Weekly Wrap Up 12/18/20 -- Driving Simulator and an unexpected visitor

MarioFan is hoping to learn to drive this spring/summer.  I have been looking around for different programs to help him in this area.  I recently discovered a Driving simulation program that spends four to five weeks using a computer simulation to imitate driving and then they give the results to the parents and address areas to work on before getting into the car.  They are also hopefully going to be having a driving ed program this summer that he will be able to attend.  It depends on Covid, of course 

The first lesson is just getting use to the machine and understanding the basics of driving

He had 3 crashes driving on the computer which was really eye opening for him especially since one of the accidents was the other drivers fault.

He was also noted to be speeding throughout the initial test but we are told this is very common since it is hard to gauge on a computer how fast you are going.  This was a good introduction to basic driving and he went every week for 5 weeks.  This program built up his confidence and he is a little more excited about the prospects of driving.  We are hoping this spring we can get his learners permit and start him driving on the road.  

We had a very unexpected visitor in the house, a small bird flew inside when the back door was opened. The humans didn't notice at first but the dog and cat were acting very strangely for a few minutes until the bird flew around and we humans finally understand what was upsetting the animals!

We have incredibly high ceilings in our living room so catching it was impossible.  I tried opening the front door and shooing it in that direction but to no avail. 

Eventually the bird made it into the upstairs school room, but again we have high ceilings so we were stuck. But I was at least able to shut the door in the room to contain it while we strategized our next move

someone told us to try to catch it using a soft blanket but even with two of us it was impossible 

I didn't want to scare it any more so after several frustrating minutes I managed to open the window.  I don't usually open the window this way so it took some time to remove the screen and lower it down wards.  

We shut the school room door and waited hoping it would fly out.  However the bird had other ideas and flew right past the window and then decided to hop around the room and explore.  

After about twenty minutes of the bird ignoring the open window, I decided to entice the bird with a trail of bread.  That finally did the trick and it flew outside. In all told we spent about 45 minutes trying to coax the bird outside.  

That was a bit of unexpected excitement to our day.  We think the bird flew in though the back porch door as the cat likes to sit on the deck and someone left the door all the way open instead of just a couple of inches for the cat to go in or out.

I will be taking the next two weeks off from blogging for our Christmas/New Year's break.  We do this every year and I really enjoy the down time.  My husband plans to take a week off as well.  We are disappointed that we won't be able to see my Mother for the holidays due to the pandemic:(.  This year the holidays will be especially quiet for us, just the immediate family cocooning in our home.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!