Today marks our 42nd day of the whole family in quarantine. Holy moly. I can hardly believe it’s been that long! This week was marked by celebrating my Dad’s and brother-in-law’s birthday. They share the same birthday! Many hours spent playing kitchen and mowing the patio with Harrison, and we started watching a new TV show that Nathan and I are really into now!

We’ve spent the last couple of Friday evenings watching a Disney movie and getting our fill of popcorn. Turns out that Harrison is a HUGE popcorn fan. He’ll finish most of this big bowl by himself. And this past week, we made popcorn the old fashioned way. Well, with the help of an Instant Pot.

I asked my mother-in-law, the queen of cooking and baking, the other week what her favorite kernels were for old fashioned popcorn, and she said these from Target.

We threw them in the Instant Pot with some coconut oil, and then drizzled it after it finished popping with butter, salt, and a Penzey’s spice that I got from MIL that is perfect for popcorn and makes it absolutely delicious!

I LOVE Penzey’s spices, and this cheese sprinkle took our popcorn to the next level!

I talked earlier this week in a post HERE about how I think it’s so important during these times to try to do something special to delineate the weekends. For us, that’s meant a few different things. One is that we make egg sandwiches most weekends, and Harrison loves to help with putting the cheese on it.

On Sundays, we do live streaming church. Don’t let this picture fool you. Most of the time, Harrison is creating complete chaos in the playroom, and we have church turned up so loud, you can probably hear it down the block, so that we can hear it over all of the crashing and playing. We finally figured out last week that we can stream our broadcast to the big TV, rather than trying to play Harrison keep away of the iPad. Game changer! And another win for Apple TV.

This sweet little girl is always close at hand. We love our sweet golden girl.

On the recommendation of several friends, we started letting Harrison use the Homer app during the day for a bit. I was looking for really great learning apps that could take some of the pressure off of us to constantly be coming up with new learning activities for him during the day, and I ended up going with this one. And right now, they’re offering 30 days free.

Harrison has loved it so far – lots of different games learning letters, colors, etc., and you can personalize the types of games and stories for your kids’ interests. So Harrison has a lot of dinosaurs, animals, and construction vehicles!

Springtime walks, especially right now, are a huge favorite of mine. Getting outside makes all the difference in my mood, and this little guy has taken to wanting to walk (ahem, run) some of neighborhood walks. He’s so fast, that I literally have to jog to keep up with him! Now to just getting him to learn how to use his balance bike, and I think we may need to invest in some bikes ourselves to keep up! This makes me particularly happy because it took him about a week to get his walking back to normal, but he’s full speed ahead now!

I think this series came out on HBO back in January, and Nathan claims that at the time I declared that it looked to “scary” for me to watch. Desperate times, I guess, mean that I’m willing to give things a new shot. We’ve watched a couple of episodes now, and we’re hooked! It’s about a murder that takes place in a small Georgia town. They arrest a popular teacher/coach in town, but he has an alibi for the same timeframe the murder occurred being miles away at a conference. If that sounds like your type of thing, definitely check it out!

I hope you all have a good Friday, friends!