a hard first week back

 last monday was a little rough getting up in the dark and back to the regular work/school routine. i think winnie was the most confused by what was happening. ha! little did we know what the rest of the week held...

thatcher worked from home and i got to go to the gym, which was nice. otherwise, the day was a lot of this. i had to take a picture of her holding onto my arm while she laid on my chair. so sweet. 

after dinner, thatcher and i stopped by a birthday gathering for our friend tom who we used to work with at community ed back in the day. it was nice to catch up with people we knew there. 

tuesday azalea had her friend sylvia over after school and ashford had zoom piano for the first time in a few weeks.

wednesday morning started off with some wonderful news from our extended family, but the day quickly went downhill. an unarmed female bystander in our city was killed by ICE. i mostly keep this blog to be about our personal lives, but this is unavoidable. ICE also showed up to a local high school just hours later at dismissal time and was detaining and pepper spraying staff and students. our school district made the decision to cancel school for the rest of the week for everyone's safety. i'm thankful they did. i hate that our city is being terrorized on behalf of trump's racist agenda. it's sickening. this is not what america stands for. 

thursday we were at least able to sleep in. i had planned to bring winnie over to my friend liz's to meet her and her two dogs, so the kids ended up coming with. we had a nice morning with them. her older dogs weren't so sure about winnie's antics. haha! we picked up culver's to-go on the way home for lunch and spent the rest of the day at home. the weekday evenings have felt really long this week for some reason. no more lights and tree, not many plans. january is januarying. 

friday was another day of no school. we hung around the house for most of the day. in the afternoon, we went over to my aunt cindy's for a while to hang out with gracie, which was great distraction. when thatcher got home from work, we had dinner and ended the night watching 'people we meet on vacation' which just came out on netflix and is based on a book i read a couple years ago.

saturday morning thatcher and i had to get up early-ish to take winnie to a make-up puppy class from when there was bad weather a couple weeks ago. it was at a different facility with a different teacher and i didn't realize it was a week 1 class, but she still got some practice and socializing in. 

backseat buddies

after lunch, azalea had her friends sylvia and nic over for hot chocolate and video games. they included ashford, which was nice. in the late afternoon our next-door neighbors josh and tina came over for happy hour. we've been talking about getting together for months and we finally made it happen. it was so nice to get to know them more. we really scored great neighbors on this block. 

after that, i dropped off azalea at a babysitting gig and came back and had homemade pizza with thatcher and ashford. we lounged around the rest of the night. 

sunday was a bit quieter. we made blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast. i love our sunday morning ritual. i ran some errands and then in the afternoon we went over to thatcher's parents' with winnie for a visit. 

in the late afternoon was another puppy class (our last one!). we had a great experience doing it. winnie certainly learned and grew over the past 5 weeks. we may do more training classes in the future. next up is figuring out a groomer to take her to. we giggle every time she asks to go outside, only to sit on the deck and look over her backyard. 

we ended the night with thai take-out and mentally prepared for the week ahead. things feel so disheartening and anxiety inducing right now. ICE is literally going door to door and pulling people from their homes. this is absolute madness and i pray it ends soon.