Patriot Day

First thing this morning, I packed mine and Addie’s lunches, and made a homemade honey mustard marinade to pour over some chicken in the crockpot for tonight’s dinner.

Then Jeff took both girls to school, back to the regular schedule, but they deviated for a trip to the gas station for some breakfast croissant sandwiches for the girlies.

And for Patriot’s Day today, both schools asked that everyone wear red, white & blue to honor 9/11, and Addie specifically had the perfect dress in her closet already.

And even though I had packed myself a lunch (a microwave chickpea masala protein rice bowl), when Jeff texted me at 11:30 asking if I wanted to go to Kyoto, obviously I said yes to that offer! This used to be Japanica out on Mahan, but they recently renovated and updated and rebranded, and then re-opened as Kyoto Japanese Cuisine. Jeff is obsessed with hibachi, and they have good sushi that I love, so it was great for both of us.

Oh, and you can see Jeff and I decided to wear red, white and blue along with the girls today too.

So I asked ChatGPT to make it look like Jeff’s eyes were open, and it went crazy making both of us look like different people! (Jeff actually looks more like one of my coworkers’ husbands. I made a collage of he two of them side-by-side, and they could have been twins!)

Stole this class picture from Emerson’s teacher today, of their special visit from their school safety officer, with almost their whole class sporting their red, white & blue outfits!

Back at gymnastics again tonight, and I got started on a brand new library book. I was able to read for about 75 minutes, and made it through about 65 pages!

Back at home, after Jeff picked up Addison, he finished up dinner by shredding the chicken and boiling some rice, and then I microwaved a bag of Parmesan garlic green beans once we got home. And I thought this slow-cooker honey mustard chicken turned out really good! Emmie didn’t love it so much, but Addie ate it, and I really enjoyed it. (Jeff was outside working on his lawnmower, so he hasn’t eaten his dinner yet at the time of writing this, but I did save him a bowl to heat up.)

But eww – look at this tiny girls’ super dirty feet, up on my kitchen counter! Obviously we wiped everything down, and then eventually washed these yucky little feet in the sink with her sitting up on the bathroom counter.

Earlier tonight, Megan texted me excited about picking up her library holds as soon as they came in. I told her I was so proud of her, and then sent her this pic of my current library books, of which I have too many at once! (I also have one more book I already finished that needs to be returned; and one more book in my tote bag that I was reading at the gym tonight.) The holds just accidentally all come in at the same time sometimes, so I pick them up and do my best. But honestly, I’ll end up having to return quite a few of these without having read them, to avoid a bunch of fines and fees…

After dinner, Emerson was working on homework, and Jeff was still outside, and I was washing Addison’s dirty footsies. Then I got them both into their jammies, and they both grabbed a snack, and then Emmie went to her room to read while Addie and I watched Bluey. While she was having her applesauce pouch, she said, “Mama, a big tornado just exploded at school tomorrow.” And when I tried to ask her what that meant, she just repeated herself and I never figured it out!

We did a “one-parent-put-down” for bedtime tonight, since Jeff was finishing up outside and then getting showered, and these precious girlies were wired up, but also very sweet once they settled down.

There have been a lot of awful, heavy things happening in the world lately, this week especially – a stabbing on a bus, a senseless murder of a man respectfully doing his job, bombings in other countries, another stabbing right here in Tally at a public park two blocks away from my office, and a traumatic accident of a friends’ sister – all on top of the anniversary of 9/11, too. All of that has been weighing on my heart the past few days, as it has for a lot of people. I don’t want to use this space to address any of that though, but just wanted to say there’s a lot we need to be praying for…