illguthlife

These two papers have been so helpful this week.

After a few weeks of stumbling around trying to figure out what distance learning looks like for my family I finally think I came up with a good, forgiving schedule. I came up with something that lets us play to our strengths and works with our family's culture. I didn't exactly make a list of our strengths when I made the schedule, but I feel like I should now.

Strengths/Assets/Abilities/etc

1. Idaho still allows outdoor recreation as long as you maintain 6 feet of distance between you and other people and you try to stay stay within your county.

2. Twin Falls County has lots of options for outdoor rec with very few people around.

3. The school provides breakfast and lunches that come prepared in paper bags.

4. My family LOVES being outside. Everyone's moods are much better if we are outside exploring.

5. I have a whole list of places within or near Twin Falls County that I want to explore.

Taking all those things into consideration it shouldn't be surprising that I created Mom Adventure School. We make a valiant attempt at school work in the morning. Then we pick up those convenient lunches and head out on an adventure for the afternoon.

So let's talk about the week shall we?

Monday April 13th

I woke up with a Veronica-Tumor growing out of my back. She was snuggled right up to me and sleeping soundly. I often wake up with her in my bed, so that wasn't new. But the fact that she was asleep was new. Usually if she's in my bed she wakes up when Brandon gets out of bed. She'll start telling, and asking, and needing right from the get go. But here she was fast asleep.

I could reach my phone so I was able to read the daily business newsletter I get emailed every morning and I caught up on Facebook. But as I laid there I realized something. I wasn't tired. Like at all. I wished I could get up. Most mornings I've drug myself out of bed when the kids needed me. Other mornings I staled for time and tried to stay in bed as late as possible. Just last week I'd let Derrick and Veronica take Marsha on a walk around the block by themselves for the first time ever because I hadn't been quite ready to get up and face the day. There have been a few days where I got up early, but they have been rare.

Anyway, I sat there and enjoyed the feeling of actually wanting to get up. When Veronica did finally wake up (at something like 8:30!!!!!!) she immediately started talking. There was no "good morning" or "how did you sleep?" She started with something like, "Hey mom, I was wondering, when we go to . . . . "

Normally we have Miss Emily with us on Monday mornings. But I'd got a text on Sunday afternoon that she was sick and wouldn't be able to work until Wednesday. So we were on our own for the morning.

The kids were great about taking their set half hour times on the computer. They all did at least 15 minutes on I-station and then could play on abcya.com. Derrick and I looked at his school work packet that the resource teacher put together. We found a little city that he could color and put together. So we worked on that together.

I gave Charlotte and Lydia a pre-test of their spelling words for the week. (Or more accurately, Charlotte's spelling words.) Veronica watched some little videos that her teacher sent out.

When we were done with our 2 hours of school time (meaning, everyone had cycled through their computer time and we'd done at few things at the table) we got dressed and headed out the door for the day. Even Marsha was ready for an adventure.

We made a stop at the elementary school to pick up sack lunches. Then we put the lunches into the kids knapsacks. I drove us down to Centennial Park in the Snake River Canyon. We parked at the trailhead for a large rock outcropping that is in the canyon. The kids were so excited to get on that trail. We've talked about hiking up to the top of this rock ever since we visited Twin Falls for spring break last year.

The outcropping has a great view of the bridge.

The kids had fun scampering around on the rocks at the top of the outcropping.

We had a good view of the Perrine Coolie waterfall on the south side of the canyon.

Everyone opened up their bags and had lunch.

Charlotte wanted to take an up close picture of the waterfall.

And here's Charlotte. Her pose says it all. This is where she belongs.

We played on the outcropping for a while. Derrick liked peering over one edge that dropped straight into the Snake River. Everyone was very careful as they walked around. Eventually someone had to go to the bathroom so we headed back to the car so we could drive to the restroom a little further down the road.

Here's a better view of the waterfall. I told the kids we were hiking to the bottom of that waterfall next Monday.

Derrick wanted to throw rocks in the water so he headed to the dock. I took this picture of the rock outcropping that we'd just climbed.

The rest of the kids went to the playground and Derrick joined them later. We haven't gone to a playground since social distancing started. Since no one was around I figured it was fine to play on this playground today. A county parks employee drove by and didn't say anything so I guess we weren't breaking any rules.

The kids played and played. This was good because I was busy texting some people regarding a potential emergency. Everything was resolved later so the details aren't important, but for a while there I was a little preoccupied and anxious.

VIDEO

Eventually we decided it was time to go home. This is where the one black spot of the whole day happened. Veronica got into her lunch and set her milk jug on the center console. The lid was open and the milk spilled as I turned the car. I was already feeling a little on edge thanks to being thrust into the middle of a potential emergency and this milk put me over the top. I was LIVID. We'd been so careful to keep the food in the bags. I'd specifically said NOT TO EAT FOOD IN THE CAR. Oh I was mad. Probably madder than the situation called for, but that didn't matter in the moment.

But we got it resolved in the end. I apologized to everyone for my outburst. (Derrick had repeatedly told me to "calm down right now.") Veronica helped me blot up the milk from the car's carpet. And I made sure to tell her that I wasn't mad at her.

After all that drama we were ready for a movie. Charlotte picked Bed Knobs and Broomsticks. I was so happy she picked a long movie. The kids watched the movie and I took care of things on the computer.

When Brandon came home we had dinner and then I snuck into my room for a little bit of quiet time. At 6:00 I called my friend Shellien. She's the facilitator for my business class. One of our assignments for the week was to find a mentor. I picked Shellien because for weeks I'd been thinking she would be a good mentor. I had a suspicion that we might be kindred spirits and after talking on the phone with her for over an hour I KNEW we were cut from the same cloth. I'm so happy I've met her.

I came out of my room and found Brandon teaching the kids about area, volume, and multiplication using dominoes.

He was also using mini marshmallows as an incentive. Veronica said her's were sheep and had made a pen for them.

Soon it was bedtime. After the kids were in bed Brandon and I decided to watch an episode of Stranger Things on Netflix. We'd watched up to episode 3 of Tiger King the week before, but I was realizing we needed to catch up on other pop-culture before watching more Tiger King. Last year Baconsale did an episode all about Stranger Things and I'd always wanted to watch the show with Brandon. So we started and got immediately hooked. We watched 2 episodes every night and finished Season 1 on Thursday night (I think). Then we immediately started season 2.

Watching Stranger Things may have been the best thing we've done for our marriage this month. It was scary enough that I'd have to sit and snuggle with Brandon. He loved that. Brandon was super into the story and said he thought about it every day. The last show we binge watched together was Community on DVD back in the fall of 2017 so obviously we were overdue for this.

Tuesday April 14th

Miss Emily doesn't come on Tuesdays so we were on our own again. Derrick was telling me all about the rock that we'd visited the day before. He was adding things that hadn't actually happened. I realized he was making up a story. So I grabbed paper and wrote down what he was saying. (I got the idea from something one of his para's did with him at school.) The story involved falling off the cliff and being rescued by a boat. He went to the hospital to get a cast for his broken leg. Then a few weeks later it was healed and he could take the cast off.

When Derrick was done with the story Veronica drew a picture at the bottom.

We did some things with some coloring pages that Veronica's teacher had set over. Here's Charlotte showing off her Easter Crayons.

The teachers have sent over oodles of online resources. I got overwhelmed with all the different options and platforms so I decided that we will just focus on I-Station. The kids all love it and the teachers can see how much time the kids spend on it. I figured if we spend a bit of time on there every morning it shows the teachers that we are making an effort to do school each day. In theory the kids are supposed to work on it independently, but it often turns into a bit of a spectator sport.

We finished with school and then went to pick up lunches. We were heading out on a long drive so I decided to fill up the gas tank. We were at half a tank. Gas was at $1.99 a gallon and I was able to fill up the tank for $17.73 cents. WOW.

We drove out west on Highway 30 and stopped at a rest stop west of Filer that's I've always wanted to visit. We got out of the car to eat at a picnic bench, but discovered that the wind was blowing hard and was super cold. So we ate in the car.

Then we kept driving on Highway 30 to Hagerman. Technically this isn't our county, but it's still in the Magic Valley so I figure we are well within the rules. My goal for the day was to find a section of the Billingsly creek. I'd written about this area, but hadn't actually been there yet. (I'd been to a different section of the creek.)

I didn't have a map, but I'd looked at a google map when I wrote about the area a few months ago and I was pretty certain I could find the creek based on that and what I already knew about the area.

And yes I did find it just fine, but there was a different problem.

When we were maybe a minute away from finding the creek Derrick yelled, "Marcia's POOPING!"

I hurried to pull over and assess the situation. Thankfully she pooped on the tote bags that hold our travel pillows and blankets and not on the actual blankets or car upholstery. I'd brought a garbage bag for our lunch trash and just scooped the tote bags into the garbage bag. Oh it was gross, but not as gross as it could have been.

Meanwhile the kids were telling me that they all needed to pee. I told them we were super close to the creek and I was pretty certain there was a bathroom there, but none of them believed me. So they just peed in the ditch by the road.

Clearly my life is not glamorous.

Anyway, we got back in the car and drove around a curve in the road and found Billingsly Creek AND the vault toilet. I was like, "see I told you.."

There was a short board walk that lead from the parking area to the creek. At first none of the kids wanted to walk on the board walk to see the creek. I told them, "We drove all this way, let's go look at it." Within minutes they were all engrossed in the creek.

The creek comes from a natural spring somewhere near the canyon wall. The water is crystal clear and cold.

The kids had so much fun splashing in the water. Last week I'd got out the summer clothes so even though the day was a little breezy the kids were all wearing shorts.

Charlotte and Lydia and Veronica would run back and forth along the board walk. The started collecting cattails.

Derrick played in the water constantly.

I walked over to get a picture of the walking trail that starts at the parking area. This wide trail skirts the marshland and connects different parts of the creek.

We saw some birds that I guessed were either some sort of Eagle or Ospry. They were flying back and forth from this nest to the water.

Here I am, windblown, sunkissed, and happy.

More of Derrick in the water.

We stayed for over an hour. The kids all said they wanted to come back again. When we left we kept driving on the road and it climbed up the canyon wall. I took this picture of the creek meandering below. One day when we have kayaks I want to come back here.

We drove back via the interstate. When we got home it was already 3:00 PM. We'd been gone since 11:30.

The kids watched the Boss Baby TV show on Netflix and I made dinner. I went to work when Brandon got home.

My boss had a long list of clients for me to call to see if they were interested in scheduling an appointment. Normally when I make these phone calls I hardly reach anyone. I just leave lots of messages. I thought that would be the case this time since I was calling after 5:00 PM. Nope. So many people answered their phones. I guess people are really in need of conversations with non family members.

When I got home Brandon and the kids were working on Domino math again.

Wednesday April 15th

Miss Emily came today and took Derrick on a walk so I could focus on helping the other kids with some school work. Later everyone played with her kinetic sand for a long time. Lydia improved on her sea turtle sculpting abilities.

Wednesday was rainy so we opted to just stay home rather than go on an adventure. The kids played with legos and other toys.

When they decided to watch a movie I got on the computer and worked on filing my parents taxes.

That evening I picked up a dresser from a family in the ward that was giving it away. For a few months I've felt like most of my kids' dressers were too small to hold all their clothes. The dressers used to work, but the kids clothes have gotten bigger so now the clothes don't fit as well as they used to. So when I saw this dresser I knew it would be the solution to my problem.

Charlotte's dresser was big enough so this new dresser would go to Lydia. Lydia's old dresser would go to Veronica. And Veronica's dresser would go to Derrick. Everyone would get a bigger dresser.

We got the dresser home and into the house, but quickly realized that it wouldn't fit into Charlotte and Lydia's closet with the other dresser. So we decided to move Charlotte's dresser to the wall and only have Lydia's in the closet. But this kicked off the realization that every square inch of their room was full of junk and garbage. I pushed all the detritus into the middle of the room, got the dressers into place, and then told the girls we were CLEANING. I told them they were clearly unable to distinguish trash from non-trash and so I was going to throw away the trash for them. I got a garbage bag and went to work.

I filled two and a half 13 gallon garbage bags full of trash! Cardboard, broken crayons, cheap broken toys, paper, toilet paper, bloody toilet paper, bits of cut up yarn, more cardboard, more paper, old craft projects, etc. I also nearly filled up a laundry basket with all the socks and dishcloths I found.

We didn't even finish that night. I got all the trash out and Charlotte and Lydia were responsible for putting away the toys and things that surfaced, but that took longer than we had. Finally at around 8:30 I told them they could just finish it in the morning. They did and the room was so much nicer. (Until a few days later when they started another cardboard based craft.)

Anyway, here is the new dresser. That kicked the whole project off.

And here is Derrick posing with his new dresser next to the old one. We moved the small one out and realized it was the perfect size to store our DVD's. On Saturday the kids helped me put all the kids' DVD's into that dresser.

When I came out of Charlotte and Lydia's room I found Veronica sitting on the couch drawing a picture of a brain from a picture that Brandon had found online. They'd been having some sort of science lesson and she was intrigued by the brain.

Thursday April 16
The main thing I remember about school on Thursday is that Veronica spent a long time working on coloring a worksheet. She was talking and making up stories about the picture the whole time. That's the first time I've seen her do that.

This was another cool and rainy day. We went to a nearby park for a bit so Derrick could test out his motor boat that he'd got for Christmas. He'd wanted to do this most of the week. Miss Emily took him and then the girls and I met up with them.

Most of the day was spent reading Harry Potter. I gave Derrick and Veronica my phone and let them watch Pink Panther to their hearts content while I read Harry Potter to Charlotte and Lydia. We went in their nice clean room and I laid on their floor and read to them for 2.5 hours. We read the entire climax scene at the Department of Mysteries. We stopped when we got to "the chapter where Dumbledore explains everything."

I went to work again on Thursday night and got a lot done. When I got back home around 7:00 I was trying to talk to Brandon about somethings, but I just kept getting frustrated. I realized work hadn't been enough to de-stress me so I went for a drive. I ended up parking the car and calling my mom. We had a good talk for about an hour.

Friday April 17th
After Thursday's success with coloring with Veronica I decided we should all color on Friday. I found some free coloring pages and printed them out. All the kids had fun coloring together.

Veronica's class had a group call at 10:00. This was the first time any of the kids have had an online class. Veronica has the youngest teacher out of all four kids so she was probably tech savy enough to put this together. Veronica was so excited to see all her friends. It was cute to listen to a whole bunch of 5 and 6 year olds try to talk over each other. After a little while her teacher said they would do an Easter Show and Tell. Each kid could show something they got for Easter. The teacher muted all the kids (smart move) and gave them back their sound when it was their turn. Veronica showed her Easter Grass and her "destruction" paper.

Miss Emily had bought at volcano kit earlier in the week and today was the day we tried it out. It came with a special tablet similar to an antacid tablet that made it fizz with just water. That kind of worked.

But things really took off when Miss Emily tried it again with Baking Soda and Vinegar. It erupted for 20 minutes straight. And Derrick watched the whole thing.

We ate our lunches at home and then headed out on a hike the the jump site. We saw some cute little prairie dog like animals.

The kids played on the jump site for a long time. I'd finished the Jennie Gaffigan book and had downloaded a new one called My Friend Anna about a lady who loaned money to her friend that she thought was an heiress, but was really a fake. It was a good book because it was a good distraction. But I partially wanted to kill the author/reader every time she said the word "excursion." I wasn't sure if I just hated the word, the way she said it, or the fact that I have very little excursion options right now, but wow I was so sick of hearing the word excursion by the end of the book.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but Veronica is dressed like a bat. It's basically always Halloween in our family.

Here she is sliding down the hill.

Back at home I logged into my work email to make sure everything is okay there. I do this nearly every day and usually there isn't much to do. Well this time I ended up with about 45 minutes of emails that I needed to follow up on.

After doing that I realized that I wasn't in the mood to make dinner. I decided to have Brandon pick up something on the way home from work. We've done online ordering for pizza but nothing else. I decided to see what it was like to order online from Wendy's. It turned out to be fairly easy. In fact I might never go back to ordering at the counter. When I order at a restaurant counter I get overwhelmed by the menu options and how loud and busy everything is. I don't really pay attention to the true cost of everything.

But online I could take my time and weigh my options. I could even see the price difference between my options. It was so simple.

Brandon picked up the food on his way home from work and the kids were all excited to see it when he got home.

After dinner Charlotte, Lydia and I finished reading Harry Potter while Brandon and Derrick and Veronica did something. (I literally have no idea. It might have just been more Pink Panther.)

Charlotte was working on a new home for her Calico Critter Mice Family. It was made out of a card board box that was bent in a cool way.

This was a hanging bunk bed she made.

Saturday April 18th

Brandon had to work on Saturday morning for the 3rd week in a row. (He's getting real sick of being an essential worker.)

I work up feeling great. I just knew we were going to get a lot done that day. I rallied the kids to help me get the basement cleaned up. They even vacuumed under the couch cushions.

We also cleaned the living room and got all the kids laundry put away.

I organized one of the hall closets and made it into an official linen closet. I also cleaned my room and washed all my bedding.

Brandon went grocery shopping after work and came home with lots of good food. After he came home I took the Honda and went to D&B supply to buy two cherry trees. I'd been researching trees for a few weeks and had picked two kinds that sounded like they would do well in the climate here. I picked out a Rainer Sweet Cherry and a Montmortancy Tart Cherry. I picked out the trees, and some root stimulant and then figured out how to fit the trees into the back of the Honda.

The kids were so excited to see them when I brought them home.

Brandon and the kids had been cleaning up the yard. They got all the dog poop picked up. They started mowing a little bit after I got home. Here's Veronica helping Brandon.

I started digging two holes for the trees after the lawn was cut in this area. I wanted them by the fence because it should help shelter them from the harsh west wind we get a lot.

The are such a good addition to the yard.

Here's Charlotte standing by one for scale.

And by the other.

Here's the whole garden right now. It's so great to see it coming together.

The kids also helped mow the front yard. It looked great when they were done. I got the linen closet done and then started working on straightening up the laundry room. I even was caught up enough on the laundry that I was able to run a wash cycle through with bleach in it to sterilize the washer. I wiped the washer and dryer down. They looked so good. Having a clean laundry room is always such a good moral booster.

We had taco salad for dinner and then it was bath time. I told everyone I would do all the dishes if I didn't have to help AT ALL with bath time. They all took me up on that offer. I did all the dishes and was able to get other parts of the kitchen clean too.

Brandon took care of supervising bath time and also cleaned the kids bathroom.

It had been such a productive day. I love Saturday's like this.

The kids and I watched Richie Rich while Brandon had some time to himself. He put together a really yummy chocolate dessert for both of us to share for a "date" later.

Sunday April 19th,

This was the 8 month anniversary of moving into our house. I feel like I've lived four different life times here already. Unemployment, Brandon working at Armark, Brandon working in Jerome, and now COVID-19.
Sunday was a relaxing day. We had a little sacrament service with our neighbors, but other than that we have much planned.

The kids discovered all their little toy birds and played with them all day. This one had its wings replaced with electrical tape and cardboard. It looked like a punk rocker.