This week has been hard for me, but it wasn't until Friday that I figured out the exact reason why. A few weeks ago I took an enneagram test (after listening to Jennifer Fulwiller rave about the test for years.) I scored as a 3 which is the Achiever. (That's what Jennfer Fulwiller is too.) And as an achiever I enjoy getting things done, accomplishing things on my to do list, and being productive in general.
But Covid-19 is making it really really hard for me to "get things done" in a way that I'm used to. My plans have been upended, my days now revolve around keeping my kids entertained, and it's really hard for me to plan very far in the future. I don't like operating this way.
I'm coping by finding little projects that I can accomplish, and by celebrating the things I do get done no matter how small. That's probably one reason I like this blog so much. Publishing a post is always something I can achieve.
So even though much of my life is unpredictable right now I'm still going to do a blog update and you can bet I'm going to talk about the things I accomplished this week.
Monday March 23
This was the beginning of what would have been our Spring Break so I wasn't super interested in establishing much of a schedule yet.
I let the kids sleep in, but I got up early and worked on last weeks' Illguthlife update. I was in a really great mood from all of our adventures on Sunday. It had been really easy to forget about the pandemic when we were out hiking in the sunshine the day before.
The kids woke up and we had breakfast and then walked Marsha.
I had seen on Facebook that many people were doing something called "Chalk your walk" for the weekend. People were drawing fun sayings and pictures on their sidewalks for people to see as they walked around their neighborhood. I'd looked for chalk at Smiths when I went there real quick on Saturday, but they didn't have sidewalk chalk. They did have window crayons so I bought those. The kids had fun drawing pictures on the window.
Derrick had therapy scheduled for the morning. They weren't going out into the community any more, but Miss Emily was prepared for that. She and Derrick were working on a papermache volcano at the agency office. I wanted to run into work while Derrick was at thereapy, and since the office is 2 blocks from our house I just dropped Derrick off there rather than wait for Emily to come pick him up. That worked really well.
Work was great. I was so happy to have a reason to take a break from my kids and my house. I also liked having a reason to get dressed in my nice clothes and to do my make up. (Though I totally forgot that Monday's are the day my boss spends writing so I didn't see anyone besides him the whole time I was there.)
When I came home the three girls showed me their final window art creations. This one has Lady and the Tramp and it says, "This is the night to fall in love."
I also liked this one of someone surfing.
And there were a lot of random scribbles from Derrick and Veronica. (Derrick had written his name and 2+2=4)
Derrick came home and we had lunch.
Everyone had different ideas for what we should do that afternoon. I wrote down all the suggestions and we proritiized them. First up was a walk around the neighborhood. I wanted to do that first because it was currently partially sunny after a morning of light rain.
I'm glad we did that first. We went on a long walk and as we walked back down our street we heard thunder. It rained the rest of the day.
When we got back we played the card game Green Thumb. It started out okay, but we had to pause the game when two of the four players were in tears. The game usually isn't that emotional, but I think everyone just needed a break. The kids went downstairs and watched Frozen while I took care of some stuff with our bank.
When the movie was over we tried again. It went much better and Veronica ended up winning. I'd been helping her throughout the game, but she'd also made some plays that I didn't tell her to do.
The kids watched James and the Giant Peach (I had no idea that was a Disney movie) while I made dinner. Brandon came home and we ate dinner. Then I headed into the bedroom for some time to myself and a little nap.
At some point I received a notice from the school district that the school would have a soft closure until April 20th. I'd expected an announcement like this. But it still felt crazy that school would be out for almost a month. Still, I couldn't complain much, my friends in Utah were posting notices that their schools were out until May 1st.
We put the kids to bed and then I finished writing the blog update. Then Brandon and I watched Jimmy Fallon's tonight show from home. There is something so comforting in watching Jimmy Fallon deal with being quarantined with his two children under the age of 5.
Tuesday March 24th,
This was a harder day right from the get go. I'd stayed up way too late the night before and so I just felt tired all day. The kids were all just a little on edge.
I did work on getting Derrick's behavioral therapy hours increased. Since school was officially cancelled I wanted to have some extra help keeping him occupied. I asked for 10 additional hours and Miss Dana sent me the paperwork to sign. I sent it back to her and she forward the request onto the Department of Health and Welfare. It felt good to be on top of that.
In the afternoon I knew we needed to get out of the house so I told everyone to get in the car. Some of the kids didn't want to go. I told them, "we are going to walk down the trail for 10 minutes. When the timer goes off we will turn around."
I took them to the Twin Falls Visitor Center and we walked east on the canyon rim trail. I've never walked on this part of the trail.
We got a good view of the bridge.
I was surprised that we could catch a glimpse of Pillar Fall from the trail. (I'd written in my twin falls guide that there was no easy view point from the canyon rim.) One day I want to kayak on the river to this waterfall.
I'm glad we went on that walk because the rest of afternoon was depressing. I got notice that the Tokyo Olympics were getting moved to 2021, that Yellowstone National Park was closing, and that the Art and Soul competition was postponed to June. Of the three only Art and Soul really impacted me. But I was equally depressed about all of them. So many cancelled plans.
The kids ate a ton of toast all day long. We ran out of bread because all they ate was toast. Feeding the kids was a big stress for me. Not because we didn't have food, but because I'm not in the habit of feeding them lunch. I really don't know how to do it. Last summer we went to lunch in the park almost every week day. The summer before that they were in daycare (and went to lunch in the park). The summer before that was when we lived in Yellowstone and Brandon was in charge of lunch. And the summer before that was when we lived in Alabama and the kids were so young they were content with simple meals. I started looking forward to next week when the school would provide grab and go sack lunches.
To help with my sadness and frustration I texted my neighbors Diantha and Kaymie to see if they'd want to get together to talk in Diantha's dirveway that evening. They said yes, but we ended up deciding to go on a walk. We were pretty good about keeping space between each other. It was so good to talk and walk with these ladies. I felt much better after getting to socialize with some friends.
Wednesday March 25
Right before we went on our morning walk on Wednesday I looked out the window and saw snow flakes falling down. They weren't sticking, and there weren't a lot of them, but it was definitely snow. Still we headed out on our walk.
Here are some of the snow flakes that landed in Lydia's hood.
Derrick had therapy again so I dropped him off at the office and then headed to work. While I was at work a reporter from the Times-News stopped by to take my picture. He was working on a story about the Autism Support Group. The plan had been to get a picture of the attendees at our March meeting, but that meeting was cancelled along with every other meeting at the library. So we decided to just take my picture and run that with the story. Good thing I'm not camera shy.
After I was done at work I was able to run over to Smiths to pick up milk, bread, and a few other things. I was happy to see that the restrictions on how many gallons of milk we could buy had been lifted. I was walking by the almost expired food shelf and saw this cake. I decided it would be the perfect treat. Later I joked with Brandon, "I'm eating my feelings and this cake's colors represent how out of sync I feel."
I picked up Derrick and we went home. Lydia had finished this drawing and was happy to show it to me. I told her, "This is how everyone will look as soon as we can go places again."
It started snowing again. The snow was little balls, but it wasn't quite hail.
The sun came out for a bit. None of the girls wanted to go for a walk, and they were all pretty calm. But Derrick and Marcia needed to get out. So I took the two of them for a walk around the neighborhood. Derrick was just in short sleeves - which was fine for the first half of the walk. But it started snowing again - while the sun was shinning. What strange weather.
I took a nap while the kids watched a movie. It was a really good nap. When I woke up I read on Facebook that Governor Little had issued a state wide Stay Home order for Idaho. This closed all non essential businesses and encouraged residents to stay home as much as possible. Recreation was still okay, but should be done near to our homes. This effectively cancelled the tentative plans we'd had to go camping at City of Rocks that weekend. (That was already our Plan B from camping and swimming at Banbury Hot Springs.)
My biggest question was whether or not Brandon's job was considered essential. Infrastructure jobs were considered essential and aviation is part of infrastructure. But Brandon works for a private company so we weren't sure if it was considered essential. Well the company is staying open (probably because they are the main fuel supply at the Jerome Airport) so Brandon still had a job. We were thankful for that we've had enough adventures with unemployment in the last 12 month - we don't need another one.
After dinner I found myself staring out the kitchen window for the second evening in a row. I could feel the ennui (a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement) settling in and I knew I needed to stop it. So I decided to get a puzzle out. We'd been given some puzzles last week and I'd been saving them for when I was bored enough. I decided this was it.
So I got out the 1000 piece Disney Themed puzzle and set it up on the kitchen table. Brandon and the kids helped me with it. It had a complicated boarder so that took quite a bit of time. But it was nice to be engaged in something.
At 7:00 I had to take a break from the puzzle to jump on a Google Hangout with my siblings. We have been talking a lot on Marco Polo, but we'd decided we needed to talk in real time. It was really good to talk with everyone. Usually our calls last an hour, but this one went on for nearly 2 hours. Brandon took care of putting the kids to bed so I didn't have to get off the call.
After the call Brandon and I set up a card table in the living room and moved the puzzle over there. We worked on the puzzle for a long time. We've been trying to find a good time to read scriptures together. We figured out that it worked to listen to a chapter of the Book of Mormon while we worked on the puzzle. Then we watched Jimmy Fallon. It was a really good evening together.
Thursday March 26th,
Right before I fell asleep on Wednesday night I started humming the song Everything's Not Awesome. This is from the Lego Move 2. The kids had watched this movie a lot over the summer and I'd really liked the message of the song. In fact, when Brandon lost his job in the middle of our move to Twin Falls I'd had the song running through my head. I realized that the song was pretty applicable again.
I especially liked this verse:
Everything's not awesome Things can't be awesome all of the time It's an unrealistic expectation But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try To make everything awesome In a less idealistic kind of way We should maybe aim for not bad 'Cause not bad right now would be real great
There are some profound words in that song.
With those words ringing in my head all morning I was committed to aiming for a "not bad day."
It was a cold day, but we still made it out for a walk.
I had the kids sit down and paint some watercolor pictures for three friends who have birthdays in the next few weeks. Derrick kept thinking we were making birthday cards for him. I had to keep telling him, these are for friends. You will get birthday cards when it's closer to your birthday.
Lydia wanted me to take this picture so she could see what the water did to her eyes.
The kids were getting stir crazy so we HAD to go for a walk. I basically forced them all into the car. We drove over to the parking area near the Perrine Coulee waterfall and then followed the trail north. I knew it went to a tunnel under a main road, but I'd never been there in person. No one was really interested in a walk, but they were all curious enough about the tunnel that they were willing to go on the walk. By the time we found the tunnel everyone was in great moods.
We came back home and were surprised to find a small package addressed to Derrick sitting on our porch. It had come in the mail and was from Mrs Fish. I have no idea who Mrs Fish is. But Derrick knew her name. From what I could gather Mrs Fish is a resource teacher at the school and she works with Derrick. She somehow knew Derrick's birthday was coming up (probably because he tells everyone) and had sent him a birthday present.
The present wasn't very big, but it meant EVERYTHING to Derrick and to me. Mrs Fish and her children had made a volcano themed birthday card and colored some volcano pictures. The put those in a small box with a bouncy ball, a windup chick toy, and some candy. Derrick was so excited about everything in that box. The little chick was especially entertaining for everyone.
Charlotte also got a letter from her teacher. She was thrilled to get it and immediately started writing a reply.
Lydia spent quite a bit of time constructing a harness for her horse.
She had it all set up to pull her doll around in our little wagon. (By the way you wouldn't believe how many toy purges this wagon has survived. Every time we think the kids won't miss it they ask for it again.)
Here she is working on her project.
Up close.
I spent most of the afternoon working on the puzzle. It was really fun because there were so many characters. The kids would help and then wander off and then come back to help some more. I think Charlotte worked on it the most with me. We got it done around 5:00 pm. That was a little less than 24 hours since I'd got the puzzle out.
Thursday night I held an online chapter meeting for my Idaho MWEG chapter. I didn't make it very formal. I was just happy that something I'd planned a month ago HADN'T been cancelled. It was fun to talk to the 3 other women who were on the call.
Friday March 27th
Every day had been blending together to I was actually a little surprised that it was finally Friday. I was kind of burned out from the week. The kids ended up watching 4 movies throughout the day. We've been good about having the kids watch only 1 or 2 a day, but I'd given up by this point. (We'll technically they only watched three movies. Charlotte picked Journey to the Center of the Earth for her movie, and later Derrick picked the same movie. When it was Derrick's turn he didn't want to watch all the boring talking at the beginning so we just started the movie when they go down in the earth. He LOVES that movie because it ends with a volcano erupting. And he liked running around the house saying things like, "The three notches" or "Ayayayaya."
Lydia worked a lot on her harness.
And I worked a lot on another puzzle and finished that. This is the point when I realized that I need some feeling of accomplishment in order to stay sane.
Brandon came home and was so happy to start the weekend. Everyone was sick of movies so we hung out and played some games.
Veronica cut up a lot of papers and made "soup."
Charlotte played with dominos and made some fun designs.
At some point Derrick saw this How It Should Have Ended clip. He kept repeating the dialog and asking us to play certain characters. He laughed hysterically every time.
Saturday March 28th
Was the most normal feeling day in the whole week. Brandon went to Winco a little after 7:00 and was able to get a lot of groceries. Winco is currently limiting customers. They only allow 200 shoppers in the store at once. Brandon said he was shopper number 86. He said everyone in the store gave each other wide berths when they passed in the store. When it was time to check out he wasn't allowed up to the cash register until the person ahead of him had finished their transaction. And there was a large piece of clear plastic between the cashier and Brandon.
When Brandon came home we spent several hours cleaning up the house. The living room had been particularly messy so it was good to get that cleaned up.
We had lunch and then headed outside to spend the rest of the day working out there. I got a few things done in the garden, but the big story was the tree house.
Brandon put up the support boards.
All the kids were so interested in what he was doing
He had to run to Home Depot once for a few more 2X4s. The kids wanted to go with him, but I told them that the Stay Home order meant that only one person should go to the store at a time.
Around 4:00 I remembered that the hosts of the Radio Ronin show were going to be DJing a live dance party. So I got onto Bash Music on Spreaker. At first I was just listening to the music on my own while I was making dinner. After a while I pulled out my bluetooth speaker and put it up to the window so Brandon and the kids could hear it.
The kids loved listening to the music. They came in for dinner and we kept the music on in the background. Then we turned it up when they went back outside. We listened to the whole 3 hour show. The music was so fun and upbeat. It definitely helped improve my mood. I loved what Jimmy Chunga said at the end. He said, "50 years from now your kids will say when I was young we had a virus, and to beat this virus we danced."
Brandon and the kids got so much done on the tree house. They were able to add a floor to part of the platform. (We still need at least one more trip to Home Depot to get more plywood for the rest of the floor.)
Her's what it looks like on the bottom.
From another angle.
Oh and here's the garden. I got the grass clumps out of the other three beds so they'll be ready for planting in April and May. I also added an old T frame clothes line to be a support for green beans. And I dug a huge metal clothesline T frame out of the area where we are going to put the berry patch.
I love this picture of all the kids helping Brandon.
And here's how the tree house looked by the time Brandon was done for the evening. Railings are on 3 of the 4 sides.
We were thinking about watching Star Wars epidsode 2 for movie night, but it was after 8 by the time we were done with baths. So we just put the kids to bed.
Sunday March 29th
Today was a good Sunday. The kids all piled on Brandon and the couch this morning.
Like really piled on him.
Brandon and I both participated in a church wide fast. That led to me having a big realization. I'm hoping to write a deep post about my feelings. Hopefully I find time to write that tomorrow.
We had sacrament meeting at our next door neighbors' house today. It was good to see Diantha and Jennifer and to meet with them.
In the evening I had my business class. This was the third Sunday that we met over Zoom. I usually lock myself in my room for the class. Veronica was in tears outside my door so I let her in. She laid her head on my knee and paid attention to about 10 minutes of the class before she fell asleep for about an hour. Other people in the class had kids wandering in and out of their screens too. This is the new normal.
Tomorrow we put a little bit of structure back into our lives. The kids start distance learning. Derrick has therapy 10 hours a week. Since we have the stay home order the therapy has to happen at home. So Miss Emily will come to our house. She's going to be very helpful at keeping Derrick on task while I'm working with the other kids. We'll see how this all goes.
Today I've realized that every day is going to be different amid the Coronavirus outbreak. It really hit home to me when I woke up today to news that there was an earthquake in Salt Lake City. I jumped on my siblings Marco Polo chat and asked my sister Hillary who she was doing.
She replied back a few minutes later. She was crouched under her kitchen table. An aftershock started about 3 seconds into her video. I could hear the house shaking. It sounded like a freight train. But the scariest thing about the video was Hillary's expression. Her eyes had true terror in them.
That's when I realized these are unique times.
So I think I need to be updating this blog daily. I've decided to make daily notes and then turn those notes into a post on a weekly basis. So let's go back and fill in some info for earlier this week.
Monday March 16
School was officially cancelled Sunday afternoon. This was 3 days earlier than the kids would have been out of school for Parent Teacher Conference/Spring Break. Since I'd already been planning on them being out of school earlier in the week I wasn't too stressed about making sure we were working on school work or following a tight schedule. After having the time change the week before it was nice to suddenly have a reason to sleep in as much as we wanted to on a Monday.
Derrick does need a little bit of structure though, so I wrote a quick schedule for our day. My biggest priority was making sure we had a way to keep track of whose turn it was to pick a movie. We'd turned my Disney Plus account back on as soon as school was officially cancelled and everyone was talking about what they wanted to watch. So we made a schedule for that.
The morning went well. One of my ministering sisters who lives a few streets away from me needed a bag of sugar. So we walked that over to her house and left it on her porch. Then we walked a little bit more. As we walked I realized that the kids don't know our neighborhood that well. We moved in on the first day of school and so their lives have basically revolved around school. We all had a good time on that walk. We saw a robin redbreast bird, some daffodils, and a parked car with a flat tire. All those things were fascinating to the kids.
When we got back the kids watched a movie and I wrote a blog post for Idaho Falls Mom's Blog. It was something that had been on my mind for a few days and it was one of those posts that wrote themselves. It was published on Sunday and the blog owner, Gigi, said that it made her cry. You can read it by clicking here.
In the afternoon we went on a longer walk on the East Canyon Rim. Veronica and I walk this all the time, but we never get very far before she asks to turn around. This time she didn't ask to turn around. She and the other kids were in great moods. This wasn't a walk, it was a skip. They all kept skipping. We made it farther on the trail than we have before and I could see that it did eventually make it to the canyon rim. I told the kids that next time we came we'd go to the rim.
I'd left my phone in the car so we took a picture when we got back to the car.
It was Lydia's turn to pick a movie, but the weather was so nice she said she wanted to play outside. So the kids played and I worked in the garden. I wanted to make an arch for the garden. Brandon had bought some wire on Saturday and I worked on measuring it out.
I noticed I had a text message from my ministering sister. She'd asked if I could take her to the hospital. Then she immediately sent one saying she didn't want me to get sick so she would just call an ambulance.
I could hear a siren somewhere in the neighborhood and wondered if that was for her. I called her up and asked if she'd called the ambulance. She hadn't yet. Her voice was so faint and I could tell she had trouble breathing. Neither of us said anything about Coronavirus, but we were both thinking about it. I asked her if she wanted me to call an ambulance for her. She said yes.
So I called 911. I've had that done for me twice, but this was the first time I've ever done it. The emergency dispatch people were very nice. They asked me if she had a fever, and I told them I had no idea. They said an ambulance was on it's way.
The next few minutes were a flurry of phone calls and text messages. I texted my ministering companion and I texted the Relief Society President. I really wanted to go over to my ministering sister's house, but I didn't want to bring the kids. I hadn't heard back from my companion yet so I ended up calling another one of my ministering sisters who lived one street away. I asked her to just run over there to be my eyes and see if the ambulance arrived.
The ambulance did arrive and so did my ministering companion. I received phone calls from her and the other sister I'd sent over. My ministering sister was on her way to the hospital in the ambulance. What an afternoon.
Derrick had been helping me with the wire when I'd got the first text. As soon as he noticed I was distracted he went to the garage and got his bike out. He'd been begging to ride it all day and had even pumped up the tired by himself. He rode up and down the street while I was on the phone. I kept and eye on him and was thankful that he'd found a way to keep himself occupied while I was busy.
He's so coordinated on a bike. He kept giving me thumbs up signs.
He wanted me to take a video of him riding up and down our street.
Meanwhile the three girls were having fun in the back yard. Charlotte started making a well out of the bricks we were moving.
Derrick finished riding his bike. The mail lady delivered a whole stack of mail from the Department of Health and Welfare. Derrick opened them all before I knew what he was doing. I walked into the house and found the kitchen table covered in papers. As I went through and tried to organize the papers I realized what they were. They were back dated insurance information going back to November. And all of them said that Derrick had Katie Beckett Medicaid. I hand't (and still haven't) received an official letter from the evaluation company, but from this pile of paperwork it looked like Derrick had been approved. This was a really big deal. Katie Beckett Medicaid will take care of paying for Derrick's therapy. I'm so glad that we took care of all this before things got crazy with coronavirus.
Derrick had therapy at 3:00. Miss Emily came to get him. A lot of his therapy takes place in the community, but a lot of the places they go were shutting down. Places like the Mall or the science museum were already closed. They went to a park and Toy Town.
Brandon and Derrick came home and we had dinner. Then we went outside and worked in the garden some more. We put in some 2X4s to keep the garden separate from the grass.
The kids worked on the well.
They all threw in rock "coins" and wished for no school ever again. There is a high chance of this coming true for the foreseeable future.
My friend Gigi was doing a little contest to give away a book. All we had to do was leave a comment with a picture of a motivational book that we enjoy. I added a picture of a book I'm currently reading. It's called This is Where You Belong by Melody Warnick. It's all about simple things you can do to love where you live. The first activity is actually to walk your neighborhood.
Monday had been a very busy, and yet very successful first day.
Tuesday March 17th
Brandon helped the kids make leprechaun traps on Monday night. And he took care of related mischief. We woke up to some fun surprises.
Including our last gallon of milk having turned green.
Tuesday was a little harder than Monday. Mostly because the kids woke up so dang early because of the leprechaun. They'd slept in until after 8:00 on Monday. On Tuesday they were running around the house at 7:00. Charlotte and Lydia had actually been out of bed at 1:30 to go see what the leprechaun left for them. Brandon had ordered them back in bed.
On a normal school day this enthusiasm would have been great, but I wasn't happy about getting woken up like this.
We did have a good day though. Before our morning walk I took this picture of the boards Brandon had helped me put in the garden the night before.
We made rice crispy treats. I'd bought fruity pebbles and rice crispy treats with the idea of mixing them together. But the girls suggested making two layers and making one of them green. I knew this was a bad idea. We'd had a failed attempt at green rice crispy treats back when we lived in Texas. I'd even included a warning in my last post for Idaho Falls Mom's Blog to avoid making green food. But we went ahead and made green rice crispy treats. And they did not look good. This was a valuable lesson for us all.
After lunch we took Marcia on a walk to a section of Rock Creek Canyon. Veronica and I had been here before, but the other kids had not. They all had a great time exploring.
Veronica brought a container of worms so she could collect some for a fishing trip all the kids were hoping to go on with Brandon.
Everyone was so happy.
Derrick showed off his good balance.
Veronica pretended to fish.
We could have stayed a long time, but some of the kids needed to go to the bathroom so we ended up coming home.
We read Harry Potter and the kids got creative while I was reading to them. Derrick likes to play with kinetic sand while I read.
Lydia made a fairy house.
And put a battery operated tea light into the chimney.
Charlotte worked on fuse beads. she made a horse that looked like the unicorn shape in the Lucky Charms we had for breakfast.
I saw on Facebook that DI was going to close for the foreseeable future that night at 6:00. We'd been planning to buy a "new" bike for Charlotte at DI this spring. So I called Brandon and asked him to stop by DI on his way home from work. He did, but couldn't find a big enough bike for Charlotte. After thinking about it we realized that it's probably time to buy 10 speed bikes for the kids anyway, so Charlotte will be the first one to get one and we'll replace the other kids bikes as needed.
My sister Hillary told my siblings on our Marco Polo group that she'd gone to a DI to try to find an office chair for her husband who is working from home now. She wasn't allowed in the store and an official from the CDC was basically kicking everyone out.
Brandon sat with the kids and helped get their fishing poles ready. They were all planning to go fishing when he got off work on Wednesday.
Oh and Charlotte finally finished her fuse bead house. She made the roof out of cardboard that she painted and then hot glued on. I'm so glad this project is over.
Brandon also stopped by our neighborhood grocery store after work to see if he could grab any milk. There wasn't any. So after the kids went to bed he mixed up powdered milk. This reminded me of living in the RV.
In other news. Tuesday was the day that schools closed in Pocatello and Idaho Falls. The governor of Idaho had left it up to individual school districts to decide whether or not to close school. Pocatello and Idaho Falls decided to stay open, but let parents know that absences wouldn't count against the kids. I'm not sure what made them decide to close on Tuesday, but that's what happened.
I also started seeing Facebook posts from my friends in Kansas. School was closed for them for the rest of the school year. Until I saw that I didn't realize that was even an option.
Overall though I was handling things just fine. Brandon even commented that I seemed really relaxed. I was like, "Yeah because I really don't have any responsibilities besides keeping the kids entertained and I know how to do that."
Wednesday March 18th
Wednesday was harder though. My phone was blowing up with Earthquake news almost as soon as I woke up. And the image of Hillary's wide eyes full of terror during the video she sent during the aftershock stayed with me all day.
The kids did sleep in which was good. When they were all awake we went on a walk to the school. Derrick had been fine the first two days off of school, but he was beginning to wonder why he couldn't go to school. We told him it was closed and on our walk we went to the school so he could try to open the doors. That helped him know that it really was closed.
Our walk was good. The kids kept pointing out houses and saying, "We went there on Halloween." I was like, "Have you really not walked around the neighborhood since October?" I started pointing out street signs and trying to help the kids develop a sense of direction in our neighborhood. Later I joked that this was social studies.
Derrick had therapy again. They bought supplies to start making a giant paper mache volcano. They will work on it at the office building for the agency.
I took advantage of Derrick being occupied and ran into work for about 90 minutes. I was able to get a few things taken care of. It was good to do something normal like work. I had to do a lot with the 10 Key machine. It was nice that amid all the uncertainty at least math was still working out the way it should.
Derrick got home a few minutes after I did. We really should have gone on a walk, but I was a little tired from work and I assumed that Derrick had had enough stimulation for one day. I figured we could skip the walk.
BIG MISTAKE
Derrick ended up having a huge meltdown.
I'm sure this was from all the change, but I also think a walk could have helped him with his emotions. I told the kids we had a new rule, "We HAVE to go outside in the afternoon." This is the exact opposite of an old rule we had when the kids were all toddlers. Back then the rule was "We can't leave the house after 11:00."
At some point in the afternoon I realized that today would have been parent teacher conference for the three girls. A week earlier I'd been so proud of myself for managing to schedule times for the conferences at 3:00, 3:30. and 4:00. Now it didn't even matter at all. That was one thing I kept noticing about this epidemic - things that had seemed so important just days earlier were reduced to nothing.
In some ways that was good, in other's it was depressing.
We made it through the afternoon. I basically pushed the kids and Brandon out the door after dinner. The kids had been talking about fishing for days. And even though it looked like rain, and even though everyone was tired, they all HAD to leave. I needed some alone time.
They were only gone about an hour (because it did start raining), but I got a lot of writing done. I realized that my guide to the Twin Falls area was closer to being done than I'd thought. I'd been working on it off and on for a while. All of a sudden it seemed to be nearly done and I knew I could publish it by the end of the week. That made me feel like I was actually getting something done.
I saw online that Twin Falls County had it's first case of COVID-19. It was an elderly man who was recovering at home. I think the total for Idaho was something like 7. There were cases in Ada County (Boise) and Blaine County (Sun Valley).
Brandon came home with the kids and all the kids took baths and then went to bed.
I follow the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon on Facebook and I saw a post that showed Jimmy Fallon doing the show from his home. His wife filmed him, his daughters ran around, and he did a Skype interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda. Brandon and I watched the little episode and loved it. This was the second night Jimmy Fallon did this so we went back and watched the episode from the night before. It was fun too. Watching those silly little episodes somehow made the whole day seem much better.
Thursday March 19th
Thursday was a much better day.
As soon as the kids had breakfast we got ready for a walk to the store. We'd learned that it was impossible to get milk in the evening so we were going to try to get some in the morning. We live really close to Smiths so it made sense to make going to the store part of our walk.
As always we noticed interesting things while we were walking. We all loved seeing this beautiful ice pattern on a car window. This is one of the things I really like about life right now. We have literally nothing to do. We aren't hurrying anywhere. We aren't late to anything. We can stop and appreciate ice on a car window for a few minutes.
I kept talking about street signs with the kids while we walked to the store. One thing is for sure, they WILL know the neighborhood by the time this is all over.
We were able to get two gallons of milk. (Two was the limit.) We also picked up some fresh fruit and a few other things. Derrick and Veronica came in the store with me while Lydia and Charlotte waited outside with Marcia. Most of the aisles in the store had food on them. Yes the toilet paper was gone and there were limits on milk and eggs, but I was comforted to see lots of produce. Times might be crazy, but there was still food at the store.
We came home and watched a movie. We were doing great at keeping up on taking turns with who's turn it was to pick a movie. I was also impressed that we were only really watching two movies a day.
After the movie we made cookies. Derrick helped a lot more than he usually does.
A friend in my ward put together a neighborhood scavenger hunt. She posted the starting point and a route and made a whole list of things we could see along the way. The route ended at her house where she'd hidden Easter Eggs in her front yard. It was such a clever idea. At first I thought we'd walk the route, but Derrick was in a bad mood again. He wasn't in melt down mode, but we were close. I didn't want him freaking out while we were walking down a neighborhood street. So we just drove the route. It was fun and the kids liked finding the little prizes at the end.
Then we drove to the East Canyon Rim Trail and went for a walk on the trail. This was for our much needed afternoon walk, but it was also research for my blog. I was listing the canyon rim trail on my guide to Twin Falls and I needed to know if it ever got to the canyon edge. I also wanted to know how accessible the Evel Knievel Jump site was. I'd seen the jump site on earlier walks, and it looked like the trail went there, but I'd read somewhere that it wasn't accessible. So I wanted to check it out and see for myself before I wrote about it.
Most of the kids were excited for the walk. Derrick was grumpy at first, but I coaxed him along and gradually he got happier. I kept telling myself, "It's better for him to be grumpy here than at home."
The trail did make it to the canyon rim.
And we could access the jump site.
We climbed to the top and looks out over the place where Evel Knevel tried to jump. There was a plaque at the bottom of the hill. It explained that he'd tried to jump the mile wide canyon with a Skybike that was actually more like a rocket. I'd always assumed he'd driven a bike over the canyon. But really it was almost a rocket launch from a platform built on this hill.
Here I am on top of the hill. It was windy.
The kids had fun running all over the hill and sliding down the steep front. Then it was time to go. Here's a picture of them in front of the hill.
Here's another view of the canyon rim. I think that's Pillar Falls down there, but I'm not sure.
There are a few small streams that run under bridges on the trail. Here's Veronica looking at one.
The hike wore everyone out perfectly. When we got home they setttled down in front of another movie and I was able to get a lot of writing done.
The mail came and I got the book I'd won from Gigi's contest earlier in the week. It was the Tipping Point which is kind of an ironic book to win in the middle of an epidemic.
We had lasagna for dinner and I was pretty proud of the fact that I was able to make this in addition to everything else I'd done that day.
But we weren't done with the accomplishments yet. As soon as dinner was over Brandon Derrick and I went to a nearby Farm Supply Store so we could buy Hog Panel for my garden arch. (The wire I'd been measuring on Monday had been to thin to support itself in an arch shape.) I'd asked in a ward Facebook group for suggestions and had been told to try D&B. They had exactly what I needed and Brandon helped get it secured on top of the Honda. At 16 feet it was much longer than the Honda so we drove home with it partially hanging over the front and back of the car.
Brandon helped get the panel in place in the garden. It looks so good.
I'm pretty excited to have this in place. This is one of the things I really wanted in place in our garden this year. I think it makes the garden look so put together.
And in case you are wondering I've been getting a lot of my gardening ideas from the MIGardener Youtube Channel.
But this successful day was also accompanied by some deep disappointment. I received an email from the people in charge of the Parent Leadership Development Retreat I'd been accepted to in April. The event was being postponed to April 2021. The small consolation that I didn't have to reapply next year didn't do much to help my disappointment. Just 10 days earlier I'd been elated to be selected for the program. Now it didn't really matter.
Also I saw that Xanterra was cancelling its operations in National Parks until late April. I didn't have any plans to visit the parks or stay at a Xanterra property, but it was still disheartening to see my parkie friends posting about their jobs evaporating. Xanterra gave it's employees the option to stay in the housing and have free sack lunches from the employee dining rooms. So the company was doing a good job of taking care of their own. Still, it was just more bad news that somehow felt really personal.
I also saw news that Blaine County (where Sun Valley is) had 12 new cases. A shelter in place order was put into effect for the county. Residents were told they could only leave their houses for situations like grocery shopping or essential jobs. I have a parkie friend who worked at a restaurant there. I checked on her via Facebook messenger. She was doing okay, but her restaurant had been shut down.
I was very happy to watch Jimmy Fallon that night. His silly little show had very quickly become and important part of my day.
Friday March 20th
The big news of Friday was that I finished my Twin Falls Travel Guide. You can read it here.
And here's the picture.
The kids were so good while I finished up. They watched a movie and I was so close to being done when the movie was over. We had a quick lunch and then I told the kids, "Okay, I have like 90 minutes left before I'm done. So you guys are going to watch another movie now. And when I'm done we will go out in the backyard and play there the rest of the day okay." And that's what we did.
I was able to put some more wood dividers into the garden. Then I worked on putting in a third brick path.
I had to pause what I was doing to make dinner. The three girls kept playing outside, but Derrick came inside and helped me make pizza. He had fun kneading the dough and putting the toppings on the pizza.
After dinner we all went back outside and Brandon helped me put the last brick pathway into the garden. It was a good feeling to get that done.
Here's the garden from another angle.
And another.
The kids had kept themselves busy with various things. They eventually formed a bucket brigade to transport water to the top of our lava rock fountain. Here's a video of them doing that. We need to figure out how to turn the fountain back on for real. I'm also looking for suggestions for shade loving plants that we can put in planters on this waterfall.
When we were done outside we went inside and watched Star Wars the Phantom Menace. The kids LOVE this one.
We went to bed after 9:00.
Saturday March 21st
The kids slept in which was so nice. After they woke up I went on a quick shopping trip to Smiths with Charlotte and Lydia. We were able to get 2 more gallons of milk and two cartons of 12 eggs each as well as a few other things. Charlotte and Lydia hadn't been in the store on Wednesday. They were shocked to see the empty toilet paper aisle. Actually they were shocked to see any empty spaces on any aisle. They were like, "Mom, the food isn't there!" But overall the shelves did have food.
We came back home and joined Brandon, Derrick and Veronica in cleaning the house really fast. When that was over we had lunch and then went outside for the rest of the day. Derrick entertained himself by pouring small buckets of water on the patio and watching where the water flowed.
Brandon and Charlotte started surveying and measuring the ground to start working on a tree house. We've been talking about building a tree house for years and so everyone is happy that this is finally happening. Our tree is too small for a real tree house so we are building a playhouse next to the tree. It will feel like a tree house, but it will be anchored into the ground.
It was a beautiful day and the weather was perfect for a project like this. Brandon dug out all the holes with a post hole digger he'd bought a week earlier. He'd bought the wood last week too so he was able to put it in each hole.
But he didn't have cement so later he took Charlotte and Lydia with him to Home Depot to buy cement and more wood. I told him to get everything he needed for the project because I was getting worried that we might have shelter in place orders here in Twin and I wanted us to have everything we needed to keep us busy with our projects for the next little while.
Meanwhile I was working on the garden. I'd been waiting for the soil to dry out after all the rain we'd had earlier in the week. It was finally workable again. I mixed peatmoss into the beds and got seeds planted.
I have lettuce planted in the raised bed on the left.
Peas are planted in the raised bed on the right. I used the wire that hadn't worked as an arch to be a support for the peas to grow on. Peas will also grow on the arch.
I also got one of the flat beds on the back row ready for planting. I had to get all the grass clods out of the soil and that took a long time, but it is such good soil now. I planted onions in that bed.
Brandon came back from Home Depot with more wood and cement. He went to work mixing cement and filling it in the spaces around the posts. Very quickly he realized he'd miscalculated and would actually need one more bag of cement. So I went to the store with Charlotte and Lydia. They helped me find the cement and helped me lift it. We also bought bean, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds.
We got back just as Brandon needed that new bag of cement. He ended up with about half a bag leftover so he made a cement mold and we all put our hand prints in it.
Here's the posts all standing in their cement.
Another angle.
And here's my garden. This was a great stopping place for the weekend. Later I'll finish getting grass clumps out of the other three beds. I have some supports I need to add for the beans, tomatoes, and pumpkins, but those aren't getting planted for a few weeks so I'm not in a big hurry.
Garden from the very back of our yard. You can see the tree house beams by the house. You can also see the kids garden area. They have claimed the area by the garden shed as their own garden. Charlotte and Lydia built their own garden over there and added supports and bricks. They planted left over seeds over there too. It's also where we plan to plant the sun flowers.
I don't have a picture of it, but the area that we pulled all the bricks out of will be our berry patch. We have raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries ordered. They will arrive around Mother's Day.
The kids took baths and then we all watched the 1959 version of Journey to the Center of the Earth. I LOVED this movie as a kid and it's probably where I get my fascination of caves. The movie held up really well and the kids loved it. Derrick was so excited by the volcano at the end.
We went to bed after 9:00 PM again.
Sunday March 22nd
Everyone slept in again. (Actually I think Veronica tried to wake us up at something like 6:30 but Brandon made her get back in bed.)
Our neighbors were sick (not with corona) so they told us not to expect them for the sacrament that day. We had a little service with just us. It went better than last week in that Derrick didn't freak out during the sacrament.
Then we got ready for a long Sunday drive. Brandon and I knew that if we stayed around at home our kids would all just get ornery and I wanted to test out the directions I'd written for my Twin Falls Area Guide. So we decided to drive the route that I'd written in my guide and see how it went. I could add notes as needed.
So we drove out of Twin Falls and traveled about 40 miles west to our first stop. I read a chapter of Harry Potter 5 while we drove.
I'm not going to put a lot of explination into these pictures. If you want to know where these places are you can check out my guide. Here's the link again.
Our first stop was the Malad Gorge.
Followed by the Snake River at 1000 Springs Resort. I love how fit I look in this picture. Yardwork has been good for me.
Then we took a longish detour out to Balanced Rock.
And climbed up to an area above the rock. We've never been up here before.
Lydia said she was a mountain goat and was hoping all over the place.
Then it was back to the north side of the Snake River. We were somewhat surprised to see a huge crowd of cars at the parking lot for Box Canyon. We've been here before at this same time of year and only saw like two cars. Earlier that day I'd shared my guide in a local group. It has started to get a lot of shares almost right away. Part of me wondered how many of these people were hear because of my guide. I told Brandon, "I think I broke Idaho." (I didn't really, my guide didn't have that many views. Everyone was just taking advantage of a beautiful day when there weren't many other options of things to do.)
We skipped passed Box Canyon and went down to Ritter Island. This was another busy place. We had a picnic lunch here and then walked to see the waterfall.
We crowded around for a group picture.
This waterfall is so pretty.
Then we headed out to Niagara Springs.
After that we drove back home. We'd read a chapter and a half while driving and I'd been able to make note for changes to my driving directions. The kids all said this was the best Sunday ever.
We made it home in time for my zoom meeting with my business self reliance group. I'm glad we are still able to meet electronically.
I spent the rest of Sunday evening uploading pictures to the blog and scrolling social media. I realized that there was no way I'd get this finished in time so I didn't try. I got the pictures uploaded and then hung out with Brandon for a little bit.
I'll do an update that includes today next week. Today actually started our official Spring Break. We'd had a lot of plans that included going places like the roller skating place, Jumptown, and swimming. All those plans have been replaced with DisneyPlus, reading Harry Potter, and lots of walks around the neighborhood.
It's not exactly what I planned, but it's not all bad either.
Just what is a girl to do when she is a college graduate in economics; a wife to an aviation enthusiast; and the mother of four children age nine and under? I'm not sure, but I am trying to figure it out. Read along as I find out where I fit in the world.
