Quarantine part 2

Life has been so busy, sometimes I can't even wrap my mind around it. I see lots of posts about being bored or taking this time to relax, learn a new skill, or get projects done. Not over here. Homeschooling or remote learning or whatever you want to call it, takes up all my time and more. Even with 3 adults in the house, it's never enough (and to be fair, Lance is working from home). Grandma was pretty much exclusively devoted to keeping Blade and often Maddie entertained (and a lot of cleaning up), while I run back and forth between the girls, ensuring that all their work is getting done, and spending hours nursing.  Lance does a lot of cooking and the grocery shopping. We settled into a decent rhythm, but Mom left yesterday, so we'll see how things go this week. (Actually by the time I posted this, she has been gone for two weeks. Spoiler: we survived)

Birthday #3 in quarantine (if you count Dixie. Also Blade's was borderline). Nothing too exciting but everyone made it a nice day. 

Lance went out early and got me birthday flowers! One is more precious than the other. The girls also made me birthday flowers. 

The cutest birthday buddies around! She did not let me sleep for a birthday present. 

I put the girls in charge of my birthday cake and they made a delicious banana cake with very little supervision. I topped it of with brown butter cream cheese icing. Super yummy. 

When we went to serve the ice cream, we realized it was melted. The fridge/freezer had gone out! And it was completely stocked with food. Yikes. We crammed what we could into our already full deep freeze and a cooler, and Lance went to Home Depot at 6 am the next day to buy a mini-fridge. Unfortunately, they couldn't deliver a new fridge for almost a week. After calling around, he got one from RC Wiley and they delivered it the next day. The salesperson told us they would just drop it on the porch and not take our old one, but thankfully that was not true. A crisis quickly resolved.

Just so many snuggles around here. It's how we get through the day. 

General Conference was an awesome weekend. So many cool experiences. Hosana shout, a new proclamation, a worldwide fast announced, and a new temple near us!

Blade didn't take it too seriously- he loved having everyone hanging out in the same room. 

We also tried out cinnamon roll waffles. Not bad. Equal to regular cinnamon rolls in taste and ease. 

Dixie's cord fell off and a few days later she got her first bath. Not a big fan. 

She is a fan, however, of really powerful poops. They really shoot out. This one went over two feet before hitting the diaper stacker and wall. Daryn wrote her teacher about it. "Hands" doesn't begin to cover it. 

Tummy time fall somewhere in between baths and pooping on the scale of hobbies. 

Maddie's preschool teacher had us pick up a packet, and she's been working on lots of crafts, as well as learning to read. 

She also does Zoom dance class. 

So. Many. Walks. We have to get out of the house!

Watching the full moon rise with the girls. Benefits of not having early school!

Remote learning gets a little crazy. So many apps and Zoom meetings to track!

Getting out to go for a drive one day. The girls in their old stomping ground! Quite a bit bigger now. 

Maddie didn't last long. I think she misses her car naps. Reagan was faking. 

Reagan's been perching in the flowering plum tree a lot (I think to get some alone time), so Lance made her a little platform up there.

She was thrilled to pieces. 

Dixie started smiling at 4 weeks old! Kills me every time. Absolutely the best part of the newborn stage. 

Lance is literally working out with a wheat bucket. He misses his gym at work.

Took this to enter in a Layton contest. Recreating our photo from last month.

Time to say goodbye to Grandma, after 5 weeks. 

Please don't go!

But she did, and so far we've survived. 

We took a little trip out to Antelope Island. I think Reagan overpacked. 

 It was so buggy that Dixie and I stayed in the car while Lance took the other kids on a short walk. It reminded me why I really don't like this place. We did see some antelope and bison, though. 

 And we stopped at Chick-Fil-A on the way home. Our first time ordering food in over a month. We took it all home and microwaved it. Can't be too careful. 

We had a great Sunday with the kids- our first day as just a family of 7! Reagan took these pictures of me and Dixie and I love them. 

I'm so obsessed. 

Reagan runs a tight ship for nursery. She spends most of her time yelling at the other kids to listen. Good luck with that.

A makeshift tent to study King Benjamin's address and watch his BoM video.

Smiles for Daddy!

Nothing cuter than a snuggly swaddled sleeping baby. It's so hard to get her up sometimes!

Dixie turned 1 month!

No, not 4, Dixie. 1. 

At one month, she weighed just over 9.5 lbs. Not too heavy for Reagan to hold!

Like I said, she started smiling a couple days earlier. At one month, she was eating about every 3 hours during the day (although I have to wake her up about half the time) and twice at night (sleeping 8-8), with 1 5-6 hour stretch. She is generally a pretty happy, if somewhat gassy baby, and spits up way less than all of our other kids, which is a huge win!

Blade helped her get her daily dose of sunshine. 

Another Sunday, another cute outfit. This was Lance's shirt when he was a kid.

I took the kids on a long walk. We ended up going 3 miles and they were still going strong, so we've been doing that almost every day. 

Everyone working hard on school! Maddie was reading to Blade. 

Dixie has a dermoid cyst on her face at the end of her eyebrow, so the doc told us to take pics so we could see if it grew. 

At the same time, I decided to document this mole that popped up out of nowhere on Blade's chin. Weird. 

On Earth day we rode/walked to the park 1.5 miles away and had a picnic and played games in field. 

We also fed the ducks and saw some babies right as we left.

She can't even smile wide enough to show how happy she is!

Reagan saw these around on our walks and took it upon herself to make one. Good initiative!

Since Lance and I couldn't go to the temple this month, we took the kids on a little temple trip instead. We stopped first at the Layton temple site, and then drove to the Ogden temple and walked around it.

 We took a few minutes to talk to the kids about what we do in the temple and why they are important. I'm not sure they were listening, but we tried.

We then drove to see the Bountiful temple. I wasn't planning on getting out there, but Dixie needed to eat, and as soon as Lance opened the door to get her, Blade's water bottle rolled straight out and into the gutter. I was in favor of just leaving it, but Lance was determined to get it out! Blade was quite distressed.

After more than a few minutes of rigging up different contraptions to try to snag it, we realized the grate was not bolted down like we thought, so Lance lowered Daryn in. Success!

We caught the end of the #giantcookiechallenge with a giant chocolate chip cookie. The kids were big fans.

Dixie enjoying her bath for the first time instead of screaming! She was super mellow and just stared at Lance.

More baking fun- homemade soft pretzels on National Pretzel Day!

We drove up to one of our favorite mountain spots to throw rocks in the river and got to watch a loooong train above us. Blade was enthralled. 

Seems comfy? I'm not sure how this happened.

It was warm enough to set up the pool Maddie got for her birthday! The whole first day was overcast and the girls were freezing and somehow ended up dumping a bunch of dirt in the pool? Things got better after that. 

More walks! Maddie ate it super bad later on this walk and ended up with quite a bit of road rash. Thank goodness for her helmet!

I've been doing Cosmic Kid yoga every morning with the kids. The girls are hit or miss but Blade it a huge fan. He get so excited for "oga!!" and follows along as best he can.

He's so freaking adorable.

A couple of days ago we had an F-35 flyover for the whole state. They took off from the base right by our house. You can barely 2 of them in the picture below. Apparently I only got a picture of them circling up to altitude, and not when they actually zoomed over us. Regardless, we had fun waiting outside and watching them.

 

The weather has been beautiful lately and we really haven't minded staying safe on our little piece of paradise :)