Day 405

Late start day for school (except Matteo). And it was a very cold walk to school with AJ. A little work got done on the puzzle. And Nana finished up altering Fina's dress for prom and made progress on a runner (pictured) for the same event (this Saturday!). Lexi and Jonnie had swim lessons as usual for a Wednesday these days. 

AJ made my day. He came out and joined me at the fire, as he often does. But rather than a couple-minute conversation, this one went quite a while. He told me how he and a friend at school had quite the conversation about Passover. AJ recounted for me what he told the friend, and it was spot on! He remembered (mostly) the bitter herbs including what each meant. He remembered the blood smeared over the door and what that meant. He remembered Moses at the "bush that was burning but wasn't burning down." He went on to tell of playing 20 Questions at church with Bible character names on their backs. As fate would have it, his tag was Moses. His first question was about the burning bush. Yes. His next question was did he take slaves out of Egypt. Yes. The teacher wanted to know how he knew so much. Grandpa. He asked me if we could do more stuff like the Passover Seder. Yes!

Temps were below freezing.

Ready for a spankin'?

Day 404

Interesting sky and views after last night's snow. Even a "snowbow." Today was the twin's first workday of their quarantine from school this week. Oh, how we dislike this Zoom stuff. The fire had to burn its way out of the snow for Torah Time today. And Lynn had her first knitting class at the Club! The day ended for the Fosters with a phone call to the Siscos to plan their early-June New Mexico adventure. Oh, and how about that Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey at Walter's! Shhh, don't tell Rob, it's a surprise...

Day 403

Off to school! Well, all but Jonnie and David who are quarantined out of school for the week because there's been some kind of exposure via their classroom. Matt, Fina, Nana, and Papa managed to get away for lunch to Sushi Ato, a fave. Right after school, AJ was pretty anxious to do his chemistry kit (from Mel Science), so we did. And Nana whipped up some great stuffed mushrooms and a yummy salad for adult dinner.

Chemical seaweed (crystal growing, essentially)

Making "jellyfish" (more crystal growing)

Day 402

It was a day like any other... Until it wasn't. The morning was quite normal with everyone involved at church. In the afternoon, Fina and AJ had callbacks for The Sound of Music. But on the way to callbacks, things shifted. Fina was practicing driving and hit a curb at Research and Voyager. Which totally disabled the car. This started a 6-hour ordeal getting the kids to their callbacks, staying with the car (which was not moveable) till a tow truck arrived, etc. AJ thought the whole experience was fantastic except when he saw fluid on the ground and couldn't open the car door; temporary panic. The door being locked probably saved him from flying out into traffic. This also meant Tracy wasn't home for a gastro feeding, so Lynn had to do that, and together she and I got dinner for the rest of the gang at home. Lots of texting for status, etc. All's well that ends well, things were calm again by 8pm or so. AJ (and crew) got a "trip to the star place!" (Carl's Jr.) and Starbucks on their way home. AJ and Papa had planned to do his newly-arrived science kit today; that didn't happen. And not much got done on the new puzzle either. 

plus Dino Nuggets

Yup, it's turned out a little too much.

Day 401

Matt's pumpkin pancakes for breakfast were a big hit; it's been a little while. Community theater is back! Jamie went down to First Company Theater this morning to work on cleaning out and arranging a storage area off the theater. Fina and AJ auditioned today for a production of The Sound of Music by Elevate Productions (headshots for today's auditions below)! Of course, Fina's been managing to keep up stage activities through much of this pandemic stuff, but AJ could only keep asking "when can I be in a play again?" We kept telling him we were watching for opportunities for him, and finally one came along! We'll find out soon (they both got a callback for tomorrow). The run will be June 25-27 (sadly, while Nana and Papa are in CA).

The finished product; a vast improvement.
Couldn't even walk in there when we started.

Day 400

400 days and still counting to "flatten the curve in two weeks." To be fair, Colorado is getting better quickly, or so it seems today. We're headed to CA at the end of June, however; not sure how "normal" that will be. I'm also not sure how much longer I can keep up this daily posting... Yup, more snow overnight. Not much of a Spring so far. Always enjoy Chess with AJ; he's really working on strategies. Tracy, Fina, Nana, and I enjoyed a wonderful lunch at Marigold Cafe and Bakery (surrounding a visitation trip for the foster kids). The amazing part was that it felt like normal, ya know, pre-COVID normal. It was packed, noisy, and bustling. We loved it! The kids discovered Lolley's Ice Cream tonight. "Graham Slam" was a big hit (really does taste like cinnamon Graham crackers). My fave is "Cocoa Coconut."

Marigold

Lolley's Ice Cream

Day 399

A Pear Valley Wine shipment arrived today! And by evening, snow was coming back. For dessert after Walter's Pizza (I love the meat-monster on cauliflower crust) was The Cupcake Doctor. Did I mention Matt went up to Cherry Creek for a couple days to work not-from-home ("out in the out" as Fina puts it). Tracy's gonna swap spots with him Friday night.

We had two huge little moments at The Compound today:

1. Tracy put the finishing touches on an audition packet for Fina and for AJ. They audition this weekend for The Sound of Music (Elevate Productions). Community theater is back!

2. I had one of those wonderful moments when the stars align while learning new stuff. I've been diving deep into the Torah (1st five books of the Bible) and have also started learning Biblical Hebrew (Great Courses) to go with that effort. Today, the language lesson was about 1-letter prepositions and 1-letter articles that are put on the front of nouns to make a phrase. And low and behold, I spotted one in an Exodus commentary I'm reading (for my Ten Commandments study group). I usually don't look at the Hebrew much (don't know enough yet), but today I just happened to spot "to the earth" (see pic below)! Several of the translations, including this one, say it's "under the earth." I think that's a context thing. Anyway, this is a good example of how Hebrew is more concise than English. It can take about 50% more English words to say what is said in Hebrew (Hebrew Bible has about 420,000 Hebrew words while the English translation has about 600,000 words). That's because of stuff like this: one Hebrew word equals three English words. In לָאָרֶץ, the first letter לָ (Hebrew reads right-to-left) is the preposition "to/under", the next letter would be ה but it's contracted out (not there, like the second 'o' in don't) and means "the", and the rest, אָרֶץ, is "earth". I will sleep well tonight!