Day #15

If i had to use one word to describe life right now it would be weird. Everything feels strange. We’ve got more time, even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, we really do. But I personally don’t have the energy/mental capacity/mind over matter to get things done right now. My mind is jumbled and going in a million different directions. Everyone is getting along. We’re all healthy and generally happy. I’m okay. I feel an underlying peace. And also, scattered and grasping for normalcy. But life is fairly normal at home. And not at all, all at the same time. It’s just weird. 

Gov. Hogan announced a shelter in place order that started at 8pm yesterday. That doesn’t change much of anything for us, as we have been following the guidelines for over two weeks, except that now we can’t collect shark teeth or have a picnic at the park, or go walk St. Mary’s Lake. At least I think we can’t? We can still walk in our neighborhood and I think we can still ride and play in the school parking lot? Chris will still work and Matt and I will still work from home. 

Delaney has done this butterfly puzzle at least 5 times. And it makes her happy and that is great. 

This is a beautiful sight. A Navy hospital ship showing up to bring some relief to NY. It’s for non COVID-19 use only. I wonder if women will give birth on the ship? It would be such a hard time to be preparing to deliver a baby. Pretty sure I’d be doing a home birth if I was delivering soon. This has been on my mind a lot as we have 2 sweet sisters in the ward preparing to deliver in the next few weeks and I am praying to know how to minister to them. This is hard. And also, we can do hard things. 

We played Name that State and Scrabble and not our new Sushi Go game yet. We ate leftovers and subs at 8pm. I had to have a talking to with the girls. Part of our problem, (my problem?) is that everyone is moving so very slowly. I wanted to run yesterday morning, but I decided to wait until the girls were up and ready so we could take the hoverboard to the school. I tutored 10-11, then everyone sloooowly got ready and we picked up lunch from the school. Then everyone slooooowly ate and sloooowly got ready to go play at the school. It just feels like everyone is in molasses and then we get nothing done. and then we’re eating dinner at 8pm. I know I drive the train but I am having trouble because of scrambled brain. And none of this is terrible and I’m not complaining. Word vomit blog, maybe? SEE WHAT I MEAN, WEIRD?

I love Jen Hatmaker. Yesterday morning she shared an inspirational video, a real “we can do this!” grace filled pep talk. And by 5pm she was sitting alone in her bathtub near tears. I relate to that. These are wild times. 

Do you know what’s not weird or hard, but is definitely wild? This guy!

He’s crawling and pulling himself up on things and, like in this screenshot from a video where he’d just done both those things, he’s so proud of himself. We were supposed to see him this week for Josh and Michelle’s wedding, but life is sideways and who knows when we’ll see him again. We miss him and are so grateful for FaceTime and all the videos Lu sends. 

So our Utah trip that we were leaving for tomorrow is cancelled. Our Italy trip is officially postponed. Hopefully we’ll be able to go next year. 

General conference is this week and I have never been more excited. And thus ends the weirdest blog post ever. 

Day #14

Sleeping is going better! We are all settling into this weird new way of living. So much so that when we watch movies there’s often a comment about how they are not social distancing. It’s going to be SO strange when we get back to normal again. It will probably take awhile to feel safe enough to do all the things we used to do. And then I’ve read articles that have suggested on again, off again social distancing, so that will be even more bananas. 

We had our online church again - adults then kids. Both were wonderful and it has been such a joy to see everyone.

Afterwards we took a walk to leave Mia a happy birthday message on their driveway. Delaney rang the doorbell and ran down to the sidewalk where we all sang happy birthday. 

I took a fasting nap before meetings started up. Delaney fasted for breakfast. Frankie fasted about an hour longer than D. And Addie held out till dinner time. We’ll never make them fast, but do encourage and try to teach by example. Today was a special worldwide fast for relief from COVID-19. We loved talking about people all over the world fasting for the same purpose. Powerful. 

My dad came over during my mtg, so I missed him. But he took loads of pictures of the girls acting a fool.

 D was doing cartwheels. 😂 these were my two favs. 

Oh, hey!

Delaney and I played scrabble while Matt and Addie worked on their puzzle and Frankie rode her bike. 

We had a zoom call with the Rays, and it was fun to catch up. Half of them still live in Seattle, the first American epicenter of covid, but thankfully everyone is doing well. 

We watched all the videos that have been shared to our ward fb page this evening. Tony and girls sang happy birthday to all the kids who’ve had birthdays, and he told them to get a blanket cape on. Frankie’s a nut. 

And some after scriptures wrestling time with Delaney and Bubba. 

Palmyra

Matt and I were able to wake up early and perform sealing ordinances in the temple. 

Josh and Alecia got our girls up, fed, and ready for the day so we could go. We have the best friends!

We met the gang after the temple and got to touring. 

We learned about the different places from the missionaries and toured the replica buildings. 

We felt like some butter, so...

We found a sacred frog. 

These cute friends had the best time. 

Matt’s a sucka. Not really, he’s a good daddy. 



We had talked to them ahead of time about being reverent in the sacred grove. We reminded them that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ came to this special place and that we wanted espect it and feel the spirit. 

But they were with their friends and 7 kids under 11 aren’t the most reverent of people. We did take a few minutes to sit quietly and pray, and I felt the spirit. i know Heavenly Father loves these little ones, even when they are silly and louder than they should be. 



It was a warm day so we sat in the shade for awhile. 



We had an adventure trying to find lunch. There are like, 3 places to eat and they were either closed or crazy busy. I’m the end we scrounged our roadtrip snacks and Josh grabbed some drinks from a convenience store.  

Then we went to the Grandin printing press where they published the first Book of Mormon. 

Our one and only picture of the whole group. 😍

Alecia’s mom reserved a church house in palmyra and set up an amazing lunch. Her brother and all of his family, plus all of Alecia’s sisters and their families were there. And the Ray’s! 😂 We felt a little bit like interlopers, but everyone was so gracious and friendly. And after our makeshift lunch, we were all famished. 

Day #13

Not a thing new here under the sun. 

We did laundry as a family and my dad ordered us pizza for lunch - highlight of the day for all.

Addie and I walked up to the clubhouse for her to take some books back and check out the stock. 

Game plan for family movie night. 

Day #12

More of the same. 

Hover boarding 

Tutoring x2

Piano

Work at home for Matt 

We took a field trip to pick up and drop off a walker for a sister at church

Made lots of calls checking on people. 

I made a summer split pea salad for lunch that was just ok. 

Then I lost track of time and we had dinner at 9pm. The girls are hungry a lot, which is not like them, but seems normal during this weird time. Between meals I tell them to eat a fruit or veg and then they can have whatever they want.

We had Mediterranean pinto bean soup for dinner and everyone liked it, but it did not get the rave reviews the curry got. 

Christian and Delaney were the last to be done so they had a race. 

They have a silly teasing relationship. 

Delaney has gotten to be more  prickly with people. For example, she calls herself a know it all. We talked the other day about how that’s not really a great thing and that it’s good to know lots of things and always learn, but not to act like you know more than other people in a mean way, and we agreed she’s stop saying she’s a know it all. Time will tell. 

Delaney laughed. Chris won. 

We watched The Pacifier for family movie night. Movie nights happens a lot more often than once a week now and it’s all good. 

Day #11

We have a very loose covid schedule. I’ve got a list of things I’d love us to do daily that I put in a sheet protector so we can cross it off as we go, but we rarely get to even half, and that’s ok. I decided we don’t need to wake up early early, but also shouldn’t sleep all day. Delaney has had trouble sleeping, and Addie always loves to read late and sleep in, so  I decided (for now because everything could change) to wake them up at 10. Frankie, of course, is always up early. 

I’ve taken to making lunch and dinner, mainly in an attempt to clean out our pantry of weird odds and ends. Last night I made Thai green curry soup and it got thumbs up all around. That was nice, because my bean sprout salad for lunch was notso hotso. 

On my list of very important things each day:

30 minutes of piano

Outside/exercise time

Tutoring with Frankie

Come follow me

Dinner together

That’s pretty much it. 

My semi-important things would include:

Youth goals (this should be very important but I’m struggling with it for some reason?)

Governor Hogan pressers

Reading together (they all read a ton on their own)

Some kind of organized learning

Yoga

Cleaning time (their rooms are almost all the way cleaned out, except for clothes because it’s still vacillating between winter and spring)

Cooking time with girls

Journaling - this one is important to me but we haven’t found our groove yet

Art - though they doodle all day every day, I want to do some fun projects

The girls brainstormed that they want to learn some Italian, learn about stars, and learn to type. All fun and interesting things to learn. Ok, typing isn’t super interesting, but it makes online communicating a lot more fun when you know how. 

Yesterday after breakfast we took the hoverboard to the school and the girls were ace at taking turns riding it while I ran. I’m up to 4 miles again and it feels so good. There was no one there, and it was fun to ride all around with no interference. And then they let the hoverboard die and I got to carry it home, but that’s another story. 

While waiting for the hoverboard they rode their bikes, read, or just sat and waited, ala Delaney. 

Natural home schooling - Addie helped Matt change the water filter in our fridge. She was real, real excited about it. 

We picked up lunch from the school, but the problem is my girls don’t love the main course and I hate wasting food. They pawned 3 of their sandwiches (that they initially thought were burgers) off on papa, and begrudgingly ate the last 2. Chris scored us a 40 lb box of chicken for $50 from crabknocker mike, so we portioned that out and filled our freezer. I’m not worried about grocery stores running out, but it was a great price and we have the room. And it’s good peace of mind. 

Matt is working from home and that’s going well. He’ll work awhile, come spend time with us, and repeat. We’ve all noticed how many families have been outside playing together that  we’ve seen, a huge perk of working from home. Would be nice if this could continue once the world starts turning again. 

I tutor M, W, F at 10. Kind of right in the middle of productive time, but it’s only an hour and it’s going fine. Christian is still working at CK, but they are not very busy, so we’ll see if they stay open every day. They are already closed Tuesday's because it’s not crab season yet, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they close another day. They did a have a big catering job, someone bought lunch for all the police officers in Prince Frederick yesterday. I love reading these stories and seeing the pictures. So much good happening in the world right now. 

And also hard and scary. On Tuesday more than 200 people died from corona, and yesterday the US took the lead in number of cases worldwide. It’s so hard because testing is so limited, and I know each country has its weaknesses here, and that tons of people haven’t been tested, still, not a heartwarming trend here with numbers. NY hospitals are overflowing with patients and there aren’t enough ventilators or gloves, masks, and protective gear. WHY? It’s truly maddening. 

The senate passed a 2 trillion (trillion) dollar relief package. I think it’s the right thing, and also worry how we will ever dig our way out. What will become of us in the next few weeks, months, and years?

They closed all the temples. For the first time since the restoration of the gospel, all of the temples are closed. Again, it’s the right thing, and also sad and hard. A sweet sister from our ward had to cancel plans to fly to Utah to receive her endowment, and I wonder how long she’ll have to wait. I believe in compensatory blessings, I am seeing them all over the place, and these help take the sting from our mortal disappointments. 

I am trying to focus on the good and positive, the here and now. This time is a gift, I fully see and recognize, and am grateful for this slow down. All of my people are healthy and safe. As I pray and read my scriptures, i feel comforted and safe. And yet, our favorite scripture hero’s had to do really hard things. A lot of days I don’t feel up for the challenge, but I’m a firm believer in fake it till you make it, so here we are. It feels like we’re all walking a tightrope, but we’re not giving up. President Nelson asked us to participate in a worldwide fast this weekend. The girls and I had already talked about this, and we are all in. I love knowing that people all over the world are fasting and praying towards the same goal. It’s powerful and I will cheerfully and faithfully do my little part. 

Something exciting! I was telling the girls a story about my Papa Clayton. His father wasn't a kind man, and his mother passed away when he was a small child. After I told them the story I went to family search to see exactly how old he was when she’d passed (7 😔). I started clicking around and, long story short, I just knew something about his mom wasn’t right. Different census records and dates. She was born in Hungary, and because she passed so young, and my grandpa became estranged from his father, we don’t have a lot of good information. I’ve searched around for a week, and even pulled out a box of fh info my mom gave me. So after scriptures last night (thank you, aid to revelation) I looked again and it finally came to me! We thought her name was Annie Mary Zatyko, but there was another woman, Annie Zatyko with very similar info. They are 2 different people! And I don’t have Annie Zatyko on my tree because... I don’t know how it happened, but we didn’t. Now I know when they emigrated (when my g grandma was 1) and where they stopped on their way to Illinois (Scranton, PA!). I can’t wait to sort it all out officially in our records and do her temple work. Compensatory blessings. 

Day #10

• No pictures
• Tutored
• Dropped gift at Eva’s while properly social distancing. Stayed over an hour talking in the rain. We miss people. 
• Girls had Zoom Primary activity
• Addie had Google hangouts YW activity 
• Started cleaning girls rooms 
• Ended the day grumpy. Giving lots of grace because this is hard. 

Happy birthday Frankie!

I stayed up late decorating the house for our sweet birthday girl. 

This morning Matt got up early and picked up our favorite McKays donuts. 

She was so excited!

She got to FaceTime with Roslyn in Italy and they were sooo excited! It was so cute and silly. Ros said they can only go in their front and back yard, and only one person can be in a car at a time, so they really can’t go anywhere. And she said if she could be anywhere right now she’d be in Maryland. 💕 We miss her!

Happy birthday candles on donuts.

Classic. 

We gave her her gift early so they could play with it all day. 

A hoverboard and go cart seat. 🤗

They rode it around the island again and again practicing. Then we attached the seat and they got to take it for a spin outside. Very fun!

Dad wanted to treat everyone to a KFC lunch, and the birthday pook wanted a blue raspberry freeeze. 

We social distance ate on dads deck, but I didn’t grab a god picture. Dionna and I had planned to meet them at our house at 1:30. They drew a fun message in sidewalk chalk and made her a giant card with balloons attached. 

Frankie was so excited!

Social distance friendships. Being awkward since 2020. 

The card blew over and all the balloons popped, but it was still cute. 🤗 

Frankie had one more gift I remembered. 

“Huh?”

We’ve wanted to get her this shirt forever. We finally made it happen!

Dad came over and we figured since the world is upside down, we might as well have cake before dinner. 

Our big 10-year-old!

She requested shrimp for dinner, so Christian brought home some yummy shrimp from crabknockers and steamed it for us. After dinner we had more fun social distance visitors, the Aina’s! I only grabbed this one picture, but it was very sweet. They brought her a gift and hugs in a jar, since we can’t give real hugs. They were all drawing with sidewalk chalk and Isla walked over to her and gave her a big hug. It was so sweet, and also sad. A sad reminder that life isn’t really normal right now, even though we’re trying real hard. 

After we visited with the Aina’s we had a virtual birthday party scheduled with the Seagrove’s. It took us awhile, but all 9 different households finally connected. We all ooohed and aaaahed at sweet Emmy. It was loud and crazy, but it was fun to connect and celebrate our 2 birthday girls. 

Our final birthday treat for froggy is to watch Onward. I can’t say I’ve ever watched a brand newly released theater movie in my family room. Pretty cool. Frankie’s had a fun and full day of celebrating in this weird new world we’re all experiencing. 

Happy birthday to our sweet girl!