- A sour cherry cake
- A cool lamp
- Raspberry almond brioches
- Cupcakes
- Legos
- Walkie-Talkies
- Camera
- Soccer goals and the Thanksgiving game
- National Parks scratch and sketch
- Mostly video games and mostly FIFA
- Finished up soccer on team Honduras and played after one of final games with Fintan
- Fun at the YMCA (camps and after school)
- More dancing; awesome dancing by Z and a few dance offs!
- Time change threw us for a loop; Zach had his worst time with in in years
- Theo's birthday party
- The days off continued to be a real challenge
- Zach is a leader at school by bringing his soccer ball and pulling together a daily game
Zach's Words and Songs
- Podcasts - Stories, Story Pirates, Who When Wow, Cairo Carter
- Listening to A Star Full of Stars and best of Cold Play, Chris Stapleton’s Parachute
- Zach is reading. He read “play with your food,” and my GC hoodie, “Keep Going”
- Enjoying Boxcar Children, Jigsaw Jones, and the Story Pirates books, Stuck in the Stone Age and Digging Up Danger
- Listening to The Perfect Secret
Empathy Corner
- Inter-personal challenges with Ethan and with other classmates and bullying
- Z did his own problem-solving
Health Corner
- Bi-annual Saville Center visit
- I got COVID :( We eventually traced it to Emily. She and I had gotten together on Sunday morning and she thought she had a cold. She had tested on Sat and been negative. For me, it has only felt like a bad head cold. Nothing in my chest. really only felt like a bad cold. I have not lost my sense of taste or smell. I had swollen lymph nodes and maybe a little stuffy, then chills and achy. I developed a bit of a cough. My doctor prescribed cough medicine, and that helped as my cough worsened. Tu - developed symptoms | W - chilled and achy and tested positive | Th - still achy, cough worsened | F - on the upswing | Sa - feel pretty good, still a bit of a cough. I’ve been taking extra strength Tylenol. Doc prescribed Bromphen PSM DM (cough medicine) and extra Vitamin D, C and Zinc. Started isolating on Wednesday and Frank and Zach tested negative on Th (F&Z), F (Z), and Sat (F&Z). We’ll see how the saga continues.
- World Cup watching
- Frank and Zach: soccer, Sky Zone lots
- Me and Zach: Hey, Man, basketball, ice skating, soccer, hot drinks at Shenandoah Joe’s, visit to Ix Park’s Through the Looking Glass exhibit, Amazon classical Christmas and checking out Xmas decorations, Metro adventures - rode the newly opened section out to Ashburn and went down to Dupont Circle; we watched A Muppet’s Christmas Carol and baked cookies
- Christmas decorations: borrowed one of Bri’s inflatables!
- Fake bacon by accident and attempts to replicate
- Zach's birthday treats!
- Coucou Rachou pastries
- Visits with Emily
- Support from Mary Kay, Paige, Emily, and Nicole for T’giving and Rae afterwards
- Emily’s impactful movies were: Beaches, Steel Magnolias, and Crazy, Stupid Love
- Neighbors! Walking to the bus stop, talking while the kids play outside, some of my best moments
- Met Jess for coffee
- Catching up with Nicole
- Sharing Grief Companion with Sarah and Rae
- One final farmer’s market with Mary, Cora, and Logan
- Running into Kevin from work and his wife
- Time talking to Meaghan at Thanksgiving
- Time with Sam, Julia, and Zahra
- Meredith from Guilford texted!
- Trip down to Sperryville for Frank’s birthday
- Fun hike
- Talked about impactful movies; for me: Brokeback Mtn, the Boys of Baraka, Becoming Jane, Blue Valentine, and Places in the Heart and for Frank: The Martian, Inception, Free Solo
- Lots and lots of pain and work and progress and it’s exhausting
Fun and Not So Fun
Personal
- New glasses
- Happy/upbeat songs: Human, Little Lion Man, Miss Hollywood, When I am King
- Reading: Read most of Girls Burn Brighter, Rest is the Resistance
Listening
- VH and Jason Isbell’s Relatively easy
- Think Again on Audible
- Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead
- Kate Bowler
Watching
- Native Film Festival. Shorts and The Meaning of Empathy
- Finished High on the Hog and From Scratch
- Enjoyed Look Both Ways
- Watching White Lotus, Girlfriends
Not So Fun
- It's been a tough five weeks. Ups and downs and ins and outs
- The gnatty bugs won't die
- Dead car battery three times in 1 month, so we got a new one under warranty!
- Ongoing issue with the key not being removal :(
Professional
- Product Training (DM, GC Essentials and GC PT2 again and those connections)
- ARC work and conversations
- DEIB
- 80’s love ballads while rebuilding a form and then figuring out the issue with the form
- Leadership session and “Why wasn’t this helpful?”
- Looking forward to hearing more stories from the ZA team in 2023
