Amelia is 17, Da Vinci Night

 

Wednesday was a special holiday, our second year of celebration! It was Happy Pah-hass-a-mus Day, aka Administrative Professionals Day. Josie said we celebrate by eating Lucky Charms. Easy enough. Let that holiday stand in the Call annals of time. 

The Call boys entertained themselves all week finding and spouting off Chuck Norris jokes. My mom told me about a meme joke she saw. I showed the boys and bam! A new obsession was born. One evening Justin and Everett had a joke off, Amelia rolled her eyes most irritatingly 

Reagan hosted Da Vinci and Great Brain night on Thursday. Evelyn worked really hard making a slideshow about Fighter Pilots and Jets for about 2 weeks. She even called Aunt Kat to get her view on pilots and jets. Josie's project was about Arctic Foxes. She helped me make a PowerPoint slide show using Epic (online library) to gather facts about Arctic Foxes. Josie dressed up as an Ice Princess, because Duh!...ice. Justin showed up to admire the girl's projects, their artwork, and even buy treats. Yum. 

Amelia turned 17 on Thursday. It is very hard to believe she will graduate next year, crazy thought. Birthdays during the school week and year are harder to celebrate. She ate lunch with Ambree and her group of friends. Amelia LOVES pasta salad, so I made her favorite Italian version. For her cake I made a raspberry jell-o cake with fresh raspberry whipped cream. We all died and went to heaven, so delicious. Amelia opened up her gift, a Nintendo Switch Lite the Animal Crossing version. Now she doesn’t have to worry about a sibling messing up her precious islands. I found a crossbody bag to match and a new Amiboo card (character cards). She was very excited for her fun gift. We had the day off Friday so she had extra time to play on her birthday gift. Amelia is the bestest ever. She is sweet, kind, smart, and talented. 

I lost my 17 year streak of taking birthday photos of my kids, my steam is gone. I am sure it will still get done by combining Amelia and Everett sessions. I’m just exhausted. So I used one of her newest forehead photos as payback, posted it on FaceBook. 

Early Friday I went to see Andrea at her dermatology clinic. I’ve photographed her sweet family for 3 years now. She traded the photo session fee to remove several bumps on my face. I was very excited to get the bump next to my nose and another on my lip removed. She also fixed the broken blood vessel on my lower lip. One of the moles she removed was a bit suspicious, it came back as potentially threatening. I didn’t realize the bump next to my nose was keeping up my glasses. 

While driving to the MCO concert on the 20th I noticed the van was shaking on the freeway, not a normal shake from unbalanced tires, but something more serious. I asked Justin about it, he said it was probably just unbalanced tires. Dusty confirmed the weights on the back tires were loose. I took in the van on my day off just to get it checked out. Les Schwab called a while later to report that the tires were fine but the wheels were all damaged and needed replacing. I called Justin, unsure why the wheels could be broken. A few months ago Justin noticed the tire iron did not fit the lug nuts on the van. After researching he found out the van might have the incorrect lug nuts. He found suitable replacements at the junk yard then replaced the lug nuts. Turns out the original lug nuts were the correct size, they swelled after a while which explained why the tire iron didn’t fit. The new lug nuts were a little too deep, caused damage to all the wheels. We were both very sad about the wheels, the new wheels were a costly $1,000 fix. After that news I decided going to Utah was not economically sound. I really wanted to support Jacob, finally see one of his performances. There were some tears shed over losing that trip. 

I cleaned the garage mostly on my own, it was time to de-winter the garage. The boys had a great time using an empty photo paper roll as an extra long arm (Phillip) and a bazooka (Everett). Phillip helped clean the bike side of the garage. Everett helped for an hour, which was very welcome.  

Amelia and Ambree had a combined birthday party at Sara’s home Friday evening. The girls invited school and church friends over for the celebration. Sara and I split the cost of the ice cream bar toppings and BBQ stuff. I heard a lot of gigging, laughing, game-playing, and party sounds coming from the Ostlers. I went over to watch the girls open up gifts. Amelia was letting Josie pick out which gifts to open, that was very sweet. Kiana’s gift to Ambree was so special. Kiana got a book for Ambree then spent about 2 months annotating the book just for Ambree. Kiana started crying when Ambree opened the book. That was so touching. The emotional support buns were also very cute! Ha ha ha. We love our silly girls. 

It is the yardwork time of the year. It felt awesome to get out in the yard and prune bushes. Justin loves to kill weeds with the propane torch. Two of our trees are finally sturdy enough to support a swing. I sewed up a fabric swing for the girls to use this summer. Since my sewing machine was out I finally finished sewing a darling summer outfit for Mrs Norland's baby girl. Check that box off my list, zap.