The first half of May has certainly started out with a bang! After many months of barely leaving our house, I finally feel like I have a life! I'm still at home most of the time, but there are actual things on my calendar now. (I have things to write on it again!) Eliot and I are also making a big push to do a lot of cleaning and house projects. I probably won't be around much, so I thought I'd do another recap while I had some time.
I've already told you about some of the stuff that Eliot and I have been up to. On May 4th, I celebrated my 8th Blogiversary. On the 5th, it was Cinco de Mayo and Eliot and I both had our first COVID vaccination shots. The last week and half of April and first few days of May, I was taking a free online business workshop. Over Mother's Day weekend, Jeremy visited and we spent the afternoon with my parents in Freeport. On Monday May 10th, we received the Aulani package we'd ordered back on May 2nd.
It's hard to believe all of those things took place in the first 10 days of this month. The rest of last week has also been a bit of a blur.
The San Jose Sharks hockey season ended on Wednesday, May 12th. It went out with a fizzle since we lost 6-0 to our arch-enemies the Vegas Golden Knights. Our season was originally supposed to be over on the 8th against Arizona, but since a few games got rescheduled due to the NHL's COVID procedures, we got stuck with this finale. At least the Sharks have been able to have fans at a few of their last home games. But it's too bad the season was shortened and weird with COVID since this was the Sharks 30th anniversary year. We also had a terrible season and couldn't seem to get it together. Eliot and I are glad it's over at this point... it was getting painful to watch. Hopefully, the guys will have a good break over the summer and things will go better next season. For now, we get to watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs stress free!
Sara's Graduation from Colorado State University was on Thursday the 13th. Due to the ongoing pandemic, it was virtual for us, but unlike Elissa's graduation from UNE last year, at Sara's ceremony the students were allowed to be present for it. About 15 minutes before the ceremony started, I used our Roku to get on YouTube and found the livestream so we could watch it on our big screen television. Eliot arrived home (with Amato's for dinner) a few minutes later right as the students marched in. For the next two hours, Eliot and I sat in our living room watching the ceremony as Sara and her classmates received their hoods and diplomas, as well as awards for excellence.
It was really bittersweet. We were sad that we couldn't be in Colorado to celebrate, but I was happy for Sara that she got to walk across the stage. Elissa wasn't even able to do that last year, and I'm still angry and hurt for her to be robbed of the experience. It was also a really exciting evening as Sara and her classmates took the veterinarian oath and Sara officially become a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine! After 10+ years of school, she'd reached her dream of becoming a vet! She's talked about this ever since I met her 13 years ago. Eliot and I were so proud to see her reach her goal.
A few hours after the ceremony, Eliot and I joined his family on a Zoom call for just over an hour. We're scattered across the country in four different places so it was nice to talk to everyone at once. (Eliot and I talk to everyone often, but we only do a Cady family Zoom call every few months.) It wasn't the same as everyone being together in Colorado to celebrate, but it was still nice. Hopefully, we will be able to get together with Eliot's sisters and parents at some point so we can all celebrate both Sara and Elissa's graduations and accomplishments!
Of course, it's not all fun and games here. We've been busy with a few other things.
I've been working on this blog post on and off all week. (That makes it easier than typing everything in a recap all at once.) I had another fun post that was supposed to be live on Friday, but I posted the same blog post four times and each time it was deleted. (According to an email from Blogger, it violated their malware and viruses policy?) I'm assuming one of the videos or links I wanted to post had something they didn't like. I tried taking off all of the foreign websites and a few other things and that still didn't change it... my post was still deleted a few minutes after making it live. After over an hour of trying to get it to work, I gave up and left a draft of my post for another day. I've never had this happen to me before so I'm not really sure what to do about it.
(Update: Yesterday, I woke to four emails from Blogger saying they reinstated my post after checking it. I was finally able to go back in and post the original version!)
We've had many more orders for Happily Ever Hatter and Snowblade Creations. It's been keeping our printers, Eliot and me very busy! But I do a little happy dance every time we send another load of packages to their new homes! People are definitely traveling to Disney based on the number of mouse ear orders we've had. And those not traveling are still adding magic to their houses or work with our desk accessories!
This past week, I've juggled working on our businesses with cleaning and organizing the house. I know that it's only a matter of time before the weather gets warmer. Soon we'll need our air conditioner and I'd like to get a bit more cleaning done before that time! Thus, I've tried to focus on cleaning the house as much as possible.
I don't feel like I have much to show for it, but I have been slowly going through and organizing the containers of stuff that we've tucked away in our dining room area. A lot of my business supplies have ended up stored away here, since I currently use the dining room table as my workstation. Now that putting everything into my office (in an organized fashion) has become a viable option due to Squirrel Gate, I'm hoping to spend the coming weeks moving stuff into my office.
This afternoon, Eliot helped me move everything away from the closet so we could start organizing that. I haven't decided exactly how I want to arrange all of the storage containers, but we removed some of the extra stuff so it'll be easy for me to move things around. I'd like to have the closet be all storage so I can have all of my supplies organized and easy to find! Right now, most of the containers have my scrapbooking and paper crafting stuff in them, so it'll be nice to be able to have quick access that too!
Another thing that I've been working on is organizing some of the DIY projects that I want to work on. I've got supplies and pieces for projects all over the place. I finally gathered another container of them this weekend. Unfortunately, Eliot took one of my other DIY containers downstairs and I'm not 100% sure where it is, so I'll be keeping a close eye on this one. Maybe I can finally start working on a project here or there!
On May 2nd, Eliot and I started to go through everything in the new storage unit that we got after Squirrel Gate. We were able to consolidate a bunch of stuff into fewer containers freeing up four containers. We're about 1/3 of the way through cleaning and disinfecting the stuff that Eliot packed up from my office, so that's a good start!
Eliot has been hard at work with outdoor chores. He usually doesn't start mowing our lawn regularly until June, but by then it's more overgrown than it should be. Since the weather has been nice lately, our grass has already been growing like crazy. He's been outside each weekend of May getting that accomplished!
Eliot and I were hoping to redo our flower beds and front walkway, but we'll probably wait one more year to do that. I'm not a huge fan of the red brick, and the wildflowers that are planted in it have become unruly looking. We're hoping to replace it with gray bricks, a few bushes (instead of flowers) and having the front walkway paved. The slate stones look charming, but they're a giant, slippery pain in the butt in the winter.
We're hoping to get a bunch of cleaning and organizing accomplished over the next few weeks. I'm really on a mission to get our puppies sooner than later. I know once we get them, our priorities are drastically going to shift so I'd like to get the house stuff done before that. Plus, we have quite a bit of puppy proofing that we need to do first.
Thankfully, we're going to have a little bit of extra time to get everything done. Eliot still has 3.5 days of vacation that he has to use before the end of May. This is new territory for us since we always use up all of his vacation days. We're planning to add them onto Memorial Day weekend so we'll have an extra long weekend and he'll have a very short work week. We're hoping to get a bunch of projects finished around the house during his days off! Hopefully we'll be able to check a few things off our to do list!
Eliot and I are also planning another trip down to IKEA in the near future. The item we needed to get after our last trip was supposed to be restocking last week. According the website, it's been delayed for a few weeks. (Maybe we'll be able to use one of his vacation days to get that once it's finally back in stock!) There are a few other things we're planning to grab while we're there... and I want more Swedish meatballs!
The next few months are sure to be busy ones for us, but I'm excited about all of the progress we're making. I feel better about the house, better about the pandemic and better about how our businesses are doing! Eliot and I are going to keep moving forward and working hard! Hopefully all of our efforts will be rewarded with two cute puppies later this summer or fall! For now, Just Whistle While You Work... °o°
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