Distractions and Ben's Birthday

This week I have been physically better but emotionally up and down. I was really hormonal at the beginning of the week- quick to anger, frustration, melt downs- but the hormones have righted themselves. I still get sad but I at least feel more in control of my emotions and that's nice. To distract from the sad I got the silly idea to pretend it was Christmas time. Then somehow along the way we decided it wasn't Christmas but Chungus Day (Chungus is basically a very fat Bugs Bunny invented by the internet). We decided Chungus was the Easter Bunny's less loved brother that always felt overshadowed by the Bunny. For our Chungus Day we made salt dough ornaments and hung them on a mini Christmas Tree. Ben even dressed up as a Chungus- I'm not sure what the blue scarf on his face was about.

In addition to making ornaments we watched Christmas movies, drank hot cocoa, and made and decorated sugar cookies. I know we are weird but the kids had fun and it was a good distraction. The only embarrassing thing was when Lucy was in a Zoom meeting with her first grade class and I hear her telling them "We made ornaments and cookies and then big Chungus brought each of us a gift." Our connection was bad so I'm hoping no one heard the Chungus part- otherwise they might think we're crazy (which we are).

Friday the 27th was decided to be Chungus Day and Chungus left them a garbage bag with a gift for each kid- books for the oldest 3 and pattern blocks for the youngest. The kids want to make this a Hatch family tradition- we shall see, ha ha.

Another distraction of the week was hiking. We had some good weather days so we crossed the street and went for a little nature walk. We didn't encounter a single person so we had no problem social distancing. And since the last time we hiked there we had gotten lost, good old Lucy left x's all along the path so we had no problem finding our way back. 

The kids favorite part was climbing the trees and "adopting" sticks. Penny named her stick "Georgie" and Ben named his "little Timmy." 

The kids are still home schooling- currently the governor is pushing to cancel school for the rest of the year, heaven help me if she does. The oldest 3 get daily assignments posted in Google Classroom but Penny's teacher has just sent some different apps and websites she can do. She is insistent on doing work too because it's "too boring to play by herself" so this week I upped my game a bit and planned some fun activities for her to do (and Lucy joined in when she finished her assignments early). Two of the fun activities they did were making houses for the 3 little pigs and blowing them down with a hair blow dryer and second was making Jack's beanstalk with the giants castle on top. We do have some fun but I am not a homeschooling mom. I am good at scheduling our days and lesson planning but I butt heads with the kids a lot. They often complain about work or get frustrated when an assignment is hard. We really only do an hour of learning in the morning and another hour in the afternoon but sometimes you would think I was just the worst task master ever. The days are so long.  

Since Ben's birthday is on Fast Sunday we decided just to celebrate it Saturday. We had to cancel his pirate party with friends because of the Coronavirus but we were still going to make it fun. We started with a card from a friend, Lucky Charms and opening gifts. He got a sword, and 4 Defy passes (an indoor trampoline park) from us. He got a Pac-Man game and small Minecraft Lego set from Grams and Poppy Hatch. Later that morning we got a phone call from a friend saying to have Ben out at 11am for something. I assumed her family was just going to come by and sing happy birthday to him from their car- instead a whole parade of cars came by- shouting birthday wishes, honking horns, and waving posters. They came around a second time and then sang him "Happy Birthday." This will be a birthday he will never forget- he was grinning the whole time and kept commenting about how nice it was. For memory sake the families in the car parade were- May's, Bloomfield's, Hine's, Jensen's, Wagner's, Barney's, Jacob's family from across the street, and JayJune (his friend from school). 

After the sweet car parade Tyler picked up Subway for the family (Ben's favorite) and then we had his Pirate Party as a family. The kids got tattoos, made pirate hooks and caught glow necklaces with them, pinned an eyepatch on a pirate and painted treasure chests which they hid and used treasure maps to find. 

After our family party I rented "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" from Amazon for the kids to watch. I didn't particularly enjoy it but Ben thought it was awesome. We finished up the day with take out from Chili's and birthday cake. I think despite everything, Ben still was able to have a really amazing 10th Birthday!