September/October 2020 (except fall break)

In the fall of 2020, things started to get back to normal.  We went back to work, and I didn't complain that they had moved me into a big corner office to make social distancing easier.  Yay!

And, I got to see my grandma!  In person!  It is true that we were outside and she was inside and there was a screen between us and we had to stand behind a tape line on the ground, but still!   So good to see her smiling face. 

Arden was taking P.E., but since they only went to "A" day once a week, she had to do other exercise, so I got to take her on a bunch of hikes.  Here is Arden at the waterfall up Duell's Canyon.  We made it all the way up!

Another day we went up Waterfall Canyon.  Olive of course came along with us.

Arden even had a great time swinging on the rope swing halfway up a hike.  So fun! 

Somehow, the hikes didn't continue once they weren't a requirement, but I enjoyed it while I could.

In early September, there was a CRAZY wind storm.  Trees were down everywhere!  The next door neighbors trampoline flew up and impaled itself on their fence...

The power went out at our house for most of a day, and the kids had fun playing spoons in the dark.  The lights actually came back on during our game, and we turned the lights back off to finish.

The trees between the Loveridge's and the Thornes were some of the many casualties.  

We were lucky and didn't lose any trees, but I woke up in the middle of the night on the worst night, and I was sure our big maple tree was going to go over any second.  A couple of days after the storm, Cora had soccer practice in Farmington, and it looked like a bomb went off in that town...trees and fences were everywhere.  I went on a run during practice, and there were dozens of huge trees fallen across the bike trail I usually run on.

I love fall time in Bear Lake!  We did our annual horseback riding up by Beaver Mountain:

The leaves were beautiful, and we were having a great ride!

You guys know that I have a thing for leaves, so I took a lot of pictures even though it is not that easy trying to take a picture from the back of a moving horse.

Cora was having a great time, and giggled every time we would get to trot a little.

Right as we were almost back to the corral, I was near the back of the line, and was looking ahead and all of the sudden I saw a horse's feet in the air.  Wait, what??  I jumped off my horse and ran up there, and found that Dax's horse had tripped and fallen all the way over, and of course Dax had been thrown, and the horse had even rolled over his leg a little.  I was sure he would be broken, but he stood up and we looked him over, and he was just scraped up and a little bruised, thank goodness!  

While we were there I of course went on a few walks and runs, and here is a very small portion of the pictures.  

Oh, I love this.

And I love this picture we took of Olive when we took her to the beach and she had been smelling things in the sand.  Hilarious.

We took the kids out to the Cross E Ranch one night to do the fall festival stuff there.  Me and Preston NAILED this picture:

We chose pumpkins to put on the porch and carve up.  They were still attached to the vines, so they gave us clippers.  Mistake?  Maybe.

The kids always love these silly little picture things where you stick your face in the hole.  They don't often want to pose for pictures anymore, so I will take their faces however I can get them.  Cute little bat:

We also did the corn maze, of course.  They gave us a map, but I was not able to figure out how that map, but Preston was very good at it!  We found all of the clues and made it through.

Before we knew it, Halloween was upon us!  We weren't sure about trick-or-treating, because of COVID, but people were creative, and found ways to do it.  A lot of people left treats on tables, spaced out for the kids, some people had fun trick-or-treat clothes lines, and on and on.  

Pumpkin carving, of course, was still allowed:

I didn't dress up, but I did a Snapchat filter, so that counted, right?

Dax was a giant inflatable dragon!

Arden was a very cute sloth:

And Cora was a super scary skeleton pirate:

Here are our pumpkins.  Mine was the scary coronavirus pumpkin.  Cora's was the Mike Wizowski-looking one, and Arden's was the alien guy.  Dax is the screaming one, and you can't quite see it but there are pumpkin guts spilling out of his mouth...cuz Dax is a 12 year old boy.

On Halloween we went to Grandma Zaugg's to trick-or-treat, and it was hilarious to watch them jump on the trampoline in their costumes, especially Dax!  

I couldn't stop laughing. 

For our trick-or-treaters, we left a bunch of soda pops on the table on our front porch.  Preston was worried about kids taking too many, so we set up the camera doorbell we have so that when it sensed someone there it would alert Preston's phone and he would play a spooky sound at them so they knew they were being monitored.  It was a pretty relaxing night not having to get up and down to answer the door, but I missed seeing the kids' costumes and stuff.  Oh well...lowered expectations is the theme of 2021!

First Day of School - Fall 2020

 There was a lot of apprehension around the first day of school this year.  There had been a lot of back and forth around in-person school, but you better believe I was praying for them to find a way to make it happen.  They finally decided on an alternate-day schedule, where the kids with last names A-L would go Mondays and Wednesdays, and kids with M-Z would go Tuesdays and Thursdays, with everyone being remote on Fridays, and kids could have in-person meetings with teachers on Fridays if necessary.

Arden and Dax were okay with it because most of their friends were in the same half of the alphabet, but for some reason almost all of Cora's friends were in the opposite half, poor girl.  And Dax was starting junior high, which is a super duper scary thing!!  

And, of course, masks were required! 

But I would rather get the smiles even if they weren't realistic!!  

Good looking bunch, right?  I listened to George Michael's "Freedom 90" on full blast when they were gone that first Tuesday, having them gone for the first time in like 8 months felt weird but also amazing!  I never had such an appreciation for teachers as I had in 2020.  God bless them every one.  

Summer 2020 Randomness

Summer 2020 was still kind of a weird time...things were kind of opening up, but mostly, not really.  Restaurants were still only doing curbside pickup (and that quickly became our jam), and some people would let their kids have play dates, and some wouldn't.  It was kind of a low-key summer, which means the kids were mostly whining that they were bored and wanted more screen time from morning until night.

To pass the time (and try to get the kids outside), Preston got a skateboard, and Arden was the one who played with it the most.  She has good balance and learned a few tricks.

There were some good sunsets, and we were home a lot so we saw them from our house.

Arden was so bored she resorted to poking more holes in her head than were there before.  She is up to five (two in each earlobe, and one on the top).  She would often get her hair caught in the top one which would make her scream, but she loved it.  

Our lawn was looking especially bad, so Preston ordered some ummmm...natural fertilizer.  I authorized it, but when I got home and saw the van-sized pile of poopoo on the lawn I was so shocked that I took its picture.

It took us quite a while to spread that stuff around the yard, but it did help quite a bit.  

I was still working from home exclusively, and had a little summertime system.  Cora had soccer practice early in the morning a couple of days a week, and I would go for a run during that, and then I would be super hot.  So I would grab my laptop and go sit on the deck.  Pretty often, this yellow bird would come and sing me a song:

And more often than not, the cat would want to come and keep me company.  This didn't help the whole "keeping cool" situation, but he didn't seem to care.  

Then it was the 4th of July.  The kids were super bummed because the big fireworks show at the golf course was (of course) cancelled.  Plus, fireworks are banned at our house due to fire danger.  So...we just went up to grandma's and did sparklers.  Next best thing, right??

It was pretty exciting when Xander and Emmy got sparklers...it was their first time and it was magical...until Xander burned his fingers.  Yup, fire is hot.  

Then, it was my birthday...again, not much to do about it, but the pedicure place had opened back up, so I took the girls down to celebrate.  We had to sit far apart from each other and keep our masks on, but it was still nice to "go out" and my feet were in pretty rough shape (as per usual), so I quite enjoyed myself.  

The girls are smiling under those masks, I'm sure.

Then we had pretty toes!!  Well, my toes are just weird, but at least the toenails are pretty.  

And guys, look at this cake Cora made for me!  So beautiful!  She is turning into quite a talented little baker.  

Then, before we knew it, "Summer Band" had started up.  Dax had signed up to play the trumpet after the junior high band teacher visited his 6th grade class (before the shutdown).  Arden wasn't interested in band, so this was my first experience.  Apparently the trumpet is really hard to play when you are a beginner, and Dax was surprised that he couldn't make any music-like sounds come out of it.  After a session or two of band, he came home and ran out on the deck where I was working, and showed me that he had learned to make trumpet-like sounds!  

Great job Dax!  But man, trumpets are really loud!  

We weren't sure whether we should go ahead with our annual summer cabin trip with the Wongs, but none of us had any covid-like symptoms, so we decided to go for it.  The kids loved having people to hang out with!

We went up to Bloomington Lake, and I really wanted to swim across the lake and jump off some cliffs.  Arden, Zane, Nash, and even Lincoln swam across.  There were a few logs floating in the lake, so we would swim from log to log to cross the lake.  I wished that we had brought some life jackets, as Lincoln was getting pretty tired, but we all made it okay.  It is hard to see, but here is Zane getting ready to jump.  It doesn't look that high, but it was pretty high when you were looking down from the top!  

The next day, the kids wanted to do an escape room, but there was a maximum of 10 people, so us parents volunteered to stay out and let the kids try and solve it themselves.  Us grownups had a nice relaxing time sitting at a nearby restaurant across the street and sipping some sodas and talking, and turns out the kids are super smart and escaped the room with just a few minutes to spare!  

We played a lot of tag, and I loved this picture of the kids running around, and Olive helpfully just running in circles around everyone.  Perfect moment.  

Another time that summer we had a couple of visitors to our salt lick.  It was a mother and her teenage daughter I think.  So cute.  

And just like that....summer was over.