Quarantine Birthday

I'm the birthday girl today, and it really was a great day. I loved having a quarantine birthday! Usually I don't do much, but it was great because my kids aren't doing much - like they didn't have school or excuses like they have in all the years past, so I was able to get a mother's dream come true with them doing lots of cleaning! Yee-haw! The first thing I saw was a note on my flip-flops -

at the bottom of the stairs: "Here are your flip flops to start off your morning. Happy Birthday!"

..then I went to make oatmeal in a clean kitchen! With a few homemade gifts waiting for me (which I opened later)

The little girls stayed up last night cleaning. We told them to go to bed at 11pm last night, but I could hear them moving chairs and stools around down there and making noise so I knew they were up to something.

Such good kids. And just in case I was wondering "Lily and Abi helped the most" with cleaning.

Then I went on my morning walk. The pink flowers down the street are starting to bloom!

Then we had our family devotional. Last night I said for my birthday I wanted everyone to come, so Joseph helped Ethan get out of bed and join us today! Wow!

That was the south couch above, then HM and J on the east loveseat

And a few more early risers on the north. Doesn't everyone just look so happy to be awake at such an early hour!

But we all got to work and it was a great day. Corey had the kids clean the garage today and Joseph led the charge.

The house was pretty clean today and it was a beehive of activity.

Corey got me flowers. I also got flowers from two of my Relief Society presidency friends, and my ministering sisters, and some from a neighbor, making in total 5 bouquets of flowers!

My main birthday present to myself is getting family pictures taken on Thursday! I also got a card and cash from Corey's parents and my mom. My mom brought over a birthday cake, creamies and some vegan ice cream.

The last "it's my birthday" request I had today was to go on an outing to sleep hollow. In my minds eye, we were going to recreate our family hikes there in July 2017.

It didn't work for several reasons, but the three big ones were 1) there wasn't any water in the little stream, and 2) there were lots of piles of horse poop on the trail (I guess with quarantine, the horse owners are taking their horses out on the trail more - Owen accidentally stepped in a fresh one) and 3) Owen had a bathroom emergency of his own (#2) which we couldn't help him with, so he messed his pants and it got all down his pant legs and into his shoe. That last one cut the outing short, but before that happened, we made it to the dry creek and were enjoying a picnic dinner.

Pb and J sandwhiches, chips, and clementines.

Peter had fallen asleep on the short drive over, and stayed alseep during the hike down. He woke up for the picnic.

O smelled really back, so I said "Ok, that's good enough. I guess we can't make magic moments happen. This was still fun, but let's go home." I put O in a big plastic bag so he wouldn't get #2 all over the car, and we made it home safe. Then I carried him up into the tub and started laundry again. I did several loads today because Daniel peed on the floor twice and Peter also had a #2 explosion. Side note - from the House video, you'll see that Daniel has continued to have lots of accidents. He claims that he can't pull his pants and underwear down. As I cleaned it up today, I vented my frustrations and told my 3 year old, that if he had to pee his pants, if he could do it on the bathroom tile instead of the carpet that would be better... "don't pee on the carpet" He asked to clarify "I can pee on the bathroom floor?" No, pee in the toilet, but if you have an emergency, atleast stand on the tile. So then today Mel ran into the bathroom and stepped right in a puddle of pee and she was grossed out and so were all of us. I cleaned it up and we told Daniel again to NOT pee on the floor - "Just pee in the potty, you're a big boy, you can do it!" So there were lots of messes and laundry today, lots of baths, and other cleaning today, too. Overall it was a great birthday and I loved having everyone quarantined here with me and all the thoughtful and helpful things they did for and with me today. It was a very good  and Happy Birthday!

Seems Okay

Today was just another day of life and school. It will be changing next week, but as for today, the sun is still shining and the school buses are still running. Usually Owen wakes up early, but this morning I woke him up when I woke up the girls. They all slept in their own beds last night! Wow!

I thought they all looked cute. Good morning little Daniel, all snug under your blanket

After the older kids got home from school, I took a brave step forward and I decided to go shopping. I went with a little bit of caution, as I was hearing horror stories on facebook. But I also thought things might be getting worse and crazier, so the sooner I faced the store, the better. With our usual emergency preparation I feel that we're all set for month with everything (for a year with food), but to play it extra safe if this goes on for a few months, we could use more diapers for Peter. So I went to Walmart. It didn't look too crazy from the parking lot. I walked in. I looked around, the isles are neat and orderly, not a mass of people fighting or anything... seems ok? What do you think Peter?

Sniff sniff.... inhale and exhale. Do I need to be careful? I felt like I was living this clip from Galaxy Quest.

Guy Fleegman:
Wait! Don't open that! It's an alien planet! Is there air? You don't know!!!

Fred Kwan:
...Seems okay...

Haha, so funny. Sidenote - we recently learned where the word okay comes from. This video caught my attention the other night as we were on youtube before scriptures, and I had to know why we say OK! Turns out it was a kinda code letters, satirical abbreviation, that meant "oll korrect". They had a few others that got their start around the same time as OK but are no longer used—including K.C. for "knuff ced" K.Y. for “know yuse,” K.G. for “no go,” and O.W. for “oll wright.” They seem to like the letter K. Maybe that's why Spanish uses que? Ok, KC, back to Walmart...

I walked around the store like I usually would have, going for the diapers first. I was very happy that they had a big box of diapers in the brand I prefer and in Peter's size - that white and green box on the bottom there.

Yahoo, we're set. There was a lot gone off of the shelves, but that was ok. It's a good time to be vegan, cause I didn't even care that the milk, butter, eggs and cheese were gone! We grabbed a few things. Bananas, apples, clementines... I even found a few of the last big jars of spaghetti sauce. I bought some big flat bins that will fit under the kids' bed. We we're going to try again to organize toys and costumes and things, and this time I'm not going to do it by toy type. Each kid gets to choose toys that go in their bin, and that's it. Atleast that's my plan. We'll be working on this project for the next few weeks while the kids are out of school. Then to checkout. The line was long and slow, but we eventually got out. I had to buy Peter some tiny Nilla wafers to keep him happy and quiet during the wait.

I missed the picture, but he had a handful of wafers all stuffed in his mouth and almost spilling out, and then he made a calling noise as he leaned toward the cashier to get her attention. It was funny. And then we were done! Not bad at all.

I came home to see Owen and Daniel taking a nap by my door. I locked it before I left, cause no one needs anything in there. O and D might have thought I was in there, so that might have been sad for them if they thought I was ignoring them. We woke them up, time for dinner.

Corey and I went on a date at Blue Lemon. Things are good and I hope we learn from this how to handle uncertain times. As Corey said tonight, heaven help all of us spoiled Americans if we ever have a real crisis.

Sad Daniel

Daniel at church today - he was sad at me cause I took away a toy.

What a look!

Actually I can't remember why he was sad. It was either cause of a toy or cause I told him to be quiet. Either way, I'm pretty sure it was because I was trying to enforce reverence. And he was being reverent even with his pouty lip.

I'm glad Abi was there to comfort him. He's a sensitive little kid.

I gave him my phone so he could take a few selfies.

It made him feel better. Natalie before church, doing some Sabbath appropriate playing with the keva blocks. Yes, we love Jesus!

Here's the status of Owen's nose - swelling has gone down, black and blue coloring is still there.

You really clocked yourself hard, didn't you Owen?

And one last note - I bought these cookies at Costco yesterday, and I ate the whole bag. Vegan, and dangerous. They were very yummy treats. Sorry to my family that I didn't share them. 

Well, I gave Mel a few at the Mozart Concert last night. I can't buy these again cause I want to lose weight. A few other things from today - we went to Corey's parents' house for a potato bar. It's always nice to be with family. We came home and watched a little bit of 90 day fiance for our cultural and future family relationships lesson. Tonight as we read scriptures, Ethan was translating into Ferb-Latin everything I said, pretending to be translating it for Wesley who doesn't speak English apparently? It was funny. Ethan really has become quite the family and class clown. Some of the stories he tells us of things he does at school are quite hilarious. I'll need to get him to type them up sometime.

Not On Top of It

This morning while I made oatmeal for breakfast, these two cute little boys played at my feet. Daniel was teaching Peter how to play drums on the pots and pans.

I've been pretty consistent at making oatmeal every school morning. Corey likes the steel cut oats, so we don't do the regular rolled oats anymore. As I've mentioned before, we only have 2 vehicles right now. I'm okay to be left a home without one usually, but if Corey takes the car then he runs the risk of being the one that needs to go get the kids at school, should any emergency arise. So it's best if I keep the car even though I don't need it. So I took Corey to work this morning. So after we dropped him off, I took the little boys to the store with me (because today was one of the rare occasions that I was on top of it for once and I actually knew what I wanted to make for dinner tonight!) The boys were excited about getting in the car cart!

I used to always go to Fresh Market instead of Smith's because they had car shopping carts.

But Fresh Market closed a year or so ago, so now I'm stuck with Smiths, so I usually don't take kids.

I can do Costco with the little boys, but I don't like going to Smiths. Maceys worked though - I can do Macey's with these little guys.

Hey, this could even be a standard operating procedure that I go do a quick "groceries for dinner" run after dropping Corey off at work. ...Of course, that would mean that I have to be on top of it, and right now.... I'm not...  as evidenced by the fact that I bought some vegan treats at the store....

So we had vegan ice cream for breakfast. Yeah, so I'm not performing at my peak right now. I blame this guy...

He's like literally sucking the life out of me. I've told Corey that my only complaint about Peter is that he nurses too well. And is too content to keep it up. So I'm feeling trapped a little bit and am looking forward to having my freedom back some day in the future. Once I have sovereignty over my body again, then I'll get my act together again and might be on top of it. But as for now, hooray for hardship nice cream. And violin playing. Violin is my new escape from life. I really like it. I played for a few hours today (another reason why the house is a mess...) This is what my thumb looks like after holding the violin bow for a long time. It makes me feel like I'm working hard, go me.

Ya can't be on top of everything. Taking care of kids, cleaning, family budget, dinner, violin, nursing... Right now I'm in survival mode, so we'll see how it goes, and we'll try to just keep on keeping on.

Hopefully Potty Trained

Today was a good day. Corey took a few kids skiing on the kiddie hill at Alta this afternoon (Abi, Sophi, Owen, and Daniel) that's always fun. I'll try to get some of his pics here. Or if you're some future historian doing research here, there should be some skiing pictures and videos on our family cloud drive. That's where most of Corey's pictures are videos are all ending up, unless I ask him to send me some on Whatsapp. We need to figure out what to do with his stuff so they aren't just lost in computer storage. Well, just know that he takes more pictures than I do. And the kids take lots of nonsense videos and hundreds of selfies on his phone too, so yeah, there's stuff there.

The thing I'm most excited about from today is that I think that Daniel is almost potty trained. I forgot to get diapers his size today at Walmart, and I'm almost out of diapers, so instead of running out again I figured let's do this - and I've been buckled down for the day watching him (except for just crossing my fingers while he went skiing). Tonight I could just tell by a look on his face that he was about to go hide and do #2 somewhere in privacy, but I grabbed him and wooshed him away to the toilet and there FINALLY did it! A month into this and he had his first successful #2 in the toilet. I had been trying to bribe him with ice cream for days and weeks: "If you go poop in potty, I will buy you ice cream!" And cookies, and candy, and whatever you want - it was reverse terrorism negotiation "I will meet your demands!" "Just poop in the potty and I will get you whatever you want!" Well, the son of a gun did it, so off we went to the store....

...and to the ice cream isle -

And he picked out drumsticks. (And I got some vegan soy bars for Hyrum and myself) 

And we brought them home and shared them. 

We have not had ice cream for a long time. We ate ice cream almost daily in Brazil in 2015, it helped us cope. I'm an anti-dairy flexitarian now, a flexible vegan, so I let cow cream slide as a birthday-day only treat. But we haven't had any birthdays since September! Well, we did have Mel's but she was at college so we didn't have cake and ice cream here (Natalie was a bit ticked off) and we didn't have cake and ice cream for Joseph's birthday either, cause he's gone, and we didn't have it for Peter either, cause P doesn't care. So yeah, this really is a special treat now cause it is a rare delicacy.

They did this little "cheers" thing, like they were making a toast "To Daniel!" "To clean underwear!"  "To ice cream!" 

I'll keep an eye on him for the next few days, but I'm glad we crossed this hurdle and he knows how it's supposed to be done. And we made such a big deal about it, I hope that it works. After him, I've just got one more kid in diapers! After 20+ years of this, that's crazy. I can hardly imagine not having to change a kid's diaper, but I bet it will be nice! Peter, you're next.

Hosting Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! We are hosting this year -

My parents and sister Beka and her husband are joining us for the feast. 4 guests plus us = 16 table settings and one high chair. We put together our table and two banquet tables, and then some fun decorations down the middle to make it pretty!

I liked setting the table the most. And making the vegan stuffing. Daniel behaved better today during our preparation than he did last night, which was helpful. He kept Peter entertained at the piano.

Lily got Peter dressed up!

I was in charge of 3 dishes: Potatoes, stuffing, and sweet potato souffle. The souffle was super healthy, so it wasn't quite as addictive as previous years, but still wholesome and delicious. My parents arrived around 2:45, which was when I realized I hadn't cleared the driveway yet! So I ran out and my dad and I did that, then Corey and the kids got back. It worked out just right. We enjoyed a few minutes of pre-feast visiting as we did the finishing touches on the food.

And then everyone sat down and we went around the table to share some things we are grateful for.

The table from the other angle. It was fun to have us all at one long table together, rather than the adult table and the "kid" table.

I think we'll have lots of feasts like this in heaven, that's gonna be so fun for forever! Then my dad said a prayer of thanks to God for our many blessings.

Time to enjoy! Little kids loaded up with jello. Peter at the head of the table.

Ethan had a mountain of food.

Glittery pumpkins and leaves as I try to get another angle of the meal. 

After everyone was full, we visited more, then enjoyed pumpkin pies from Costco while we watched "The Fighting Preacher" My mom and dad hadn't seen it and they stayed for that, Corey and the kids headed back up to Park City around 7, and now the movie is over and I'm here with Daniel and Peter. Quiet house, going to go to bed early. It was a good day, I think we caught some of the magic that we had at our family parties from years gone by. Maybe we'll try to have festive feasts more often.