The Waterstraut Waterspout: Happy 3rd Anniversary, Blue Spring Drive!

Hey guys! It's been a couple weeks again. I know I don't keep up on the blog as much as I did when the boys were little, or as much as I did when we were doing our year long home school projects . Speaking of which, I am working on next year's calander because we're doing a bit of a 're-do' year with Hayden, since he was so little when we did things like the Candy Bar Election and the President's Birthdays, we're going to be doing them all over again. And, it's an Olympic year AND a leap year. So, I've got plans, and traditions. 2020 should be cool. (Also, Calib is going to BE TWENTY! And, that's kind of crazy.)

But anyway, lets get back to this blog. In the last couple of weeks we've celebrated some milestones. On November 7th, we marked three years of home ownership. (Remember how we closed on our house the day before Trump was elected? That was also bananas). I always take a picture of everyone out on the porch just like we did the day we closed. In this picture I have Peyton annoyed because I took him away from his phone, Calib with his shirt on backwards because I said 'could you please at least get out there with a shirt on', and a couple of dogs back there in the window barking, that you can't see. But hey, I did it!

Our house anniversary fell on a Thursday- and Calib and Peyton have classes on Thursday nights, so we couldn't celebrate on the actual day, which is lame. But, I guess I'm at that stage in my life where I have to take what I can get as far as getting everyone together goes. Monday evening everyone was home AND we had cooler weather, so it was a perfect night for our annual celebratory cookout and fire outside.

We might have had a bit too much food- we're still working on leftovers. Hayden made brownies for the occassion. He's pretty good at using mixes and then adapting them. This go around we got peanut butter swirl brownies.

And then we all hung out by the fire, which was nice.

Plus, again, it was cool enough for a fire. Can you believe that? It FINALLY cooled down around here.

It was November 1 this year when we opened the french doors for the first time. This house is great for us, and I like it. But when we can open up the french doors, I love it. It's my favorite feature of the whole house.

In other news, Asa started his new job a week and a half ago now, and he is loving it. They really harp on 'self-care' and a 'work-life balance', which is something, frankly as someone who took calls for IT support he's never experienced before. In those jobs it's all about doing more, and faster, and not "wasting" a second of your day to take a breath. So, this is nice. It's just like the pace of everything has slowed down. Oh my gosh, and get this.: They tell him things like 'you're working from home, we know you might have a doorbell ring or DOGS BARK, or kids yell in the background of a call every now and again.... So, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT!" This makes my life a million times easier. Not that we're all screaming or anything. But, to know if the doorbell rings I don't have to wrangle up all the dogs and try and get everyone to be quiet is just a nice feeling.

He's been provided with everything he could need to work from home- his laptop, a monitor, a lovely headset he really likes, you know, things like that. But, then he also get sent a few little welcome gifts. He even got an awesome laptop backpack should he need to take his laptop with him somewhere. He gave me his water bottle they sent him, and it's pretty awesome. My water is still cold in the morning!

He is training though, so his schedule is a bit irregular. He has all these meetings and such, but then there's a lot of training material to get through on his own, so he kind of pops in and out of family life. It's been a little difficult for me to adjust to, because I never quite know when he's going to be around and when he isn't (this week he emailed me his schedule so I can check, though, and that's helping a bit). Anyway, I am a creature of routines. It helps my anxiety immensely if I have a routine, and I haven't quite found a new one yet. Not that I'm complaining, this new job is great for him- and is so much less demanding on his time and mind, and he's just around more. So, this certainly isn't a gripe. I'm not even entirely looking for a routine because his schedule is going to be a little strange when he's in training. So, once he get his own students and sets his own office hours, I'll try and settle myself into a better routine around that.

In the meantime, most mornings it's just been me and the dogs on the morning walk. One morning we saw a turtle laying eggs!

Oh my gosh, and Asa can cook again. It's been the most glorious thing. I loathe cooking. But, since Asa has worked over every lunch and dinner time with only a quick break to gobble down some food, it's been on me for quite a while. And now, it's not. I haven't cooked once this week- not even lunch. It's been amazing. Last night he made me greenbeans, lobster ravioli and filet mignon. So, you know, an upgrade from my cooking for sure.

I have made time to get a lot of things done around here. I finally cleaned out home school central and all the bins in the living room. Peyton and Calib went down from two cubbies to one (and then complained I was trying to "erase (their) childhood", but now I have more space for books and things I'm working on with Hayden.

Oh, and Disney plus came out. So, that's pretty much been what I've been doing for the past two days. Asa and I decided the best 'first thing' to watch on Disney plus would be Steamboat Willie.

And then on that first day alone I watched Moana, Wall-E, some DuckTales episodes, a couple of shorts, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Zootopia. Conviently, Disney Plus coincided with my terrible cramps days, and so I was happy to cuddle up with the dogs and sit on the couch all day with my heating pad watching Disney.

It's also great to put on in the background while I'm doing other things. I decided with Christmas approaching, I better get to cleaning out my closet. It becomes such a mess during the holidays because that's where I put everything for the boys. Also it was time to do another clothes purge.

Why you ask? Well, I have lost some weight and some of my stuff is just WAYY too big now. I'm not entirely sure how much weight I've lost. Way back, maybe in April, I decided I needed to try and manage my anxiety better. So, I adjusted my diet and made sure to exercise. Basically I just decided I would move more and eat better. I had no specific plan or anything. I just tried to eat less processed food, and lots more fruits and veggies. I still had brownies or french fries, but only on the weekends. I'm still adhearing to that decently well, and last week I finally saw the scale break into the 160s, which I'm pretty sure hasn't happened since I had kids. I don't know exactly how much I lost because I was probably about a month into my little experient when I finally weighed myself (and I was 211 then- yikes!) But, this means I officially lost at least 40 pounds. I didn't even do any of this to lose weight, just to feel better. And, I do feel better. Plus I've been getting some fun new clothes, since everything else is way too big. I sorted through and there was a lot of stuff just hanging off me. It is real weird to go shopping now though. I automatically think I need an x-large. But I bought a medium shirt the other day. I grabbed a size 12 pair of jeans and had to go back to try on a 10 instead. Anyway, who knows if I'll lose anymore. I'm just living my life, moving more, and eating more veggies and saving all that bad for me stuff for the weekends. It's that whole thing how they say don't just diet, change your lifestyle. So, this is what I do now. I'll let you know if I *gasp* every get into the 150s. But, if not, I'm cool here too.

It's also been a minute since I blogged- so Halloween got lost in the shuffle. It was the first year none of my kids went trick or treating. I told them they totally could go (I do NOT subscribe to the fact that you can be "too old" to trick or treat. If you're 40 and you want to dress up for candy, I'm happy to give you some!), but I guess they figured they had enough candy from the Not So Scary Halloween Party. Calib and Hayden said they wanted to carve some pumpkins, so we did do that.

Well, rather, Hayden wanted to carve a pumpkin IF someone else scooped out the guts, so I was kind enough to do the gross part for him.

Here in Florida you basically have to carve your pumpkins ON Halloween, because in no more than three days they are covered in mold and flies. Florida heat, you know?

We actually still had SO much Halloween candy left from the Not So Scary Halloween Party, it's what we passed out. We also went to 5 below and got a giant tube of Sweettarts that Asa saved for someone he thought had the best costume. We ended up giving it to a little girl dressed in a Moana costume who had deckded out her wagon in Pua and HeiHei toys. She was SO excited about it. She hugged the tube and passed her pumpkin full of other stuff on to her parents. Peyton and Hayden helped pass out candy, while Calib said he would stay inside and "watch the dogs", which meant he was staying inside to play Luigi's Mansion 3 that had come out for the Switch that day. The three of them went in on it to preorder it.

Peyton is usually the last on board with letting Christmas start to trickle in the day after Halloween, but he realized it was approprate, now that Halloween was over, to break out his Christmas Vacation Moose glass.

Asa and I also took a trip to the zoo a couple weekends ago.

They were still a little confused on if it were Halloween or Christmas- they apparently aren't as fast at switching everything over as Disney is.

But, I wasn't there for the decorations anyway. We saw penguins, and the pygmy hippo..

an okapi and a baby elephant!

Plus we saw some bats...

...an emu, and made our way through the bird house.

On the way home we stopped for lunch at Portillo's and some Siptopia at Wawa.

And now that I was back from all of our trips, we were back to our usual Sunday morning bike ride. This time it was actually a little chilly. I came back cold for our ride instead of sweating. I think we're going this Sunday too, so I'm going to have to figure what to wear in our fridged weekend weather.

The mornings have been chilly, but for the most part the afternoons have been nice. We've even gotten to eat outside for dinner a few times. Dinner, however, more often than not, is just the three of us. Between work and school, Calib and Peyton have not been home very much for dinner. If we're lucky we've been getting one night a week where we're all home.

But, that is about to change! So, right after Peyton got hired, their manager announced he was leaving in a promotion and they were bringing in a new manager (rumor had it this girl got it because she basically volunteered- there just are not a lot of people who want the gig). Anyway, this new lady is TERRIBLE. I'm talking saying terrible things to the boys, yelling at them for clocking in a minute early- then two minutes late. But then she hired a family member and Calib said she didn't say a word to them about being 20 minutes late. She was telling them they don't go when their schedule says so, but rather when she tells them they can go (Calib once got held two hours late on a ten hour shift where he didn't have a break). Peyton got my head cold and tried to call in and she said he had to find someone to fill his shift and then hung up on him. The water fountain broke and she was making them buy water.. The schedule wass coming out the night before the next week was supposed to start. Like I had to wake Calib up one Monday morning to see if he worked because it still wasn't out when I went to bed Sunday morning. Just all these things. She complained about Peyton not being trained properly- and he wasn't, since he got there so close to the old manager leaving his training stopped after two days- when the old manager left, then said she was going to schedule him for training, but never did. She put him on the pizza making line one night, when he had never been trained on pizzas and then complained he didn't know what he was doing. By her second week, multiple people had quit. Peyton put in a two week notice when she called him a liar when someone had a wrong address for their delivery and Peyton told her he read it back to them. By now he was like the fourth of fifth person to quit since the new manager came in.

So Peyton's last night we called to order pizza and have him use his discount on us one more time.

That night Calib came home and announced he had also put in his two weeks- he couldn't take her anymore either. He had worked 10 hours that day (again without a break) and she was just terrible the whole time. He was going to have to quit when he went to Italy in December anyway, because the old manager said he was sure they could work something out for him to be able to go, but the new one surely wouldn't approve his time off. Anyway, Calib will be there until a week from Friday and then everyone will be around again and I'm super excited. It'll make doing all of our holiday things before Calib leaves for Italy on the 20th much easier!

They also only have about 3 weeks of school left, so then they'll be back on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Although, Calib has had his class cancelled a few times. With Asa's new job, he was able to come with me when I took Peyton to school when Calib's class was cancelled. We stopped by Moes for dinner too.

I was a little concerned with how Peyton would do in a traditional classroom, since he hasn't been in one since 4th grade. But, he's taking American History, so if that doesn't set him up for success, I don't know what does. He got back his first test and the professor announced that he was allowing people to do a re-take because the class a a whole did so poorly. Peyton thought he was screwed, but as it turns out he got a 90% (It was also an essay test as opposed to multiple choice, so that also plays to Peyton's strengths). He celebrated that night with filet mignon. (In case you're wondering how Calib is doing in psychology- he has a 117% so he'll probably be getting an A)

Over in Hayden's school work, we finished our first verse of 'We Didn't Start the Fire'.

I personally really enjoyed his Liberace. And then when we started with the next verse, he paid homage to Animal Farm with Stalin.

I hung up all the postcards from the first verse out by the cork board.

We also did our very first Hayden only Jeopardy. Peyton came to play, too, just to give Hayden some competition.

I've slowly been adding to our alliteration days, and we started in on our Theme Thursday last week. I'm trying to work with him on pulling out themes and doing character analysis- and I finally found a reason to pull out some of my favorite old picture books. Although, we're also going to be finding the themes in a lot of animated shorts on Disney plus.

We finished To Kill a Mockingbird, and held our Finer Things Club to discuss the book.

And I wanted to do a really short book to squeeze in before Thanksgiving so I went with a "Classic" he had never read, even if the reading level is something like third grade. I figured I could mix a few of these short reads in there and it would be a good break. Next short read we do it's going to be BFG and then we can watch the movie on Disney Plus (do you see a theme here!?)

He has had a couple of libary events too. He went to woodburning yesterday and made some coasters.

And Asa was able to take him to chess club on Tuesday. I think I forogt to talk about how this new schedule is amazing- there's SO much time in the evenin Gwhen you don't work until 7:30... or 8....or 8:30 because you're stuck on a call. Between Calib and Asa, Hayden's been at the library like every day this week and I haven't had to take him once.

Out in the garden my watermellon plant has really taken over. It now spans the whole length of the box and down the fence.

And I even have a few baby watermellons starting to emerge! Hopefully this weekend's cool weather won't stunt their growth. I did read between like December and March, Florida is the only state that can grow watermellon.

Asa's tomato plant is also killing it. I think we'll have to get some tomatoes at the store for this week's Sunday Football taco bar, but next week we might have our own!