Friday Night Photos

Rain and baseball. That's what the past three days have been. I can't get over this "spring" weather--it hasn't been this cold in May for as long as I can remember. When in the car, we go from heat to air conditioning and back to heat in a single day; at home, we go from heat to windows open to closing the windows for rain, and heat again when it's too cold in the late afternoon. At Eli's baseball games this year, I've been wearing long underwear under my clothes as well as a hat and gloves. In May! It's crazy.

Anyway, this weekend has started out very poorly...

After two and a half years of managing to avoid it, COVID has reached our household.

Jerry is the only one who has it (or who is symptomatic, anyway), so hopefully it stays that way. He took tests Wednesday and Thursday--both were negative. This morning, his symptoms were worse and I told him to try another test. It showed up as positive almost instantly.

All four of us are vaccinated and boostered, so I hope that his symptoms don't get any worse. He has a cough, very stuffy nose, body aches, mild fever. He won't have to go to work until next Friday, so right now he's just sleeping a lot. It's crazy how he managed to avoid it for so long, even when it was at its peak and he was still working all through the pandemic.

Anyway... Eli asked me to take some pictures of him at his game earlier this week and when I was looking through them, I couldn't believe it was my kid. He's SO grown-up! It was funny--a couple of kids from the other team asked him if he plays football and he said no. They said he looks like he lifts weights, haha. He is taking time off of lifting until baseball is over because he has practice or a game every single day. But I can't believe how much the lifting changed his body in such a short time frame.

Check this out... a 10 year difference:

That year, in his gray shirt, he chose number 11 because it was my favorite number. The sweetest kid ever!

We have baby squirrels!! I'm so excited and they are SO stinkin' cute. It's hard to see their size without something to compare it to (and it's hard to get pictures of them because they move so fast and all over the place). They look like adult squirrels, just in miniature form. There are four of them and they chase each other all over the tree, wrestling and going out on limbs that just look way too small for them. 

They all stop and stare, still and wide-eyed, as their mom comes to get food to bring to them. This morning, mom was coming down the tree with all four babies following in a single file line behind her. My heart melted.

In this picture below, you can kind of see their size in comparison to mom. She's on the far right.

I thought it was interesting that Duck sleeps with his eyes open sometimes. In this picture, you can clearly see his eye, but he was sound asleep. I thought he was watching me as I was moving around the living room, but his eyes weren't moving. You can see a shift in his eyes when he wakes up--from vacant to "Oh, hello there". It's kind of creepy!

I gave myself a haircut and it feels a millions times better. (It looks bad in these pictures because I'd had it pulled up while it dried, so there are lumps from the hair ties, but you get the idea.) The top of it was looking so weighed down, and I just spontaneously cut it when I got out of the shower. It doesn't look like a big difference, but it feels SO short now. I'm glad I can still pull it into a messy bun (just barely, though!).

Joey on our walk Wednesday morning. I kind of miss doing this route with him. I'm going to make it a point to do it more often.

The cats have been getting so much attention ever since Duck's surgery in December. I laid on the couch a few nights ago and instead of letting all the cats sleep on me, I let Joey crawl up on my lap (he's there, he's just hard to see!). He loved the extra attention--I think he felt special that he got priority over the cats.

Eli asked me to buy him Lunchables when I went grocery shopping. They're like $2.50 each and you barely get any food in them--certainly not enough for an active teenage boy. I put together these ones for him and it made me so nostalgic for when the kids were little and I packed their lunches. When they went back to school during the pandemic, lunch was free for everyone. Eli started eating school lunch ever since (by choice, not because I made him). Now he says he's sick of school food; I'm happy that I can pack lunches again! (I never thought I'd say that)

When we went to my parents' house on Sunday, Noah played with Luke and Riley. He's SO GOOD with them! I always thought it would be Eli who was great with kids, but Noah chased them all over the house and the kids had a blast with him. I love seeing all of them play together.

Noah got a haircut yesterday, thankfully. I feel like I have to explain because of the way his hair looks in pictures, haha. He's been growing it out so he just had the sides cut and the top trimmed. I'm not a fan of the long hair, but I'm just an old-fashioned mom I guess ;)

Finally, a picture of Phoebe enjoying the one random nice day we've had. She rolled around on the concrete and lay in the sun. She loved it! I take her outside a couple of times a day for about 10-15 minutes because it's the only thing that she seems to really look forward to. She perks up so much after being out there. 

And that's all I've got. Have a great weekend!