Quarantine, Conference Time!

Ahhh, quarantine life.  How are all of you doing the quarantine?  I find the weeks and days running together with little variance.  But we are healthy and well.  COVID-19 is going strong and getting worse in our area.  We are looking forward to general conference.  Every week with the kids we do a Rose, Bud, Thorn with them.  We find out what they loved the past week (Rose), what they are looking forward to (Bud), and what was disappointing (Thorn).  Several of our kids mentioned General Conference as their bud which was so fun!  I'm glad they look forward to the Church's general conference that happens twice a year.

Shanna got this picture of herself so she could draw someone praying.  Very clever!

Here is the drawing Shanna did of Joseph Smith's First Vision.  I love how she incorporated the ax in the picture.  This is the 200th year since Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in the Sacred Grove near Palmyra, New York.  General Conference will be focused on this theme.

The kids have been writing a fair amount of letters during the quarantine.  And they can confidently address a letter as well!

More indexing fun....Though Shanna spells her middle name differently.

Clark has gone on a few drives by himself or with Cal, or with Cal and Elden.  I think it's cute. They mainly go up to the overlook in Massanutten at the end of Del Webb.

And of course one needs a mustache and goatee!

I never knew Corona was a last name!  I was also reading an article about a town in Nevada, West Wendover.  Their poor mayor....his last name is Corona!

The day finally came, General Conference! What a treat during the COVID craziness! It was very weird seeing General Conference broadcasted from a small auditorium, with just a few people and with the First Presidency sitting 6 feet apart from each other.

President Nelson gave an opening address and said this:
"Little did I know, when I promised you at the October 2019 general conference that this April conference would be “memorable” and “unforgettable,” that speaking to a visible congregation of fewer than 10 people would make this conference so memorable and unforgettable for me!"

We loved being home by ourselves for the whole conference.  It's fun being with extended family as well.  But I think we enjoyed this more and will continue to do this in the future.

It was a terrific conference!  Two youth speakers spoke at a special Saturday night session, there were some video clips of President Nelson at the Sacred Grove area, a special proclamation about the restoration of the gospel was shared, we did a Hosana Shout Sunday morning and several temples were announced including one in Shanghi, China!!!

Shanna has been sending packages and letters to her good friend Cortlyn. Cortlyn sent Shanna a package and she was very excited to receive it!

Every Monday night after general conference we have a special treat (normally the kids get to pick their own) and we each talk about three things that we enjoyed from conference. Since we were under quarantine I made homemade ice cream and hot fudge.

Love this "salsa"!

Time to share our conference thoughts!

Lee has been busy with lots of projects around here.  I should be doing some projects as well but am putting them off...  Lee and the kids took down the playset and hauled it away.

Yep, Shanna is still taller than me!

The kids are sad that Flabby died.  Who is Flabby?  I don't know.

Lee has been enjoying several bike rides.  He decided to take off another week after spring break.  He didn't have any pictures for spring break as we were going to go on a cruise (surprising the kids!), but of course that got cancelled.  Then the week after spring break he decided to be closed the next week as well.  He saw a couple of emergency patients.  He could have been open the whole time and didn't have restrictions to have his office closed.  But we were worried about people giving Lee the virus and Lee spreading it to patients and to us. It was nice having Lee home. 

Elden did some weeding at Lee's office and enjoyed finding a snake.

The kids had fun playing badminton.  We got this set from someone, but sadly it wasn't in good shape.

We played a couple of games of Monopoly.  Intense to say the least!  Lee and I are reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.  Quoting from his book, Cal, after writing about the great benefits from playing board games makes this point. "Playing games also provides permission for what we call supercharged socializing--interactions with higher intensity levels than are common in polite society."  I chuckled out loud when I read this.  Totally my family! My kids hum, make repetitive noises, yell and talk VERY loudly during games.

I thought this was hilarious:


I thought this one was funny too:


In some of our other closets we added a second shelf and made the lower existing shelf deeper.  I was cleaning out our coat closet (I feel like it needs a good cleaning in the fall and spring!) and wanted to do the same thing in this closet!

Second shelf.  Deeper bottom shelf. PERFECT!

Finished project!  I am not sure what we will store on the second shelf, possibly food storage.  I'm glad we have one now and I was able to get ALL the paint cans off the closet floor! 

That's one way to eat ramen... We go through food and toilet paper a lot faster now with us being home all day, together. 

A few times my kids have gotten the free lunches at school.  I made them go the last ten minutes during the pickup time because we don't need the food.  We haven't gone for a couple weeks now because I am leery of other people touching the food!  I am sure they are very cautious, but still.... The kids had fun the few times they picked up food.  I hope everyone is healthy and well!

Old Rag

We had a fun few days of quarantine with Reed at our house.  Of course that included doing indexing!

It's fun seeing the different names.

Six days a week I make sure and go on a long jog.  Such pretty, blossoming trees.

Haley likes drawing these dragons and she's so fast at it!

Gotta love lots of game time during COVID-19!

Shanna loves getting my phone to snap selfies.

We finally went to Old Rag!  I wanted to go in April but figured why not go in March when we had the time (because everything was cancelled) and the weather was decent. And good thing because now I am writing this in May and the Shenandoah National Park is completely closed.

Old Rag is a popular hike, a 10 mile loop basically. And with lots of rock scrambles.  It was awesome! Enjoy all the photos!

LOTS of social distancing going on, right?!  On Monday or Tuesday after the hike they closed Old Rag because too many people were out.

You notice there weren't many pictures of Cal and Reed because they were ahead of us and then we never saw them till after we got back from the hike!

That night some of the kids slept outside.  I also found out that my friend Ann Best died that evening. She was the third death in a row in my ward that happened every 3 weeks. 

The next day, Sunday, I went to visit Ann's daughter, Jen, who is disabled.  It was great to see Jen, but also sad.  Her mom was her full-time caregiver.  Coronavirus or not, I was going to go see her.  Thankfully that Monday I was able to see Ann and Jen and talk with them both.  And that Friday I had chatted with Ann as well on the phone.  The next day she had a heart attack and died quickly.  We were all quite shocked as she seemed to be in fairly good health with several more years to live. Jen is now at her sister's house.  Someone in our ward had written a post about how we need to stay home and not visit people at risk--which was something this person heard about.  I wonder if that person was referring to Ann and Jen. Not sure. But if so, personally I am not sad at all that I was able to spend time with them before Ann passed away.

It seems like the kids have been doing funny things every week...maybe it's COVID-coping.  But this particular Sunday they were putting ice on their bellies and seeing how long they could leave it on their skin. It was a 2 liter of soda with frozen water in it.

What was really funny was Clark just sitting with it on his stomach for a LONG time.

And the ice challenge happened during Quirkle.

More sleeping outside!

We had an early celebration for Reed's birthday when Lois came to pick up Reed. I made cupcakes with Nesquik frosting.  I had to use a cream substitute because I couldn't find whipping cream at Food Lion.  It tasted fine chocolate flavored but was really weird on it's own.

Another weird thing my kids did for a couple days was to tie each other up and see how fast they could untie themselves.

Earlier that day Cal and Reed went to fill up wood for a lady.  Cal and Elden do this often and they like the extra money they earn.

Clark is trying to get a job at Food Lion.  I was proud of him for calling a couple of times to check up on his application and going to the store in person to talk to someone in management.  It was my idea, but he followed through!  Even the experience alone of applying for a job is so important!

Lee and I did a huge shopping trip, trying to not go to the grocery store for five weeks.  We ended up going a few times though, but it was always for other things and we figured while we are there, why not get stuff we want/need!

We've had a couple different meetings with the missionaries with them sharing a message with us.

I broke the plastic plug that fits in the lid on the blender.  Oops!  It fell into our chocolate spinach smoothie. Ugh...

More decluttering happened! I wanted to go through the entire girl's room and Shanna wanted to rearrange it.  I really like the new set-up.  It was great going through things yet again.  I've found with minimizing you do have to keep up on it and continually minimize!  We aren't minimalists, but we have gotten rid of/donated hundreds of items over the past 1 to 2 years.  I've done a monthly decluttering challenge 3 times now and will do a fourth one in April.  Whatever the date of the month is, that is how many items you get rid of.  So the 1st you get rid of 1 thing.  The 2nd you get rid of 2 things, the 3rd, 3 things and so on. Every month you get rid of 450+ items.  (Not counting February.)

Since the kids were home and the governor declared school cancelled I had the kids go through their school stuff with me and I put away their backpacks.  That felt great!

More indexing!

We started doing penpals with the primary which has been really fun!

Shanna and I hit up Family Dollar and we were surprised to see lots of toilet paper in stock!  It's still hard to find hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes.

I listened to this book and LOVED it.  I highly recommend it!  I bought copies for the Relief Society presidency to read and bought my own copy.

Hope you had a fabulous March!