This past week is kind of a blur. I keep thinking back to things we did this week and I'm like, "That was this week? It feels like that was last month."
This week was a mixture of absolute irresponsibility and getting a lot of things done. You'll see as we talk about it.
Monday was probably one of the most responsible days I've ever had during the week between Christmas and New Year. I went to work at 8:00 and stayed until nearly 12:00 because I had so much to take care of. Derrick had therapy. Brandon had work. Veronica had Physical Therapy.
But it was also a lazy day because we still didn't have school. The girls set up a village for their Calico Critters and had fun playing with that for a long time.
They also played with Derrick and his hot wheels track. Charlotte helped Derrick with some of his engineering ideas.
Monday kind of ended on a downer for me - for kind of an odd reason. Brandon had asked at work about what week would be a good time to plan a vacation. His boss told him any time between now and the end of March would be good. So on Monday night Brandon and I were trying to pick a week for a vacation and pick a place to go.
We have several places we want to go. San Diego, California and Southern Utah are at the top of our lists. But COVID throws a wrench in both plans. California has such high COVID rates that it's not a good idea to plan a trip there. Even planning to camp wasn't a good idea for California - the state had recently closed all campgrounds. And there was no way I was going to go through getting campsites cancelled again.
And Southern Utah had many of the same issues. Plus it seemed like everyone wanted to plan trips to southern Utah. I didn't really want to deal with crowds. We briefly talked about just visiting back country sites, but that seemed hard.
We decided to go back to what I'd been saying we'd do for this year. Ever since we got back from the Washington Trip I'd been saying that for our vacation in 2021 we'd just stay in Idaho. So Brandon and I started looked at the Idaho Map. But then we ran into the winter problem. We want to visit some of the places in the interior of Idaho, but all those places are locked in snow until late summer. There was no way we could visit them in March.
Brandon and I never came up with a good plan and I went to bed feeling discouraged. I was just so over dealing with COVID.
At home the kids did a few experiments with food. We called it "Food Lab." Charlotte had the idea to melt a bunch of chocolate Chips and put them into the used chocolate advent calendars to make more chocolates. She and the other girls moved things from the upstairs freezer to the downstairs freezer so they could have room for their trays.
Derrick told me he wanted Cheese Hotdogs for lunch and then gave me step by step instructions for how to make them. When he was first learning to talk we basically had a rule that he could have anything he asked for because it was so great when he said any words. Now I think the rule is he can do anything he explains because it's so cool to hear him articulate an idea.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HardyHistory
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hardy_history/
Each movie is about 2 hours long so we started watching the first movie around 5:00 so we could get through all three movies before midnight. We loaded up our plates with lots of goodies and settled in for a good time.
We also organized our freezer food. We had a lot of small things like butter and lunch meat that were hard to keep track of in the big deep freezer. We moved those things to the upstairs freezer where they are easier to keep organized.
He was so excited about his Cheese Hotdogs.
While the kids were playing in the kitchen I was playing on the internet. I'd had an idea to create a Facebook Page and and Instagram Profile for the family history book I've been helping my dad proofread. He's going to sent out chapters by email, but I figured it would be helpful to have some snipts of the history available on Social Media. That way people could see those and then remember to check their email for the full chapters. So I spent some time working on those. You are welcome to follow along even if you aren't family. Here are the links.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HardyHistory
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hardy_history/
Derrick was so proud of his hot wheels track and he wanted to take it to Speech Therapy to show Mr Jeremy. He'd first started playing with Hot Wheels at Speech Therapy so it made sense that he wanted to show Mr Jeremy. We carefully packed the track in the box and he proudly took it to therapy.
Before we left I decided to grab a copy of the Hunger Games to read while I was in the waiting room. Brandon had been reading it to get ideas for his book and he'd recently finished it. I was between books and thought that maybe it would be fun to revisit the book. I'm not sure I've reread it in over a decade.
Well the book SUCKED ME IN. I read it all through the appointment. When I got home I made dinner and then went right back to reading. After dinner I sat on the couch and read the book. I think I stopped reading to help put the kids to bed. Then I kept reading. I finished the book around 1:00 AM.
Brandon was shocked I'd read the book in less than a day. I told him that it helped that I already knew what happened. I didn't have to sit and wonder at the strange society or the implications of different events. And honestly it was just a joy to read a novel. I love non-fiction, but I've been reading a lot of deep books about racism this year. Those books have been important, but I think my brain needed a break.
I didn't plan to work on Wednesday, which was why I'd been able to stay up late reading. I ended up sleeping in so late.
When I did get up I felt like being super productive. I'd already written out some of my New Year's resolutions and I'd given myself some "easy" resolutions like schedule a dentist appointment for me and Brandon and schedule eye doctors appts for the kids. I'd planned to take care of those things the first week in January. But I felt like doing them this day. So I made a huge list of things to do and places to call.
Two hours later I had dentist appointments scheduled for both Brandon and me, Eye Doctor Appts for all 4 kids, a check up scheduled for me, an orthodontist evaluation scheduled for all 4 kids, and I'd even taken a first step on planning a vacation.
The idea for the vacation had been percolating for a few days. Brandon and I had decided that if we were going anywhere in Idaho before April we had to plan to stay in cabins. We didn't want to tent camp in the cold. I decided to look up cabins at Miracle/Banbury Hot Springs. We wanted to continue our tradition of going to a Hot Spring for New Years, and I thought it would be fun to stay in a cabin when we did that.
So I looked at cabins at the hot spring and ended up really liking the look of the Glamping Dome at Miracle Hot Spring. I called up the resort hoping to reserve a date around New Years, but since that was that weekend it was already booked.
I asked about a Thursday or Friday night later in January and the lady told m there was a Thursday available later in the month. I booked it right away.
And then I knew what our vacation should look like. Instead of taking one week off and going all over the state in that one week, we should just take one day a month off and do mini trips. Derrick doesn't have therapy on Friday anymore, and I don't usually have work, and the kids are fricken homeschooled so it would be easy to go somewhere Thursday night and stay through Friday or Saturday. Brandon would just have to take one day off a month.
I started to look at other places with cabins, but I didn't book anything else because I wanted to talk the idea over with Brandon.
I'm not sure what other plans I might have had for Wednesday, because around lunch time I developed a terrible headache. The kind that hurt my head every time I moved.
I spent most of the rest of the day laying on the couch. I deeply regretted staying up late to finish the book. Staying up late might have caused the headache, but the reason I regretted it was because I didn't have anything else in the house to read. I ended up getting on the library website on my phone and reserving a lot of books. Some were for the kids when we start school again, but a few were for me. One was the next Hunger Games book - Catching Fire.
I texted Brandon and told him not to expect much from us when he got home from work. The kids spent all afternoon watching Rescue Riders on Netflix and I spent the afternoon laying on the couch. Veronica was supposed to have a Physical Therapy appointment, but I cancelled it because I was also coughing a little, and well I'm always worried COVID has finally found me.
The Physical Therapy place wasn't as concerned and asked if I wanted to reschedule for Thursday. I said yes, and later Brandon offered to take Veronica which was super nice.
Brandon got home from work about a half hour early. He was so excited to have the next two days off of work.
After dinner Lydia was complaining she was bored and eventually figured out that Derrick's Hotwheels track was really fun. She helped Derrick set up the track in a cool way and then they found all the hot wheels cars and tried them out on the track to see which one was the winner. Lydia gave the cars names like, "Apple" and "Officer" that we heard Derrick using several days later.
I felt much better on Thursday. This was New Year's Eve. Charlotte and I went into work to check the mail and this time there was mail. I took care of processing payments and then one of the therapists came in and we went over a bunch of things together. I was at work for about 90 minutes and Charlotte was anxious to get out of there by the time I was done.
We took the deposit to the bank and Charlotte had fun pushing the button for the deposit tube. Then stopped at the store. We also went to the library because my books were in. The library has been closed to the public since November. I have to call the library to let them know I'm in the parking lot. Then they check out the books for me and bring them to the car. It was fun to get a huge bag of books.
Brandon took Veronica to her Physical Therapy appointment at 1:00. It was so nice that he did that. Taking kids to appointments is one of my part time jobs so I'm THRILLED when I get a break from that.
I don't really remember what I did in the afternoon so here's a good place to put my list of 20 good thing that happened in 2020. 2020 was a hard year, there was the despondency of April and the depression of November. And I'll never forget the trip to Washington where I had to reschedule our accommodations for nearly every single night of our trip. But there were also some really good things that happened. Here' the list in no particular order.
20 Good things that happened in 2020
- Derrick learned to play pretend
- Veronica started pretending more
- Charlotte and Lydia had time to be super crafty
- My picture (and autism support group) made the cover of the local paper.
- I had an article published in a magazine
- I joined the Magic Valley Orchestra and started playing the String Bass again.
- Brandon got a new job working with RV's and we all love that it's so much less stress than aviation.
- My office moved to a location super close to home.
- My sisters were able to come visit
- Brandon and I watched three seasons of Stranger Things. (This was by far the best part of the early days of COVID.)
- Brandon and I watched two seasons of Cobra Kai
- The kids had so much time to play
- We've been able to sleep in a lot
- I started a garden
- We went to Washington and it all worked out (even if it was stressful to play and then re-plan.)
- Homeschool has been a net positive experience. (Though there has been quite the learning curve.)
- We got Marcia (the kids made me put that on the list.)
- We've been able to sleep in - A LOT
- We made the patio really cute
- We didn't have to move.
As the evening approached Brandon and I started working on getting things ready for our New Years Eve Party. This is one holiday that didn't need any tweaking to accommodate COVID. We ALWAYS spend New Years Eve at home, watching a movie trilogy, and eating a TON of snacks. Brandon had gone to the store earlier in the week and bought our traditional shrimp and everything we needed for a cheese ball. He made another crackers and cheese tray, a veggie tray, and a treat tray.
It had taken a long time for us to pick a trilogy for this year. We wanted something we could watch with the kids, but we were running out of options for trilogies. About a week before Christmas we realize the perfect trilogy would be . . .
. . . The Karate Kid Movies! Honestly, with how obsessed I've been with Cobra Kai I can't believe I didn't think of these movies sooner. I ordered the trilogy online and it arrived in the mail a day or two before New Years Eve.
Each movie is about 2 hours long so we started watching the first movie around 5:00 so we could get through all three movies before midnight. We loaded up our plates with lots of goodies and settled in for a good time.
The kids LOVED the movie. We watched it when we first moved to Pocatello, but none of the kids remembered it. Brandon and I loved watching the movie again. It's so fun seeing it knowing that the TV show Cobra Kai continues the story so well.
When the first movie was over we took a break and the kids spent a lot of time running around the basement practicing Crane Kicks.
They were all so excited by the movie and told me that they all wanted to do karate.
We sat down for the next movie, but paused it so we could look up Okinawa on our world map. Derrick kept calling it Nokenawa. He pointed to Florida on the map and said, "That's the Everglades. Flamingos and Aligators live there." I was very happy to see that all that time spent watching the Octonughts has taught him something. (He also has started saying "can't" with a British accent like Captain Barnacle and it's hilarious.
Anyway, back to Karate Kid II. That was a good movie too. We finished that one and rolled right into Karate Kid Part III. The last time I saw this movie was when I was 12, and I've always kind of wondered if it was a dream or not. It wasn't until they referenced the third movie on Cobra Kai that I realized the third movie does exist.
That movie is definitely the weakest of the three, but honestly it held up well. It had a good story and was compelling. So compelling in fact that all the kids were still awake when the movie ended at 11:30. (Though some of the kids said they'd fallen asleep in the middle.)
I joked with Brandon that we should turn on the first episode of Season 1 of Cobra Kai, but instead we went upstairs to wait for midnight.
There had been fireworks going off in the neighborhood all night long so we were expecting a good show at midnight. And we were not disappointed. There were quite a few aerials going off behind our house.
Veronica was too tired/scared to go outside, but the other three were outside. Derrick was a little worried by the fireworks. Charlotte and Lydia loved them.
When the fireworks died down we went back inside and helped the kids make beds in the family room. We told the kids they better sleep in late the next morning and then we went to bed.
The kids did sleep in until around 9:00. When I got up I was quite excited about the new year. I'd been hesitant to expect much from 2021 just because the date on the calendar changed, but the new year actually brought with it new energy.
It helped that our stimulus money showed up in our bank account on January 1st. I'd already planned out how to allocate the money, so a lot went to savings, but there were still some fun things that I'd been waiting to buy until the money showed up.
I was able to book cabins at two state parks and 1 KOA Kampground for more of our little monthly getaways. Looking forward to trips ALWAYS gets me in a good mood. And even if one or two of these trips end up cancelled it won't cancel the other trips.
The kids worked with us to clean up the house really well. After the house was clean we let the kids watch Rescue Riders and Brandon and I went on a quick date to Smiths to do some Caselot shopping. we bought a lot of food storage and then came home and had fun finding spots for it all. These shelves are getting so full.
I worked on putting away some of the Christmas Decorations. We've all said we want to keep the tree up for a while because it helps us feel cheerful on dark winter nights. But the other decorations were making the room feel a little too busy. So I took down the manger scenes, the wreaths, and the stockings. It's nice to have parts of the living room back.
New Years Day felt like a day full of possibilities. It was such a good energy change from even the day before.
Every year I pick of word of the year to be a guiding theme for the year. 2020's word was Grow and I feel like that word really worked out. 2021's word is Gather. Obviously I'm hoping to gather with people in 2021, but I also want to gather food, experiences, and well, I'm not quite sure what else, But I'm excited for gathering in 2021.
Cobra Kai Season 3 started on January 1st, but Brandon and I hadn't finished the Mandalorian yet so we watched the last three episodes of Season 2 of the Mandalorian. That was such a satisfying show. And I'm back to idolizing Cara Dune's arms.
Saturday was a really special day. We had plans to go SOMEWHERE!!!!!!
Normally we go to a hot spring on the day after New Years Day. We went to Lava Hot Springs in 2018, and 2019, and 1000 Springs Resort in 2020. I was kind of planning to go back to 1000 Springs this year. But every time I thought about that I remembered that the bathrooms there are a little on the sketchy side even when I'm not concerned about a pandemic. So that's when I started thinking about going to Miracle or Banbury Springs.
But as you know I was too late to schedule anything for New Years Weekend. So I decided to flip flop our January Plans. We'd talked about going up to Sun Valley sometime in January. So I decided we'd go to Sun Valley for our New Years Trip.
Last year when we went to Sun Valley we'd gone sledding at Penny Hill and Skating at a park with free skate rentals. Both had been fun. But the sledding had been a bit steeper than we'd expcted. This year we decided to skip sledding and just go skating.
Lydia had been making a Lego model of a ice skating rink that looked similar to where we were going.
On Saturday we got up and packed for the day. I think the last time we left Twin Falls was when we went to Utah for Brandon's Grandpa's funeral in mid-October. So it had been a while since we'd needed to pack for a trip. We put all the kids snow pants, gloves, and hats into a laundry basket. They wore their coats and boots. We also brought things for a picnic lunch.
We had a skiff of snow in Twin Falls, which meant there should be a lot of new snow in Sun Valley. As we drove north we could see the snow on the distant mountains.
We don't get piles like this in Twin Falls.
The kids worked on a tunnel.
And we did a selfie.
And then we decided we were done with winter and so we went to the car. The kids put all their wet things into the laundry basket and I handed out dry socks. Brandon drove us back to Twin Falls.
Back at home we were happy to see that my Amaryllis flower had fully bloomed. I call these flowers, "January Insurance." They are great to have around when January gets a little dull.
I discovered something else amazing.
East Idaho Moms Blog had been counting down the top most read blog posts of 2020. My post about telling the kids about Elf on the Shelf had come in at #7 and I'd been pretty proud of that. But I'd wondered if anything else I wrote would make the top 10. Last year two of my posts had so I was wondering if that would happen again.
On New Years Day they'd announced the #2 post. And it was the one I wrote about Pocatello.
I was super curious to see what the #1 post would be. Part of me hoped it would be one of mine, but I was still completely shocked when I opened Instagram and saw that the #1 post was my Yellowstone Day Trip Tips post.
Charlotte and Lydia were sitting next to me and I was trying to tell them about it and I couldn't get the words out. My post was #1.
I think it might be time to get back into the professional writing headspace.
I'd put chicken and BBQ sauce into the crock pot before we left and so we had BBQ chicken sandwiches for dinner.
Derrick made another amazing track. (I think Charlotte or Lydia helped with this one a little bit.)
Veronica got the Trolls movie for Christmas and she'd been asking about the second one so I'd ordered it from the library. We sat down to watch it for movie night, but I had no intention of watching it. I was asleep within 10 minutes.
After the movie we had a dance party.
The kids have so much fun with these. We put on a party background from Youtube and Charlotte plugs in her party light.
Today was our last day of holiday break. We slept in until 9:00 for the last time. We ate off paper plates for the last time. I hung around all day in my pajamas for the last time. We've definitely needed these last two weeks to relax.
I'd put together a new weekly work tracking chart and filled it out for this week. I'm feeling good about this next semester. We've worked out a lot of the kinks with our homeschool program and Brandon and I feel much more on top of things. The kids aren't too excited for school, but they will be okay.
Brandon and I took down the downstairs tree and put the school tables back. We brought the Chrome books back out of hiding. I wrote a writing prompt on the whiteboard.
Tonight we put the kids to bed at 8:00. I'm planning to be in bed before 10:30. I have an alarm set for 7:00 AM. We are getting back to the daily routine.
And I'm feeling ready for it.
Thanks for reading. And Happy New Year!
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