March 29- April 4

This is spring break week but the kids really didn't have much of a break since teachers started to post assignments.  The last two weeks were pretty easy going for them so their home school teacher was mean and made them work. 

We are really liking this family time more and more each day. The evenings are the best.  We aren't hurried to read our scriptures and have family prayer.  We can eat dinner together more consistently.  Nathan has been reading the Ranger's Apprentice series to the kids and I find myself listening to it instead of doing other things.  The kids love having him read.   

We love our sacrament meetings together.  This week was the world wide fast for the corona virus pandemic.  It was fun to be able to focused on fasting as a family.  Everyone shared their testimony during sacrament meeting.  

We also made ourselves sick by making peanut butter cups and mint brownies but they were so good.

I had each of the kids pick an activity that they took the lead in planning for this week after all school stuff was done each day.  Elijah was first.  He had everyone write a story of their choice.  These two pictures are of them reading their stories to each other.  Those who did participate had some creative stories.  

Not pictured...........For Jarom's activity we had a Nerf war that was super awesome. Josiah decided we would watch a movie on his day.  Very creative huh?  

Josiah was clearly bored and piled pillows on my head.  

We took a break from school on Thursday to deep clean the house.  The kids did an awesome job and it felt nice to have the place super clean.  

Sadie put us to work on sidewalk chalk for her activity.  We had fun going crazy with the chalk.  

We hadn't been anywhere (except the grocery store for me) for the last two weeks and when Nathan got home from work he took us near the shipyard gate to show us the cherry blossoms.  So cool!  It was funny how excited we were about going on a drive.  Ha ha!    

This was my activity and we had quite a bit of fun even though Jarom's horse was the only one that worked very well. 

                                       

 This here is a momentous occasion.  This boy loved this blanket when he was little.  He did not want to be away from it hence the reason it is so worn out.  He kept it this long but decided it was smelling and needed to be disposed of.  

We had our first youth zoom meeting.  We played Chameleon.  It was good to associate with the few who joined in.  

Week of March 23-28

March 23 was our anniversary and have been married for 19 years.  Crazy how much those wonderful years have flown by.  We had planned a little get away since Sadie is old enough to hold the fort down.  However, that got cancelled too. 

March 27 Sadie received the final decision that HEFY will be cancelling all humanitarian trips for the summer 2020.   She will get a refund or have the option to roll her money over to a trip for next summer 2021.  She is pretty bummed and we feel so bad it had to happen this way but there wasn't anything that could be done. 

***We are noticing that we have time to get projects done that have been sitting for a long time.

March 24 was Josiah birthday.  He is 15 years old and super excited to be driving soon.   He is the most excited about not having to be at school.

The big ice cream cookie wasn't quite ready to be eaten so it ended up being a big mess.  

We updated our 72 hour kits this week and this yummy dish was on the menu one night for dinner.  The kids were not a fan of canned Ravioli?!?!  Luckily for them we didn't replenish our kits with more of it.  

Josiah and Nathan finished their knives they started a long time ago.   They are made out of aluminum bronze.   They made the handles too.

Elijah made a tank out of wood.  He was quite proud of this.

We bought a scroll saw so that we could make some cool things.  Elijah is working on his tank in the picture.  

Josiah successfully climbed the rope without using his feet.  He is getting stronger.  

Sadie started a puzzle and each of us helped out a bit and got it finished.

Other things that happened

Parent teacher conferences were over the phone.

Zoom meetings started for seminary.

The schools did post some lessons and other activities that students could do.

Elijah's birthday and sacrament meeting

This was not only Elijah's birthday but we had a full on sacrament meeting at our house.  I love having church at home.  Nathan spoke about testimonies and Sadie spoke about prayer and they both did an excellent job.  Josiah prepared the sacrament, Nathan blessed it and Jarom passed it.  The spirit was in abundance and it was so neat.  We commented though that since this is the direction from the Lord to stay home and have church that he is blessing us with his spirit.  

Elijah was excited to celebrate his birthday earlier than at dinner time like we usually do.  We are thankful to have him in our family.  

Week of March 16-21

This week we tried to figure out our "new groove" whatever that might be.  The schools didn't really have anything yet for the kids so I found some things for them to do.  I did let the kids sleep in some.  Life slowed down quite a bit this week and it feels so nice. 

Josiah got his invisalign this week.  He had to use this for his braces instead of regular ones because of his bite. He trades out his trays each week.  This sounds like a much better way to go than the metal mouth the other two kids have had.  

Sadie was furloughed from Old Navy since their stores can't be open.  She has also been receiving notices that her Paraguay trip could be cancelled because of this pandemic.  It is looking more like it will cancel but they want to hold out till they really know.  There is a possibility of money that has already been paid not be refunded.  Yikes that is a lot of money.  I have been feeling so bad for Sadie because she was so looking forward to this and has worked so hard to make it happen.  

We attempted to find some graves to photograph for a couple of evenings this week with no luck.  I thought it was so fun just to look at all of the graves.  We found a couple of them who are members of a family in our ward.  There was a neat peaceful feeling walking through this cemetery. 

We also took advantage of having hot dog roasting with smores one evening.  

Church and a walk

At the beginning of the year we switched to going to church at noon.  I do not like going to church at that time.  We have missed our awesome discussions with "Come Follow Me" that we had last year.   I have meetings most Sunday mornings and then have more meetings at various times after church on some Sundays so we have found it hard to get really into our lessons.  However, today we had another Sunday at home together due to no church meetings at this time.  We only had our "Come Follow Me" lesson and it was nice to have the time to have really good discussions.  At this point there wasn't any directives from our local leaders on if/when we could have the sacrament yet. 

I think we could be going on lots of walks/hikes as a family.  Today we ventured out to a fun place we haven't been.  Jarom was especially excited when we came across some ant hills.  He likes ants.  

Look at all those ants moving around.

                                         

Changes

I chuckled at this at the beginning of the week and thought of all of the teachers who I know that would get to deal with this combo.  See below.  I sub in our school district but didn't happen to have any jobs this week.  

This week ended up being more crazy weird than this meme above. One by one everything was getting cancelled.   The COVID-19 pandemic hit fast and social distancing needed to happen.

1. All church meetings including activities and seminary were cancelled till further notice.

2. Seattle temple closed till further notice and we had planned to go this week. 

3.Jarom's last basketball game cancelled out so his season ended abruptly.

4.  On Friday the 13th it was announced that school would be closed till April 27.  Six weeks of no school!  Our kids were so disappointed.  Ha ha!  

5. My substitute jobs all cancelled through April 27.

6. Several other church activities cancelled out for that weekend and beyond.

  

7. AND no toilet paper.  Ha ha!   I am thankful we were prepared with toilet paper.  

I honestly sat and shook my head wondering if this is really happening.  The kids won't be in school for six weeks!  No church, no temple to attend nearby and etc!  I wasn't scared at all just a super weird feeling came over me.  I looked at my calendar thinking, now what?!?!?! Everything just got wiped out of the schedule for the next six weeks.  Crazy!  

Family Walk

We took a family walk tonight on a Wednesday evening which is so rare for us.  This is our youth activity night.  Last Friday evening March 6 we received word from our stake president that Stake conference was cancelled and that there would be no church meetings at all on Sunday.  Then our Bishop decided that our youth activities would be cancelled this week for the same reason.  

Our state was the first in the US to start the outbreak of COVID-19 or at least the first to be in the media.  It was moving fast in the Seattle area.  It was suggested that we shouldn't meet in a large gathering for stake conference and our local leaders were be cautious about youth activities too.  

I remember thinking that this was so nice to go on a walk with my family and it seemed so stress free.  It was a rare treat to be able to spend this time with just us.  Life is so so busy.  At times insanely busy.  We always discuss what we can do to to cut things out but there is nothing that can be cut.  Not having Stake Conference or any church on that Sunday was weird.  We did have our own lesson though.  Little did we know as we walked that night what would happen later in the week that would change everything.   

                                   

This is a video of Jarom attempting to jump over the pole  and the next one he succeeded.

We love these kids so much.  They are crazy, awesome, cool, weird, best friends, smart, kind, loving, and all around great people.