Week in the Life // Wednesday Words & Photos
And here we are on Wednesday already. Today Ben was up at 6:30am, which is a little bit earlier than normal. We started off the day with the two kids yelling at each other. Thankfully, that’s not the norm around here since they both seem to be morning people. I’m wondering if Ben’s eczema has been bothering him because he’s been really itchy recently. He seemed to be growing out of his skin sensitivity, but it is definitely flaring up. I noticed it after the bath and we had to use his steroid cream (usually a last resort). Mike took care of breakfast with the kids this morning while I got ready and got everything gathered for Ava’s classes.
After breakfast, getting dressed, and brushing teeth, Ava was ready for school to start at 8:30 with Ms. Trish in third grade math. Ben went downstairs with Mike for some playtime in the basement. He’s been writing his letters and they’ve been playing some board games. Sometimes he’ll get a cartoon before he heads outside. I’m so thankful Mike work and take his calls outside. This is the longest stretch he’s ever been home without traveling. Obviously, visiting hospitals is out of the question right now.
While the boys were downstairs, I was able to get some work and studying done. I actually wrote blog posts for the first two days of Week in the Life, edited my photos and got them organized into daily folders. Next, I had a few social media posts and catch up work for the design teams, as well as lots of DM‘s and messages and comments on different posts. Most of my time was spent studying and I’m making a lot of progress hoping to sit for the exam as soon as it’s possible. Today, I made myself a late breakfast (a soft boiled egg on toast usually I have Trader Joe’s everything but the bagel seasoning but I ran out and I keep forgetting to order some).
Ava had a words per minute benchmark evaluation with Miss Kim. All the kids had to sign up for 15 minute slots and she stressed how important this evaluation was. Ava doesn’t seem to have any issues with taking tests and quizzes, so she didn’t seem bothered or overly preoccupied with the evaluation. Once that test was done, she was actually done for the day. She joined the boys downstairs for a cartoon while I put together a very simple lunch. We all went outside in the backyard for some swings and trampoline time. Mike had a few conference calls in the afternoon, so I stayed outside with the kids for a few hours. We transitioned to the driveway on the side of the house to build tall towers with the jenga blocks. We’ve never really had any success with the actual Jenga game, but they’ve proved to be loads of fun as large building blocks. Ben and I worked on a super tall tower. Mike bet me $5 that I couldn’t build one taller than myself. Ben and I were super excited when we won.
Our tree guy came this afternoon and I had to walk through our yard with him. The landscaping and trees were some of our favorite aspects of this house when we looked at it for the first time three years ago, but we had no idea how significant the upkeep would be. I spent about an hour with Jim, who is incredibly nice, and learned that we actually have two different varieties of magnolia trees on our property with a total of about 12 trees. He said to expect a ton of blooms this year, which I love. We lost a spruce bush and one other small tree. We talked a little about the cold wet spring that we’ve had and the effect it’s having on a few of the flowering shrubs.
No visits from Mom and Dad today. I know we want to see them before Saturday, when Dad will take uncle Terry back to Indiana. They only have a few more weeks before their lease is up at the end of May.
Mike surprised me and asked this morning if we had any puzzles for grown-ups. Of course we do! I had no idea Mike even liked puzzles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him work on a puzzle in the 15 years we’ve been together. But, he proceeded to spend the bulk of the afternoon on a really cute 500 piece puzzle and we all got involved to some extent. It was funny… he was super protective of the puzzle and had a very clear method. He wasn’t very keen on any of us doing any unsupervised work on the puzzle. As of bedtime, he was about 3/4 of the way done and very proud of himself.
Dinner was cheesy eggs and crescent rolls along with fresh strawberries. We eat so many eggs I think I made nine total in this batch of scrambled eggs and we ended up not having enough. No baths for the kiddos tonight so just playtime and more puzzle time. Ben was definitely cranky and I think his stomach was bothering him. We decided on an early bedtime, especially since he was up earlier than usual this morning. Ava was ecstatic to have more time to read her book and as usual we sat on the bed together reading.
The majority of my evening photos were taken with my phone, and as I mentioned I’ll be dealing with those later. Thanks for visiting and I plan on posting Thursday words and photos tomorrow morning. So far, I’m really enjoying this process. I hope you are, too.
