claire

Corona #2

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Claire is dealing with the *@&#*#&! coronavirus now too.

Here’s a quick photo to capture this historical moment (Claire’s doing fine). She’s been hanging out on the couch for about 48 hours. A milkshake and some chicken soup are helping with the recovery.

The frog hat (from her sister for her birthday) isn’t just glamorous but is also is reported to “actually” make Claire feel better. ☺️

Molly, who tested positive a couple of days ago, is currently doing cartwheels around the living room. I guess she’s feeling better. 🤸🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♂️

As a side note, Claire thought it was funny that while we were watching Demon Slayer, there was a “COVID-19 Testing” broswer tab open in the background. 😂

A Very COVID Thanksgiving

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If you had asked me a year ago if I wanted to spend all of Thanksgiving week locked down at home with the kids, not seeing any family or friends all week, I would have said, “Uh… no.” But things have changed. The girls and I had a pretty amazing pandemic Thanksgiving to ourselves.

It was so good, in fact, that I forgot to take any pictures of the kids, so this is going to be a mostly photo-free post. 😉

For nine days, we all chilled and barely left the house. The kids got lots of rest and down time. I worked most days, and the girls settled into a relaxed groove alternating between relaxing for a while, and then hanging out for a while. 🤔

At the end of the week, I asked the girls if they ever got bored. “Yesss!” they both said in unison. “But it was good!”

A few highlights:

  • Molly set up a pillow fort in her room dedicated to reading Fever 1793.
  • We had some seriously crazy games of Uno. I didn’t know that game could get so crazy. 🤷🏻‍♂️
  • We watched Jojo Rabbit, an astonishingly beautiful, sad, and funny movie about a Nazi youth. 🙃 I assured the girls ahead of time that it was heartwarming, made fun of those stupid Nazis, and it even had a funny Hitler. 🤔
  • We played some Among Us and had some good laughs.
  • I took a walk with Claire during which we exclusively discussed nuclear power and radiation poisoning. 🤷🏻‍♂️
  • The girls discovered the joys of my PC and worked out a peaceful PC-sharing system. I did not have to get involved. ✌️
  • Claire and I joked a lot about the “most definitely” Roblox guy on Twitch. 😆

I told Molly I was going to have to serve 81 meal portions over nine days, if you could three meals a day for all three of us. That is a lot! I told her I thought we could get that down to 54 portions if we all just skip one meal a day. “Noooo nooo! No!” Molly said. “You’re trying to trick us!” 😆

So we cooked a lot.

We made our favorite “Very-aki” chicken from memory. We made what Claire described as a “modern Mexican Thanksgiving meal”. Between the apple crumble dessert and making Claire’s apple birthday cake, we peeled, cored, and shredded 6 pounds of apples. 😮

Best Thanksgiving ever!

Note the “most definitely” that Claire added to the wall chalkboard. 😆

Most Definitely

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Claire’s been following this dude on Twitch who does Roblox stuff. Claire cracks up because he always says, “Yeah, yeah, most definitely.” It’s never just yes and no. The negative counterpart is, “Absolutely not.” Claire is compiling a montage of this.

Claire and I say “most definitely” to each other way too much. Like if I say, “Claire, are you ready for dinner?”, she will respond, “Yeah, yeah, most definitely. I’ll be right over.” 😆

The funniest part was when we were all planning to watch Schitt’s Creek as a family and Claire had to pass. She texted me from upstairs.

By the way, Molly’s official stance is, “I don’t like most definitely.” When asked to explain further, she says, “It’s just so annoying.” 🤷🏻‍♂️

Just Like Mendl’s

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Claire and I love the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel. We’ve watched it together a few times over the years. In the movie, the pastry from Mendl’s not only looks delicious, but it also plays a major role in a prison escape.

The iTunes Extra” included instructions for making the infamous Courtesan au Chocolat. Instead of just idly watching these tantalizing instructions, we decided “Let’s make and taste a Courtesan au Chocolat!”

It’s the perfect pandemic lockdown activity. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Claire did almost the entire recipe herself. The kitchen was a mess, but the result was amazing. It’s a light, creamy, slightly sweet pastry. It tastes even better than we expected. We did not include pick axes to get anyone out of jail, but maybe we will next time. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Way to go on making this happen, Agitha — I mean Claire! 😀👍😋

Avatar Verse

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Claire has started the fascinating new hobby of making video edits with clips from Avatar: The Last Airbender. ☺️ She had seen a few edits on Instagram and decided to do her own!

To get started, Claire asked me if she could buy Video Star for the iPad. At first, I thought this was just a silly little editing app. But she can do amazing things with it! I was stunned to watch Claire just figure out on her own how to make beautiful edits with this app.

Way to go, Clairey!

Honor Society

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Claire was recently admitted into the National Junior Honor Society.  She worked hard and got her grades up to make this happen!

Congrats, Claire!

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Ze, Susie, and Claire accepting their honor society membership.