Another month is drawing to a close. Journal excerpts from the end of May:
Monday, May 18, 2020. My book came today! The one I wrote! Well, it's the first draft, but I started reading it and got about a quarter of the way through. So far so good. I thought taking 2 weeks away from it felt like forever, but it all feels more familiar than I expected. I hope I can be objective and figure out what to do to it.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020. Last night/early this morning I had the weirdest dream where I was preparing to fight Lord Voldemort and I couldn't find my wand. My wand was a tiny sewing pin and I kept losing it amidst a bunch of non-magical pins. In order to find my wand, I touched the pins and said "lumos" over and over until my wand-pin lit up. I knew I was going to fight Voldemort in my parents' house instead of Hogwarts, and I was stressed about making a mess in their house during my duel with my tiny pin-wand. It was a stressful dream, and I never actually got to the part where I fought Voldemort. Thank goodness! Haha, I haven't remembered a dream that vividly in a long time! Random!
Wednesday, May 20, 2020. My Jay is growing up, up, up before my very eyes. He turns eleven tomorrow. How on earth? He is so excited for his birthday. It's sweet and a little heart wrenching because he won't be a cute little boy excited for his birthday for many more birthdays. He has already grown up in so many ways since last year. It's so fun having a big kid, but on the eve of his birthday I am prone to a little motherly nostalgia for his fast-ending childhood.
I am always excited for my kids to progress, learn, and grow. But then I step back for a minute and see that I am already well over halfway through the journey of having all of my young kids home full time, and it surprises me. How did that happen? Lots of the time I feel like I'm still as inexperienced as I was as a 22 year old new mom who knew nothing but ideals and vague impressions of motherhood. And somehow I only have seven more years to finish raising my boy. Yikes, I hope I'm doing it right. I'm glad Jeff is in this with me! Ok, enough of the motherly ache. Sniff.
Thursday, May 21, 2020. Today, I was typing a text message caption to a picture of teenage Kyle holding baby Jay. When I typed "Baby Jay," Amber came up behind me and read aloud "baby Jay!" I then had to test if she could actually read, so I typed each word separately. She read baby and Jay, and then even read the word "little" too when I tried that one on her! The wild child is learning how to read on her own! Thanks mostly to Starfall.com, the preschool which she visits every day.
Amber, playing with Rose: "Rose tastes like a human with an owie."
Me: Amber, are you a vampire?
Amber: No! I'm an Ampire!
Friday, May 22, 2020. We watched the Disney Pixar movie Onward for family movie night tonight. It was so good! I loved it! After the movie, we went to the church for a drive-in ward activity. It was a Sunnyside scavenger hunt with ten clues that we had to drive around taking pictures of someone in our car at each site. It was a fun socially distant semi-social activity. We didn't see the clues on the back of the paper so we took a bit longer than many of the other cars because we had to backtrack when we discovered that there was more to do. And I got a tad car sick from all of the twisty turny driving through curvy town roads, but it was still fun. I like our ward. It felt good to get together again, even if we were just in our own cars.
Sunday, May 24, 2020. Sunday Sunday. We had a good home church today. We sang all 4 verses of Welcome Welcome Sabbath Morning amd had the sacrament. Then the kids acted out Alma the younger's conversion and we listed things he did before his conversion and things he did after his conversion. After that we watched the corresponding Book of Mormon video and sang Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam and I Feel my Savior's Love. Next up: a one mile family walk. It was a beautiful day. The kids still fought and Rose still had her frustrated moments but overall it was a good day.
Monday, May 25, 2020. Memorial Day. Jeff and I went on a walk together once the weather cleared this afternoon. We had hot dogs and burgers for dinner, grilled on our griddle and the electric George Foreman grill. Nothing fancy. But we did have potato chips and lemonade with it. And pickles. Good ole American foods! I played music from The Greatest Showman on the piano after dinner because it was the most American music I have, aside from patriotic hymns. After the kids did the dishes, we played frisbee out in the yard until bedtime (for like 15 minutes). Jeff and Jay played football catch while the girls and I played frisbee. I taught both of them how to throw and they did quite well! It felt like a major win to have a positive family activity during the witching hour, however brief it was.
Tuesday, May 26, 2020. It got hot today, and my shoulders got sunburned while I was outside longboarding and running in a tank top. I put on my running clothes at 8:30am but didn't end up running for nearly 2 hours afterwards due to an onslaught of parenting responsibilities. Amber attacked Jay. Jay goaded her into it, but I warned Amber that if she hit Jay, she would get less computer preschool time. So when Jay and Rose started their online work, I had to keep Amber away from the computers. I had her help me change the sheets on my bed and then we went outside to the paved pathway. She rode a plasma car and I rode my longboard for a whole mile. Then I let her go inside to do "math journey" and other learning activities on her computer. By then it was time for Jay's piano lesson and Rose's class video meeting, and I had to download Zoom onto our old cell phone so they could both use video calling at the same time. Finally everyone was situated and I got to run. But it was hot by then!
Saturday, May 30, 2020. Thoughts from Alma chapter 1: the people of God were industrious, steadfast, humble, and patient. As far as I can tell, those are the four main characteristics that stood the believers apart from the unbelievers/ people of Nehor. Nehor's unbelievers were prideful, lazy, and impatient. It is tempting to laud having "time off" from working, or always to be seeking a break from the daily grind, but even though we need rest after work, it's important to keep a balance between work and rest/recreation. Resist laziness! It's hard when all we do is stay home all the time. And we aren't going anywhere anytime soon...
In order for a county in WA to apply for phase 2 (restaurants, hair salons, etc. at low capacity, max gatherings of 5 people), there have to be less than 25 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents over a 2 week period. Our very own Yakima county had 431 cases per 100,000 during the most recent 2 week period. Time to write another book, haha. Or finish revising the one I already wrote. Actually, I finished the first round of revisions today! I got in the zone and finished making notes on the last 70 pages this afternoon. My next step is to type the changes into my story file on the computer.
I love this view for so many reasons: Daddy daughter run, big sky view, my handsome husband, tenacious Rose with a burst of speed, flourishing mint field, etc.
Jumping with neighbor friends.
Editing the first draft of my book: a truly daunting task. It helped to have it printed out, so I could scribble notes all over the pages.
Hug time attack!
Pure mischief.
Bless the trampoline for regularly siphoning the children's energy.
Free asparagus from friends in our ward who farm it. It was my first time cooking asparagus!
Lemon asparagus noodles.
A sunny Friday morning breakfast at my desk.
We have made great use of the paved Martin Expressway behind our house.
A collage of pictures we took for our ward scavenger hunt: the high school, the statue of astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, the COVID-19 mask mural, the frontier log cabin, the water tower at the top of Harrison Hill, a Welcome to Sunnyside sign, the Veteran's memorial plaza, the Carnation tower, the cemetery, another view of the high school grizzly sign, and the church building. It was a fun drive around town!
On our way home from the ward scavenger hunt, a group of 7-8 horseman crossed a crosswalk right in front of our car. They had just stopped at a convenience store for drinks--see the cups in their hands? I couldn't resist taking a picture, even though I know that guy in the middle knew what I was doing.
Jeff and Amber, playing a game together.
Patriotic Memorial Day weekend run with my Rose-girl.
Grapes in front, Mt. Adams in the back: a classic Yakima Valley view near our house.
Digging.
Jay tried a swordplay lesson video on YouTube one day.
Overheard exchange between Jay and Rose:
Rose: there's a weird taste in my mouth.
Jay: maybe it's your personality.
Rose: are you saying I'm weird?
Jay: no! I'm saying it would be weird if your personality was in your mouth.
Throwing rocks on a Sunday walk.
Traditional family walk turnaround picture.
One day I ran into town past the mask mural and inadvertently took a picture that made the mural-lady's arm look like it was coming from my shoulder. Big gun Shaina, cruising through Sunnyside.
Front porch rocking.
Riding with Amber
She used her stick as a spear and a cane to propel herself forward on the plasma car.
We entertained ourselves by coming up with plague names for each family member. It all started when Amber named her Dungeons and Dragons character Cholera, after one of the disease cards in her beloved Oregon Trail card game. Eventually we gave everyone middle names too (like Varicella, Diptheria, etc.), but I never wrote them down. Strange times, stranger entertainment!
I finally found my cute N-99 mask! The wildfires of 2017 motivated me to buy intense masks, and they have come in handy during the pandemic. I lost my cute pink rainbow mask for months until it resurfaced last week. This yellow mask mural is right across from our Safeway grocery store, so I paid homage to the mask lady.
Green green mint, blue blue sky, with a stripe of brown hills in between.
Rosie: a Rose selfie.
I thought this artwork by Amber was funny and cute, with the large wide orange pants and the skinny torso. And the... bite taken out of the corner of the paper?
I lifeguarded for the kids when they went next door to swim with Ian this week. Life is good when your best buddy has a pool! We were so close to our house that I still had a wifi signal while I sat at our neighbors' pool.
Amber is becoming quite the fearless fishy. She can't quite swim more than a few feet at a time, but she's making progress.
Ian spent close to 15 minutes blowing up this massive beach ball with the air compressor. It was hilarious watching the kids try to play with it. They could barely lift it!
Cleaning her room: DRAMATICS ensued. Eventually she got it done.
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