Denverunning

Running in Denver = Denverunning. While we were in Denver last week, I enjoyed a wide variety of running routes. All of my running was done straight from my parents' driveway, exploring the local pathways of Greenwood Village. This was the first time that I managed to keep my bearings in the area around my parents' new house enough to improvise and wander while running. Fourth visit is the charm, I guess!

We decided to drive home on Friday, March 27th, leaving at 4am. On Thursday, while Jeff and I were trying to figure out strategies to make the drive as smooth and painless as possible, we hatched a new plan: leave at bedtime on Thursday night! It seemed like a great idea, eliminating the difficulty of waking up tired kids and herding them to toilet and then to the car. We would also avoid early morning lingering tearful goodbyes between the cute cousins. Obviously the sacrifice of staying up all night was not going to be easy, but we felt that the benefits outweighed the inconveniences. The drive was so long that we'd be driving plenty of time in the dark no matter when we left, so it was decided. We'd leave at 8pm Thursday night. Google Maps said the drive would take 17 hours 40 minutes straight through.

Quarantine photo stream

When we arrived at my parents' house on March 14th, Colorado was almost a week behind Washington in its COVID-19 progression and management. For the first week we were there, the situation gained major momentum every day. Eventually Colorado received shelter-in-place orders and we were officially not going anywhere but the grocery store (not that we went anywhere pre-quarantine since my parents' house has an excellent yard, but still-- it felt different to know that we couldn't go anywhere). We all just felt lucky to weather the first week of the quarantine together, when our kids had their cousins for entertainment and us adults had each other.

We chuckled at endless pandemic memes. The kids played and played and played with their cousins. We made all the jokes about how our gathering was over ten people so we were totally breaking the law. We listened to my brother Brad (who is in his first year of medical residency) tell about hospital situations and contagion management when he came home from work every night. We had church at home. We watched informational videos about the exponential curve. Every day, we discussed the short and long-term social, physical, and economic ramifications of the coronavirus. We lived in a bubble of quality  family fun time that was regularly punctured by pandemic developments.

Traveling on the edge

Every spring, my sister Em and I like to get together. Her husband gets swallowed up in tax season for his job and my husband gets swallowed up by track season as a coach, so it's the best time of year for a sister gathering. And our kids LOVE their cousins, so everyone is happy. We all look forward to our annual springtime visit. Jay especially was in countdown agony, so excited to see his best bud-cousins at last. When it was time to plan the trip back in January, we couldn't find any worthwhile (aka affordable) plane tickets between Pasco, WA and St. Louis. We started thinking outside the box and came up with DENVER. The entire rest of our family has recently moved to Denver, and it is a more central location between WA and MO. I also happened to find affordable plane tickets to Denver, so we decided to converge on my parents' house there in March. It was our first all-5-sister gathering! (not counting the annual reunion) The most sisters we've had together for our spring visit in the past was three.

Enter: COVID-19. On Friday March 13th, the same day of our flight to Denver, our state governor closed all schools until April 24th in order to slow the spread of the virus. With all of the virus hype and restrictions, I was a little nervous to fly from Pasco with our connecting flight in Seattle. It was also a bummer to leave Jeff right when he had been locked out of both his teaching job and his coaching job. But the cousins were waiting in Denver, so onward we went, traveling on the edge of the pandemic-wave! What I did not factor in was the cursed date: Friday the 13th was cruel to us without even invoking the evil of the coronavirus. My journal entry from that day says it all:

Photo Album

This is a photo album post--no subject, no story, just pictures and captions. I like remembering the in-between everyday moments, even if it's just with a poorly lit, awkwardly framed cell phone picture. Two thirds of these pictures have something to do with Amber, once again proving her dominance, vivacity, and enormous presence. Our everyday photo album from the past five weeks:

T-Day

It is T-Day: I gave a talk in church today. It was my first talk in two and a half years, and I battled nerves all week leading up to Sunday. It weighed on me so heavily that I was glad I only had one week to prepare. In spite of my pre-talk anxiety, this was the easiest time I've ever had writing a church talk. I had the entire talk written out within 24 hours of receiving the assignment. Then, of course, I spent the rest of the week tweaking words and agonizing over it until I thought I'd never survive on T-Day. Every time I was not actively looking at my talk, I felt insecure and uncertain about what I had written, questioning whether or not I should just chicken out and write a different, less personal, more generic talk. But then I would read what I had written again and all of those insecurities and doubts would leave. So I held steady, even though telling a 4+ minute opening story before getting around to my actual topic was a major departure from the norm for me. Speaking gospel doctrine is easy; telling personal experiences regarding how I feel about the gospel is scary!

Utah for a day

Jeff's Grandma Kay passed away on Saturday, February 22nd at age 96. The following Thursday, we made the 11 hour drive from our home to Bountiful, Utah so we could attend the funeral on Friday the 28th. It went like this: drive there Thursday, funeral Friday, drive home Saturday. It was intense but necessary. The funeral was a beautiful classy well-done tribute to Jeff's last living grandparent, and it was good to gather with the Argyle side of his family--the last time I saw that many Argyles in one place was at Jeff's sister Steph's wedding 9 years ago!