Quarantine and chill and kindness chatty clubhouse: Jump in and join the conversation! All is welcome!

[flyingdumbo127]

Hug, Sparkle, have fun relaxing at the beach! I am so glad you are able to do that, my friend. Funny you brought up half birthdays! I forgot all about that. My Dad's half birthday will be next week. This year on his real birthday he was not well so didn't get to enjoy the day though I did put up some decorations and had a small cake. We were ordering a few things yesterday on Amazon. I gave him a half birthday gift of a few dollars towards a CD he wanted.

PollyannaMom, any time is a good reason for ice cream and cake What a fun memory to help make for your son

 

[easyas123]

Rain here as well...in truth I love a rainy day and I hate to waste this one inside at my desk! I'm hoping it is still raining when I get home this afternoon.

We've got nothing much on tap this weekend, besides our usual mowing. I'm starting to feel a bit stir-crazy in truth. I might do a kitchen/pantry/laundry room sweep and see if there is anything in cabinets I don't need/use and get rid of it. Should do the same with clothes. I am in the middle of a good audio book about the plague in the 1300 & 1400's so I'll get a few hours of that while I'm on the tractor tomorrow.
Wow - I just bored myself to death re-reading that paragraph.

Friday 7/30 QOTD: Thinking about a kids book I recently re-read, did you or any of your friends (or with your own family) ever make up your own holiday? I can't think of any holiday we made up, or at least nothing is popping up in my memory! My husband reminded me it was Harry Potters birthday yesterday and keeps a running countdown to the Christmas holidays - he LOVES Christmas - and reminds me every once in a while how many days till it gets here! What we did use to do as kids was make up random 'match box towns'. We'd carve out a town in the dirt road, we'd make houses and gas stations and different places out of stones & sticks and random things. We'd have the mini breyer horses for folks that had horses in their backyard. I think we had other farm animals, to. Always had the mini farm tractors and low boys w/ excavators or loaders on them....we'd play in that town and drive around it kinda creating a narrative of what was going on that day. We would spend hours playing there.

Dinner tonight will be steaks w/ garden tomatoes & corn. I think Saturday will be leftovers and odds & ends. I did find passion fruit rum at the liquor store earlier and got a bottle (I was planning on getting some rum anyway). I've had some darn good passion fruit mojitos so maybe I'll mess around with that.

 

[Bianca and Bernard]

QOTD: We've never done a made up holiday. Sounds like fun, though.

Went to BJs to get a few things for the month, and to replace the hurricane supplies I bought in March that we used over the last few months. Walked out $600 poorer. I'm still not sure where it all went. The worst thing....$30 on cheese. Shredded cheese. that's a lot of tacos/burritos/quesadillas/homemade pizzas. Ah, well, at least I won't need floor cleaner or fabric softener or toothpaste or oil or cat litter....for a few months...

All that food and stuff I bought....and we are ordering Tijuana Flats for dinner. (Happy hour menu, woot).

Getting things battened down on the balcony, just in case we get hit by Isaias (put up the folding chairs, and brought in and cleaned the ice chests in case I need to go get ice tomorrow morning). If we lose power, we're going to be eating pb&js, lol, because I am too tired to go dig out the camping stoves out of the storage shed. So everyone get out there with your fans and blow that sucker to the east, ok?

 

[apirateslifeforme]

Tina, so glad to hear from you again! You've had a lot on your plate! Happy Birthday to Matt!

AuntieMe3, I am so grateful to hear that your friend's daughter was found. That must be such a relief

Pea-n-Me, I'd love to know any tricks on how to save money on the Poly! I used to be so into Disney and thought I knew all the tricks, but they've changed things so much now! We've already decided that we won't be able to afford a "grand trip" where we do everything anymore. We've resigned ourselves to doing it piecemeal...just spending a few days at 1-2 parks tops.

Turkey Hill is my favorite ice cream - in fact, it's on sale at our store this week! - but I also didn't know they made cakes! I think the only ice cream cakes at grocery stores here are Carvel and Friendly's (and I believe we can also order one from Dairy Queen...we don't have a sit-in DQ where you can get food; it's strictly a walk-up for ice cream). When we get an ice cream cake, as long as there are the chocolate crunchies in the middle, I'm good.

Tomorrow is DH's birthday and I spent the morning making a chocolate peanut butter pretzel pie. We didn't want cake this round because Josh's birthday is in 2 1/2 weeks and he wants cake. I never thought I'd say this, but with our 3 birthdays in a one-month span, trust me on this...There IS such a thing as "too much cake!" And my BIL's 50th birthday is on the 13th, but we probably won't do anything because he doesn't want to think about it

I thought we had a breakthrough last night...Josh started crying and screaming about making the "crona-virus" go away - "I want to do stuff again! Just snap your fingers and make it go away!" I hugged him and told him that I understood, I'm frustrated and want to do things, too, that this has never happened before in any of our lifetimes and it's new to literally EVERYBODY in the whole world. He then suggested that everyone should eat hot sauce. How I wish it were that easy...But now today he is back to being angry again. My living room is so torn apart that I can't even enter the room. He's got all my sofa cushions on the floor and refuses to put them back, plus his toys are scattered all over the floor. My heart hurts for him. I'm literally afraid of how angry he is now.

Friday 7/31 QOTD: Thinking about a kids book I recently re-read, did you or any of your friends (or with your own family) ever make up your own holiday?

I didn't come up with this, but a few years ago, I was made aware that August 10th is Duran Duran Appreciation Day! I celebrate that one without fail!

We also celebrate Josh's "Transferversary," as it's called in the infertility community. For those not in the know, a transferversary is the day you have your embryo(s) - whether 3- or 5-days-old - put back into your uterus where they'll hopefully implant and grow into a baby. Josh's Transferversary is December 7th (also Pearl Harbor Day, so it's easy to remember). Our clinic gave us a photo of the two embryos that we had transferred that day, which I love showing to Josh and telling him, "This is the first photo we have of you..." (I just don't know which one is him )

 

[sparkle78]

Hang in there, my 4 year old niece is going crazy too missing her friends. Heck, even my teens have had more than normal crazy moments through all this. Maybe a soccer net and ball in the yard, a small exercise trampoline ( often at yard sales) , water balloons to throw, or putting graham crackers or pretzels in 2 gallon bags and giving an ice ream scoop or large spoon to crush them.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Tina, so glad to hear from you again! You've had a lot on your plate! Happy Birthday to Matt!

AuntieMe3, I am so grateful to hear that your friend's daughter was found. That must be such a relief

Pea-n-Me, I'd love to know any tricks on how to save money on the Poly! I used to be so into Disney and thought I knew all the tricks, but they've changed things so much now! We've already decided that we won't be able to afford a "grand trip" where we do everything anymore. We've resigned ourselves to doing it piecemeal...just spending a few days at 1-2 parks tops.

Turkey Hill is my favorite ice cream - in fact, it's on sale at our store this week! - but I also didn't know they made cakes! I think the only ice cream cakes at grocery stores here are Carvel and Friendly's (and I believe we can also order one from Dairy Queen...we don't have a sit-in DQ where you can get food; it's strictly a walk-up for ice cream). When we get an ice cream cake, as long as there are the chocolate crunchies in the middle, I'm good.

Tomorrow is DH's birthday and I spent the morning making a chocolate peanut butter pretzel pie. We didn't want cake this round because Josh's birthday is in 2 1/2 weeks and he wants cake. I never thought I'd say this, but with our 3 birthdays in a one-month span, trust me on this...There IS such a thing as "too much cake!" And my BIL's 50th birthday is on the 13th, but we probably won't do anything because he doesn't want to think about it

I thought we had a breakthrough last night...Josh started crying and screaming about making the "crona-virus" go away - "I want to do stuff again! Just snap your fingers and make it go away!" I hugged him and told him that I understood, I'm frustrated and want to do things, too, that this has never happened before in any of our lifetimes and it's new to literally EVERYBODY in the whole world. He then suggested that everyone should eat hot sauce. How I wish it were that easy...But now today he is back to being angry again. My living room is so torn apart that I can't even enter the room. He's got all my sofa cushions on the floor and refuses to put them back, plus his toys are scattered all over the floor. My heart hurts for him. I'm literally afraid of how angry he is now.


I didn't come up with this, but a few years ago, I was made aware that August 10th is Duran Duran Appreciation Day! I celebrate that one without fail!

We also celebrate Josh's "Transferversary," as it's called in the infertility community. For those not in the know, a transferversary is the day you have your embryo(s) - whether 3- or 5-days-old - put back into your uterus where they'll hopefully implant and grow into a baby. Josh's Transferversary is December 7th (also Pearl Harbor Day, so it's easy to remember). Our clinic gave us a photo of the two embryos that we had transferred that day, which I love showing to Josh and telling him, "This is the first photo we have of you..." (I just don't know which one is him )

FWIW I admire what a good Mom you’ve been, and how devoted you are. I was telling my DD about it the other day (when I had to read her your passage on clothes shopping she was wondering why I was lol!). I mean, picking out a state every day to explore and all the other things you’ve done with Josh, it’s really amazing! I know I would be exhausted, lol.

It’s not something I can discuss publicly here because of the competition aspect w Dreams Unlimited. So we will have to speak by PM.

Our Transferversary is February 4th, and pregnancy was confirmed ten days later, on Valentines Day.

QOTD we do not have any of our own named holidays but we do think of every Disney trip as a holiday of sorts, and we commemorate it. Like one trip was in September. We sang “See You in September” the whole way to the airport after practicing for months, lol. I had forgotten about it but recently we were watching some old videos (DS always pulls them out) and I was sort of shocked to see we had actually done that! But it was really cute, even if a little cringeworthy now!

 

[PollyannaMom]

Josh's Transferversary is December 7th (also Pearl Harbor Day, so it's easy to remember). Our clinic gave us a photo of the two embryos that we had transferred that day, which I love showing to Josh and telling him, "This is the first photo we have of you..." (I just don't know which one is him )

That is so adorable!!

I thought we had a breakthrough last night...Josh started crying and screaming about making the "crona-virus" go away - "I want to do stuff again! Just snap your fingers and make it go away!" I hugged him and told him that I understood, I'm frustrated and want to do things, too, that this has never happened before in any of our lifetimes and it's new to literally EVERYBODY in the whole world.

It probably was a breakthrough, it's just that kids process things in fits and starts, so it will need to be a chain of little breakthroughs, not just one moment.

But now today he is back to being angry again. My living room is so torn apart that I can't even enter the room. He's got all my sofa cushions on the floor and refuses to put them back, plus his toys are scattered all over the floor. My heart hurts for him. I'm literally afraid of how angry he is now.

Don't be afraid (because believe me, they can smell it!) but try to reassure him that he is not the only one who feels angry. Books for kids about all this have been popping up on my Pinterest feed. It might be good to read some with him:

Link to a bunch!

Also, if you haven't already, start helping him to see the difference between feelings and actions. Remind him that it's OK to feel whatever you're feeling, but there are OK ways and not OK ways to show your feelings.

I love the suggestions above for appropriate ways to get out anger! One of those blow-up punching bags might be great as well. So is squashing Play-Doh, and stomping on bubble wrap (if you happen to get any in packages.)

Amazon link

As for cleaning up - if he won't put his toys away, you can always put them away in a closet after he's in bed and make him earn them back by doing chores.

 

[flyingdumbo127]

Please stay safe Bianca and Bernard! It is crazy (and IMO not right) how prices have skyrocketed on some items. I also know it is quite easy to spend more than intended at most any store!

Happy Birthday to your DH tomorrow, apirateslifeforme! You are indeed doing an amazing Mom job for Josh!

All good ideas, Sparkle! One other I just remembered (I know this isn't too physical an activity) if Josh likes basketball. I got one time for my preschool kids one of those suction cup (put on a window) basketball hoops that came with a nerf ball. They loved being able to move the net around plus it was a handy rainy day option as well. I also had as a childhood an indoor hopscotch mat. I realize Josh may be too young for hopscotch itself but he might enjoy jumping in the squares anyway

You posted just as I did, PollyannaMom! I think your suggestions are great too especially to remind Josh these are positive ways you can be angry. We all need to remember that at times! Another idea I just had is Alexander and the Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. I do not remember if this was included in the story but a takeaway from reading about that book in another kid's book one time was asking a child if they would like to start the day over. Literally get back in bed, calm down for a few, and then try again at the day.

Hug, Pea-n-Me, what a sweet share

 

[PollyannaMom]

Another idea I just had is Alexander and the Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. I do not remember if this was included in the story but a takeaway from reading about that book in another kid's book one time was asking a child if they would like to start the day over. Literally get back in bed, calm down for a few, and then try again at the day.

Love the re-set idea!

And that book is available on YouTube as a read-aloud:

 

[lynxstch]

When you have time @apirateslifeforme --would you please share the recipe for chocolate peanut butter pretzel pie? It sounds delicious! Happy Birthday to your husband tomorrow--hope he has a great day!

 

[lynxstch]

Weatherman was wrong again here, what a surprise. We had a nice light steady rain overnite..today we have sun and 84 degrees. The mugginess is gone, and it's just plain hot. I picked 6 more tomatoes this afternoon..one of them is a new variety called 'mushroom basket', I picked one of the 'smaller' ones, and it weighed 2 1/2 lbs! At the price they want for garden tomatoes at the farm stand-$4.99 a lb, that little sucker would cost almost $12! And I have a garden full of them, lol!
Have a great Friday evening everyone, take time to stop and give thanks for the good we still have in our lives, including this thread!

 

[Meriweather]

Pool day today.....part of home schooling

 

[easyas123]

Can I be homeschooled at your house????
Looks fun!

I’m going on 5 weeks of trying to get 3 different pool co salesman to even call me back!

 

[flyingdumbo127]

Can I come, too, Meriweather? Your pool is awesome!

Lynxstch, I am glad it was cooler then expected! Amen that there is good in each day!

 

[Meriweather]

Can I be homeschooled at your house????
Looks fun!

I’m going on 5 weeks of trying to get 3 different pool co salesman to even call me back!

They aren't home schooled at my house Just pool time is here. They have school at their house.

 

[Meriweather]

Can I come, too, Meriweather? Your pool is awesome!

Lynxstch, I am glad it was cooler then expected! Amen that there is good in each day!

Thank you. It is small (called a play pool) but nice.

 

[Breezy_Carol]

Pea-n-Me, I'd love to know any tricks on how to save money on the Poly!

The only reason were able to afford it in 1992 was we own Disney stock and there used to be benefits.

@Meriweather, I think your pool looks lovely.

I’m going on 5 weeks of trying to get 3 different pool co salesman to even call me back!

DD had a friend near her who had the pool people come out in mid-May to open their pool. The company told them they were really booked up with pool openings and they were lucky to schedule then or have to wait quite a while. I think they said so many people were at home and not traveling so they wanted pools.

I forgot another made up holiday but I didn't create it -- Festivus.

Dinner tonight was shrimp steamed with Old Bay, red beans and rice, and salad.

 

[flyingdumbo127]

Our thread is slipping!

I, too, think your pool looks lovely and tropical, too, Meriweather, very relaxing and fun as well That does make sense about a pool service back up (in being able to send someone out), Carol.

I hope all of you are keeping cool and having a good evening, too!

 

[gwynne]

Dinner tonight was turkey burgers.

@Bianca and Bernard Stay safe, hurricane season certainly can keep you busy.

@Breezy_Carol We celebrate festivus as well. It's also hubs birthday. Makes us smile every year.

@Meriweather Loved the photo. What fun at your pool today.

@flyingdumbo127 I enjoyed hearing about Augustania. That is a good day to celebrate!

So thankful for the kind words and thoughts here. Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

 

[flyingdumbo127]

Gwynne, Augustania was mentioned in a Baby-sitters Club Little Sister book called Karen's New Holiday!