Early June

It took five years and a global pandemic with a stay at home order to finish, but I finally finished the top of Leona's quilt. It's at the quilter's house as I type this being quilted.

The stay at home order finally expired on June 1 and we were eager to get out of the house and court. We figured that as long as we were outside it was ok to meet up with friends- even though technically we weren't supposed to be in groups larger than 5. We met up with the Calls for a hike. At one point I looked away from Leona for less than one minute and when I turned back around she had shimmied up a root and was 20 feet off the ground. 

On another stray nice-ish day we met the Rices at Edmonds Beach. The kids had a great time, and because they're crazy they got in the water. It was really nice to see people again and remember that we do have friends.

This is the result of an "engineering" school assignment for Leona. She had to find a way to solve a problem so I suggested the problem of Timothy emptying out the recycling bin multiple times a day. At first she moved the unused baby gate in front of the bin and I had serious doubts about he future as an engineer.  Then she filled that purse with toys and hung it on the gate. She explained that when Timothy came to dump out the recyclables he would be distracted by the decoy toys and leave the trash alone. 

I still had my doubts, but I was wrong. A little while later Timothy ran over, peered around the gate at the bin, snatched the bag off the gate like a seasoned pickpocket, and ran off with it like he had gotten away with something. At intervals she would replace the purse and he stayed out of the recycling for several days until she quite replacing the purse.

Leona's been asking for a haircut for 9 months, at least, so when it was just Leona, Timothy, and me at the house one afternoon I gave her one. It's a cute length on her. It has totally changed her look though as we cut off all of the blond. Collin told her that she is like her favorite princess, Rapunzel. When her hair is long in the movie Tangled it is blonde, but after her hair is cut it turns brown. Now we keep confusing Leona and Clara when their backs are turned to us (and we are paying attention).

This is Leona turning a piece of trash into an owl's beak.

May... The Entire Month of May

During the months of the stay at home order our court became our whole world, especially so for the kids since they probably only left the court for brief car rides a handful of times in all of May. Having the kids in our court was a lifeline for all of them.  They are all the best of friends.

Tim, doing what he did best- trying to derail school.

Success! This was a day that he was so rotten and threw so many fits that we gave up on school. It didn't happen often so he was THRILLED, as you can tell by his smug little face.

Leona photo bombing. :)

After so long staring at the same view we decided to get some fresh air and went to Cama Beach on Camano Island. The drive was an hour each way, which was novel in its own right, and we could only stay at the beach for about an hour and a half, but it was worth it.  It was beautiful, the sun was shining, and it was out of our house.

Leona's act of civil disobedience.  She had to draw a sheep for her math assignment. All she had to do was draw a circle and call it a sheep. Instead she drew sheep with frowny faces and the middle sheep is throwing up, because that's how she felt about doing her school work that day. For the record that barfing sheep was the highlight of my day because it was hilarious and had that trademark Leona spunk.

Ready for church!

End of April

Timothy got a ball pit in an attempt to keep him occupied during "home school". It worked moderately well for him, the problem was that everybody else wanted to play in it too. :)

To celebrate Clara's 8th birthday we had to get creative since the stay at home order was still in place because of the coronavirus. We opened presents, went for a hike, and in the evening had ice cream cake. The best part of the day though was when Clara was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of

 Latter-day Saints. It was exciting that she was able to be baptized on her 8th birthday and she got to have almost all of her relatives view her baptism. Our family and Bro. Murdock, from the bishopric, were the only ones there in person, but all grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (except the Carrs because the baptism took place at 2am in Berlin) were able to watch the baptism via Zoom. Clara was very happy with her decision to follow the example of Jesus and be baptized. It was a great day for the whole family.

Leona's Kindergarten Sum Up

5 Best Things about Kindergarten
* Recess
* PE with Mr. Parker
* That we got to do fun stuff in class.
* Mrs. Salmon
* Doing the Superkids reading program.


5 Worst Things about Kindergarten
* NOTHING!!!
* Staying at home instead of getting to go to school.
* Recess at home with nothing to climb on.
* Not getting to play with friends every day.
* Not getting to ride the bus every day.


3 Weirdest Things about Kindergarten
* Quarentine
* Having a monster (Timothy growling) at school
* Having mom be your teacher


5 Things I'll Miss about Kindergarten
* Mrs. Salmon
* 1st grade buddies at recess
* Olivia, Asiya, and Anna
* Doing the monkey bars at recess
* The recess teachers.

Mid-April Fun

This was a fun art project. It turned out better than I expected.  I was sad when it got erased by rain.

This is a photo of me when I was about 4 or 5, so just a little bit younger than Leona. It's fun to see the resemblance.

I thought this was fun. These are seriously the sweetest sisters I've ever met.

One of my ministering sisters brought over some temporary hair color. We did it for one of our themed days during "spring break". We also had backwards day (which was a bit of a bust), treat day (where I passed out treats for every completed activity and was a big hit), and field trip day (where we did online virtual tours of aquariums, zoos, the Eiffel Tower, and Buckingham Palace, these were surprisingly popular). It wasn't a trip to Disneyland, but it was something to break up the monotony.

April Conference and Easter 2020

It was nice to have Church at home be a normal thing for one week at least. We watched General Conference and did all the usual activities, snacks, coloring, bingo; but there were things that set this Conference apart from the previous ones. One thing that was special was that President Nelson read a new Proclamation on the Restoration of the gospel. Another thing that was surprising was that the Prophet announced that there would be a temple in Shanghai, China (only for Chinese citizens). I was shocked to hear that there would be a temple in mainland China.  Definitely a sign that the second coming is getting closer.  The last thing that was unusual was that we all participated in a Hosanna Shout to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first vision of Joseph Smith. I quickly sewed little handkerchiefs from some excess white quilting fabric that I had so that everybody could have one for the shout.  I used the handkerchief that my granny gave me. It was the one that she used at the Dallas Temple dedication. It was special to get to do that as a whole family and to explain the significance to the girls.

The Saturday before Easter we did some Easter activities. We dyed eggs using two different methods this year.  The foam method was more fun but the "cosmic" eggs turned out really beautiful. That same morning our friends, the Storers, dropped off a fancy  cupcake decorating kit from a bakery downtown. The girls had a great time frosting and decorating the cupcakes and I enjoyed eating a delicious, plain cupcakes. We also did an Easter egg hunt. Collin and I divided the egg hiding, with him hiding eggs for the older two and me hiding for the younger two. Unfortunately, we once again forgot where some of the eggs were and were therefore unable to help with hints. Fortunately, the girls found all of the eggs by the end of the next day. Also fortunately, there was nothing perishable in the eggs.

April Fool's Day

To brighten everybody's spirits we planned several pranks throughout the day, including food coloring under the cereal in the bowls (as soon as you add the milk it changes color), giving the kids cups of jello that we told them was juice, and saying that we had a pan of "brownies" that was really a pan filled with letter E's that were cut out of brown paper. 

However the best prank of all just sort of fell into our laps with this meme. We showed it to the kids and they went nuts.  Leona immediately said, "Why does the governor always have to say lame stuff?" Eliza was concocting elaborate moving schemes to avoid this fate.  We had already told them that the same thing was happening in Texas, so Eliza suggested that we move first to Virginia- she figured she could get Collin on board with that suggestion- where they could be promoted to the next grade, and then move to Texas where they could settle in without being held back a grade.  We didn't tell them right away that this was a joke, we let them ruminate on it for several hours.  At some point Leona said, "Or maybe this is all just a prank." but nobody paid any attention to her comment and it continued until Eliza called her friend, Joel, to talk about the tragedy. It was pretty hilarious.