This Week at the Brennans’

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Remember my last family update when I said I wanted to start doing more weekly updates? Hahaha…hahahahahahahaha! 6 weeks later…. Ahem. I guess we’ve established that I’m a busy lady. ANYWAYS. Here is what happened this past month:

Our built ins are done. Can we all have a moment of silence for those darn built-ins getting completed? HALLE-FREAKING-LUJAH. It was certainly a bigger project we weren’t expecting to take as long as it did, but we homeschool our kids and have all been home 24/7 for the past five months. Why did we think we could get it done quickly? Note to self: hire everything else out.

Eddie and Brooke both had a birthdays! They are about two weeks apart, Eddie at the end of January, Brooke early February. Eddie turned 5 and Brooke turned 12! I can’t even believe it. I know kids get older, but whyyyyy do the days feel long but the years feel short? I am preparing my kids to leave the nest in practical ways, because logically, that makes sense. But I will probably miss them more than I’m anticipating. Ha!

Gordon broke his toe! He stubbed it on a bench and it swelled up pretty good and turned a lovely shade of black and purple. Luckily it was just his middle toe and wasn’t too effected by it. Like it obviously hurt for a few days, but he’s been back to normal for a while now even though its not completely healed. Grateful it wasn’t his big toe, which I hear is terrible.

We got one quick dumping of snow a few weeks ago to be followed up by another one that lasted a little longer more recently. My kids love the snow, so its extremely welcome when it comes. But I really enjoy it melting away a few days later. I forgot how grey Portland gets in the winter, but all things considered, I’m grateful for the rain simply because you don’t have to shovel it.

Brooke is back to swimming for her swim team! It’s currently at an outdoor heated pool, but we’ll take it! She will be headed back to the local pool in a few weeks after things open up a little more, which will be nice because its a quick 5 minute drive away.

Our next ‘home project’ will be the office. We need to add doors so Porter doesn’t see me every time he walks by and freaks out. Since a huge part of my job is literally sitting at a desk and typing, doors would be helpful. We are also going to install some cabinets to store all the office items we have in boxes. Yes, still have things in boxes, though in our defense, these are the last two boxes. I ordered some Ikea cabinets with some semi-homemade door fronts and other pulls. The cabinets are here…we are waiting for the doors. So, we just have to buckle down and take the 79 hours it will take to put this Ikea stuff together.

Gordon and I finally got our bikes (really belated Christmas presents) so we can go riding around the neighborhood with our kids. Porter is a little unsure about it since I have him on the back of my bike, but I think as it warms up, he will come to love it!

Eddie has been consistently asking for more and more school work to do because I’ve started bribing Blake with candy during our little math class. His attitude is terrible and the candy does help. SOOOO, Eddie has been observing this for months and got smart enough to want to do school for candy, too. So, that’s what we’re doing and as long as he enjoys it, we’ll milk it for all its worth.

We are slowly getting ready for our Hawaiian vacation! We leave next Wednesday and I am so excited to get the heck outta here. We had a bunch of travel credits from our cancelled trip to Ireland last year and were on a time crunch to use them. We had such a great time the last time we went to Hawaii (O’ahu and Maui) so thought that would be an easy trip since Hawaii is so close to us on the west coast. It’ll be different because we probably won’t do much sightseeing, but just being able to go somewhere with better weather will be amazing! Heck, I’d be happy just staying at the vacation rental the entire two weeks we will be there. (It has a pool and I’m not mad about it.)

For those inquiring minds, yes, Hawaii is open! Hawaii has all its visitors jump through hoops in order to travel there safely and we are happy to jump through them all…Pre-covid testing, social distancing and all. 🙂

Here’s what is coming up these next few weeks:

Me, going crazy, trying to finish and get ahead with as much work as possible so this vacation can actually feel like a vacation. That would be nice. I’m also trying to find summer clothes for Porter which seem to be nonexistent in February. Ha!

Putting together some Ikea cabinets. Heaven help us.

My phone is acting really slow and I haven’t upgraded it in a while so I should probably do that before we fly across the ocean.

Recipe testing! Getting ready for Easter!

Have a great week, friends!