Easter at home

We had a low-key, calm Easter weekend, consistent with our usual style. Usually Jeff is gone at a track meet on the Saturday before Easter, so it was extra cozy having him home all weekend... and all week, every week for the foreseeable future! This pandemic is causing plenty of negative effects in the world, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the handful of positives to come out of it! I may feel invaded and maxed out by the constant in-yo-face presence and demands of our kids, but I don't feel that way with Jeff home. I love having him around all the time!

Since we're used to track season swallowing up our pre-Easter Saturday, we forgot to do the kids' egg hunt on Saturday. It was fine though, because we finished our 2 week post-Denver self-quarantine and took the kids to see their local cousins at Grampa Dan's Saturday morning pancake breakfast. The kids played and played, then the girls went home with the cousins for a couple of hours, after which they came to our house for more playing. Rose missed her cousin-bestie Layne!

Pandemic food and fasting

Ever since we got home from Denver two weeks ago, I have been putting off going to Costco. I have heard enough tales of long lines of people wrapping around the outside of the store waiting for admittance at an appropriate social distance, to make me wary. Costco is tiring under normal circumstances. The mere thought of adding any element to the experience served as a deterrent for two whole extra weeks. Then the CDC recommended that everyone wear a protective mask in public. What with the extra long lines and the extra smothering face-gear, this grocery trip was looking more and more difficult the longer I waited. But still I waited. We made do with Sunnyside's two main local choices for as long as possible: Walmart and Safeway. Walmart and Safeway are perfectly adequate, but I only resupply current week-to-week needs there. Costco is for large-scale restocking. By today, it had been at least six weeks since my last Costco run, and our pantry supplies had thinned out significantly. Plus, a nice fat Costco rewards check had come in the mail. It was time. Today was the day.

Quarantine Routine

We have been home from our Denver visit for a week. No school, no outings, just the grocery store, running, and home. This was week one for us in the quarantine/stay-at-home time. (It was week three for everyone else in our state.) As a stay at home parent living outside of town in the wide open country, my life has not changed as drastically with the quarantine as many others have. This would be exponentially harder if we lived crowded in a big city, or even in a neighborhood! But we have room to breathe in the country. It is a little unreal to have Jeff home full time right now, because usually springtime is his most absent season, since he's a track coach. It's awesome seeing my husband in April! I can still go running every day with zero social contact-- all week I only saw two other humans outside while I was running. And since Jeff is home, I get to go out of the yard to run. Adios, field loops! I don't take anyone to the grocery store with me anymore, but that is also a bonus because I prefer to grocery shop sans-children. I don't miss having appointments and obligations outside the home--those have never been my fave. And yet, staying home indefinitely is still proving to be tough. One of my favorite memes to come out of this situation says "And just like that, nobody will ever ask stay-at-home moms what they do all day ever again." Hello silly, snarky, blessed validation.

Reeves Road

Several weeks ago, my around-the-corner neighbor reported an intimidating new dog north on Reeves Road. From that moment on, I couldn't muster the courage to run on that section of Reeves, even though it made up the entire beautiful backstretch to my favorite loop. I tried and tried to find a new loop to fill the void of my beloved Reeves route, but none of my new loops were quite as scenic or conveniently adjustable as dear ole Reeves, which has perfectly placed intersections where I could choose to turn and shorten the loop, or continue straight and lengthen it. This multi-purpose adjustable rectangular route could be 4, 5, 6, or even 7 miles, depending on my mid-run mood and energy levels.

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!

A Sandwich at Sunnyview

This morning I decided to run on the bike path while Amber rode her bike. We parked at Walmart, unloaded Amber's bike in the chilly sunshine, crossed the railroad tracks, and got on the bike path. Amber is a SLOW biker. I ran up ahead, then back to her, over and over and over, back and forth, back and forth, for what amounted to about a mile of the bike path. My watch told me I had run two miles over that one mile distance. At last we came to Sunnyview Park. I decided I was done with the bike path back-and-forth but still wanted to run more. So we dashed across the busy road to the park, where Amber parked her bike and played while I ran laps around her.

After about five minutes of jogging around the park, I realized that I couldn't see Amber anywhere. We had the park to ourselves, so it should not have been difficult to spot her pink boots and wild hair roaming around. But she was nowhere to be found! I ran over towards the silent playground, wildly wondering how on earth the girl could have given me the slip between the 30 second increments that I glanced over at the playground while running laps around it. Finally, far out in the middle of the massive field beyond the playground, I saw Amber wandering and slowly turning on the spot, clearly looking for me. I ran over to her.

Light and friendship

On Tuesday, I came across this quote from Blaise Pascal: "In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart." I love the idea of carrying something beautiful in my heart. That's why I read the scriptures every morning. That's why I do my best to maintain meaningful friendships. That's why I spend time with mother nature. We all need something beautiful to carry in our hearts!

While I sat in bed doing my best to read Isaiah on Tuesday morning, the sunrise slowly slid over me, lighting my scriptures, then my face until I was nearly blinded by the light. It was a beautiful symbolic moment, and possibly the most I've ever gotten out of Isaiah ever (outside of Handel's Messiah).

"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light." (Isaiah 9:2)