3,300 pieces

Our ten new puzzles arrived on Saturday. Since Nadia had two friends here all day that day, we didn't do any puzzles on Saturday. The boxes were opened after breakfast on Sunday (before "online" church). Oliver did a Spiderman puzzle on Sunday that wasn't one of the ten new puzzles. Nadia and Ian have done seven of the ten puzzles so far; the seventh is on the dining room table and thus not included in this picture. If the kids want my help, they know to do them on the dining room table as sitting on the floor is far too painful for me. One of those seven has been done twice already. Ian and I did the 500 piece Monsters University puzzle together on Monday, and then it was taken part. Nadia did it today. Nadia, Ian, and I have done puzzles that totaled 3,200 pieces plus Oliver did the 100 piece Spiderman puzzle.  Oliver helped a little with a couple of the other puzzles. I helped Ian with two puzzles - Monsters University and Cars. Nadia did hers all by herself. We have listened to Code Breakers, The Unbreakable Code, and The Alcatraz Escape while doing puzzles the last few days. 

I think 3,300 pieces is a fair amount to accomplish in four days especially given how many hours they've been playing outside in the afternoons and evenings every day. Oliver has swum in the neighbor's heated pool on three different days. It's in the high 60's outside, but the water temperature is in the low 80's. He wants to swim EVERY day, but I keep reminding him it's not our pool, and he needs to be invited. I hope he doesn't pester them!!! Not all the kids in the neighborhood come in our backyard, but often times there are other kids jumping on our trampoline. The neighbors who face our backyard have two boys and one girl, and the family with the swimming pool has three boys (plus one male cousin who often is with them). The kids also regularly play with the neighbors (one boy and one girl) who face our front yard albeit they don't come in our backyard very often. In light of everything being cancelled from the middle of March through the end of June (and most things in July have already been cancelled as well), it's refreshing to see the neighborhood kids playing together again. Two boys and their mom came to our house for a play date yesterday afternoon, and one of Nadia's friends is coming over again this Friday for another sleepover. The kids might be either at home or outside in our neighborhood all the time, but at least they are interacting with other kids again.

Today we finally experienced one second benefit of being in the yellow phase. I went to a library! I have library cards from four libraries in the state. I only use the one for the Free Library in Philadelphia to access things online. The Milton library reopened on Monday, but they had so many restrictions (no DVDs and you could only check out a very small number of books) plus all the books we wanted aren't in their collection. Our local library reopened today. I placed my requests yesterday and picked up some books and 2 DVDs today. They always only allow patrons to check out 2 DVDs at a time so the limits weren't any different than usual. Ironically even though this library is much smaller than the Milton one, they had the books Nadia really wanted. That library is only an 8 minute drive from our house. The library that is our "usual" library hasn't reopened yet. Once they reopen I presume we'll use that one more than our local one because they have a MUCH bigger collection of books and DVDs. I think that being able to have a few people over to our house, being able to do a curbside pickup at the library, and the kids will be able to keep a dentist appointment next month are the only three ways that life is different for us in the yellow phase compared to the red phase. Their dentist appointment on June 22 is literally the only thing on our calendar at this point for the entire month of June. Although the green phase will NOT mean life is totally back to normal, that phase will be a BIG improvement over red or yellow as I believe then we can go to museums, historical sites, zoos, amusement parks, church, etc. In addition to being able to go to the library today, one other praise was that Walmart delivered toilet paper to our house today. Yahoo! I never thought that would produce a big sense of relief, but never before in my life has it been very hard to buy toilet paper for two straight months. Now if the price of ground beef could come back to normal, we'll probably only be eating chicken or tuna until it does.

Paul's mom was hospitalized yesterday due to fluid around her heart. Also, 17 days ago Paul's nephew had his appendix removed. He was in the hospital for 14 days due to infection and gangrene. He was discharged on Sunday, but today Millie drove him to the Lehigh Valley Hospital (bigger hospital) because the infection still hasn't cleared up. Prayers for Paul's mom and for Shawn would be greatly appreciated. We're also praying that they will not get COVID-19 while they are in the hospital.