Welcome to our World

This Christmas included a cancelation of our plans to join family in Utah due to Covid numbers there but we tried to make the best of staying home.  We baked cookies, celebrated Michelle's virtual Holiday Performance with Chinese food, wrapped and delivered presents, and waited on the sledding hill for a giant cloud to move so we could see the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter aka The Christmas Star. As part of Danny's Christmas presents we rented out our favorite laser tag place and let him bring two friends along.  I drove the boys in my car and Hubby drove the girls in his truck.  Emma also had permission from Danny to come along and I'm glad she did.  We all had a wonderful time with not only laser tag but also rope climbing, bumper cars and the arcade.  So much fun to own the place for a couple of hours.  I wouldn't be surprised if Danny asked for the same present again next year. The next day, on Christmas Eve, we got into matching pajamas and took a ...

Well, we made it out of quarantine just in time for hybrid to be canceled.  Not like it was a surprise but still a major disappointment.  As I’ve watched my children hate online school I have spent hours trying to find a place with excellent schools that are open, that I would be willing to move to in January and have affordable short term housing.  Doesn’t really exist.  So, we soldier on and do things like take a day trip to Denver.  After introducing Kate and Natalie to Voodoo Donuts we saw the traveling Dog exhibit and the remodeled Space exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  (We liked the campfire, fantasy spaceship and heat/cold temporary tattoos best.)  We then drove to the newly opened In-N-Out Burger for lunch but were told by an employee the drive through line would be a five and a half hour wait!  We headed over to the nearest Chick-Fil-A instead.  In-N-Out Burger will have to wait for another day.  Sadly, I had...

Well, the time finally came.  Covid finally caught up to us via dance class.  On Sunday, November 8th Michelle woke up with a fever, sore throat, and headache so I made a virtual appointment with our pediatrician.  By Monday morning Michelle felt fine and at our appointment the doctor said it didn't sound like Covid to so go ahead with life as usual since Michelle was feeling better in less than 24 hours and had no more symptoms.  Then on Wednesday night we heard she had been exposed to Covid at dance class on Monday night.  Even though the known exposure was after her symptoms ended, I decided to have her tested.  Soon after coming home from getting her test (and some drive through Baskin Robbins on the way home) we received another email stating she was also exposed during her dance class on Thursday, November 5th.  I told her we definitely would have had her tested after that email so it was just as well we had it done with.  So, late Saturday ...

Weird goes with Halloween and this Halloween definitely was weird this year.  There were tears over canceled classroom parties but smiles over the virtual ones. There was disappointment the ward Trunk or Treat was only outside but joy in creating a vampire themed candy chute to use for social distancing. We made it to the pumpkin patch but forgot to bring them in when it got down to 1° at night so they turned mushy. The movie Halloweentown was so bad we wondered why on earth there were 3 more movies made but we were thrilled to watched the Season 2 premiere of the Mandalorian. The Child still gets awwwws every time he’s on screen.  Kate had two costumes this year. One she dressed up as a ghost with her good friend Emma for the trunk or treat and for actual Halloween day and trick or treating (because it hadn’t arrived on time) Stitch. That cute alien didn’t fit our food theme so I captioned our family picture on Instagram as “Stitch’s Food Fantasy.”  Thank you to Emma for...

     Years ago when Danny began reading the Harry Potter books I promised him we would take a trip to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida when he was done reading all seven books and watched all the movies. (Each time he finished a book he was able to watch the corresponding film.) After reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone together as a class at the Waldorf school last fall, Michelle sped through the series and Danny granted permission for her to join us. At the end of February I planned everything for the school’s 4 day weekend in October. We were so excited and especially grateful we could still go as planned even with the pandemic safety measures closing the parks down for months. By the time we got to Orlando you could tell the theme parks had things down to a science. We stayed at the cheapest of the Universal resorts (Endless Summer Surfside) and lucked out that they accidentally gave us a nicer room than I reserved and they let us keep it. We e...