Hello there....

Well hello there or "Hello Darlin!" as Conway Twitty would say!😀😀 

Happy Wednesday and happy St. Patrick's Day to you all! It has been a hot minute since I have updated this here blog o' mine (looking back it has been 3 weeks!) Oops. Sorry about that. There were days that I just didn't have anything to write about, days I was too busy to write and other days that just sped on by and are now a part of history. 

The last time I wrote, Rebecca had just competed in her district tournament for Power of the Pen. If you are wondering what Power of the Pen is about, it is a writing competition where students are given a prompt and then immediately have 40 minutes to write a story based on that prompt. Then they take a 10 minute break. Then they are given another prompt and have 40 minutes to write a different story. Then a 10 minute break and then again prompt and story. It is a difficult competition. Well, on March 6, they held the virtual award ceremony for that tournament which we live-streamed on YouTube. 

I am super proud to say that Rebecca earned 2nd place out of 89 eighth grade writers at this district event with 18 different schools competing!! We are super proud of her! She goes on to compete at the Regional event this coming Saturday; this will also be a virtual event.

We have been trying to take advantage of some warmer spring-like days and have gone on more walks at Ariel-Foundation Park, the bike path, Kokosing Gap Trail, and the Holmes County Trail and Mohican Valley Trail and the Bridge of Dreams and we even visited Malabar Farm so that we could pet some farm animals and walk the paths. 

I fell off the porch. I was taking trash out and don't know what happened but I fell off the side of our porch and landed on top of our mini garden flag pole. Thankfully I just scraped up my arm and bruised my butt. I don't remember falling. I just remember that one second I was on the porch, the next I was on the ground. It was really weird. 

Bill fixed the dryer. We just had to buy a new washer (which has been working beautifully!) and our dryer decided to make really loud noises when you would run a load-- almost like you were drying a pair of sneakers in it. Well, Bill googled the problem, figured out it was one of the gear pieces that was worn down, watched a YouTube video, took the dryer apart, bought the piece and fixed it. Took him 4+ hours but only cost $25 to fix. Yay! 

We were able to attend a choir concert for Rebecca. This is the first one that they have been allowed to have in person this school year. Only parents and siblings who were too young to stay home by themselves were allowed. And everyone was seated maintaining distance between people in the theatre. The kids sounded great! It was very nice to be able to see them in person.

 

We went bowling as a family. I surprised the kids with a bowling outing. The boys and Rebecca had only ever been bowling like once or twice in their lives. They had a lot of fun and I didn't do too bad considering I hadn't been bowling in years! I don't think 136 and 114 are too bad of scores! 

We tried out some new foods as a family. We tried a new Oreo funfetti cake mix and frosting. It was pretty good, but something I could make with crushed up Oreos and plain frosting.

 

We also tried some new flavors of Pocky. We love the cookies and cream and chocolate ones here but wanted to try a few more flavors. So last Friday while we were watching our DVRed episode of the new Masked Singer we tried Almond Crush (which to me tasted like the outside topping of a Drumstick ice cream!), Chocolate banana (which Bill said reminded him of banana runts candy), strawberry (which Rebecca and I both said tasted like strawberry yogurt) and Matcha Green Tea. We liked all of them to some extent except the Matcha Green Tea one. That was just weird tasting to us.

 

We went on a free tour at a local Maple Farm. A friend shared that a local maple syrup farm was having an open house so we decided to take the kids. Well, come to find out this farm is owned by the family of the boys' kindergarten teacher's husband! LOL Jacob and Ben enjoyed seeing Mrs. Butcher at the market when we stopped in to buy some maple syrup and some maple cream. 

So there you have it. The highlights of the last 3 weeks! There have been some lowlights too--- like depression hitting Bill and I, some issues with my leg hurting, etc. But highlights and lowlights are all part of LIFE and we have to keep moving forward day by day and week by week. I am hoping to write more frequently as I do miss writing here on this blog, but I can't promise anything! (I will also try to write more so that Rebecca doesn't nag me that "You haven't written on your blog mom!" 😂 )

I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday and a Happy St. Patrick's Day!