Boom tick-a boom

It’s spring in Pennsylvania. The birds are chirping. The bull frogs are mooing. The baby turtles are wandering in the woods

And the ticks are freakin’ everywhere😡 It has gone absolutely nuts with ticks here. The other day, as I was working, one of them crawled across my computer screen! Luca especially is getting tick-paranoia and honestly who wouldn’t if they found 7! of them climbing on their bed as they were about to go to sleep. It turned into a tick-genocide as you unfortunately can’t just wash them down the sink. They will climb right back up to come and get you, so Luca made sure to chop them all in half first...... Otherwise we usually churn them in the kitchen sink incinerator.

Why do we have that many ticks one might ask. Well.... not to mention any names and shame certain members of the family, but one of us in particular just loves hanging out in tall grass

We have started to give him that neck-pesticide for dogs that gets absorbed through the skin and that helps somewhat. Another suggestion we have had is to put the ticks in a flask with ethanol, which will kill them instantly. And of course my mind went off roads and started to imagine shelves of tick bottles one could take down and admire. Perhaps in the company of grandkids one day and tell the how 2020 was such a good season for ticks👵🏻

Ticks aside the US has also had the pleasure of housing killer hornets now (though not in Pennsylvania yet.....) and apparently we are in for a crazy cicada year as well. Yay. The summer of 2020 will be such a blast😑

Covid coping

I don’t know about all of you but I have reached that point where I don’t really know how to answer when others ask if I am OK. We are OK! Kristian and I both work from home without any salary cuts, Ulrik just finished his sophomore year in college, Teresa studies like crazy for her AP exams and Luca still has online school every day. We have food in the fridge, money in the bank, and we are all healthy. That’s actually not bad at all.

And at the same time I feel SO insignificant. This virus feels like a lottery you didn’t want a ticket for, and if your number gets drawn you don’t know how big your “prize” will be. We also have close family members in Denmark that are infected now and we can do absolutely nothing to help from all the way over here🥺 All of this combined really gets to me some days, and I have to be very considerate with how much time I spent checking the news and how I take care of myself.

One really good thing is that we finally have spring, and we try to be outside a lot more. This past week we discovered High Rocks Vista, and it amazes me that we live so close to something this beautiful:

Even Bailey seems to be speechless with awe......

I spend an embarrassing amount of time watching my plants grow, just because!

To keep my body going I have tried different YouTube fitness routines and it has been sort-of-fine. And then I discovered Sydney Cummings.OH MY GOSH!!!!! That women makes me work my 🍑 off with exercises like “skull crusher” and “one armed man maker”. I am not yet at the point where I don’t have to choose the easier versions of some of the exercises, but I can feel myself improving💪🏻

I also have my embroidery. Here is my progress from week 1 in quarantine to week 8 (or is it 7 or 9?????):

Amazing right?

Last but not least we had to perform a quarantine emergency haircut on poor Luca. At least we know now that if all else fails working as a hair stylist will not be something neither Kristian nor I need to consider

On the bright side is that everything grows super fast on this kid so soon the days of being a Prince Valiant lookalike will be over