New Life- Week 37 (Give Thanks...For Moving?)

This have been a long, stressful, and emotional week.  We spent pretty much all this week packing and moving.  On Wednesday we had two PODS delivered and we spent Wednesday and Friday loading every nook and cranny we could.  It was like a jumbo version of Tetris but with all your earthly possessions.  I would love to say we took break on Thursday for Thanksgiving, but more accurately we took a break for a couple of hours on Thursday to celebrate the day with my parents and the Ioapo's.  Aside from that little repreve, we spent basically the whole week packing and moving.  Yesterday we did all of our cleaning and today we left our keys and garage door remotes on the counter and locked the door for the last time.  Tomorrow the new owner takes possession.  I sit here this afternoon with very mixed feelings.  I have shed a lot of tears the last few days, but ultimately I know that we can't accomplish the goals we set for our family in that house and so it is time to say goodbye.  You would think that after about a year and a half of trying to sell that I would be more than happy to say goodbye, but it turns out the feelings are a bit more complicated than that.

So here we are now, nowhere to go but forward.  I am too emotionally spent to have much more to say so I will leave you with the only pictures I have from Thanksgiving.  It's Carrigan and Aunt Emily getting cozy together after Thanksgiving dinner.  Until next time...

New Life- Week 36 (Jeremy's Birthday)

This week we were really excited to get out of quarantine.  We celebrated by spending all of Saturday looking at houses.  I think we saw 9 or something crazy like that.  We also saw houses on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week.  It's been a little crazy.  We did actually find a house we love on Friday.  We have put in an offer, but unfortunately we were far from the only ones who loved it, we won't find out until Tuesday if we got it or not.

The real highlight of the week was celebrating Jeremy's birthday.  Jeremy and the kids took the day off (since we worked through Veteran's Day) and we went sledding.  The whole drive to Mt Hood we saw signs about snow, but zero snow on the ground.  We were two miles out and still there was not a stitch of snow.  We were starting to get a little worried.  At the last second we rounded a bend and...SNOW!  We spent a few hours sledding and had very little company while doing so.  There was a jump part way down the hill that Merrick spent most of his time trying to master and the rest of us just took turns doing runs.  Elsie also insisted we build a snowman, Big Lip Larry.  Unfortunately Larry faced an early demise when a little boy veered sharply off course on one of his runs.  It was a direct hit.  Almost comically so.  Anyway, it was a blast and, even though sledding is clearly a young person's game, we all had a great time.

We also celebrated the day with doughnuts, cake, and other yummy foods because what birthday celebration would be complete without it.

It was a great day! It actually felt almost like a normal birthday.  It gave me hope that one day we may get back there.  In the meantime we were just happy to get to celebrate Jeremy.

New Life- Week 35 (Quarantine Continues)

 Prepare yourself for a really non-exciting blog today.  This past week was our second week of corona quarantine.  As you might expect, it was extremely uneventful.  Wednesday was Veterans Day and so the kids should have been off school.  Since we were under strict quarantine anyway, we decided to go ahead and do school.  To make up for it, we are taking tomorrow off for Jeremy's birthday. We likely still won't be able to do much due to corona restrictions and our desire to be extremely cautious as we are about to move in with my parents.   

One of the only highlights for the week for me was Carrigan's daily outfit choice.  Her favorite expression over the last two weeks was "you can do whatever you want during quarantine" and for her that either translated into her wearing her pjs all day or the fanciest dress she could find in her closet.  It was a wild ride.  And that's about it...well, except for my now apparently weekly "sleepover" photo.

New Life- Week 34 (Corona Quarantine)

Remember how last week I said we outsmarted the Rona.  Well....I was wrong.  Last Saturday, during our Halloween party, Ben noticed that he was starting to get a sore throat.  He immediately went home and the party continued on without him.  Over the next couple days he wasn't feeling better.  Then on Monday he heard that one of his co-workers wasn't feeling well and was being tested for Covid.  Ben decided he needed to get checked.  Monday afternoon we found out his coworker was positive and  Monday evening Ben's results came back as positive.  Just like that we were all in quarantine.  Over this week we spent our time getting our tests scheduled and completed and waiting for results.  Finally, last night, the last of our test results (mine) came back and we all officially tested negative.  Unfortunately, since we had close contact with Ben we still have to quarantine until next Saturday.

This very unfortunately means we have had to reschedule all of our house repairs for the sale of the house and that we can't continue our home search.  This means we are most definitely going to be homeless for some portion of time.  I am trying my best to stay calm and use this time to pack and get organized.  In the meantime nothing too exciting is happening for blog purposes.  The one thing I did want to mention was Friday night sleepovers.  This is by far my favorite Corona change.  Over the course of the pandemic my kids have started having sleepovers together every Friday night.  They alternate between the girls' room and Merrick's room but either way, every Friday they sleep all together.  Maybe I have already talked about this, but it merits repeating because it makes my heart so happy.  These days it's the little things that make all the difference.

New Life- Week 33 (Pandemic Halloween)

This week we had our first ever pandemic halloween.  Leading up to the big day we had lots of discussions about how we would celebrate.  Would we trick or treat?  Was it safe?  We have been trying to be so careful for my dad and trick or treating just didn't seem to fit with that extra careful attitude.  On the other hand we were so reluctant to let Covid take one more thing away from us.  In the end, my sisters and I decided that rather than trick or treating, we would have a Halloween party.

Turns out the party was pretty epic!  Let me preface this by apologizing for the picture overload, but it was just too great not to document.  The evening began with a scavenger hunt.  The kids were divided into two groups.  They each had 20 items to find and 4 activity stations to visit.  After they found 5 items, they were given a clue which helped them figure out a destination.  At each destination there was a challenge to complete before moving on.  The stations were blindfold basketball, hoola hoop toss to ring a pumpkin, finding hidden objects inside a pumpkin, and creating a halloween costume out of craft supplies.  In the end Becca's team (Colvin, Kalani, Jason, Isabel, and Carrigan) beat Jeremy's team (Quincy, Kai, Lincoln, Merrick, and Elsie) and were awarded medals.

After the scavenger hunt, the night was just getting started.  We had the kids mummy wrap each other while we set up the next game.  For our next game the kids were each greeted with a plate full of shaving cream.  Under the shaving cream were 11 different candies.  Without using their hands they had to find and identify all the candies.

Following the candy/shaving cream game we took a break for some dinner (mummy dogs, corn chowder, and ribs) and then the kids settled in for a movie while they adults prepped the next surprise.  Since the kids weren't trick or treating we needed a fun way for them to get epic amount of candy.  We hit this one out of the park.  We took 180 balloons and filled them with candy before blowing them up.  The kids had to pop them to get their candy.

We finished the night with dessert consisting of amazing spider cakes full of candy made by Becca. 

It was a night for the record books.  My kids all said it was more fun than trick or treating.  Carrigan said "Can we do that every year?  It's more fun than trick or treating and you don't have to do all that walking".  As we were going to bed Jeremy asked if it was all worth it.  I said that since the kids didn't feel like they missed out on trick or treating it was definitely worth it.  For once in 2020 Covid didn't win!