Jacque and her kids came to visit last week. They spent a fair amount of time alone in our house since we had school, but after school the cousins were happy to visit. Julian and Matthias played Pokemon and video games together. Theodore and Samuel played with cars. There was plenty of outdoor and downstairs play and one visit to a playground. Lenore happily acknowledged the existence of the girls and was even willing to engage with them sometimes, much to their delight. Kaitlyn was often able to convince Lenore to adventure with her while Jacque was busy doing other things.
Jacque and I were able to visit in the evenings and -- side benefit -- I got my Christmas cards addressed, stuffed, and stamped while we chatted. Jacque may have helped. :) Those should be arriving soon if they haven't already. I remembered a few people preferred digital letters, so I've uploaded those to the Christmas Letter discord thread.
Olivia and Gretchen were also able to sneak in a couple of games of Villainous with Jacque while she was here. Their track schedule was different this week (Jacque on Tuesday night: "I just watched all of your complaints about track play out in real time!") which gave them some unanticipated free time. They put it to good use.
Kaitlyn turned 11 on Friday. As is the custom, she received a laptop for her birthday. Bryan helped her set it up and created a discord account for her at the same time, so some of you may be receiving friend invitations. We had church on her birthday, but managed to sneak in a dinner beforehand and cake afterwards. I also had the realization that we were at the exact same point in the liturgical cycle 11 years ago, because I remember hoping that all of the prostrations on the 5th Thursday of Lent would jump start labor. They did, and Kaitlyn arrived early Friday morning, one week before Catholic Good Friday and two weeks before Orthodox Good Friday.
Olivia's high school application and placement test are all complete, so now it's time for scholarship applications. I don't remember high school being this much like college, but it is. Luckily for her, there's one main scholarship application that covers about a dozen scholarships and only requires one 250-300 word essay. She was intimidated by it and worried about the length and accidentally wrote a 650 word essay. She and I slashed and tightened last night to get her down to the limit and today she's submitting the application and getting that off her plate.
We had to borrow a scale before we flew to Florida in order to weigh our suitcase. Of course, everyone hopped on out of curiosity. For posterity, our post-beginning of Lent, pre-vacation in Florida weights. Our children are going to have some strange ideas about the proper protocol for weight secrecy as they age. These were written on our fridge for two weeks before I copied them down.
Bryan 188.2
Johannah 129.8
Olivia 105
Gretchen 78.4
Kaitlyn 73
Matthias 64.6
Theodore 52.2
Next weekend we'll be in Columbus visiting Bryan's sister for Easter, so I'm not sure if I'll get the blog up on Sunday or not.
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