Mimi and Mormor Visit

Mimi and Mormor came to visit during Mimi's Spring Break.

The kids spent a lot of time outside with Mimi playing mostly soccer and some baseball.  Mimi wasn't very good at guarding the goal, and Derek kept on scoring :-)   Derek was incredibly pleased with himself.

Mimi throwing a ball to Karina so she could hit a home run:

They also played soccer, dribbling the ball and taking turns guarding the goal. 

Derek had a different soccer ball than Karina and Mimi, and Karina was not allowed to prevent him from scoring.  Derek didn't know that though and he was incredibly sneaky, running in clandestinely, and kicking his ball in the goal every time Karina turned away.  

His victory dance when he scored against Karina the goalie was energetic and cute.

There was also lots of time to read stories.  Mormor's lap was good for snuggling and reading:

Snoopy was never far from the action either. 

We celebrated Derek's birthday a second time when our visitors came.  Derek's birthday was actually the week before, but Mimi and Mormor visiting was a good excuse to celebrate a second time.  He decided on chocolate chip cookies for this party.

Mimi installed our fireplace mantle for us.  It was a major job with plenty of prep work.  The mantle is 70 pounds, so it needed to be mounted well.  Derek helped Mimi drill some holes in the wall to find exact location of studs:

He put 10 inch lag bolts in the wall, placed at an angle for added stability.  Then he had to match the hole placements and angles of the lag bolts in the mantle.   

The kids helped clean up Mimi's messes:

Despite the difficulty of spacing and angles, the lag bolts in the wall studs perfectly slid into the mantle on the first try!  Given how meticulous Mimi is, I don't think anyone was surprised. 

We are happy with our antique hand hewn oak beam mantle.  You can see the marks from the axe or adze when the beam was hewn likely over 100 years ago:

Here is the final result:

We have loved having a gas fireplace.  We use it multiple times per day for warmth and coziness.  

Mimi also had time to pretend to be a dragon.  Derek appears to be fighting the dragon:

We also had a chair leg break, and Lydia and Derek were quick to help with the repairs, with their drill and screw driver:

A couple days before Mimi and Mormor left, we found out schools were shutting down for coronavirus.  More about our homeschooling and quarantine to come in another post.