April Catch-up

Hey guys!  It's been a few weeks since I've posted again.  Sorry about that!  I hope you all are doing well, and staying healthy and socially-distant.  Kevin and I are doing pretty good.  Our jobs are still stressful (especially Kevin's), but every week we're just focusing on getting to Friday and then we're trying to make sure we're really enjoying our Friday evenings and our weekends.  So, in this post I'm not going to talk about COVID-19 or any of the terrible things going on, and I'm going to try to focus on positive stuff or just what we're up to.  This will be a looooong rambling post filled with lots of random pictures.

We have a bit of a routine to make our Friday evenings and weekends more special and relaxing during this crazy time!  In our house, we have a downstairs den area that is kinda closed off from the rest of the house (we have a split level house), and we have a big TV and a big sectional couch down there and also a few nice windows, so that's now our Friday evening and weekend hangout area!  During the week we stay upstairs in our living room area by our front door, and hang out there (and that's also where I work now during the week), so we've started making our downstairs den room the "escape" room so it feels really separate from our stressful weekdays.  It's helping our mental state a lot I think!  It's like a little staycation every Friday evening through Sunday evening. 

We've also been trying to do movie marathons on the weekends.  One weekend we did a Mission Impossible movie marathon, and last weekend we did an Indiana Jones movie marathon.  I think this weekend we might do Fast and the Furious?  We're not up for anything that is serious or that involves thinking, and I think Fast and the Furious is the right level of ridiculous.  Some other movie marathons we thought of for future weekends are:  Back to the Future, Hobbit / Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Die Hard, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter (!!!!!!!), and we can do a full Marvel movie marathon over a few weekends too.  Our Friday night movies are usually non-thinkers too... We need dumb movies on Fridays.  Here's what we watched last Friday (it's one of our favorite non-thinking movies for Friday nights):

Oh yeah, and we have Christmas lights around the TV in our den.  Haha :) That helps with the "staycation" vibe we have going on in that room.

We bought a bird feeder at the beginning of March before all of this really started happening (good timing, eh?), and we have been enjoying it a LOT.  We can see it through our kitchen window, and it's so fun to see all the different birds that are enjoying it!  I don't really know many types of birds or how to recognize them, but one type of bird I DO know is a cardinal, and we have some female and male cardinals that love our bird feeder!  Those are my favorites, because they're just so pretty, and honestly just because I know what they are... haha :)   So, I guess I have a favorite type of bird now?  I guess that's where things are in life right now?  Haha :)  Here are a few pictures of birds enjoying our bird feeder:

There are 2 birds on the bird feeder, but the one is kinda hidden.  

Here are some pictures of some pretty flowers around our neighborhood, just because! 

Look at this tree at our neighbor's house!  So many flowers. 

Here's my Christmas cactus!  It decided to full-on bloom, which it never does around this time of year... so I don't know what's going on with that. 

Speaking of plants, I'm contemplating buying a few plants online for inside our house!  I'm just feeling like we need some more green and life in our house, because I have a feeling we're going to be spending a LOT of time indoors over the next many months.  So, I'm searching online for some plants that are almost impossible to kill, because I do NOT have a green thumb and I can kill almost anything (I've even killed bamboo!).  I know there are a few plant species that kinda thrive in almost any conditions, so that's what I'm looking for!  So far I'm looking at the website Bloomscape (www.bloomscape.com) because they have a lot of information on indoor plants.  Let me know if you have any other suggestions on good places to buy plants online, or suggestions for types of plants that might be good! 

I decorated for Easter this year, and I never got a chance to share pictures of the decorations!  So, here's some pictures: 

We got this huge creepy rabbit for free from a grocery store a few years ago!  If you bought like 5 Easter cards, then you got the rabbit for free.  So, I definitely needed to buy 5+ Easter cards, so now we have that creepy rabbit. It's like over 12" tall and pretty heavy!  And that card is a hilarious card from my parents last year!  I saved it to use for decoration because it totally cracks me up.

The salt and pepper shakers that my parents got for us a few years ago!  So cute. 

 

My new Easter towels from Adriana!!  So cute :) 

Oh and here's some NON-Easter decorations that my amazing parents have made for us!!  The top one they made for us for Christmas, and the bottom one they sent to us just because they're sweet and awesome! :). The bottom one is our little family made out of rocks (look at Guinness's little ears!!), and that's a branch from my parents' almond orchard.  We love it so much!!! 

Our sweet neighbor gave us this plant!  I think we'll try to plant it in our yard, and we'll just hope that the deer don't eat it.  

 Speaking of deer, we had some deer hanging out in our backyard last weekend!  I managed to get a bunch of pictures from one of the windows in our downstairs den, so here ya go:

And here's Kevin and Guinness looking out that same downstairs den window: 

And here's a picture of Guinness hanging on the couch in our den!  This picture cracks me up because every once in awhile his lip will get stuck on his tooth, and it looks SO funny.  It looks like he's making the Elvis-lip or smirking or something: 

And then he never understands why we're laughing at him when his lip is stuck: 

 Oh and something crazy happened in our front yard just this week!  A bird's nest fell out of the bush by our front door!  I think maybe this is an old nest?  I'm not sure.  There were no egg fragments or anything in it, but it's a really cool looking nest, and it was surprisingly big!

Crazy, right?  I've never had that happen before... 

Well you guys, I hope this post didn't bore you too much!  I'm going to try to post more often, with the same basic plan for posts, with just focusing on what we're up to or some positive stuff.  And hopefully if I DO post more often the posts won't be quite as long or rambling as this post!!  Haha :). I really hope you're all doing well though, and I'm thinking about all of you.  Take care of yourselves during this crazy time, and love you so much! 

Crazy times...

Well... I haven't posted in a looong time, because things are NUTS as you guys know.  I am still trying to fully wrap my head around everything going on in the world right now, and it's just crazy and really overwhelming most days.  I hope you're all staying safe and healthy, and have all the food, supplies, etc that you need.  Please let me know if I can help in any way!

Work has been CRAZY for both Kevin and I because of COVID-19. I'm able to work from home full-time right now, but my amazing husband still has to go to the hospital every day.  So, I worry about him constantly because he's in a hospital with all of this going on, but I know he's careful and staying as safe as possible... but things are just nuts for him right now.  I'm not sure if most of you know what I do (so you may not know why my job is crazy right now), but I work for a non-profit called ECRI, and we help hospitals with lots of things, but my job in particular is to help hospitals with supply issues.  I help them find devices or supplies that are functionally equivalent to items that they need (and usually they need these equivalents because of recalls or out-of-stock issues, or they just want to see what their options for certain categories and what the differences are between those items).  Well.... as you know, ALL hospitals are having issues with obtaining many supplies right now (mostly N95 respirators, surgical masks, ventilators, ventilator parts, test kits, and various PPE)... so my job has changed a bit, but I'm incredibly swamped.  Plus, a big problem that we're seeing right now is that there are a lot of scam vendors that are preying on hospitals right now because they know hospitals are desperate. It sucks, and it's truly upsetting that hospitals don't have enough supplies.

So, onto positive things.  One great thing is that I'm able to work from home full-time right now, and our dear sweet Guinness is loving it and I'm sooooooo grateful for him right now.  He's so comforting when I'm crazy stressed during the day. Other things that are good right now (see, I'm TRYING to focus on good stuff!!  It's really hard some days, as I'm sure it's hard for all of us right now) is that I've been doing a lot more cooking, and we have plenty of food thanks to a few lucky trips to the grocery store.  Kevin and I are both feeling good and staying healthy, and we're trying to really enjoy our evenings and weekends and take that time to de-stress.  We're trying to enjoy some fresh air every day and we're trying to stay active.  We take Guinness for walks every day (unless it's pouring rain... because we've definitely had some of that recently), and we've also been enjoying our back patio area.  Another good thing is that Spring is mostly here!  There are flowers out and about in our neighborhood, and most of the grass is turning green again.  The trees in our area don't have any leaves yet, but that's gotta be coming soon!  I'm excited to see green everywhere again soon.  So, with that, I'll just end with a bunch of pictures of Guinness from the last month or so, and some pictures of flowers in our yard and/or neighborhood!  I am going to try to do more posts, just to let you know what I've been up to and share happy stuff.  Stay safe, and stay healthy!

This looked sooo uncomfortable to me, but Guinness slept like this for a long time!  

He's been sleeping in the weirdest positions! 

Here he is sleeping with his head buried in a pillow. 

And this was on a different day, he decided to just lay on the pillow to sleep. 

And Guinness has also been VERY cuddly lately!!  He's been cuddling with me and Kevin a LOT, so he must be able to sense our stress levels or something... haha :)

Here's Guinness cuddling me. 

Here he is cuddling Kevin... 

Cuddling me again... He's full-on laying ON me in this one.

Here he is cuddling Kevin's legs... 

Cuddling Kevin again... 

My guys sleeping all curled up on the couch!  So cute. 

Here's one I just took today!  He looks so distinguished and deep in thought.  Haha :)  

And now for our yard!!  

Yay daffodils!!  I love daffodils so much.

Blossoms on the plum tree in our front yard! 

  

My Christmas Cactus is VERY confused, and is about to bloom again!  It bloomed in December (like it does every year), but it's going again apparently... 

Ok that's all for now!  I'll try to take more pictures of happy stuff and what we've been up to.  Take care, everyone!  Stay safe! Love you all!!