St. Patrick's Day, Social Distancing, Earthquake, Homeschooling, Garage Crash, Dog Toothpaste, Painting, Cooking, Birthdays, Cabin Fever, Geocaching, Field Trip

 Wow a lot has happened in the last 2 weeks.  Before all the craziness started we did celebrate St. Patrick's Day--as much as you can celebrate being stuck at home.  Matthew's after school program had their last day together that afternoon before they were going to start practicing social distancing.  They made the most of it by having a party.  They got all the clients a lot of BLING to celebrate.  Matthew came home wearing it and was pretty excited to show it all off.  I am glad they were able to have one fun last day before everything stopped for a while.  Here's Matthew and his St. Patrick's Day bling:

To celebrate as a family we had a green dinner.  No food coloring was involved, either--since all the green food coloring was gone at the store.  We had spinach Alfredo sauce with spinach noodles and salad.  If you blend up a few spinach leaves in with some Alfredo sauce you can't taste the spinach, but it colors it green.  The kids thought it was weird, but fun.

School got cancelled due to Coronavirus two+ weeks ago.  They are trying to prevent the rapid spread of the disease so they have cancelled school and restricted any gathering to 10 or less people.  That means restaurants have closed all their dining rooms and are only doing take out service.  Most salons have closed, grocery stores have been ransacked and staples such as flour, milk, bread, yeast, sugar, toilet paper, etc. are hard to get a hold of.  All my school clinics from both my immunization and my clinical instructing jobs have been cancelled.  Aaron is deemed mission critical at work so he is still going in to work, but a lot of the base has been forced to telework.  The whole economy has almost been shut down and it is crazy!! I never thought something like this would happen.  Even church has been cancelled.  We are encouraged to perform the sacrament at home, but not hold sacrament meeting.  It definitely has been interesting to watch.  Unfortunately, many things have been cancelled like the track season for Daniel and Josh.  Josh is still holding out hope, though.  Even though they can't hold official track training, the coach will let everyone know what the workout is for that day and they are in charge of completing the workout on their own.  Josh and a group of his friends have been meeting together in the early mornings to do the workouts, though.  However, as this goes on, that group doing the workouts together is dwindling in numbers.  They are still holding out hope that regionals and state meet will still be held in May.  It really is too bad because at their last meet right before everything got cancelled Josh actually got over the pole vault for the first time during a meet.  Anyway, Josh also got accepted into Engineering State up at Utah State for a week beginning in June. Unfortunately that got cancelled this past week which he is sad about.  It is only for high performing JUNIORS so Josh won't be able to participate next year.  Josh also was scheduled to take the ACT April 4, but that got cancelled as well.  He rescheduled it for June so hopefully he can take the ACT then.  Noah's spring Soccer got cancelled as well.  He was sad about that.  We are just waiting to see what comes next.  We have a bunch of things lined up for the beginning of summer so we are hoping things calm down by then.  We are just in a holding pattern right now.

In keeping things exciting we did get to experience an earthquake about two weeks ago, too.  It was frightening.  I was awake during it.  It did wake my kids up, though.  They came out of their rooms a bit freaked out.  It lasted awhile, too.  Sometimes the house will settle, but that is only a really short time. This earthquake lasted for about a minute.  You never realized how long a minute is until you are experiencing an earthquake and its shaking during that time.  We did feel a few aftershocks the next few days, but we are not to traumatized by things.  It was a wake up call for us to update our 72 hour kits, though!

The second day of school being cancelled Sarah and Noah gave me an awesome surprise.  I haven't been sleeping very well so the one morning I was able to sleep Sarah and Noah set their alarm and got up at 6 am to clean the whole house for me.  They were so excited when I woke up to show me what they had done.  I was touched.  That was an awesome surprise!!  With everyone being home all the time no matter how much cleaning up you do the house is always trashed.  It is a bit frustrating, but I thankful Sarah and Noah wanted to help out!

We got another surprise that wasn't as awesome later that day.  Josh was getting in his car to go somewhere.  That's when we heard a big crash.  I looked out in the garage to see that Josh had not raised the garage door before backing out of the garage and ran into it.  He totally bent up the garage door to the point it wouldn't open or close.  Aaron was NOT happy.  Josh tried to blame Sarah who was a passenger for not warning him that the garage door wasn't open, but that didn't fly.  If you are the driver it is your responsibility to check these things out before you drive.  The next couple hours Aaron and Josh worked on fixing the garage door to get it working again.  Although the garage door will open and close now, it still is bent up.  Oh the joys of having a teen driver....ugh!!

Anyway in other things, Sophie can have some stinky breath so I found a dog toothbrush and toothpaste.  I ordered it to see if it would help.  She really needs a dental cleaning, but those are quite invasive and expensive so we are hoping to postpone it for a bit.  Here's what the kit looked like:

Upon closer inspection I about gagged when I saw the flavor of the toothpaste was chicken mint.  Ick!!  Sophie isn't much of a fan of the actual brushing of her teeth, but the toothpaste she didn't seem to mind--gross!!  

I keep threatening the kids if they don't behave I will make them use Sophie's toothpaste--it seems to be working--haha!!  I would find that a good motivator myself haha!  You know April fools Day is coming up.......

Well we have been homeschooling for over two weeks now.  We aren't enjoying it immensely, but it isn't as bad as I thought it would be, though.  The kids all checked out laptops from their schools to do their work online.  Josh, Sarah and Daniel are really good about getting online, checking what their assignments are and completing their work.  Noah on the other hand needs some redirection.  I will walk past and find him playing games on his laptop instead of doing homework.  DOH!!  What can you do?!  We have set up the kitchen table as their workstations.  There are the normal squabbles of he is not doing his work, he's staring at me and she is in my space, Josh is dancing again, mom is singing, but it seems to be working for the most part.

As for Matthew homeschooling is a bit harder for him.  His major IEP goals are accessing and navigating in the community, working on social skills and cooking.  Well when you are stuck being inside the only thing you can really work on is cooking.  Matthew's teacher has called 3 times to check up on him so he is worried about him.  I am trying to keep him busy.  Matthew did help make pizza for us two weeks ago and prepare a few lunches.

 Matthew is not one that enjoys being home and isolated.  He really is struggling--poor guy.  It has been hard because he does not enjoy watching TV AT ALL.  He doesn't like reading.  He doesn't love practicing the piano, either.  It has been hard for us, too, because when he gets bored/stir crazy he makes mischief and tries to get attention by purposely bothering people.  It has been been hard to keep him busy.  He has been listening a lot to music on his iPod, shredding papers and walking Sophie.  I am about to go buy him a ream of paper to shred just to keep him busy.  Thankfully, G&G T, Aunt Johanna, and Erin Einzinger has given him papers to shred which he has LOVED!  Anyway, poor Sophie she has had so many walks in the past two weeks.  Whenever she hears him getting the leash out she will hide.  I saw this meme last week and it applies to Sophie so much:

Here's what happens when he comes to put the leash on her--she will come and snuggle in next to me to try and hide.

Then as he puts the leash on her she will look at me with her pleading eyes.  I have limited the number of walks Matthew goes on, but he is still going on about 5 walks a day.  Each walk is about a mile or two long so she really is getting quite the workout.  Matthew and Sophie will be in the best shape of their lives at the end of this quarantine for sure--haha!

Sophie has definitely earned her a spot in heaven!!

You can only be stuck inside for so long before you start going even more crazy.  We decided to go on a long walk and do some geocaching two Saturdays ago.  The kids liked crawling around on anything they could including this school sign:

 We had to bring Sophie a long with us, too:

 We didn't find the first geocache, but found the second one:

 We did stop by the park for a few minutes.  It was such a beautiful day.  There were quite a few people at the park, too.  Everyone seems to be getting some cabin fever!

 We found one more cache on the way home.

 Here's Daniel and Sophie while the rest of us checked out what was in the cache:

Some geocaches have different themes.  This particular cache was a coin cache.  We traded something so we could take out a cool looking coin.

The kids immediately wanted to give it to Grandpa T to add to his coin collection.  We did take it home to find out more info about it before we gave it to Grandpa T.  It ended up being in English penny from the 1920s.  It was pretty cool.

Josh got his answer back to his promposal.  She said YES!! Wahoo!!  We are just hoping his prom doesn't get cancelled.  It is in May so there is some hope that it might not be cancelled.  Keeping our fingers crossed!!

 In addition to their online work the kids are still asked to read at least 30 minutes a day. Sarah LOVES to read so this is not in anyway a punishment for Sarah.  However, Noah, is a different story. At least we have at least another month to work on it....Here's Sarah reading and Sophie snuggling with her:

 The kids are having fun connecting online with their friends from school, though.  I think it is great they still can visit with their friends even if it isn't in person.  Noah has been playing interactive games with his friends the last few days.  He LOVES it!

I am struggling being stuck inside the house with everyone.  I decided we needed a field trip last week.  Aaron took a half day off from work and we did a mini road trip up to Shoshone Falls in Idaho.  Luckily, or unluckily, our original plans to go to California for spring break got cancelled, but before it got cancelled I had checked out three different books on CD.  Luckily we had those checked out before the library closed so we were able to listen to a book on CD during the drive.  We listened to The Sword of Summer which is the first book in the Magnus Chase book series.

Matthew LOVES seeing the state signs when we pass the border and makes sure we take a picture of it.  Here's the Idaho state line:

 We drove by the Twin Falls temple to check it out:

When we got to Shoshone Falls we stopped and had a picnic lunch.

 We then walked around and admired at how pretty it was:

We still made sure to practice our social distancing to stay safe.

 There are quite a few cliffs around the kids thought this sign was pretty funny:

 Everything is pretty safe, though.

 There were some steep trails to climb up and down on to get to different places.  Glad to see Aaron wore is all terrain flip flops--haha!

The kids climbed on everything.  Homeschool P.E. for the win, right?!

It was rainy and chilly especially with the waterfall spray, but Noah seems to immune to the cold.  We did have a sweatshirt and jacket for him to wear, but he absolutely refused to put it on.  What a weirdo!!

It was a fun field trip and was worth the 6+ hours of driving time to get back and forth that day.

Noah's grade had an online talent show last week.  Noah recorded himself playing the piano for his talent and then sent it to his teacher.  I think it's pretty cool they can still do things like this as a grade.

Sarah has been doing dance via zoom meetings with her class and teacher.  Since my kids seems to have learned how to whisper/be quiet inside a helicopter surrounded by revving chainsaws  (meaning they don't know how to be quiet AT ALL) we have her do her dance classes inside her room so she can actually hear the teacher--haha!  She puts the iPad on the floor under her bed so she has the rest of her room to practice her dances.  It's been awesome!

Speaking of online things....I had a work Conference Call I had to take.  It was supposed to be quick, but when you have 25 ladies all get together it never is quick.  Luckily, I took the call in my bedroom since again my kids learned how to be quiet inside a helicopter surrounded by revving chainsaws (aka they don't know how to be quiet!!).  Thank goodness for the mute button. I kept my side on mute so no else had to listen to my kids Kung Fu Fighting in the background.  That was a long 2 hour conference call!! Ugh!!

I have tried to be involved with what my kids have been doing.  Josh came home from a track workout and needed to do some ab work.  He invited me to join in with him.  I tried my best, but I did horrible.  Also after doing a halfhearted attempt at abs I was sore a for a few days afterward, too.  I am just little out of shape--haha!

Josh, Matthew, Sarah and Noah have also been doing online piano lessons with their teacher using Marco Polo.  I don't think it is ideal, but it is better than not doing anything so we will continue with it and see how it turns out.  I am hoping things return to normal sooner than later, though.  I love being active with my family so being stuck inside has been rough to say the least.  We are eyeing a few hikes we would like to go on soon so hopefully that will help with the cabin fever we are all experiencing!!

Josh likes to cook and the other day Aaron sent me a recipe that Josh wanted to try.  It was a pierogi lasagna.  Pierogis are something Aaron ate on his mission.  Even though it is a Polish thing Aaron still ate it while serving in Canada.  It is like a ravioli only instead of being filled with cheese and tomato sauce they are filled with mashed potatoes, bacon and cheese.  Then you serve it with sour cream.  I was skeptical when Aaron had me try them, but they were good.  So when Aaron saw this lasagna that looked good Josh was more than happy to try it out.  It was lasagna noodles layered with mashed potatoes, caramelized grilled onions, bacon, and cheese.  Then it was served with some sour cream.  It ended up being pretty yummy.  The kids all liked it which was amazing in and of itself.  Here's Josh working on it:

We made two pans.   It was so filling we didn't even get through one pan which is saying a lot because our kids are big eaters.  We froze the other one to eat later.  

To try and keep in some contact with our young women we did a drive by visit last Sunday afternoon.  We decorated uplifting posters and taped them to the outside of our vans.  We visited almost all (not everyone was home) of our 40-50 young women and leaders.  We called out to the them via a megaphone and then threw them (from a safe distance) a Smiles fruit snack.  Here we are as we visited Sarah:

It took about 2 hours to do, but it was fun!

It was my birthday a few days ago.  It was hard to celebrate since everyone is on lockdown, but we did our best.  G&G T came by to visit.  They brought by a Rice Krispie Treat for everyone and a candle to put in mine.  The kids thought it was great and sang Happy Birthday to me while I blew out my candle.

One of my sweet young women made me a cute card and delivered it.  It was so awesome!!  It made my day!!

Aaron bought me a cheesecake (I LOVE cheesecake!!).  The kids sang Happy birthday to me again after dinner and I got to blow out some more candles.  It was a good day!

Aaron made me a yummy birthday dinner Sunday afternoon.  We had street tacos and they were great.  However, Aaron did have a guacamole mishap.  The blender lid came off while he was making guacamole and it exploded everywhere. Aaron thought he cleaned it all up until during dinner I happened to look up and see more guacamole explosion on the ceiling--haha!  The kids thought it was quite hilarious.

Josh offered to clean it off the ceiling since he is tall enough to reach it just standing on a bar stool.  The rest of us would have needed a ladder so we were glad about that.

To stay busy we have done a few virtual field trips.  The Hogle Zoo also offers a daily live informational class on different animals at the zoo.  Those have been fun to watch.  We have also done a few puzzles.  We just keep it out on the table and if you have a few minutes you can work on it.  The kids haven't been interested in the past, but this time around they have been good helpers.  Here's Noah and Aaron working on one:

Yesterday was the first day of Spring Break which means the kids had no homework to do.  To fill the time we made some bread and did a painting activity.

There is a lady that teaches a painting class on YouTube.  We all watched and followed along.

We painted the Sacred Grove.  Here's how everyone's turned out.  Matthew gave up and went for a walk so that's why he isn't in the picture.  Noah is holding his picture up:

Here's my picture:

Also yesterday was Grandpa T's birthday.  Josh made him a Carrot Cake Cheesecake.  Here's how it turned out:

We stopped by to visit with them, wish Grandpa T a Happy Birthday and to deliver Josh's masterpiece.  

Yesterday we finally got Josh's and Matthew's new glasses in the mail.  They both needed updated glasses prescriptions so they had their eye visits a few weeks ago and we finally got their glasses.  Josh has been having a hard time wearing contacts so he really needed an updated glasses prescription.  They are excited to be able to see clearly again.  Matthew wanted transition lenses--the kind that get dark like sunglasses when you're outside.  I really don't like those, but Matthew insisted.  He is liking his new 'sunglasses'.

Aaron always says that he is not a fan of Sophie, but don't let him fool you.  He likes it when she snuggles him even if he denies it.