Quarantine, Days 27-33

Hi friends!

It has been another busy week.  Here is what has been filling our time!

Friday night viewing of The Great Muppet Caper... such a classic!  I think I watched this 1,000 times as a kid.

We tried to make our Easter weekend a little bit special, despite our isolation.  Coloring of Easter eggs took place Saturday.  I gave L my phone to capture the footage as I was busy in the kitchen, baking bread and making homemade meatballs for dinner that night.

She decided to also take super smiley pictures of all her sisters, and a selfie!

Love these happy girls!

Here are the finished eggs, waiting expectantly on the table for the Easter Bunny's arrival:

They turned out cute right?  And it was nice for me that the bigger girls are able to read directions and do this on their own... not that I wouldn't have loved to do it with them, but... well... just seems like I'm always so busy.  Story of my life.

The Easter Bunny brought Tamogotchi pets for all the girls, a fitness watch for N (she had been requesting one!) and Harry Potter Barbies for the younger three girls.

N was instructed by the younger girls to dress up one of our Ken dolls as Viktor Krum so all the girl Barbies could have dates to the Yule Ball.  Loved what she came up with!

After Easter baskets we had our Easter breakfast, complete with fruit bunny.

(bunny carnage)

After breakfast we did our normal Sunday chores, spent some time outside, and then prepared a bit of a fancy Easter dinner.

Salmon, quinoa, veg.  Yum!

Dessert was made entirely by N and L.  Brownies and blueberry crumble.  Delish!

On Monday, we finally got around to playing the Marrying Mr. Darcy card game that I got to play at my sister's bachelorette party over a year ago!

We had some tea as we played, obviously, and I had coffee in my Jane Austen mug :)

It was an extremely blustery, rainy day here that day (our power even flicked on and off and back on a couple times!) so it was the perfect day to enjoy a game.  I'm hoping we will repeat it many times before quarantine is over!

Diligently completing schoolwork...

...with a few hugs in between.

It has been a musical week for me... I am participating in a "virtual choir" recording project for Labyrinth, in lieu of our spring concert run which was cancelled.

I also made a for-fun project on Acapella with the girls-- I arranged a piece for string quartet and played all the parts myself, and the girls sang.  I'm still tweaking it but hopefully I'll be able to share it soon!  It was so much fun to put together!

I don't always practice cello, but when I do I have lemon cake and coffee.

Speaking of lemon cake, Little Miss J and I have been binge-watching some cooking channels on YouTube, and a favorite that we recently discovered is Jenny Can Cook.  Many of her recipes are super simple and easy... too much so, I think, because I'm tempted to make all of them!  J convinced me to make her lemon brownies one night after dinner (we had watched the how-to video earlier in the day).  They were super easy and because I doubled the recipe we enjoyed them throughout the week!  We have had a pretty steady stream of baked goods going in our house, because, well... when you have to stay home a lot, the baking instinct kicks in I guess.  I feel a bit like my late grandmother who had a "coffee break" every afternoon with some sort of sweet.  Just one of those comforting things getting us through, and afternoon coffee certainly increases my productivity!  I'm sensing some of Jenny's chocolate cake on our horizon next.  Hmmm... hoping my pants will still fit after all this is over.

The Harry Potter Barbies for Easter combined with our current binge-watch of Star Wars: The Clone Wars episodes every night has led to a giant Barbie-playing story arc this week among the girls.  I'm not privy to the entire story line, but it has to do with the Barbies all being actors/actresses in a Star Wars show, lots of battles, interviews with the actors, etc.  I'm finding lots of remnants of "sets" and "dressing rooms" around our house.

I haven't seen them so totally absorbed in a play scenario in a long time, and, truth be told, it's been a while since they've had so much free time to spend on it.  It's kind of great, actually!  Other than watching Clone Wars, we haven't had much screen time because they have been so busy playing.  This is a major bonus for me because almost 100% of their schoolwork right now is on computers, so I'm really glad to see them step away from the screens for their play time.  Yay!

After an extended conversation this morning over breakfast about how covid-19 is effecting the world's pollution levels for the better.  We then discussed how the economy that depends on these fossil-fuel-burning industries is currently going down the toilet.  I think it was L that suggested that we give all of our country's unemployed individuals NEW jobs in industries that will save the planet, like solar or wind energy, developing vaccines, or clean transportation.  We ended up talking about the upcoming election and how we might effect changes like the ones L suggested, just by voting a certain way.  The girls were inspired to have their own at-home election and did some campaigning around the house.

I really hope that they do infiltrate the U.S. government someday, because I think they would do great things.

Lastly, today's project was haircuts, as all hair-cutting places are currently closed.

This was the amount of hair I removed from M's head!!!!

Before:

After:

Little J got a bang trim too:

It makes her cheeks even more kissable, if that's possible!

And that's a wrap on our week!  Nothing super exciting, but we are finding our happy moments.  I'll be back tomorrow with workout recap and meal plan!  Happy weekend everyone!