Working, Covid Vaccines, On TV, Cooking, Basketball, Play, Missionaries, Dance Recital, Mission Paperwork, Broken Dishwasher, Holiday

The past two weeks have flown by.  We have started doing A LOT of Covid vaccine clinics all around the state.  This past week I have worked full time and put over 800 miles on my car.  I also was able to finish the first 'The Saints' audiobook during my drive time this week.  That audio book is 14 hours!!  It was a pretty interesting book, too.  Anyway, needless to say it has been a bit crazy!!  However, it is exciting to be a part of history!  Last week I went all the way down to Gunnison for a 6 am clinic start time.  That meant I had to wake up at 1:30 am and leave the house by 2 am to make it there on time.  I signed up for that clinic since I usually don’t sleep a whole lot (thanks insomnia) so I might as well get paid for being awake at crazy hours--haha!  We did the staff at the prison way down in Gunnison for that clinic. That was a long two and a half hour drive just one way for that clinic.  Also during that week I was able to do a staff clinic for some of the employees at CNS and I was also able to be at the very first Salt Lake School District clinic.  Interesting side note at that clinic is that I ran into someone who I went to London study abroad with who was also a fellow CNS nurse.  I hadn’t seen her for about 20 years, but immediately recognized her!  That was crazy!  Anyway, we were even featured on the news that night.  Wahoo!  I was in the background of the news story (Channel 2).  It was fun to play 'Where’s Waldo' to see if you could see me in the news segment--which you could in a small blip, but here I am:

They even got a close up shot of me cleaning off someone’s arm with an alcohol wipe in preparation to get the Covid shot.  What do you think...do I have a future in hand modeling? HAHA!

Last Saturday I was able to do a clinic down in American Fork for Alpine School District employees.  I even saw a few familiar faces in that clinic, since that is where I grew up, which was fun.  We were again featured on the news (Channel 5) and I got to be in the background of the news segment.  Wahoo!

Most people have been excited to get the chance to be vaccinated.  A lot of people took selfies of themselves and me giving them the shot because they were so excited.  It has been a good week!

Aaron loves his Blackstone griddle.  One of his favorite dinners is sausage with cut up onions and bell peppers.  He made a HUGE batch of this one evening for dinner hoping to have leftovers.  That was not the case, though, the kids ate it all because it was pretty tasty.  Here’s what it looked like before it disappeared shortly after:

While I was at work Saturday, Aaron ran to the store to pick up a few groceries since I wasn’t around to do it.  He ended up finding some Wagyu beef steak on clearance and couldn’t resist the killer price.  He bought them.  

Instead of going out to dinner that night we dined in with the kids and LOVED the steaks.  They were very good!  Now the kids are asking when Aaron can make that dinner again.  Since it took me 40+ years to try it the first time it will be awhile before we get to try it again.  Haha!

Josh and a group of friends signed up and formed a Jr. Jazz basketball team.  Although it says Jr. Jazz, everyone on the team is between 16-18 years old.  Despite being tall, basketball is not Josh’s forte, but he was just along for the ride.  He is really good at getting the rebounds, though--haha! He had his first game last week.  He even found a good deal on some basketball shoes which he bought.  They were on super clearance and I think it was because they were so brightly colored.  Oh well, as long as he liked them, right?!

Noah got to be in a class play.  He even was listed in the credits:

All the other kids have done this play in 5th or 6th grade, but we have always been able to see it in person.  However, due to Covid, this year we had to watch it virtually.  It was the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  Noah rocked his one line and enjoyed doing the play.  Here he is playing the part of ‘Carl’:

I am glad I have older kids who can fix themselves a meal.  Especially on Saturday we usually have a ‘Fit-it-yourself’ lunch and dinner that day.  I was pleasantly surprised at Sarah’s lunch.  She cut up a bell pepper and an apple to eat with her cheesy bread.  Most fix it yourself meals are not the most healthy, but this one was so I can be excited about that--haha!  Sarah’s just annoyed she can’t eat an apple without cutting it up first since she might break her two half fake front teeth that she broke at school a few years ago.  It stinks, but it beats the alternative of breaking your teeth off biting in to an apple.  Eventually she will need permanent tooth implants to replace those fake teeth, but they can’t do that until she is done growing which will be in her 20s.  So for now cutting up apples is the way to go.

We got to meet with the missionaries in our area again two weeks ago.  I really like these two missionaries.  They are very personable and friendly.  

They even invited Josh and Daniel (since Daniel is now a Priest) to go on splits with them this past Saturday.  Josh was excited to go, but Daniel was a bit nervous about it.  However, it ended up being a positive experience for Josh and Daniel.  Afterward, Daniel came home and said he was excited to go on a mission.  All four of them went out and visited different people in our area--some who were less active and others who they just stopped by to talk with.  I am glad they got that experience.

Speaking of Josh and Daniel, they both got the chance to bless the sacrament at in person church two weeks ago.  Daniel was a bit nervous.  Josh went first and then Daniel took his turn.  He did great!!  Sigh of relief!!  I am glad things went smoothly!

Speaking of Zoom....I found this comic and think it is pretty funny!  I will be glad to be back to in person things when we get the chance!!

Sarah had her dance recital this past week.  For the teams the teacher does head shots to put in the dance program.  I had to do a double take when I saw Sarah’s head shot.  She is looking so old!!  What happened to my little baby girl?!  

I love getting Sarah all dolled up for the recital:

She needed her hair in two French braids pulled back to a pony tail.  Then she needed the pony tail curled.  Here’s the end result:

To accommodate for Covid, the dance teacher did three different recitals to make the crowds smaller.  We were only allowed three people to attend the performance in person.  Anyone else would have to watch it virtually via Zoom.  Josh, Daniel, Noah, G&G T all watched her performance via Zoom.  I was glad they were able to see her dance even if it wasn’t in person.  Sarah did three different dances.

It was fun to watch her and see how she is progressing.  As always Aaron gave her some flowers after the performance:

My cute dancer:

Sarah had to carry a few things out at the end of the recital so to help her Aaron carried her very ‘girlie’ backpack out.  What a nice dad!!

Josh had his mission paperwork physical done a few days ago.  I still can’t believe that he is old enough to be getting ready to leave on a mission.  I am really struggling with this.  I am glad he really wants to go and is excited about it, but it makes me a bit sad to know he will be leaving the nest shortly.  He has his mission dental check up scheduled for next month.  They did do some labs after the physical visit:

Josh talked me in to taking him out for lunch afterward.  How can you say no to Chick-Fil-A?!

Our dishwasher stopped working and showed an error code Friday afternoon.  DOH!! It was the same error code it showed about 8 months ago which required a repairman.  Thankfully, we had the presence of mind to buy the extended warranty on that dishwasher when we bought it a few years ago.  The only down side is that it takes the repairman a few weeks to get to our house.  In the mean time I have really stocked up on paper plates, plastic utensils, and plastic cups.  This will be a pain since we usually run the dishwasher at least two, occasionally, three times a day.  Ugh!  Anyway, as soon as we saw the error code Aaron immediately unloaded the packed dishwasher and did all the dishes by hand without me even asking him to do it.  That totally made my night because I had just gotten home from work and didn’t want to have to deal with that.  What a nice guy!

Now we wait to get the dishwasher up and running again.  In the meantime I bought one of these soap holding dish scrubber things:

I then told all the kids not to use any glass dish wear unless absolutely necessary.  Then if they did use any cookware, glass dishwear they had to wash it immediately with this scrubber.  If they didn’t they would be on dish duty all week.  They must have taken that threat seriously because they have kept the sink pretty empty.  Wahoo!  Using one of these takes me back to living in my very first apartment at college where we didn’t have a dishwasher.  Also when Aaron and I got married our Wymount Apartment at BYU didn’t have a dishwasher so we used this contraption as well.  Fun times--not really, though, because cleaning a soured milk baby bottle with this was quite unpleasant!  The kids don’t appreciate how good they have it with a working dishwasher!!  Hopefully, by the time it gets fixed they will appreciate it a bit more!

Matthew spends Sundays with us and we would take him to piano lessons Tuesday mornings.  However, the kids’ piano teacher decided to stop teaching lessons a few weeks ago. This makes me a bit sad because she was so good!  Matthew was upset when we told him there would be no more piano lessons.  He really enjoyed going.  I am now on the hunt for a new piano teacher for the kids.  They are rather hard to find.  Keeping my fingers crossed I can find one soon while the kids are still in the piano lesson routine.  Also we got an email from Matthew’s school last week.  They will be starting going out in the community next week.  This is a big part of Matthew’s school--learning how to navigate the community by using public transit, grocery shopping, ordering lunch, etc.  Being out in the community got shut down when Covid happened DOH!  It has been hard on Matthew because that is the part of school he absolutely LOVES.  We were very excited to hear they were going to start that back up again on a limited basis.  Also Matthew has been experimenting with cooking different things.  He tried out making some enchiladas Saturday.  However, he was missing a few ingredients.  He called us up and luckily, we were by the grocery store and was able to pick up what he needed and take it to him.  We called him later to hear how his enchiladas turned out and he said they were good.  He took some pictures with his iPad and will show them to us on Sunday.  Yay for Matthew!!

Monday was a holiday.  We took the kids out for lunch at a Mexican restaurant.  After placing the order the kids had fun doodling on Noah’s kids menu.  They gave Noah a kids menu to order from, but he was not interested in the kids food.  He wanted to order from the regular menu and did.  

We had fun visiting and eating all the chips and salsa--YUM!  These memes also came to mind...

Afterward we came back to the house and watched the mystery movie Knives Out.  It was pretty good.  Also a few weeks ago we watched Arachnophobia as a family, too.  Daniel didn’t like that movie since he HATES spiders--haha!  

What a crazy time it’s been!  Glad we all made it through this past two weeks.  Hopefully, we make it through the next little bit--especially without a working dishwasher.....

Ordination, Covid Vaccine, Hiking, Christmas, Growing, Cooking, Work, New Years, Sushi

The last week has gone by fast!!  The kids had a longer Christmas Break this year.  They got out of school on Friday, December 18 and wouldn’t go back to school again until Monday, January 4th.  When deciding what days Matthew wanted to come home we let him choose.  I was surprised when he said he only wanted to come home to our house on the evening of December 23 and go back to his group home on December 26th.  I thought he would have wanted to stay at our house the whole break so that surprised me.  Although he wasn’t at our house for the whole break it makes me glad that he enjoys his group home enough that he wanted to go back the day after Christmas.  We picked him up again New Year’s Eve and he spent that night at our house and the next day before he wanted to go back to his group home again.  It was also interesting to see how much more independent he has become.  He had a bit of a hard time at our house since we weren’t used to how independent he had become.  It definitely has been a learning curve for Aaron, me and Matthew.  However, Matthew is thriving and becoming more independent which is the ultimate goal.

Since the kids got out of school on the 18th by the middle of the following week they were all going a bit stir crazy.  The morning of December 23, I took them all out to Antelope Island to check it out and do a bit of hiking.  On our way out there I told Josh to look up some trails on my phone.  I got these random pictures on my phone instead--haha!  I guess that is what you get when you turn your unlocked phone over to your kid for a minute.

Antelope Island didn’t disappoint!  It was a beautiful, clear day albeit quite cold, though.  The first hike we tried we only got about 3/4 of the way up the trail until the whole trail turned into a sheet of ice.  We decided we didn’t need any injuries (my kids kept telling me they didn’t want me to break a hip because they think I am old and they also think they are so hilarious--insert eye roll here).  In order to get down th trail we had to slide on our bums.  It was actually kind of fun.  Noah and Daniel went first and then climbed back up the trail to slide down again.  Here we are sliding down the trial and also a few pretty views:

Here’s Daniel sliding down the trail:

The water around the shore was frozen.  The kids had fun throwing in rocks and breaking the ice.  They also had a rock skipping contest to see who could get their rock the furthest out on the frozen water.

Daniel hit a momentous moment this past week.  He finally is now taller than I am.  Wahoo!  I didn’t believe it at first so we had to settle it using the leveler.   I thought his poofy hair was giving him an unfair advantage--haha!  Low and behold after you flatten his hair he is actually taller than I am.  He was pretty excited about that. He says he got the bum deal of the height department since Matthew and Josh are already taller than Aaron.  He is hoping he might one day be taller than Aaron, too, but time will tell.  Maybe he has more of those short Terry genes in him than the other two--haha!

 

Josh was going through some old pictures from a few years ago and came across this gem.  His friends made him into a meme a few years ago.  The funny thing is, is that it is still very much applicable!!  Josh is always on the lookout for food while pulling a goofy face!!

The week before Christmas Matthew’s old high school teacher and her family stopped by his group home to visit with him and give him a present.  She has been so sweet to keep in touch with him!!  I am truly grateful for such caring people in Matthew’s life!!

Christmas Eve morning Josh had an appointment to get allergy shots done.  Since I am ALWAYS the one who has to take Josh to do allergy shots I made Aaron go that morning.  The previous night Aaron had started smoking a brisket.  While he was with Josh at the allergist's office he kept texting me to show him what the temperatures read for the brisket on the smoker.  In the 20 minutes he was there I had to send him the temperature a few times.  In hindsight I guess I should have been the one to take him for allergy shots that morning--haha!  Here’s one of the many temperature pictures I had to text him:

Usually we have my whole family over for Christmas Eve dinner, however, this year was a bit different due to Covid.  Only my brother, Bryan, his wife, Michonne, and their family came over for dinner.  It was nice to be with family for Christmas even if it was on a smaller scale!  We had lunch, chatted and then played some games.  It was a fun visit.  The kids had fun seeing their cousins.  After the Terry’s left we did our annual tradition of going out and looking at Christmas lights.  We then came home and frosted and decorated cookies. 

Noah’s masterpieces:

We then unwrapped our matching jammies and put them on.  

After taking an obligatory matching jammy family picture, we read about Christ’s birth in the scriptures.  It is nice to be able to refocus on what this day is truly about and be thankful for it.  We then spent some more time together until we sent all the kids to bed so Santa could come.  The kids still all wanted to sleep in the same room together.  It was a tight squeeze, but they all managed to fit in Sarah’s room.  Much to their relief Santa did come that night:

The next morning we were happy that G&G T joined us for the opening of the presents.  Although the kids were awake we made them wait until we were all set up and ready for them to come out and find their loot.  Mark, set, GO!!!!

Opening presents is fun!!

This is most likely Josh’s last Christmas with us for at least two years since he will probably be on his mission next year.  I tried to enjoy the moment while it was happening!

I even got a Keurig machine for hot chocolate.  Aaron ordered me a hot chocolate sampler pack to go along with it.  It has been fun trying out all the different flavors of hot chocolate.  Aaron likes the peanut butter hot chocolate flavors.  The kids like the salted caramel hot chocolate, and I like the white chocolate hot chocolate.  It has been fun to sample all the flavors!

We were glad G&G T joined us!!

After all the present opening excitement died down they went on to visit Johanna and Bryan’s families to see everyone’s loot.  The kids were happy to see them since they haven’t been able to hug them for a few months due to Covid.  We will be glad when Covid goes away or at least calms down and things get back to normal!!

Sarah was pretty excited about getting a phone for Christmas.  She was the only one in her friend group that didn’t have one and it has been a bit hard on her.  She also uses it for school so it will be a nice thing for her to have.

Good thing our tech support was in house--haha!  This picture was from a few years ago, but still applicable Christmas Day.

After things calmed down a bit Aaron went and made us all breakfast on the griddle.  To look at him you would never know it was only about 30 degrees outside.  Shorts and flip flops are all weather wear I guess--haha!

The rest of Christmas Day was pretty low key and was nice.  Everyone played with what they got and had a good day.

One thing Josh asked for was ramekins so he could make creme brûlée.  He likes to cook so more power to him.  The next day he made us all creme brûlée.  I was quite impressed because that requires some know how in the kitchen.  He had to temper the eggs, and know how to mix the ingredients together and cook them in a water bath.  All of them turned out and set up nicely.  The finishing touch was the browned, caramelized sugar crust on top.  

He used the torch to caramelize the sugar on top.  For some reason we have two torches so Aaron helped Josh caramelize the sugar as well.  

They turned out pretty tasty.

Right before Matthew left to go back to his group home the day after Christmas he, on his own accord, wrote Santa a letter to tell him thank you for visiting our house.  He even addressed and envelope and put a stamp on it to go to Santa at the North Pole.  It was sweet.  He even made me promise to mail it.  

I got a cool gift for Christmas.  G&G T scanned and copied a bunch of my Grandma Terry’s (my dad’s mom) hand written recipes.  She was known for her cooking so to have the actual scanned copies from her notes and cookbooks is pretty cool.  The scanned images even include the picture of the food spatters on the recipe.  I thought it was pretty neat.  Here’s just a few of the about 1 inch stack of recipe cards that were scanned and copied:

Josh is wanting to try out a few of these so we will see what will get made next.

Aaron has been loving his Food Saver vacuum.  He sealed the leftover brisket just to try it out.

Before Christmas we were notified that CNS (Community Nursing Services) would be starting up Covid vaccination clinics inside long term care facilities around the state right after Christmas.  I did see this comic and thought it was pretty funny--haha!

Luckily, when you are giving/getting a shot you don’t have to social distance.  My sister Johanna and I worked the same clinic on December 29.  The vial of Moderna vaccine is a bit temperamental.  Long term storage it has to be kept frozen.  Once the vaccine has been thawed it can be refrigerated for up to 30 days.  Once the unpunctured/sealed vial has come up to room temperature the vial has to be used with in 12 hours.  Once the room temp vial has been punctured/unsealed (each vial contains 10 doses) all of it has to be used within 6 hours before it is not viable anymore.   We vaccinated the employees and patients of a long term care facility.  Afterward we had enough to be able to give each other our vaccine as well.  It’s not every day you get shot by your sister--haha!  Lucky, or unlucky for her I was able to return the favor--haha!

I am official.  I still need one more dose in 28 days to complete the series, but I am legal for now and have the card to prove it!

After the shot my arm got pretty sore, got a headache, and I felt a bit run down for a few days, but that has all gone away.  I am grateful I was able to get mine and give others their shots as well.

As for New Years Eve we were going to get together with the Einzinger family.  However, Erin got sick.  We gave it a few days to see if it would get better (she tested negative for Covid), but it didn’t.  Unfortunately, we had to call it off and it was sad.  We have gotten together with them every New Years for quite a while so it was sad not being able to get together this time.  Josh ended up going to a friend’s house as did Daniel and Sarah.  That meant it was just Aaron, me, Matthew and Noah at home for New Years Eve.  Matthew ended up going to bed at 10 pm.  He is not a night owl.  We watched a movie and waited for 2020 to end in our comfy jammies on the couch getting dog snuggles.

So when the New Year started it was just us three, me, Aaron and Noah, banging the pots and pans to ring in the new year.

The next morning most everyone slept in except for Noah and me.  Once everyone was awake Aaron and I surprised them.  We all like to have food experiences and share our thoughts about what we tried.  Aaron and I picked up 6 rolls of sushi.  We then came back and everyone tried one piece from each roll and compared notes.  Matthew was definitely NOT a fan of sushi.  Josh only liked two of the rolls, but everyone else loved all of it.  Here’s what the sushi rolls looked like before we dug in:

Afterward the kids each got a fortune cookie.  This was Noah’s fortune.  We are friends with his teacher this year and shared it with her and she laughed.  Hopefully, his fortune will come true--haha!

After lunch we went over to Station Park in Farmington and tried out some ice bumper cars.  It was pretty fun.  It is motorized bumper cars that drive along the ice so you can run into each other.  The nice thing was is that there were only 7 cars total.  That meant just only our family was on the rink for 10 minutes trying to run into each other.  It was pretty fun!

January 1 was a pretty good day.  Let’s hope the rest of this year is great, too!

Sophie loves to climb on these chairs in my front room.  Unfortunately, she has scratched them up pretty bad by climbing on them to see who is at the door and to watch us walk out and get the mail.  She is such a weird dog.  Anyway, to help the chairs look a bit better I ordered some chair covers to cover up all the Sophie scratches.  They came in and I asked Josh to put them on the chairs.  He was in the front room for a long time before he finally came and told me he couldn’t get the covers on the chairs.  It was when I looked at what he had tried to do when I started laughing.  I can laugh because I have done stupid things like this, too.  I fixed it and then let Josh redeem himself and do the second chair which he got the cover on in record time.  Sometimes you just need a new perspective, right?!

Speaking of Sophie....she is definitely a snuggler.  Whenever anyone gets up from sitting and is doing chores, she will come and pitifully stare at them like this until they sit back down so she can get more snuggles.  What a diva dog!!

Aaron had smoked a pork butt for New Years Eve, but since our plans fizzled we were left with a ton of meat.  Aaron decided to make his yummy enchiladas with homemade enchilada sauce using the leftover meat.  He is awesome enough that he made a ton of it so we can extra freezer meals for later.  He was able to rope in Sarah to help him assemble all the enchiladas Saturday night.  We can really party it up on the weekends!!

Sunday Daniel was ordained a Priest.  It is crazy to think that Josh and Daniel are in the same quorum now!  We were given an appointment at the church for our family.  G&G T met us at the church so they could see him ordained to a Priest.  The awesome thing was that Matthew, Josh, Aaron and Grandpa and the bishop were all in the circle to ordain Daniel. Aaron did a great job.  It was a pretty special day.  We had had virtual sacrament meeting earlier that day, but we postponed the actual sacrament until we got home from Daniel’s ordination.  When we got back home we did the sacrament for just our family and let Daniel bless it for the first time.  It was pretty cool!  Afterward we took some pictures.  Here’s a quick candid of Aaron giving me a kiss.  Sarah had it on rapid mode.

That way you can see Noah immediately take advantage of the photo op:

G&G T left before we could get pictures with them, but they were there which we were grateful for!  We all did wear masks to be safe while we were at the church.

Anyway, here is my cute Daniel who is now taller than I am:

The people that got to participate in the ordination circle (except me) minus Grandpa T and the bishop, but still a good looking crew:

Last week Josh went out on a blind date for fun.  There was a big group of about 10 couples who went and did a picture date.  Here’s the pictures of Josh and his date:

Afterward they crashed at our house and ate dinner and played games.  Judging by all the laughing and loudness it sounded like they all had fun!

Here’s the group of friends he spent New Year Eve with:

The kids all started back to school this week. I am enjoying the quiet house since I am the only one here, but I am missing all the commotion from the last two weeks a bit as well.  I am hoping school stays in session for a bit.  Keeping my fingers crossed the Covid cases stay down!!