Learning to Trust and Lean: May 2020

I love May, but this was a long one! It is the month of my birthday and Mother's Day which provides me with a nice "Megan Week." My boys spoiled me on my birthday with a painting by an artist friend who does lovely Omani artwork with her Colombian flair. My meals didn't go as planned thanks to Ramadan, but our backup options and everyone being happy worked for me. To be fair, one back up option was actually my favorite option here, but I had decided to go with something different since I had just had it on a date with E.

Option C or D for lunch was McD. To be fair, I love their fries, the large drinks we can get and now the chicken sandwich I order. Plus, it is J's favorite. He was getting McD regardless of what the rest of us ate to keep the peace.

"Opening" my gift (it was covered by the blanket).

Dinner from a favorite: Mooyah!

My amazing homemade cake and frosting. Yum!

Isn't this gorgeous?!? Ive been in love with Rebeca's artwork before she joined our BSF group where I've gotten to know her better.

Mother's Day cards and origami from my boys.

We finished May at the beginning of week 12 of everyone being home. Twelve. Weeks. We did have 2 weeks off school for Easter break in there and 3 days for Eid at the end of May. But otherwise it's been distance learning 5 days a week for 9+ weeks now. I still have 4 weeks to go. 😭

The good news is that my kids really do love school and love their school work. E has started on his chocolate adventures which is a big STEAM activity summer term of year 6. He is loving it. He is coming up with ideas, names, logos, etc. for chocolates that could be sold. He has learned how to melt chocolate. I just hope we don't have to figure out how to make a minotaur shaped chocolate at the end of all this as a final project for his chosen "Mintotaur" chocolate. J has been doing Indian themed and math based art, and he really loves it. He is still learning about India and retaining a lot.

J painting an Indian elephant.

J spelling "minute" with his body.

E melting chocolate.

E's Mintotaur logo

What else can I say? We survived Ramadan. It wasn't as obviously Ramadan as other years since we were inside always. The main difference to us was that many restaurants opened later which does affect us because we eat meals early. We celebrated the first day of Eid with picking up lunch at Jollibee before noon, and I grabbed a Costa Coffee latte to drink on my walk home that afternoon. The boys also had water gun fights every afternoon of Eid. It's the best we can do to cool off since pools are closed.

I love Costa lattes! I had just removed my mask to drink my latte. Probably not totally legal, but I don't care.

Water gun fight!

We had 3 date nights this month because we ran out of Fridays for the boy dates in April. The first was E and I ordering in Mooyah while Stephen and J picked up McD. E loves choosing my favorite restaurant. J loves choosing his favorite restaurant and likes that Stephen gets to use deals when ordering. The next was with Stephen. It was themed around the Dual Spires episode of Psych (my second favorite!). We had to/decided to tweak it a bit thanks to Coronavirus. We ended up ordering in Burger King (for diner-ish food and because there is a Cinnamon King in the episode) and had a selection of cinnamon treats (because a cinnamon festival is a key event of the episode). The last had J and I picking up Subway (It was a bit of a disaster. They served me a salad with no lettuce. I had to go back.) while Stephen and E tried a new restaurant, Canadian Pizza. For each date night, one couple ate in the living room while the other couple ate in the kitchen unless the food arrival was staggered enough. My boys may really like the novelty of eating dinner in the living room while watching TV.

Stephen and J enjoying some McD. There was an error in the ordering where they made J's Fanta the large drink. He was excited!

E and I enjoying some Mooyah!

Psych date with my favorite guy!

The yummy spread

Stephen and E enjoying their Canadian Pizza. Side note: There is no Canadian Bacon on a Canadian Pizza in the Middle East.

J and I enjoying Subway and TV time.

For a little extra fun, I made the boys a special Memorial Day breakfast that they ate from the USA bowls I decorated. I had made a naturally sweetened apple crisp that I served to them as breakfast. It was a success!

E chowing down on apple crisp.

J scooping out the last of his breakfast.

We are still waiting for the airports to announce when they will be officially opened, but there are more and more chartered flights (with a hefty price tag) for those wanting to get out now. We have tickets for July 1, so come on airport!

This first week of June has been rough for me mentally, so I shall finish this post with some of my favorite memes and a video to hopefully make you laugh, chuckle, or even just smile: