(Day 15) We rescheduled our video chat with Lover’s parents for this morning, so we spent the early morning getting our other stuff done. We worked on AWANA verses – the kids are recording their verses and then sending them to their leaders to get credit. Hopefully everyone will get their books done! Cassandra will not be left out – so we give her little verses to memorize too, and she’s doing a great job with them. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that Lover and I are memorizing Romans 5 – we’re all the way to verse 16. Just a few more to go! We work on them at lunch time and the kids have ended up mostly memorizing them alongside of us. Kids’ minds are amazing!
I sent out a bunch of cards and also the docs that we need NY state to verify for us to obtain our visas for Spain. The kids cleaned up their rooms and I did lots of laundry – why is it that laundry never stops? We also worked on Easter crafts and made little pom pom pets – Javi made a little mouse and a cat. They’ve been watching old Tom & Jerry episodes lately, so I think that’s what inspired him.
We talked to Lover’s parents for several hours, and while we did that I oversaw Javi making blueberry muffins. I cleaned the kitchen too. When the muffins were done, Javi took half of them down to our neighbor who’s been such a blessing to us. I talked a little more on the video call, but I find it hard to sit still for hours on end! My mom finished my book, so we got her thoughts on it – overall she loved it and was impressed by the writing which was a huge compliment!
I went for a walk, but I’m not sleeping very well at night (neither is Lover, a weird side effect from these strange times) so I was feeling really worn out. I came back and worked on my writing a little, and tried to relax with a book.
After a late lunch, even for us, the kids helped me start a big batch of banana bread. We got three loaves in the oven and then we were going to start a movie, but Lover wanted to clean off the driveway. Our van leaks constantly onto the concrete, so he tackled power washing and scrubbing that down.
I saw a fun idea on Facebook – everyone has been doing these cool tape/chalk art projects, and then I saw someone do one on their front door! I thought it was the perfect, visible decoration for Resurrection Sunday, so we got started on that. I taped off the top parts, the kids helped with the bottom part, and we all collaborated on the coloring with chalk markers. We talked about negative space and mirror images while we colored, which was fun.
We decided that movie night was not going to happen (maybe tomorrow night) and just embraced our fun art project. Then, after we finished up and the kids were about to watch a couple of Spanish videos, Lover heard water running somewhere. We spent about fifteen minutes narrowing it down to our back room and eventually, after tearing out part of the wall in the garage, pinpointed the leak. The floor guys pierced a pipe with their nail gun, and it’s quite a good leak!
We had to shut off the water, drain the pipes to relieve the pressure, and crawl through the crawlspace to try and replace the part of the pipe with the hole. Of course, due to COVID, all of the home improvement stores close by 7 and we didn’t discover the leak until 6:40pm! I talked to a friend that had the same problem this summer to see how their homeowners insurance handled everything, and we had a tiring evening ahead of us. The kids watched some shows and I fed them in between filling water buckets to be able to flush toilets, finding tools for Lover and crawling into the nasty crawlspace to prop up the pipe so Lover could try to cut it and sodder on new pieces. In the end, we couldn’t get it to work, since it’s in such a tricky position. So, we cleaned up as best we could, put the kids to bed super late with strict instructions not to waste water flushing, and went to sleep. Better luck tomorrow hopefully!