Staying Connected through Memorial Day Weekend

We have been keeping up with our video calls in an effort to stay connected to loved ones along with lots of window visits.

School has been going well and we are in the final stretch.  We've been doing daily video meetings with his class the last couple weeks and it has been fun to talk with his teacher and classmates live each day.

I helped cut out letters to make yard signs for the high school seniors at church.  I tagged along as we delivered them last week.  I got to chat with some good friends along the way that I have missed so dearly.

We had a bit of a longer visit with my parents yesterday.  They were out for a drive and called to see if they could stop by.  I set up some chairs in the driveway and we had a great chat.  Our emotional health is going to become a focus soon and is just as important as physical health.  We are all struggling with this new dynamic a bit, but are grateful that our family is respecting our wishes.

Bacon cheeseburgers and beans to close out the night!

Hope you were able to enjoy the holiday weekend.

Minnesota Spring

In typical Minnesota fashion, the weather has been hot and cold.  It was gorgeous last weekend and we were able to play outside without bundling up.

We have taken a few further trips with Parker's 4-wheeler as well.  We have a soccer field not too far away where Parker is able to let it rip in a larger area.  We are looking forward to the day when we get to visit Grandpa and Nana out in the country, but this will do for now.

It turned a bit cooler this weekend, but we got to see another Birthday Brigade for a neighbor boy.  They also had some tasty donuts which the kids loved, of course!

Parker's art project for the week was making a super hero cape.  I used one of Jimmy's old shirts to cut a cape.  He wrote his name and I wrote "SupeR."

Mother's Day was pretty low-key (isn't everything right now?!) Jimmy was working, so I made myself a loaded omelette with some leftover veggies and played with the kids.  Jimmy got me a huge cast iron skillet from Chrissy Teigen's Cravings collection that I have been eying up for a while.  I am really excited to start using it.

Hope you moms were able to have a great day too!

Recent Home Projects

We've been using some of our quarantine time to complete some much needed projects around the house.  I've had this IKEA Ekorre swings for years and always intended on hanging it in the basement for Parker.  I finally got the hook needed for mounting and both kids have been fighting over it loving it ever since.

We had done some trimming on a small tree in our backyard a couple years ago, then it lost a very large branch last year.  This left it looking pretty shabby, so we decided to take it down completely.  My dad came over with his chainsaw while we watched from the house.  I think it will really open up our yard a lot.

We've been using these coat hooks in our stairwell since we moved in.  They are in a convenient location, but can really narrow things up, especially in the winter.  Our laundry room is through a door just to the left in the pictures below and is a perfect spot for a little mudroom.  

We had already been storing our shoes in here and also had a hutch the Jimmy's grandpa made, a bench that just collected junk, and a beverage refrigerator.  We gave the bench back to my parents and moved the hutch and refrigerator to other walls.  This cleared a whole wall to make something happen.  I ordered some new shoe racks, coat hooks and a hanging basket.  One set of hooks is lower so the kids are easily able to hang up their owns things.  The baskets are going to be mainly used in the winter to keep the seemingly endless amount of hats and gloves organized.

The organization continued in the garage.  It's a bit of a curse and a blessing to have such a big garage.  Plenty of room to store things and plenty of room to collect junk and messiness.  I removed a built in wood shelf on the right and side and moved the white shelf over that had been on the left.  This opened up a space to keep all of our receptacles. At some point I hope to get rid of the wood stove, which will open it up even more.

We were left a lot of great storage solutions by the previous owner and I hope to utilize them more in the future.

I finished removing the wood storage that was at the back of our garage and used the 2 x 4s to create some new hanging storage for tools. The ladders were previously hanging on a side wall, next to our van.  They were pretty secure, but could have caused some damage if they ever fell.  They are now off to the side and won't damage a vehicle is they do fall.