Father's Day 2020

 This was our first family gathering since January. We celebrated Father's Day, Meredith's birthday, and all the rest of the birthdays we missed over the past few months.

Annabelle wants a hammock now. I don't blame her, this was a comfy place to sit and chat. I was checking on her because she doesn't have a cousin her age that hangs with her during our family gatherings, but she was totally fine. She was entertaining herself just fine.

Apparently Andrea and I had the same idea of what to wear on this day.

I found this sweet photo of Josh and his Grandpa Koehn. Seemed timely with Father's Day.

And Happy Father's Day to Josh!

These kids have an amazing dad. I think they know it. Josh is so patient, attentive, and consistent. He is a godly example they can look up to.
While most may not get to see this side of him, he’s fun, plays with the kids daily, makes time for a card game, bike ride, slip in slide, swimming, or modern warfare.
I’m so thankful to parent these kids with a much better half. He supports me as a mom, reinforces my words when the kids don’t listen, and teaches them to be respectful. We hope to let Josh know just how appreciative we are this Fathers Day.

11 years

This song is hard to sing, but an encouragement at the same time as we miss Daniel extra today. Jesus does care. He cares about our hurting hearts, our struggling nation, and all the current woes we face.

*Charlie melts my heart at the end. 😊

John 16:22- So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.⁣
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4,015 days ago we unexpectedly lost my brother Daniel. There’s some perspective as we are at home for what feels like thousands of days. If I had to guess, I’ve thought of him at least 4,000 times. ⁣
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Because he had a relationship with Jesus Christ, I have eternity to look forward to when we will see him again. That HOPE carries all his brothers and sisters in Christ. ⁣
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May I encourage you to make each day count? Even the stressful, boring, happy, fun, or nondescript days. All of them! We don’t know when God will call us home and we want Him to be pleased with what we did for Him. ⁣
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Daniel was an outspoken goof ball and you never knew what situation he would find himself in next. He loved to be around people and I will never forget the awe I felt when hundreds upon hundreds of people packed the church and then gathered at his graveside. Death has a sting, but there’s victory over the grave when the person believed Christ paid the penalty for their sin. I hope Daniel got to tell you about how much he loved Jesus and I want to follow in his footsteps with boldness to share the gift of God. ⁣
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Last Day of School - Talking about School on ABC 7 NEWS

We finished what I hope will be the weirdest school year ever. Surely it can't get more strange. Actually, I think 2020-2021 could be an odd one too as we hope to return to school with CDC guidelines in place. More about that at the end of this post.

I love the first and last day of school comparisons. Amazing another school year is behind us.

Jack grew so much this school year. He grew in height and maturity. I wouldn't say he's mature because what junior high boy is, but we are watching him grow up too fast.

I'm not sure how Smokey feels about the pandemic. He's been smothered even more then usual the last few months. It seemed fitting he join Annabelle's last day of school photo. Annabelle was a very studious 5th grader and we are proud of her for working hard. It took her a long time to finish her work, but she did her very best and her grades are great.

This kid keeps talking his way through life. Our ears are weary sometimes, but that's who our Charlie is. Always talking, even to himself when he's doing his school work or playing video games. There's even talking in his sleep. The other day at the pool he asked me if I could hear him talking under water. Nope, but I had no doubt his mouth was moving.

We continue to take it one day at a time. That's what we've been doing the last 78 days at home. Summer will be a nice break for the Google Classroom, but we do hope that our county starts to open up so we can do more things outside of our home.

Thinking about next year, the kids were on the news. There was a town hall meeting for the Bay Area where 4 superintendents got together and talked about what the next school year may look like. It was a LIVE STREAM and they inserted interviews from kids around the Bay Area.

Jack wants a combo of online school and real school. Annabelle wants to go back to school. Charlie wants to do school at home til he's in 7th grade or college!

All the kids did an interview, but Charlie's was the most entertaining. I guess his constant talking and thinking out loud is good for a news interview.

New Flooring While We Shelter in Place

This is totally April news, but we did have a really busy week updating our floors. We are really pleased with how well they turned out. I shall begin with the most dramatic before and after picture. We bought a pretty dirty foreclosure in 2008. It was considered "turn key", but it was so gross. It's fun to see how far it has come and I'm thankful that most things could be fixed and cleaned with a coat of paint.

We had a friend in mind to help us with the job, but he typically has a full work schedule. When we heard he had two weeks off, we asked him if he was available to help us and he was! So a less before and after picture is our living room from April 17 and our living room today. We changed the flooring, re-arranged the furniture for a more open flow, and we repainted a soft grey. The mantle got a face lift too.

I made this video with a weird voice-over. If you can get past the poor quality, it does explain all the changes that came about while doing our floors.

I've always had strong feelings of dislike for our fireplace. Not only is it unusable due to what I suspect was a meth explosion, it's not symmetrical in the room. The raised hearth made for an awkward corner we couldn't make good use of. When you have a tiny house, gaining some extra floor space is like gold.

The fireplace has come a long ways through the years with paint and most recently we removed the hearth and added the "wood" mantle. We kinda of make ourselves laugh, but we glued floor planks to the fireplace. Yup, glue! Don't forget, I have sticker back splash tiles in my kitchen. I will look for the cheapest way to do a DIY project.

While we are talking about the fireplace, here are some photos from that project.

At this point we knew we were committed.

I painted the brick a bright white and we added the mantle for a bit more character. I didn't actually get a picture of it without the painters tape before we put the furniture in front of it. We will switch things around in the fall and enjoy our fireplace then.

Backing up a little bit, we did our own demo. The kids were great helpers.

Oh yes, I did vacuum it before we tore it out. I don't know why, but I just had to.

12 years ago I said I never wanted to paint that tall wall again. I made myself do it and we do love the soft grey. It was different to see our living space so torn up.

We did run in to an LARGE hole under our flooring. It was a badly sealed crack that was decaying from underneath.

We filled the hole with water and watch it leak right out of our foundation. That confirmed our suspicion that we had a crack and water was eroding our kitchen floor from underneath. It was somewhat of an alarming discovery, but our friend Simon is amazing and knew how to fix it right up. No task was too hard for Simon. He did say "Ai Yi Yi Seniorita" quite a bit. I may have had him fix a door and a few other random things while we had his expertise.

So the cracked foundation is no more.

We poured cement inside and outside and we should be all fixed.

So back to the finished project, here are all the AFTER photos. Aren't my mason jar fairy lanterns cute? Josh and the kids got them for me for Mother's Day and I adore them.

We cannot get over how much more space we have by putting the couches on the other side of the room. Without the hearth we are able to use that corner. We also dropped our cable a few years ago so we we could move our TV anywhere as well. We used to be tied to the other side of the room to plug in for that too. It's so freeing not having cable! YouTube TV is way cheaper and has all the same options for us.

We also took down the blackout curtain we had so the room is much brighter. I put up a privacy film so hopefully we don't fade our couch, but we do enjoy the natural light from our oddly placed skinny window.

So far I haven't missed having carpet. It's easy to sweet and clean. I still vacuum the rug and that provides comfort if we do want to sit on the floor.

We are very happy with this project we were able to get done. It was on our radar, but we weren't sure when. I'm not a very spontaneous person and while we did save for it, we did jump on the job with very little notice. It's the silver lining of being stuck at home.