Forever Family: School, Cocoa's First Walk Outside, Leaf Fun

Everyone is feeling better this week so all the kids returned to school on Monday except Alice. We kept Alice home this week only because her teacher's husband was exposed to someone who had Covid so we decided to be on the cautious side. I haven't decided yet if she'll go back next Monday. Since Alice stayed home this week I also decided to try and do some school with her here at home. My friend who is her teacher emailed me some stuff that they were doing.

She did a few pages out of the preschool workbook I have.

This is the letter they did this week.

I did pretty good doing school with her at home but I don't think I could keep up with it for too long. She's learned a lot so far these past couple months. Nikki and Jack struggled to get caught up with their school work after missing school some days last week. Nikki spent the whole weekend doing homework. She's finally almost caught up and feeling much better about it. Her hardest class this year is Psychology, which is also a college credit course so she'll be able to get college credit for it as long as she passes. I'm sure she will though. She's a very hard worker and dedicated in trying to do her best in school. Sometimes she tries a little too hard though, being a little perfectionist. She gets that from both her parents I think.

We had spaghetti for dinner Monday night. Alice looked so cute trying to eat it. I also discovered a new easy French bread recipe that I made to go with our spaghetti and salad. I've made French bread before but hadn't made it in a long time. This recipe is simpler than the one I used to do and faster! It's a keeper!

I couldn't find the leash that came with the harness Colby had bought when he brought Stardust to us a year ago so I finally picked up a leash at Walmart Monday night. Yesterday Garrett and Jack put the harness and leash on Cocoa to take her outside for the first time. She did not like the harness and wiggled out of it a couple times but after a few minutes she finally started walking around in the backyard and sniffing around. It ended when the neighbor's dogs started barking and scaring her. Her tail puffed right up. We tried to take her around to the front but she was ready to go back inside.

We tried again today and it was better. We started in the front yard and went around to the opposite side of the house into the backyard by the playhouse. She was a little scared but curious. Our other neighbors also have dogs and they didn't bark (surprisingly) but they started sticking their noses under the fence back under the playhouse and Cocoa got scared again. So we walked behind the house and over to the sliding door and patio. Any time someone would pull on the harness Cocoa would try to wiggle out of the harness so it was fun when she started going under the picnic table or behind things. We had to keep up with her and move our hands to a different part of the leash as she moved. Toward the end of being outside the girls were holding the leash and were trying to get her to move away from the BBQ grill but of course didn't listen to me and pulled on it and Cocoa wiggled out of the harness. I caught her just in time and took her back inside. One day she'll get to wander around outside without it but we want her to get used to this being her home first and get used to the outside surroundings first. I also want her to get fixed first. That is scheduled for next week. My friend Whitney was able to get some vouchers to get the kittens fixed free of charge so she'll be taking her in for us.

This was her first time out yesterday. She saw a dog sniffing through the hole and got curious. Curiosity killed the cat! LOL Next thing she knew the dog started barking and that's when she got really scared.

This was earlier today.

I had to retake Charlotte's picture because her eyes were closed in the first one. Not only were her eyes open for this one but she also had a big funny smile.

I also want to note that Sunday was the first day that Cocoa and Sage sniffed noses. That is big for Sage because she's usually hissing any time Cocoa comes too close. They sniffed noses twice that day without hissing! Yay! And every day close to bed time we feed all 3 cats wet food and they will eat right next to each other. Sage will only hiss if Cocoa finishes her food first and tries to come eat Sage's food. So, now we are letting the cats roam freely through the house and just letting Sage get used to her. We no longer have to feed them behind the door because they are doing so well. I had even borrowed a baby gate that I thought I would need to use for training them to eat by each other but since they are doing it with the wet food and they are mostly doing good around the house during the day we don't need to bother with the gate after all.

Jack has been anxious to rake leaves to earn money and he finally felt good enough to get started on Grandma and Grandpa Butterfield's backyard yesterday. I helped him make a big pile and then took some videos of him jumping in them. It was fun! He only did a small portion of the yard because we ran out of time and energy. He worked for about an hour and a half with some of that time used to jump in his pile a few times. I will try to post one of the videos on here. Make sure to unmute it because I love the music that goes with it. I posted the same one and two others on Facebook. Today I dropped Jack off and left him on his own to rake leaves. By the time I came back to get him it was pouring rain so we didn't bother bagging them and I didn't see how much he got done.