyard for the first time in a long time.  Seth took her on a walk and didn't close the gate all the way.  She ended up getting into our neighbor's trash and into our own.  Grrr.