Nina Turns 14

On May 23rd, we celebrated Nina’s birthday!  It’s hard to believe we have a 14 year old in the house already!  She’s fun, artsy, athletic, smart, and has a great heart, and we’re so proud of the wonderful young lady she is.  Thirteen was a great year for her, and even though 14 is starting out in quarantine, we hope for all the joy and success for her in this coming year.  On most quarantine days right now you can find Nina doing art at her desk that faces the window (she loves looking out the window into the back yard from her desk), talking to her friends or family, or playing outside.  Although the track season was cut short due to COVID, she plans to get back to hurdling, running, and high jumping when this is over.  She’ll start at Independence High School in the fall (gasp!), and her favorite meal as requested for her birthday this year consists of Chick Fil-A nuggets, mac n’cheese, watermelon, and chocolate cake.  

I mentioned her favorite meal above, however, it should be mentioned that while that would be her favorite lunch or dinner meal, donuts, BY FAR, are her favorite breakfast.  It’s pretty much a consistent trait in the Simpson house - we all love donuts, so it’s how we start off celebrating most occassions!  Since her birthday was on a Saturday there was no school or work to get done, so after a full donut breakfast, she opened presents. Her birthday request this year was to have her two besties, Grace and Emily, over for the day, so the girls came around noon, and after lunch they started into a full water battle amongst themselves and the neigbors.  

  

We are so hopeful that the pools open at some point this summer, but until they do, I think there are going to be a lot of these water fights to have fun and keep cooled off on hot days.

  

 

After finishing the water battle, drying off and hanging out for a few hours, we had Nina’s birthday dinner request and, OF COURSE chocolate cake!

 

 

Nina and her two friends took a walk to the park so we could set up the next phase of the birthday day.  Lyla had wanted to make this next part a surprise, so while the girls were out on their walk, we set up an outdoor “theater” in the driveway.  We don’t have an outdoor projection screen but found that a white sheet taped on the garage door worked just as well.  I set up my projector and played the movie through my laptop, and it was awesome!  For a JV set up, I was impressed with how well the movie looked and sounded.  It was such a beautiful night and perfect for watching a movie outside.  Nina picked Tangled as the movie they watched, and when things finally wrapped up around 10:30, we dropped Grace and Emily off at home and called it a night.

 

 

For a quarantine birthday, Nina said it was amazing and actually one of her favorite birthdays ever, so we were glad that she had such a fun day and enjoyed the occasion to celebrate her.

Since her birthday fell on Memorial Day weekend, we took the cloudy day on Sunday to recover a bit from the party day on Saturday as well as get some jobs done around the house.  However, Monday was set to be another beautiful day, so we took the bikes back to the C&O Canal, and this time biked the opposite way on the path than we took a few weeks ago.  We biked 17 miles on the trail, but had some fun on the way riding down big grassy hills on the bikes.  The C&O Canal is a beautiful trail to bike on, and it’s quickly becoming a favorite place of ours to ride.  After we made it back home, Mark got busy on the grill, smoking jalapeño poppers, making wings, and grilling burgers.  It was a fun family day and a beautiful day to enjoy being outside and active together.

   

 

  

 

 

 

May in Quarantine

Well, time keeps ticking along and so does the quarantine!!  The soccer season for Lyla officially never happened this spring, but her team had weekly Zoom calls to keep connected.  One particular call took a fun twist with a “Nailed It” challenge.  The team manager arranged for two guest judges - one was a team member of the Washington Spirit and the other was the Cupcake Farmer (a local cupcake baker).  The girls were told to make a batch of plain cupcakes and assemble some icing and decorations and prepare for two surprise challenges.  The first one was the eagle mascot of the Washington Spirit.  The picture below is what they were supposed to make, then they wewre given 15 minutes and had to create their best rendition. Below that you’ll see Lyla’s creation. I thought her’s should have won!  It was so cute!!  It didn’t win, but we thought he was adorable.

 

The second challenge was the Loudoun Soccer fox which proved to be much harder, requiring them to work with and color fondant.  She had never used fondant before (we just bought a box of it for the challenge), so that one didn’t turn out as well, but it was a fun evening for the girls.

  

A few days later, we went on our semi-annual bike trip to our favorite pizza place, Fireworks.  We drive the bikes to the W&OD trail a few miles from our house, then we bike the trail to pizza and back.  Because of COVID, curbside pick-up only was available, but we knew that ahead of time and the pizza was waiting for us when we got there.  We took it to a park right down the street to eat it, and I think it tasted even better that night than when we eat it in the restaurant.  It’s always good, but it was extra extra good that night!

  

In other news, Cayenne had her first COVID related experience this month.  She was due for her routine check-up and Lyme vaccine back in March, but we kept putting it off due to COVID.  With all of this not going away as soon as we thought, we figured we’d best just get her in for her check-up social distancing style.  Her vet’s rules were for me to wait in the car, call them when I got there, and then they’d send someone out to the car to bring her into the vet and bring her back out to the car when they were finished.  She’s a bit of a baby (obviously), so the girls were so concerned about how she’d react having to go into the vet without mama.  She didn’t even want to get out of the car when the vet tech came to get her - then the whole walk into the vet’s office, she kept looking back at me like “what are you letting them do to me??”  She survived though, and when she was fnished and was walking out of the vet’s office, she practically dragged the vet tech back to the car to get back in!  Haa haa!! Evidently, it’s rough to go it alone at the vet!

 

Mother's Day 2020

I think it’s safe to say that Mother’s Day 2020 was not your average celebration year.  For many, Mother’s Day is associated with brunches, lunches, dinners out to restaurants, and family to get together with.  However, with so much of that off the table this year, I really expected just to spend the day with my family here at the house.  However, a few days prior to Sunday, we made the call to try a “social distancing” afternoon at Mouse and Pop’s house on Mother’s Day as we’ve all not been together as a family since the middle of March, and getting together was what Mouse really wanted to do.  Admitedly, it was a little harder to stay distant than we planned, but we did our best.  We stayed outside the whole time, everyone brought food and sat in chairs in the back yard, and while the adults were good about not touching each other or getting too close, it was understandable a bit harder for the kids.  

 Nina and Lyla were so excited to see their cousins, and all of us have been diligent about safe practices when we’ve had to go out, so we just let the kids have fun.  We enjoyed some cornhole in teams, the kids had fun just running aroud and hanging, the dogs ran, the boys played some golf in the field, and then we got a pretty fierce game of poison ball going.

 

 

Poison ball is like a running team dogeball game.  It’s fast and crazy but a lot of fun.  It started with just all the girls (old and young) playing, and then when the boys finished golf, they joined in.

 

Everyone was running, laughing, getting pegged by poison balls, and the dogs (well, Cayenne) were barking incessantly at us all in the process.

 

One of the funniest poison ball “outs” of the night was when one of the grandaughters got a good tag on Poppy.  It was the funniest scene, and I had all these hysterical pictures, but they’re ALL blurry!!!  Aghhh!!!  I forgot that I had my camera set for shots earlier in the afternoon, and when I picked it up to grab the dramatic Poppy scene, I forgot to check my settings, and they came out blurry.  Very sad.  The faces and the pictures were so funny!  Obviously, Poppy was fine and was just hamming it up for the girls, but we all got a good laugh out of it.

  

We had a really fun afternoon/evening together, and it made me wish all this COVID business would just disappear and we could get back to seeing each other again like we used to.  So much is different right now, but there is still so very much to be thankful for.  I’m so blessed to be the mother to Nina and Lyla - they are God’s very good gift to me.  

 

I’m thankful for the family I have, for a wonderful husband and two beautiful girls; I’m thankful that our families on both sides have stayed healthy through this pandemic, and I’m so thankful that we are celebrating Mother’s Day for my mom this year cancer-free.  This time last year, we still were blissfully unaware of what would transpire in a few weeks, but God has been so good and faithful to bring her through this past year and give her “all clear” screenings at this point.  Having her healthy has been everything to our family, and it’s part of the reason I was hesitant about even getting together with the family for Mother’s Day.  We just want she and my dad to weather this COVID storm as they have the past year with her cancer - coming out healthy and together.  

 

Nevertheless, we spent one of those days that makes you feel like COVID-19 wasn’t an issue.  Those days are the best. Theyr’e full of smilies, laughs, fresh air, and fun memories. We feel them when we’re either out biking or hiking or doing something fun that we used to do, pre-COVID, and it just gives you a bit more life and energy in your day, and that was how it felt on Mother’s Day.   

 

 

Quarantine Spring

All the days and weeks are bluring into one, but as with everyone, we keep trucking along in quarantine.  Every week is a similar picture of the week before with some changes here and there.  We do school, get workouts in, get outside, eat, walk the dog, repeat….

We will take some comic relief whenever possible though.  Lyla was trying to convince herself that she hadn’t outgrown her battery powered scooter, and in the process, sparked a mental visual for me of Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber.  So, after paying them off with a promise of a coffee drink (as they were not keen on my idea of funny at first for fear that friends would see them), they wore their helmets and goggles so I could get a laugh.  It was well worth it!!

 

We’ve been out taking some nature walks when possible. Some of our favorite hiking places are closed, but we’re trying to get out to where we can, as much as we can.  On this particular walk, we got a little confused on the trail we were taking and ended up walking and walking and walking, but we eventurally made it back to the car and then polished things off with some ’smores on the deck afterwards.

 

  

In other news, Mark and I have been trying to knock out projects around the house, and Nina has picked up a new hobby since being in quarantine.  She asked us if we would buy her an acoustic guitar, and we agreed, provided that she would practice of course.  Niether Mark or I have played the guitar, and she can’t get lessons right now, so she’s teaching herself how to play.  So far, she’s been pretty dedicated about practicing, and I’d love to see her continue to play.

One exciting thing that happened in quarantine was that the girls’ new mountain bikes came in, and we were able to pick them up at the bike shop and take them out for their first ride on the C&O Canal one beautiful Saturday.  We had gotten a lot of rain the week prior, and a section of the trail was clearly flooded.  This trail path was actually a detour path for the actual bridge path over the river that was under construction, so there was no way to continue down the trail unless we climbed up the rock embankment on the other side of the trail, walked down the train tracks for a short bit, then climbed back down and through the woods to get back on the trail on the other side of the water...

 

…so that’s what we did and got back on the trail to continue our trip.

    

We biked to Brunswick, MD where we stopped at the Towpath Creamery for ice cream cones, then we biked back to the car.  

 

It was such a beautiful day to be outdoors and active, and we love that the girls have good bikes that fit them now, so we can take longer rides as a family.  We finished off the day by cooking our burgers and hot dogs over the fire pit (rather than the usual grill) and enjoyed the rest of the evening out on the deck relaxing.  It was the type of day that made me forget we are in a pandemic time right now.

 

Speaking of life in the pandemic, Cayenne continues to live her best life.  She couldn’t be happier to have her people at home all day long.  She is never more than a few inches away from us at any given time (as seen in the first picture while I was practicing Body Flow), and she loves the luxury of bed hopping from room to room all day long. She checks for squirrels at the window, loves her walks, and even assists in getting Nina out of bed on weekdays.  I think she’s the only one hoping this quarantine goes on for awhile longer!