Weekly Wrap up 10/30/20 -- College update

 Firedrake has been at college for over 8 weeks now and seems to be doing well.  We text several times a week and she calls once a week (usually on Sundays) to check in and chat.  She is happy and that is all we as parents can hope for.  

She sent us a picture of a group art project one of her classes completed.  Turned out pretty cool!

While living in the dorm she is experiencing several interesting events and I will list just a few of them here:)

While Firedrake and her roommate are getting along fantastically, the other two girls in the apartment, however,  are not! Recently one of them moved out of the dorm room unexpectedly!  Firedrake is sketchy on what transpired exactly between the two girls.  They are not sure if they will get another roommate any time soon.

Another issue that came up recently was that a bunch of cars in the dorm parking lot were vandalized one night.  Luckily Firedrake's car was not one of them!  She hasn't heard if they caught the people who did it yet.

Firedrake has registered to vote in her college town as we were unable to get the absentee ballot in time to her.  She can't wait to cast her vote this Nov 3rd.  I have asked her to make sure she takes a picture of her wearing "I voted sticker"!

On two separate evenings rather late the fire alarms went off and she spent some time outside in the cold waiting for the fire department to get an all clear.  Later on she found out both times someone burnt a bag of microwavable popcorn!  She was not amused by those experiences at all :)

Lastly, while she is doing well in her classes she does have one class where the teacher grades incredibly hard and Firedrake tells us that the online classroom chat, the students are all complaining and the tests scores are so bad that the teacher is having to grade on a curve.  Firedrake wasn't completely sure what that meant so she she called us to find out.  Homeschoolers don't usually grade on a curve.

Firedrakes roommate loves Pokemon and since I made a stain glass sun catcher for Firedrake to take to school she asked if I would make her room mate's favorite Pokemon for Christmas.

the roommates favorite Pokemon is EVEE so I found a picture on the internet and came up with a pattern!

 all cut out and will have it ready for when we pick Firedrake up before Thanksgiving to give to her roommate.  

All completed.  Hope she likes it:)

Over all this college seems to be doing well with the pandemic, keeping their covid number fairly low with an average of 10 to 20 cases per week.  According to Firedrake social distancing and mask wearing is expected in all areas around the campus and she is staying safe.  

Weekly Wrap Up 10/23/20 -- Chemistry experiment

 MarioFan is continuing his Chemistry online and it includes labs.  This lab included Chemical reactions

 

the lab report and directions  provided by the teacher

working with the indicator and discussing how chemicals reactions can be varied

most of the students do the lab along side the teacher and she can watch the results while the students follow along and they can discuss any issues the kids have if their reactions don't work, which did happen in this class!  Luckily MarioFan's all worked on this day

watching the chemical changes via color 

chemical reaction turning into gas--hard to see but this bag started to inflate

putting lemon juice onto one side of an apple while leaving the other side untouched

documenting the results after one hour 

and then documenting 24 hours results was the homework for this lab

While I was out of town the class did another lab and my husband sat in the room (away from the camera) in order to listen to the class and was pretty impressed with the topics being taught and doesn't think the class was dumb down at all.  Science is very important for us and we want to make sure MarioFan is being taught at the high school level and with online classes you can never be too sure based on the description!  

Weekly Wrap Up 10/16/20-- Visiting my Mom

I have been trying to arrange either visiting my Mom at her house or having her come to our home every quarter since my Dad passed 18 months ago.  However this pandemic has really messed things up.  Last quarter I drove to my Moms right before Firedrake went off to college and before MarioFan started school.  This time I flew out to see my Mom and got a chance to see how the airports/airplanes are managing this pandemic.  Luckily the airline I used was keeping the middle seat free and mandated that everyone over the age of two wear a mask.  There were no issues that I saw so it wasn't a bad as I feared it would be. 

I found an overpriced N95 mask at the airport and bought it in addition to wearing a face shield.  Despite the face mask company saying it doesn't fog up, it does and it was hot and very uncomfortable to wear.  I forced myself to wear on the way to my Mom's, I decided not to endure the face shield on the way home. 

While at my Mom's I try to help her with any house/yard items that she needs to get done but can't do on her own:).

My Mom and Jack our first day together we relax and just enjoyed each other's company

Her garden club has resume their meetings and are meeting outside or in someone's garage.  One of my Mom's friends from the garden club.  I always enjoy going and seeing what they are doing.   I am not a gardener like my Mother but I enjoy attending these meeting with her when in town. 

One of the ladies brought this book for her grandchildren about the pandemic and I thought it was excellent for young children.  She was passing it around at the garden club

It was my Mother's birthday so I made additional UK Christmas cakes and we had the smallest one for her birthday:). The other two are for her to have over the holidays as we are not sure what the holidays will bring and if we can be together. I make her a Christmas cakes every year when we are together or I mail her one:)

I also attended Jack's class for obedience training.  He is doing really well and my Mother's goal is to turn him into a therapy dog.  He is still a bit young only 11 months and still a bit excitable but that is the goal.  

Jack also can't be trusted with anything laying around the house as he is a chewer!  I learned that lesson when I left my glass case on the chair, luckily I was wearing my glasses!  I poor Mom has gone though at least 6 shoes since bring Jack home lol.

I tired to helped around the yard, we had to redo the brick patio as the sealant we used earlier in the summer didn't seem to work very well.  So we bought a different product and resealed the brick.  It looked a lot better this time around.  

I helped with cutting down some logs and making firewood.

and while in the wood pile saw this!  I might have screamed a little:)

We watched a movie one night and I swear Jack was watching along with us!  It was so cute, my dog Luna seems to ignore all screens. 

We took a nice walk at a beautiful park and found a dog park that was huge and Jack loved running free.  This was his first time at the park and there were very nice people there that gave Mom information on how to use the park and the best days to come.  Luckily there were only 6 dogs there on this day.  I am hoping she will return with Jack on her own.

My mother lives down a long gravel lane and recently a neighbor removed some trees and left a very large area along the gravel driveway that dips rather low and we were worried that visitors might miss judge the edge of the gravel road and drive off the lane and get stuck.  So Mom and I came up with a way to mark the area with reflectors.  I forgot to get a picture of them all line out along the edge of the driveway but it should be helpful even during the winter months.

Mom's old printer was giving her trouble and we discovered that since she didn't print regularly, that  meant the printer heads became jammed with old ink.  This is something that I didn't know could happen since I print almost daily!  It would have cost more to fix the printer so we just bought a new one and now Mom knows to print at least one page a month so that the printer heads don't jam with ink  again!  I was pretty pleased that I got it working before I left, although I had to FaceTime  my husband to help a couple of times for assistance!  Technology is not my thing

I also added a shelf to the laundry room so Mom could reach supplies easier!  The cabinets above are too high for her to reach and I didn't want her climbing on step stools.  So we moved everything down and left only the things she really uses in the cabinets!

Because there were a few colder days while I was there, we turned on the heater and found out it wasn't working:( So glad to discover this prior to the real cold weather shows up.  Since Mom had so much trouble with this heat system last year and went several very cold days with no heat we decided to replace the system altogether instead of pouring more money into it to fix it.  

I think we got quite a bit done while I was there in addition to some time to just chat and relax.  It wasn't all work!  I stayed about ten days but then it was time to return home :(. 

While at the airport I found the BERGER cookies!  I love these cookies but they are very hard to find and ridiculously expensive.    I bought some to bring home as a treat for my family!

Mom and I had a lovely visit and hope we can get together over the holidays but with the covid numbers rising it makes planning rather difficult.  Fingers crossed that things settle down and families will be able to get together over the holidays!

Weekly Wrap UP 10/9/20-- 21 years and counting

 Last week my husband and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary!!  It has been a wonderful ride and I wouldn't change a thing.  Here's to another 21years babe!  

Still going strong -- we aren't perfect but together we do pretty well:)

A couple of weeks ago we needed to get out of the house and enjoy the beautiful fall day.  We had heard about Bellefountine Cemetery and decided to explore figuring it would be safe and easy to socially distance.  The Cemetery is well known to be beautiful and the final resting place for many distinguished citizens from the St Louis area.  It also the final resting place for many Civil War veterans. 

There was a lovely lake near the front entrance

Lots of flowers and pollinators throughout. I  was please with this shot There was also a water lily pond but I couldn't get close enough to take pictures much to my husband's relief.  I love waterlilies and can take dozens of pictures of the waterlilies :)

The visitors office was closed but there was a very nice brochure that recommended a 38 stop driving route to see the most notable sites.  Not all were gravesites, some were gardens, and  championships trees.  It took us about 2.5 3 hours to do the drive but that was driving slowly and stopping often to find the numbered landmarks listed.  I think we found all but two on this day.

This is an outdoor Columbarium surrounded by a beautiful garden and stream.  

This structure marked a grave and was commissioned to look like Monteverde Angel in Italy

mausoleum row although there were others scattered around as well 

Celtic cross near the church, which was closed on this day 

The site my husband wanted to located the most for William Clarks grave.  It was quite large and lots of family was buried around the monument.  It has rebuilt in 2004 according to the sign.

People are leaving coins at the based of his bust.  

Probably the most famous family is the Anheuser  Busch family and this is their mausoleum It was huge

The cemetery has an area that is free to any family from the St Louis area that has lost a child under the age of two.  This was the saddest part of the cemetery as many of the sites were covered in the children's favorite toys, we saw dump trucks, spider man masks and fairies and unicorns.  

After our lovely drive we found an outdoor restaurant that was being good about masks and spacing tables out so we had a lovely mid afternoon meal.

It was nice to get out as we are definitely feeling the effects of the pandemic and wish things would get back to normal for all.  Won't happen until everyone decides to work together and wear a mask and work to bring the positive numbers down.  Covid-19 is going up again in our area with several hospitals at or near full capacities again, sigh:(

Weekly Wrap Up 10/2/20 Family life

 I didn't post last week because nothing very exciting happened, just school and staying quarantined!  

Look who is finally sitting on my lap--but only when no one else is around.  he comes to me only when I am his last option.  Not my best picture :(

Weather has been fairly mild recently so we have been enjoying sitting outside and enjoying each others company -- some days we can't stay indoors another second.  

We finally returned to in person piano lessons.  I thought they were trying to be very safe for the teacher and the students.  We still have the online option if cases start to rise again in our area

Much to my husband dismay I have also been wanting his help in the garden and it is most definitely

not his favorite activity.  We have slowly been putting in edging around the garden.  It is very difficult as the soil is filled with rocks and hard clay.  We gave up using a shovel and started using a pick ax and we only need to get down about 6 inches!

Even got MarioFan to assist one day, and he doesn't enjoy gardening any more than his father!

This area was filled with spirea plants which I hated so last year I killed them (yes I used the dread round up) and now we are digging them up and I hope to replant next spring with something else.  The area has become overgrown with weeds and just a mess!  

We got about 3/4 of the edging down when we suddenly realized there is some sort of utility pipe in the area.   So we had to stop and call to get the area marked.

found out we were digging right over two of the utilities, luckily we aren't going too deep

Although this one surprised me as there were several plants here that we had just dug up.  We didn't put in the original plants!  

and this is where the last edging strip was suppose to go, sigh, need to rethink the edging now!  Although the utility company says most lines are buried 1 to 2 feet deep and we only need to get about 6 inches deep to get the edging down so I may risk it:) much to my husbands annoyance! 

I will be visiting my Mother no posts for a couple weeks.  MarioFan and my husband will be staying home and continuing school and work.  MarioFan has several classes online and can't miss those.  I am going to be flying for the first time since the pandemic!  Hope the airlines are keeping it safe and if you are in a airport and see someone covered in a hazmat suit that will probably be me!!!!