The Accidental Boilermaker

 Jameson has officially finished his 14 day quarantine. It makes for a long 2 weeks when you aren’t supposed to leave your house.  It started the weekend of the virtual fort4fitness. I did my half marathon and the kids did their final 1.2 miles. Although Jameson really didn’t want to run   Jameson and I did lots of chores, we organized a few closets, played lots of board and card games, and planted more tulips for the spring. We tried to do some school but Jameson doesn’t like to learn from home.  Jameson went back to school today but Evelyn had the day off for her fall break. We stopped by Meijer to pick out some flowers for Jameson’s teacher to say we were happy she was feeling better. 

I took the kids to Chicago for a short weekend getaway. We of course wanted to see Aunt Katherine who we haven’t seen since March but we also wanted to see the dinosaurs at the Brookfield zoo. The dinosaurs were so cool! They were huge, they moved, and made sound. Katherine wasn’t sure if the zoo was operating on limited capacity but it wasn’t very crowded and the weather was prefect. I think we found every dinosaur and even saw a few real life animals.  My mom told Evelyn and Jameson they could pick out a mold-a-rama to remember their trip.  I think this one was my favorite. It was so big! Kate tried to feed Evelyn to the t-Rex.  Other fun stuff included snuggles with Aunt Katherine.  Watching a movie projected on the wall.  Playground date with donuts.

 I had the great idea of going to the Toledo Zoo on Sunday.  I thought for sure it won’t be that busy if we get there right when it opens; people should be at church. Well it was busy. We had to wait about 50 minutes in line to buy our tickets and go inside. Once in the zoo, it wasn’t so bad because people could spread out.  We saw the monkeys and primates first.  A big reason we wanted to visit the zoo was the newly renovated natural history museum.  We skipped the aquarium (which had a line) to check out the museum and it was a good decision. There was lots of really cool stuff inside.  The elephants are always a favorite.  We skipped other indoor exhibits due to long lines but we did wait in go inside the aviary.  The polar bears were especially active trying to get treats out of their enrichment toys.  The last animal we saw were the wolves. We have never seen them out in their enclosure before. 

 Last Saturday was Violet’s third birthday party. I agonized over going. I knew Evelyn and Jameson would want to go; I wanted to go, but just because I wanted to go didn’t make it safe. I finally decided that yes the three of us would go, but we had to stay outside as much as possible and when I said it was time to leave there would be no complaining. Thankfully it was a great day to be outside and everyone has lots of fun. I made lots of trips around the yard pulling children in the wagon. I was also in charge of making sure no one got hit in the face during the piñata. The party kind of dragged on (I think we might have been the only non-family guests) and I finally decided we needed to go before Violet got around to opening her presents but neither Evelyn or Jameson put up any fight.

For out last camping trip we went to Pokagon State Park.  The campgrounds were very nice; it might be my favorite state park we visited this summer. Nate got off work an hour early and the state park is only 50 minutes away, but we still got in a little late.  We set up our site, heated up chili for dinner, and had a campfire.  I had found these fun glow stick headbands at Kroger on clearance. Saturday morning after breakfast we went on a 2.2 mile hike to Hell's Point which is the highest point in the park and the third highest in the county.  It was a fun hike in that the scenery changed, there were some up and downhills, and no one complained they were tired. There was a chance of rain around dinner time so we decided to make hobo pies for lunch and save hot dogs for dinner.  Evelyn and Jameson did a decent job of entertaining themselves at campsite.  The campground was pretty full but we were lucky and didn't have any neighbors so we really could spread ...

 Jameson started preK today. We took some pictures in the morning with Evelyn.  After dropping off Evelyn, Jameson said he wanted to play a board game and then we went outside and played frisbee and soccer before lunch. It was super weird to drop Jameson off at school in the afternoon. He didn’t act particularly excited about school, but I think he was ready to go. We didn’t have any trouble at drop off; he walked right in to his teacher.  I pick him up a few minutes early so that we can be home to get Evelyn off the bus, but of course the bus was late today. Evelyn has an e-learning day tomorrow (one of 4 this month) which also doubles as an inservice day for teachers. So it will weird again to have Evelyn home while Jameson goes to school. 

We did a thing. We finally took down the gazebo over the hot tub. It was old and gross. It didn’t make the hot tub less dirty, it just made it harder to clean. The hot tub is less private now, but both our neighbors have fences and our backyard neighbors are almost never outside.