Weekly Happenings: Many people tend to fill their spring breaks with a ton of different activities while we tend to just…chill at home. Our normal routine is usually rather busy, so it’s nice to be able to just relax a bit. I did take the kids to the zoo one day, but other than that, we just hung around the house.
The Weekly Weather: We’ve had cool mornings and warm (but not too warm) afternoons. It’s been nice that it’s been warm enough to not need warm clothes but not so warm that we were uncomfortable being outside. I know that will happen soon enough. 😉
What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s still working from home and has been squeezing in some yard work to try to get the yards ready for spring and summer.
What Sarah’s Been Up To: It’s been nice getting to sleep in a little bit this past week. I had a good time at the zoo with the kids as well. Oh, and I experimented with my cooking blender and made some yummy strawberry jam (more details in the pictures). I did have a set-back with my back. I was doing really good (not even needing Aleve to get through the day), but then yesterday I…sneezed. That was it. For some reason, it made my back seize up. I’m not sure why that happened, but I have some leftover medicine from when I originally hurt it, so I decided to take some to see if I could get ahead of it enough to avoid landing in urgent care again. It’s still rather sore today and I don’t have my full range of motion, but I think that if I’m careful, I’ll be doing better in a few days.
What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s been soaking up spring break to its fullest. Sleeping in, playing video games, hanging out in his room…typical 9YO boy stuff. 🙂
What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s loved having Joseph home. It’ll probably be a little hard for her when he goes back to school on Monday. She’ll adjust, though. 🙂
This Week in Pictures:
She loves it when he reads to her.In San Antonio, “fall” comes in the spring (when all the old leaves on our live oak trees fall off as the new ones grow in). Paul was raking up the leaves and Abigail was loving jumping in the pile. 🙂The snow pretty much killed off the exposed mint. Paul trimmed it all back after we got back from California. It’s already growing back (yay!). We had brought the Mexican heather inside. It got quite a bit of frost damage (hence the lighter colored leaves) before we brought it inside, but at some point, it had put a runner down, so some new growth is happening there in the corner. It’s also got some darker green leaves underneath the lighter leaves, so I’m hoping it’ll come back okay.Making jam. All it called for was strawberries, pectin, and sugar.I put the strawberries and pectin in, set it to the jam setting, and hit start.It ground up the strawberries as it started cooking them.Getting all cooked up and ground up.My blender stopped and told me when to add the sugar.Getting the sugar mixed in as it started to cool down.All done! It took a little less than an hour, I think.It’s a freezer/fridge jam as opposed to a shelf-stable jam, so I didn’t need to sterilize the jars at all. I just poured in the jam and let it cool.All done! I let them come to room temperature before putting the lids on. Then I chilled them in the fridge overnight before putting them into the freezer (except for one that I kept for the fridge).The blender really, really blended it…so it ended up with the consistency of jelly. It still qualifies as jam, though, because it was made with fruit as opposed to with fruit juice.This picture makes me happy. The beautiful benches that Paul built, the fun pillows, the warm light over the piano, the windows open to let in a cool breeze, and the glimpse of pretty plants out the window. I love being at home!She’s been asking to play some video games, so Paul found some toddler-friendly ones for her.Teaching her how to use the correct buttons.Sometimes a challenging day (she’s cute, but she’s got a fair amount of sass, haha) is made better with a Dr. Pepper shake.The zoo had a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs (complete with speakers that played roaring noises). The kids were pretty excited.She was trying to get the bear to turn around and say hello to her. He wasn’t having anything to do with that, though.For a while, now, all the climb-on statues have been roped off. They’ve taken the ropes off and the kiddos were pretty excited to be able to crawl around on them again.Joseph using the komodo dragon to “surf”.Sitting on the hippos before they got too hot.The African porcupines were actually out and about. Abigail really liked their cute fuzzy faces.The elephants were also out and about.The kids both really love this little elephant.These miniature mongoose are another favorite. They were really curious during this visit…they kept sniffing at the kids.There is a bird enclosure near the hippos. The birds are really used to humans, so they aren’t very skittish. I still made sure to keep my distance, though, and just used the zoom on my camera.She was excited that she could see both the hippo and the giant fish.One of her favorite parts of the zoo.Climbing on the lion statues.This is a definite zoo favorite.
