March 2020

Ski Day
Paxton really wanted to go skiing again and Graham wanted to go this time.  Rem, Erika and Jamie took Paxton, Graham and Lucy night skiing at Brighton.  We had our Get Out pass that got them in free.  It was Graham's first time skiing.  He stayed on the bunny hill most of the time with Rem and did really good, at the end he tried the big hill once.  The rest of them went on the bunny hill about 5 times until they felt confident and then they did the big hill.  There was one part of the hill that got pretty steep for Pax and Lucy but they made it down and the second time they went down without any hesitation.  They can't wait to go again!

Parents and Pastries
It's always fun going to the school to be with the kids.  This time Harper got join in eating donuts, reading a book and taking fun pictures.



Seussical Musical
We joined Jamie, Lucy and Lincoln and went to the Children's theater to see Seussical.  It was really cute and we all enjoyed it a lot!



Happy Birthday Harper!
I can't believe my baby girl is ONE years old.  It has been so fun having a little girl in our lives, she brings so much joy and happiness to all of us.

Her birthday was on a Thursday and we were doing her big party on Saturday.  So that morning when she woke up we came in with lots of balloons and threw them in her crib, she thought that was so much fun.  We had a yummy breakfast and opened a couple presents.  Dad had to work that day so we didn't do much, but after he got off work we went to Ikea for dinner and played around a little bit.  Harper loved the chocolate cake after dinner!



Party Time!
We invited my family, GG Moss and Rems family to celebrate Harper.  We did a LUCKY ONE theme and had a gold and green dinner theme with alfredo pasta and peas, ceasar salad, breadsticks and fruit. After dinner we opened presents.  She got spoiled from all her aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  She was really excited about the stuffed Violet dog and kept going after it when we were trying to get her to open more presents.  She also loved her new pink car once we got it put together, she just wanted to sit in it.  For dessert we had cupcakes, snicker doodle cookies and rice krispie treats and of course Harper got her very own smash cake.  When we first gave her the cake she was very dainty at picking at her cake with her little fingers and licking off the frosting.  As more time passed she got more into it and started picking it up by the handfuls and then just creating a big mess.  She even started lounging back in her seat and putting her feet up on the tray and then squishing cake into her toes.  It definitely became bath time very quickly.  It was a very successful and fun first birthday for this sweet little girl!



Family Skate Night
The kids school always does a family skate night at the Classic Fun Center.  The boys always have a blast going to this and seeing their friends.  We had fun taking turns pushing Harper around in her new pink car, she had a blast.



Dear Evan Hansen
Rems brother over bought on tickets for this play so we bought the tickets from him.  The tickets were a bit expensive, but we figured we deserved a date night and it was almost our anniversary anyways.  We were lucky to be able to go to the play because this is when the United States started hearing more and more about COVID- the pandemic that was soon to shut everything down.  They did have signs up about sanitizing and such.  Anyways we were so glad we got to see, it was such a great play that we got to see at the new Eccles theater.  I didn't know much about the play other than some of the music because Rem and Paxton listen to it a lot around the house.  I really enjoyed it!



Zoo
My sister Erika bought a Zoo pass and invited us to join her and Jo one day.  It was nice to get out of the house and see all the animals.  My favorite that day was seeing the otters.  Normally I can't even find them, but this time they were swimming around and one of them kept doing back flips right by the glass.  Harper was loving it!



Warm Weather
It's nice to get some warm weather so we can go enjoy the outdoors.  We busted out the bike trailer and it's been fun to go on family bike rides.  Sometimes we just ride around the neighborhood and others we ride down to the church Friendship Park and play on the swings and playground.

Happy St. Paxton's Day!
Wow this kid is 10, double digits!  Paxton is such an awesome kid, we love him so much!  He does well in school, is social and makes friends easily, loves basketball and wrestling, and is so cute with his baby sister.

This year was Paxton's year to have a big birthday party with friends.  We had been talking about it a lot and had finally decided on going to a nerf gun arena, but I had put off booking the place which ended up being a good thing because just a few days later COVID hit hard.  Schools closed, social distancing began and soon everything started shutting down. 

So instead I told him that if things cleared up in the summer we could do a friend party then.  So on his birthday, also St. Patrick's day, we started off with lots of green balloons greeting him outside his door and then Lucky the Leprechaun bringing Lucky Charms for breakfast.  Then he got to open a few presents, but we really wanted to get him a new bike but wanted to take him out shopping for one so that got put on hold as well.  He did get to go shopping for some new basketball shoes.  I took the kids with our next door neighbor friends on a bike ride over to the school to play basketball and hangout and eat treats.  Then later that evening we ate dinner in the basement while watching Pirates of the Caribbean.  Paxton had a good day, but I do feel bad about not being able to celebrate bigger.





SCHOOL CANCELLED
Home schooling begins.

(It's hard for me to write this now because it is 5 months later, but I will do my best to remember how we felt).  It all seemed to happen so fast.  The CoronaVirus that started in China had spread to the United States and finally hit Utah.  Everything seemed pretty normal until March 12th when I got a phone call from the school saying that they were shutting down the school due to someone being exposed to someone that had COVID-19.  After many texts from neighbors and friends I decided to leave my kids at school the rest of the day when many parents were frantically rushing to the school to pick up their kids.  My kids came home that day with chrome books and had been instructed on how to use them so I was glad I left them at school.  

People were in a frenzy.  The governor quickly told us to practice social distancing and limit errands unless absolutely necessary.  People were buying out everything on the shelves including bottled water and toilet paper being the hardest things to soon find.  The lines at the grocery stores were long, it was nuts.  Luckily I didn't feel an absolute need to go out and buy buy buy.  I had a friend going to Costco so she offered to pick me up a few things.  We have a pretty good food storage if we got desperate enough.

Soon restaurants, malls, stores and even churches were closed to slow the spread of this virus, they had a work from home order if possible and then my salon eventually got shut down as well.  The world was in a Pandemic.  All schools were closed and moms all over were now homeschooling their children.  I was impressed with Murray school district in how ready they were for this.  The very next day we were doing online learning.  Many other schools didn't have anything for their students for several days, even a week.  Online school seemed kind of fun at first to the kids, but very quickly it wasn't so fun anymore.  We were trying to set a new routine and my world changed as did the kids.  IT WAS ROUGH.  Trying to juggle Graham who needed me 90% of the time to help him stay focused, Paxton was pretty good on his own but still needed some help here and there and my little one year old that was such cute little distraction and still needed my attention was very hard.  I'm pretty sure I ended up in tears every day for the first week or two.  It was a good thing my salon shut down because I don't know what I would've done with the kids.  We got to a point where numbers were going up so we were trying to social distance from everyone.  We weren't seeing hardly anyone.  The hardest part was not seeing family and not letting my kids play with their friends.  

There was some good that we saw.  We had more family time, less driving, less spending.  I'm know it did a lot of good for the world also as far as pollution and such, but our economy was going to suffer.  People were looking for fun ways to communicate, lots of online video chat and serving others.  My friends and I all would text each other when going to the grocery store and buy each other groceries so we didn't all have to go.  People did drive by birthdays and even weddings.  Our school district at first had plans to re-open, but soon got word that they would be closed for the rest of the school year.  

Our world has changed.  I'm sure I will write more on this, but 5 months later our numbers are way higher, we thought it would go away at least for the summer and maybe re-visit this winter but it hasn't gone away.  Things are open, but just about everyone wears masks in public and things have changed quite a bit.  Schools did start up this fall and we are praying it lasts.  

  







EARTHQUAKE!!
If the pandemic wasn't enough we woke up to our house shaking the day after Paxton's birthday on March 18th.  We were all still in bed at 7:09am which I was so grateful for!  I'm not sure if I would've realized what was happening and been able to react so quickly if it weren't for Rem.  He shot right out of bed, yelled "earthquake, I'll grab Harper and you get Graham".  We all hunkered down under Graham's bunk bed.  We eventually went to get Paxton from the basement, he had rolled off his bed and underneath.  We were happy to know that he knew what to do.  We stayed under Graham's bed for 20-30 minutes just taking the opportunity to talk about what we did right and what we could've done better and how to act if we were somewhere else.  Later that day the house shook again, not as bad but still enough to give us a scare and run to get Harper from her nap.  The earthquake was a 5.7 with the epicenter in Magna about 19 miles from us. It did some damage to areas around us, but we only noticed a small light weight plant tipped over and a paper envelope fall off a shelf.  Angel Moroni lost his trumpet on the Salt Lake temple.  We were lucky it wasn't a bigger earthquake.  Having the pandemic and the earthquake sure make us feel the need to get better prepared in the case of an emergency.  This earthquake sure scared us, it felt like the world was going to end.

The prophet, President Nelson had been making so many changes such as shorter church and more at home church.  He even said in October 2019 conference that our next General Conference in April  2020 was going to be "different from any previous conference."  He said, "not only will it be memorable, it will be unforgettable".  Wow, he and no one else had no idea that those words he spoke would have meant this.  How amazing to see how closely our Heavenly Father is to us to help prepare us for what has come.  I'm so grateful for a living prophet!






















St. George
My brother Trevor and his family were heading to St. George and decided to invite us even though is was COVID time and we should be social distancing, but we were being careful and we both were staying home and away from others other than going to the grocery store and no one was sick.  Other than being sick of being home.  We were so glad they invited us to go, it was a nice break over the kids Spring Break.  We stayed a couple days longer than them because we could, they had to get back for Trev's work.  We mostly hung out at the house and the kids were happy to just have a friend to play with.  We went on a few walks through the neighborhood, played lots of games, watched movies and we even made it over to Pioneer Park before it shut down.  We were hesitant to go, but we decided to check it out.  The parking lot wasn't too full and we just went as far away as we could from everyone else.  It was fun that we did because we explored a whole new area that we have never seen before.

After Trev's family went home we went and visited the Stotts, Rems sister for Sunday dinner.  Harper was loving their new little kitten.  Then we discovered that St. George had shut down their golf courses so we ventured out on a few walks on the course.  The kids brought their scooter and long board and had a blast going on all the hills there are on a golf course.  One evening we decided to further than we had before and came across water flowing under a bridge/dam so we all took off our shoes and walked through it.  We had a fun adventure and were out for a long evening walk, it was a blast! 

We couldn't go home without seeing Rems parents so on our way out we met up with them on the golf course by their home and went on a social distancing walk.  We had a fun vacation.



Happy 15th Anniversay!
Well since we were stuck home for our anniversary and Rem had to work, we mostly had a normal day.  I played outside with the kids some, then Graham helped me make chocolate covered strawberries for dessert and he helped me make a yummy dinner.  We enjoyed a delicious dinner together as a family and went for a bike ride afterwards.  Rem and I were glad we were able to go to Dear Evan Hansen earlier in the month to celebrate our anniversary.