March: Birthdays, Fun at Home, and Return to School

Derek turned five the beginning of March and was quite excited.  Even Snoopy was excited to wear a birthday hat... maybe.

 Look at that boy so excited to open his presents and to have a day all about him.

Mormor flew to Maryland with Tanja and the kids after our Florida vacation and it worked out well for her to be here to celebrate Derek's birthday.

 

Tanja and the kids.

Derek has been fascinated recently with light sabers despite never having watched any Star Wars movies.  I'm sure much of the fascination is because the neighbors have light sabers and he wants to have his own to play with them.  We had already gotten him four light sabers (and he had already broken one or two), but he decided he wanted another one and of course loved unwrapping that present for his birthday.

This bag full of bugs was a fun present to learn about different bugs too.

We were all happy with Derek's birthday cake Tanja made.

 

Mormor left to go back to Miami after a week on the day after Derek's birthday, but not before taking some pictures with the kids.

Snoopy as always is a good boy.

Derek dressed up as an astronaut knight because two costumes are better than one.

 

 Derek put on Lydia's old pair of glasses to be silly.

Now that the weather is nice most of the time, the kids can go outside to play more often.  Here they are with towels to sit on and a tent to use as a base for whatever game they had going on.

Our school district finally moved to some version of in person learning a year after closing campuses. 'Hybrid' school now consists of 2 days per week taught in-person at school, 2 days per week with live synchronous lessons on their Chromebooks, and 1 day per week of asynchronous assignments on their Chromebooks.   Lydia and Derek started in-person learning two days per week on March 15th and Karina joined them two weeks later on the same schedule on March 29th.  The rest of the days they are learning at home on the computer listening to the teachers or doing homework assignments.  Here's Lydia on her "real" First Day of School on the way to the bus stop.

Lydia had a virtual Girl Scout activity where she and the other girls decorated cupcakes and showed them off to each other via the computer.  This was one of her creations and I think she did a great job with it.  It's nice to have something fun to look forward to, even if it has to be over the computer.

The kids continue to be very cuddly with Snoopy.  Lydia is wearing her new sports glasses that she needs to use in her new soccer league that the kids will play in this spring.

I celebrated a birthday too.  Karina was very concerned that my birthday wouldn't be very good since I only got cards from each of the kids and a polo shirt from Tanja.  I personally thought it was a pretty good haul.  Different expectations I suppose.

Speaking of the kids' cards, their creativity impressed me.  Derek wrote me a card with a joke that he wrote every letter by himself - "Why did the chicken cross the road? Love Derek Happy Birthday"  The answer to his joke after I incorrectly guessed a couple times was the chicken crossed the road "because it wanted to die!"

Karina made me a nice box out of paper to wrap all her cards, jokes, and notes, then wrote a poem:

Daddy is funny

He hops like a bunny

And he eats lots of coconut rice

Because he thinks it is really nice

And I want to have all his money

Lydia made me a treasure hunt and wrote her own poem that was my treasure once I found it:

Dear Daddy

You are really nice

You really like coconut rice

You can be a bother

But I love you as a father

And you are very nice

Apparently Tanja asked her a couple times if she wanted to change the line about me being a bother and Lydia assured her that's the rhyme she wanted to use because "he can be a bother".

Later the morning of my birthday we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went to Patapsco State Park nearby to hike to the waterfall we've gone to many times before.  The kids had fun climbing on rocks and were great hikers on this short trek.

After a delicious dinner of coconut rice and coconut shrimp, it was time for German chocolate cake (along with frosting featuring coconut).  I'm sensing a theme here and it was all fantastic.  It was a good birthday.

 

Derek has been learning about castles, kings, and queens in school.  He built this castle with Tanja one day (and brought his dragon to play in it too).

And here is "King Derek" with his crown he made - a crown we have used many times since to be treasure for pirates.

Snoopy developed a constant cough that he has had day and night.  Tanja took him to the vet, and x-rays revealed an enlarged heart and fluid in his lungs.  Snoopy got a diuretic (Lasix) to get rid of the fluid in his lungs and it was supposed to get rid of the cough, but it didn't work.  Tanja took him to the vet again because Snoopy was still coughing day and night.  The vet said that it means his cough is caused by his enlarged heart pressing on his trachea.  Snoopy has now started another heart medicine, Vetmedin, in addition to the heart medicine he has been taking for 1.5 years for his heart murmur, Enalapril.  After using the new medicine for a week, Snoopy's cough is much reduced.  The Vetmedin is supposed to help the heart pump better, and it seems to be working.  The only downside is the cost.  Snoopy also had bloodwork done to check for other problems and everything looked great.  Hopefully the cough, caused by his enlarged heart, will not come back in full force.