Joey turned 14 on Tuesday! The Saturday before, he had his friend birthday party at Sunset park, like we did last year. A park birthday worked especially well this year because of COVID.

We had nine eighth-grade boys, and they played football, soccer, Capture the Flag, Spud (a new game we found online), and Infection.

Hannah and I picked up pizza for dinner. I love Ellie's face in this picture. She is NOT intimidated hanging out with older boys. Andy should be concerned. ;-)

We had creamy cookies, Joey's favorite, for dessert.

After the party, Joey came home and opened his cards and presents. Ellie is a sweetheart and offered to help out by writing down what he got.

Eighth grade birthday = LOTS of gift cards. Joey was pumped.

On Tuesday, Joey's actual birthday, he requested homemade cinnamon rolls instead of the usual donuts.

This is what 14 looks like...a little over 5'7'', 95 lbs. and growing fast! 

Joey loved this nose picking card from Papa J. Both Joes have a very similar sense of humor...be careful what you name your child! ;-)

Our neighbor, Mrs. Farmer, has become the kids' neighborhood grandma. She's been in the neighborhood as long as we have, so she's watched all three kids grow up. She gets them gifts for their birthdays and Christmas. She's amazing. The funny part is that I actually knew her growing up. I was friends with her daughter in high school. I love the relationship she has with the kids. She wrote Joey the sweetest card! Since I'm teaching Joey to read cursive this year, he could actually read it himself.

Mrs. Farmer is definitely a grandma. Anytime she gives one kid a birthday present, she sneaks in candy for the other two. And she keeps track of their favorite candy!

Speaking of grandparents, my parents came over on Joey's birthday to take him out to lunch. He loved getting two on one time with them! After lunch, Joey and Ellie played Carlsbad-opoly (The Carlsbad version of Monopoly) with my parents, and then my parents took them to swim practice. 

After swim practice, my parents left and we headed to a campground about thirty minutes away to meet up with our Bible study group. The family that hosts every week was camping, so instead of canceling Bible study, we just brought Bible study to them. I was going to make a special dessert for Joey's birthday, but we did s'mores instead, which Joey loves. Win-win!

Since we had Bible study on Joey's actual birthday, we did his birthday dinner the next night. Instead of going out for dinner and picking out his birthday present, we stayed in. He wanted to pick up Taco Bell, have a family Super Smash Bros. tournament, and just get cash for his present. (He's trying to save up for an electric bike). The tournament was a lot of fun. We even let the birthday boy win! ;-)

On October 14, my dad turned 65 AND retired. Ellie asked me, "Do people always retire on their birthday?" Not usually, but what a memorable day to have as your last day of work!

Timmy and Jill came down the Saturday after his birthday so that we could celebrate. We got pizza and he opened his presents.

What my dad did NOT know is that later that afternoon, about 20 of his closest work friends from over the years were coming over to celebrate. He was very surprised! 

We kept the party all outside to help with social distancing. A lot of my dad's friends have worked together on and off at various companies in San Diego over the years, so it was a bit of a reunion for a lot of them.

Most of the people at the party worked at my dad's old company called CommQuest. I actually worked there in the human resources department for two summers when I was in high school, so I got to know a lot of my dad's friends pretty well. This was the CommQuest group at the party, minus a couple of guys who had already left.

Andy and my dad both worked together at a small start up in Carlsbad for about five years when we first moved back to the area. One of the guys they worked with, Philip, is one of our good friends. Our families have been getting together for years so our kids have grown up together and love playing with each other. Only one of their kids is pictured here, but they have three others.

We didn't get a lot of pictures, but we had such a fun time celebrating my dad!

 

I found some pictures on my phone from way back in August that I never shared, so this camera dump covers three months. We had a few extra hot weeks this summer. Every once in a while it gets super hot and doesn't cool down enough at night. When that happens we have the kids sleep in our room since we have a window AC unit. I found these girls cuddling up together one of those mornings.

During that hot spell, we finally decided to get air conditioning installed in our house. The first time I ever even mentioned to Andy the possibility of getting AC was on a Saturday. To my surprise he immediately agreed and said that we should talk to our friend at church the next day who owns an AC company. On Sunday I talked to the guy at church, and he said he could come by Monday for an estimate. On Monday he gave us an estimate, bought the last AC unit at his supply shop, and installed it the next day. I couldn't believe the whole process, from our initial conversation to actual working AC in our house, took four days! After thirteen years of not having AC, it literally felt miraculous to have cold air coming down from our ceiling. We got it just in time too. A week or so later, it was 110 degrees in San Marcos. That was definitely the hottest it's ever been since we've lived here! 

I love when the girls play school. Their beanie boos learn so much. ;-)

We had a taco and movie night with Chloe and Lucas.

Actually, the girls had a movie night while the boys played video games upstairs. These two are so cute together. They definitely act like brothers minus any fighting!

Now that we don't have our big AC window unit sticking out onto our patio, I was able to make a nice little sitting area.

It makes me so happy!

My favorite time to sit out there is in the evening and read with our Mexican patio lights on. It's so pretty. The girls love it too.

One night Joey and Ellie both happened to have birthday parties to go to. Since it was just going to be Hannah at home with us, we made a meal that the other two kids wouldn't enjoy: a Chinese feast of orange chicken, potstickers, egg drop soup, and an Asian salad. We took this picture to show Andy's parents that we borrowed their fun soup bowls and Chinese spoons. And yes, our feast was VERY fancy as evidenced by the fact that our soup was served out of tupperware.

Have I mentioned that Ellie is into unicorns right now?? This is what her bed looks like when she makes it everyday.

Back in April, during quarantine, Hannah finished memorizing the Westminster Shorter Catechism questions 1-38. Because things were so weird for a while, we put off her little award ceremony, but she finally got her certificate. Joey had got his certificate three years ago with the other kids in his Sunday school class.

Hannah was the only kid in her class to memorize them all. 

Two kids down, one to go! 

Our sweet friend from church planned an amazing craft night for her daughter and six other girls from church. The girls made these darling pumpkin patch cupcakes and so many other cute fall decorations. On the way home Hannah said, "That was so much work for Mrs. VanOtterloo to prep all of those crafts!" It made me laugh that Hannah, my future teacher, would focus on all the prep that goes into something like that.

 Partly because of homeschool and partly because of COVID, our lives look very different this year.

 

For one thing, we are still going to the beach. September and October are usually still great months for the beach (sometimes even the best months), but once school and soccer start, we don't have time to go. Not this year! It's the end of October, and we still go almost every week. Hannah, in particular, is quite happy about this.

Because we are doing homeschool this year, we decided to get zoo passes. We haven't gotten zoo passes in years, but this year we definitely have more time to go. One day TCA had a school-wide "Go on your own field trip" day so we headed to the zoo. We had to wears masks the whole time, but otherwise it was a lot of fun. We're hoping to go to the zoo at least once a month.

We started off at the Reptile House which was a big hit.

Another favorite was the red panda.

This little guy was pretty cute too.

The most random thing that we get to do because of homeschooling, is have the kids join a swim team. Andy has always wanted the kids to be on a swim team, but with soccer, basketball, and baseball/softball we've never had the time. With the kids being done with school extra early, and all sports cancelled for now, it was the perfect year to join a team. If you had told me a year ago that I'd be at a pool with all three kids at 2:00 in the afternoon on a school day, I would have thought you were crazy!

Chloe ended up joining the same swim team, so now we carpool together. The girls were all cracking up when they tried on their swim caps for the first time.

One of the things we love about homeschooling is the flexibility it gives us. We had a couple of girls from church stay with us for a few days. I didn't know how well they would play on their own, so I mentioned to Hannah and Ellie that it might be a good idea to get all of their school work done early that week, so that they would be free to just hang out and play with the girls. That ended up being perfect because all the girls wanted to do was play with them.

We even got to take them to the park one morning instead of doing school.

Unfortunately Jazzercise is not back to normal yet as we're still doing classes online for the most part. In addition to that, Andy had to move our WiFi router up to our bedroom for work, so I can't do Jazzercise in the garage anymore. That means I have to do it downstairs while the kids are doing school. I use ear buds, so it's not as distracting. They do a great job of just ignoring my sweet dance moves. ;-) I miss doing Jazzercise in person, but with the kids at home doing school, it does work out well that I  don't have to drive to and from the studio for classes.

Recently our power randomly went off right before we were going to start school. The kids had things they could have worked on without the internet, but instead we decided to go for a hike. We haven't hiked much since the spring, and it was a nice cool, cloudy day.

It was nice having the flexibility to change up our plans on the fly. When we got home around 10:30, the power was back on so the kids got back to work. They worked a little after lunch to finish everything up, so the delay was no big deal!

So while we miss how things were, we're really loving a lot of the unexpected changes that this year has brought.