The Nelson Narrative

It occurred to me yesterday that I really should be documenting these unprecedented times.  I'm going to want to look back and remember what it was like.  So I'm going to try and blog at least weekly about our life in stay-home mode. As you may know if you've ever read here before, one of my most frequent complaints is not having enough time to work on my long list of projects.  And my favorite type of weekend is one where we have absolutely no plans.  So honestly, I've kind of been loving not having anywhere to be for the last several weeks.  I definitely am missing things like girl's night, game night, date nights (like we have very many of those anyway) Target runs, etc., but for the most part I'm enjoying finally having time to work on my projects! Besides projects (which mostly include purging/organizing drawers/cupboards/closets, sorting through pictures and putting in albums, scrapbooking (which is one of my projects I haven't actually done yet), ...

Well, it certainly was an Easter like no other.  It's funny because every year we either go to Paul's parents' house or one of my relatives' homes, and I always think that one of these years it would be nice to just stay home and be have Easter just the 4 of us.  Well, this year I got my wish.  It ended up being a great day, but I miss having other family around. The day started off with my normal Sunday routine of relaxing on the couch with a cup of coffee and watching Flea Market Flip.  I did some Bible reading, took a shower, then it was time for online church.  The girls even watched with us for a bit but then they got bored and disappeared.  I thought we'd have to fight them to get them to watch at all though so I was ok with that. After church we had a nice brunch complete with mimosas, then we hid eggs for the girls.  After the egg hunt we went on a beautiful walk (everyone except Olivia) on a trail with a cool bridge that for some weird rea...

As of last Friday, schools in Washington State (and by now most other states I think?) are closed until April 24th (at least, sounding more and more like it will be until Fall!) because of the coronavirus situation.  Thank goodness I don't have to worry about childcare anymore.  People at work are being asked to work from home as much as possible, but I'm just working from home two days a week because I just have a much better set-up at work for what I do (and no one is there anyway so the risk is low).  It's been really weird these last few weeks. Anyway, I worked from home on Friday as I usually do, then after dinner I took the girls to a bubble tea place they've been wanting to try and then to Michael's to stock up on some craft supplies to give them something to do for the next 6+ weeks.  We will try to do school work here and there but they'll need other things to do and neither of them like to read, unfortunately, nor do they care much for playing outsid...

Friday was the girls' 12th birthday and like with any birthday around here, especially theirs, we once again managed to spread the celebration out over several days.  We took them to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner Friday night, Saturday night was dinner with some of their friends at the Melting Pot and on Sunday Paul's parents came over for dinner. Cute (and rare) pic of Paul and Kayley The in-laws were bringing an ice cream cake, but Olivia still wanted to make something and I don't really care for ice cream cake (I like it fine but if I'm going to eat cake I want it to be real cake with real buttercream frosting) so she made a strawberry cake all by herself (from a mix, but homemade frosting and decorated herself).  I think she did an awesome job! 12.  Unbelievable.  In a year I will have two teenagers.  Yay.

We're not big on Valentine's Day around here.  We usually exchange a box of See's chocolates and a card and call it a day.  And I usually get roses or flowers of some sort (but no chocolate for me this year because of the KETO thing--down 15.6 so far!).  A few times over the years we have managed to go out for a nice dinner but most of the time we don't want to bother to try and find a sitter.  Luckily starting next year that won't really be an issue anymore (the girls can be left alone now but don't like to be late at night).  And then I usually get the girls a little something small, like a small heart-shaped box of cheap chocolates and in years past a Valentine's themed Beanie Boo or something.  But they are done with Beanie Boos and Olivia doesn't really like chocolate, so this year I gave her Hi-chews and Kayley did get a heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolates (not as good as See's but WAY better than that cheap Palmer's crap that...

I have 29 drafts in my drafts folder.  I'm going through it tonight and decided to go ahead and post some of these already, for no other reason than I've been slacking in my blogging lately and want to post something, plus I spent good time writing those.  So here is one I wrote about a year and a half ago.  We have now been in our house 12 years and still haven't painted (other than the bedrooms, one bathroom and the wall that spans the living and dining rooms.  Sigh. We've been in our house for 10 1/2 years and other than the main living room, have never hung curtains.  I've bought several over the years but never put them up because they ended up being not quite the right color or whatever. I was almost ready to finally take them all to Value Village or attempt to sell them on the neighborhood buy/sell Facebook page, but then I decided that the light blue ones that I intended for the living room (the one room that already has curtains, but I'm changing th...

I started Keto on the 1 st .  As of the 9 th , I had lost 6 pounds.  Then I had to travel for work.  I left on the afternoon of the 9 th , so 2 meals were still at home (or brought from home to work) and I only had dinner to worry about.  Luckily, the restaurant we ate at had some low-carb options.  I had a blackened chicken zucchini noodle thing, but I also had a “skinny” margarita (and not necessarily low-carb). The hotel offered a free breakfast, but I was worried that it would only include bagels, doughnuts, etc.  So I ventured down Friday morning and luckily, there were scrambled eggs and sausage.  So far, so good. Then it was time for the complimentary lunch.  Sandwiches, chips, cookies and an apple.  I ate the sandwich, bread and all, because it would have been hard and messy to try and eat only the meat and veggies.  I did remove the processed “cheese” slice, though.  I ate the chips (Sun Chips), because I want...