We had another low key day, finishing school work for the year, last xmas shopping trip, and a walk to the nearby park.
It was a very foggy morning, again, we could barely see the RVs across the parking lot. It had rained overnight, and the wind picked up a bit too. I woke up a few times hearing noises and feeling some movement on the trailer and it was wind pushing the awning that was left open. It didn’t look like it was too windy, so I just retracted the awning a bit and it got better. I had left the grill out last night, probably the worst night to do that with all the rain, humidity etc… and, when I went outside this morning to check things out, there were bird foot prints all over the table where the grill was. The grill was all wet, and one of the sides was greasy, as if the wind pushed the grease from inside the grill to that side.
The windows inside were much improved, there was condensation but it looked more like a fog, and much less water running. It’s improving!
Since there’s no regular school again, everyone slept in. I was up by 7:15 as I had a call at 7:30. I think this was the first time I had calls and everyone was sleeping. Right after my first call the girls were up, and then during my second call Carol was up. I had to use our AT&T hotspot for my calls as the wifi here still does not work. I kind of like the change of pace with the girls not having wifi all the time, but some times it has challenges. They wanted to ask me something while I was on the call, but we had talked about not interrupting each other when on calls, and while I could see them next to me waiting, they didn’t interrupt, but I had to signal that I could not talk. I think we are in a good spot again with rules and how we all work together in this small space. I tried to work on posts for as long as I could after my calls, I’m trying to get caught up, but only got one extra day caught up, still have two to go, on top of the new one each day 🙂
The girls were up just a little after 8. They started playing with their devices until I was done with my calls. Once I finished, I got them both going on school stuff as there were just a few things they needed to do on the assignments they got for winter break. Bia had some math, and Bella had to read and fill out some sheets.
Carol got ready and we determined everything we still needed for Xmas, and she went out shopping to get everything. The idea was she would not be back until she had every single thing we needed. hahahaha… gifts, groceries, etc. I’m sure we’ll need to get some groceries yet because we can’t store that much stuff in our fridge, so we are always going every 2-3 days. I think Carol left around 10:30am, and was back around 2. There was one more thing she needed, so she left again mid afternoon and was gone for another 2 hours almost. Now we do have everything.
When the girls were done with their school work, which was almost at the same time, I had them change and get ready for the day. It was almost noon, so I asked them to look in the fridge, pantry, etc and tell me what they wanted for lunch. They got ready and started checking around, and to my surprise, Bella said she wanted to make lunch, then Bia said she did too. They chose to make noodles with sausage and cheese. hahahaha… easy enough. While they got things from the pantry and prepared the material needed, I washed the dishes and cleaned up the area. We talked about what they would be doing, each step, timing and sequencing, amounts and portions, and who would do what. This was cool. They worked as a team.
They figure out how much water they needed for half a box of noodles. They had to find out how many cups were in a quart, and then how many cups were needed for 3 quarts. It was cool to see them work on math in real life :). While Bella got the noodles going, putting water in the pan, lighting the stove, etc. Bia started slicing the sausage. When Bella was done, she joined Bia and her role was to remove the skin from the sausage slices, so Bia could then chop them even smaller and put in the small pan we had for that. This was awesome. I had this Portuguese Sausage I bought in Groveland, and it had some fat in it which just melts away when you grill it, so I didn’t add anything to the pan, just the chopped up sausage and a cover… we let it heat up, mixing it around once in a while and left it in low heat. When the noodles were ready, the sausage was ready. I helped strain the water out of the noodles, then they served the plates and forks and serving utensils. I just put the pans on the table and we were ready to go. They already had the cheese ready as well. So, you just put some noodles, then sausage and cheese on top, mix it all quick, the cheese melted and there you have it.
It actually turned out great. That sausage added a ton of flavor to the mix. Everyone had seconds, but their seconds did not include the sausage. That’s their usual on pasta, if they have seconds and there’s plain pasta, that’s what they have, plain. There was like a half a cup of noodles left, that’s it. Then we put things away, I washed the dishes and they dried and put away. I cleaned up the stove as well, all of it, since I had the glass all the way open to use two burners. And the kitchen was cleaner than before 🙂
After lunch, the girls were playing around with some of their new toys, then they saw a kitty outside and went outside. I tried to work on more posts while they did that. Then, around 2:30 or so I told them we were going to a park, so we all got ready and left.
We walked there as I thought the park was like 5 minutes away, but not only was it not that close, I took a wrong turn and it took us like 30 minutes to get there. Hahahahaha.. They were in a great mood though, and we had a great walk there. A few homes in the area had animals, and there was a place that had a bunch of chicken, so Bella was excited. We for sure saw a lot of dogs. Most of the homes in the area here have wire fences, so it’s easy to see the animals, but there was a lot of barking at us too. I ended up getting the GPS to guide us the rest of the way to the park, and Bia wanted to “take us there”, so she held my phone until we got there, and kept telling us where to turn.
The park is actually pretty big, lots of green space to just run around, a few soccer goals, basketball court, and three different but similar playground spaces, next to each other, with a type of canvas cover. The place was pretty empty, just some kid playing basketball alone. The girls ran around and told me the playground was all wet, so it was hard to play. So, they wanted me to play “Lava Monster” with them. Hahahaha,..,. that entailed me staying on the ground, with the balls, and trying to catch them while they were up on the playground, or hitting them “softly” with the balls (no head shots allowed). That was kind of fun, so we played that for a good 20-30 minutes.
Then, they ran around a bit and Bella asked to play soccer. We went to the field and it was all wet, so our shoes ended up soaked, and dirty. We played soccer for a little while, Bella is getting into it, and she actually has pretty decent ball control. She ran across the entire field with me “chasing” her, and she kept control of this tiny ball (that Bia got from Santa) while running, and then kicked in the goal on the other side. That looked promising 🙂
It was getting colder quickly, and the dense fog was coming down again, AND we all needed to pee so we decided to walk back. Bella asked for the GPS right away and said she didn’t want to waste any time missing turns. hahahahahah… The walk back was much quicker, more like 15 minutes. When we arrived back, Carol arrived soon after. Bella decided to stay outside longer and play with this black kitty that had followed us when we left.
We started putting things away, showers, Carol was making dinner and also making Empanadas for tomorrow, so lots going on at the same time. We had the TV on as well. We had dinner, and the girls had seconds again, they love soup and that’s what Carol made. Then when Carol finished the empanadas, we cleaned up and watched a movie. I kind of fell asleep throughout the movie, so didn’t really follow it all, but Bia was really into it and followed it all along. That was pretty much the rest of our day, just chilling watching TV. Bia had asked to sleep in my bed so I was sleeping in hers, which was the top bunk, so she had to prepare it all. Hahahaha she has like three pillows to move over… and with all the stuffies and toys, I wanted her to move it all to one side.
And that was it, we had a good low key day, getting things done and checking out the nearby park.