Just a little ray of sunshine : November 16th

I've been absent for awhile and that's because I'm here to say that I'm a Covid19 survivor. 💪😂 I sound dramatic, more to be funny, because I certainly wasn't on my death bed because of it. But it's true, our little family all likely got Covid19 thanks to Adam's boss at work who tested positive after being around someone else who tested positive. We found out on Tuesday, November 17th that Adam would have to work from home for at least 14 days because of his boss being exposed and then Wednesday morning I woke up with symptoms. I got tested on Saturday (there was a wait) and found out the following Tuesday that I was positive. It started out as a sore throat and headache, but within a few hours I was feeling achy and just couldn't deal with the kids (it didn't help that they were acting like maniacs and I had no energy for it). Soon enough I was in bed and for two days I was feverish with muscle aches and a sore throat. After that the aches and fever wore off and I was able to stay out of bed, carrying on mostly normal, but then I got a cough. It was a weird illness in that multiple times I felt like I was on the mend, but then nighttime would hit and I would feel a new symptom - one night it was nausea, another night my head felt like it was heavy and spinning, and another night I couldn't sleep because I was tossing and turning and my body just felt hot and weird. Finally all that subsided and other than a runny nose and a lingering cough, I was fine by Thanksgiving, which I was super grateful for! It was a wild ride for a week and I was eager to feel totally normal.

Luckily throughout my sickness, I had moments of feeling normal enough that I could get out of bed and clean up a little bit so that the house didn't turn into a total disaster zone. Not that Adam would have totally let that happen, but I just felt better about not leaving everything to him if I could help it. I certainly watched a lot of shows to entertain myself while in bed and I must say -- it threw a wrench in all my routines. Obviously I couldn't work out for a while and I certainly didn't have the brain capacity for scripture study or blogging, so everything went on hold and there was something so beautiful about letting all my responsibilities slide for a while and glory in the wonder of doing nothing. It tasted a little too sweet and I've had a hard time getting back on the wagon. To be fair though, Maeve later tested positive (no symptoms - we only tested her so she could go back to school quicker), so she had to do virtual school all last week and today was our first normal day with her back at school. My routine was certainly different with her at home doing virtual school, so today is really our first totally normal day - which meant it was time to get back to blogging!

The funniest part about getting Covid19 was that during some of the moments where I felt more normal, I took advantage and got some abnormal stuff done - like made new sticker charts for the kids because good gracious, they were at each other's throats!! I knew we would not survive Maeve being home around the clock and our isolation without something changing. We were getting little cooperation, the fighting was constant, and I felt like all I was doing was threatening and it wasn't changing anything. It occurred to me that instead of threatening and taking away screen time and candy all the time, perhaps I needed to shift it to screen time and candy being privileges they could earn at the end of every day after accumulating so many stickers for good behavior. My my it was really changed things around here!! It's not perfect, but for the most part they have really clung to it and are excited about earning stickers, so they are behaving better and I'm handling the tough moments in a much more constructive way! The funny part about this is that in addition to that, it got me thinking about not only the kind of mom I am, but the kind of wife I am - and it pushed me to have a heart to heart with Adam about some of the same issues that come up between us that we normally temporarily resolve by putting on a bandaid, but rarely get to the root of the problem to actually figure out how to take it away. Anyway, I felt inspired to talk about some stuff with him and figure out some actionable steps and it has helped in that arena as well.On Friday November 20th, President Nelson shared his message of gratitude and I had been feeling like it was something perfect to share with someone that might need a pick me up who is not LDS. I thought of our neighbors and was bold and actually went for it - I sent them the video and a message with it and for the first time in a loooong time had a member missionary work moment. It was very well received and that was really cool for me. Mind you, all of this was happening while I was still sick, which probably sounds weird to be on my A game while sick. Like who does that? Well, then on Friday night after the heart to heart with Adam, we were watching the premiere of A Million Little Things and it started out with one of the characters in the hospital seriously injured with the wife debating on if she should tell her young son or not. This got me thinking about what the right call is in that kind of a situation and I ended up asking Adam what his thoughts were so we could know what we would do it we were ever in that kind of situation. We kept watching the episode and all the sudden it hit me that it felt like I was getting all these things in order in my life at once - changing up my parenting strategies, working on becoming a better wife, doing missionary work, and deciding what we would do if one of us was dying in the hospital. And then I started to think... what if I was getting all this in order because it was my time to go...!?! I feel so silly saying that, but legit I started freaking myself out thinking that maybe my Covid was going to take a turn for the worse and I actually would end up on my death bed. 😱😱 I was straight up in my head for a while after having those thoughts and could not sleep that night for fear that I might not wake up in the morning.... 😂😅 I am here to tell you that it was all in vain because I'm still alive and well today. Whew, dodged that bullet! 😅

Anyway, I'm certainly not going to give a whole lot of detail about the last 3 weeks because I barely took notes and let's be honest - we've been mostly stuck in our house so things haven't been ultra exciting. However, there are a couple noteworthy days to talk about like Thanksgiving and Nolan's birthday!

Like I mentioned above, I felt grateful to have my energy back in time for Thanksgiving because we had already planned on being on our own for the holiday at home. I had plans to make the Thanksgiving spread for our little family - including Turkey, Adam's signature mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash casserole, lima beans, jello salad and homemade rolls. I also made two pies for dessert and of course we had sparkly. I made the jello salad on Wednesday night and while I was making it, Adam realized he was up a creek with the turkey because it was still super frozen. We had ordered one from Walmart and they couldn't fulfill the order, but our friends who picked our order up noticed that and decided to just buy us a turkey! Sooo nice of them, but the only problem was it was a huge 21 pound turkey. Yikes. Having no better option that to just cook it from frozen, Adam ended up cooking it in the middle of the night since he knew I would need access to the oven during the day on Thursday with the other cooking I had to do. He literally camped out on the couch and set alarms every so often to check on it and baste it and stuff! 😂😂 We're crazy! Sadly though, despite that A+ effort, it still ended up super dry since it had to cook for so long. Oh well - something to laugh about later! And also the fact that when I was making my homemade rolls, after I kneaded the dough into a perfect ball and went to put it in the oven to rise, I realized I left out the salt. 😱😱🤬😭 I may or may not have needed a moment in the bathroom to myself to feel my feelings.... 😂😭. I was sooooo angry, annoyed, bummed out, wishing I could turn back time - you name it - I was feeling it. I did the only thing I could do, recommended by google, and that was to knead the salt into it as best I could. They weren't totally ruined from a taste perspective, but it messed with the rising and they would have looked a whole lot prettier had I not messed up. I was looking sooo forward to nailing it and having amazing rolls to eat, but at least they were still edible in the end. Aaand I did also ruin the lima beans, because I had saved the bacon grease from cooking bacon in the morning to use for the limas, but Adam didn't realize that's what I was doing and got rid of it. Apparently, they do not turn out the same without that grease, so that was a big bummer. All of this to say that after spending hours and hours in the kitchen, we had a mediocre meal that took so long to put together that the kids ended up eating Cheerios 20 minutes before we put it all out on the table because they were "soooo hungry" and I was beyond caring.... 🤦‍♀️. It was a fiasco that we will always be able to laugh about later and now I certainly have a lot of respect for my mom and all the other women out there who do so much work year after year to make the Thanksgiving spread. It is so much work for about 15 minutes of eating and then a whole lot of clean up. It looked like a bomb went off in our small kitchen! Luckily though we had leftovers for dayssss and all you need to fix some dry turkey is a lot of mayo. 🙌 Also, my key lime pie and double berry custard pie got a big stamp of approval from Adam so that was nice!

We watched the Santa Claus on Friday to get ourselves in the Christmas spirit because I was feeling way too lazy to decorate for Christmas after such all our hard work the day before. 😂 I forgot how funny that movie is - it's a good one right behind Home Alone! We pulled it together and decorated for Christmas on Saturday (the 28th) and the kids were fully invested!! We all had our Santa hats on and even put a Santa outfit on Nolan for a little bit. The kids were beyond thrilled to help decorate the tree and I am happy to say that Nolan has not been destroying the tree like we thought he would!* Such a relief. In all our decorating, we pulled a Christmas puzzle out of one of the bins and Adam and I decided to sit down and do it together on Saturday night. It was honestly harder than we thought it would be because the pieces were seriously wacko and a lot of them looked so similar. It was fun though to get it all done in a few hours and laugh as we were working. Not our typical weekend activity, but I think that needs to change. As long as we do 500 piece puzzles (which this one was) that can be done in one night start to finish, we won't have to worry about the kids destroying or losing the pieces. 🙌

It's getting late, so I better end here for now, but here are some pictures from the 16th - 28th.

Losing his pants 😂

I could seriously eat him!! 😍😍

I guess I don't have to wonder how Maeve feels about herself... 😂

😍😍😍

Nolan is so obsessed with his Daddy right now! 😍

He's obviously the gun one 😂

Living the life 😂

This is circled because if you look close you can see a stream, which would be Rowan peeing all over Adam at the precise moment I took this pic... 😂🤢

Getting so many teeth and not a fan of it at all! Wondering when my baby might really nap again... 🙄

😍😍

I love him so much 😍😂

Maeve needed to join the photoshoot and wanted me to take a pic of her "sliding" down this slide that she is as long as now 😂🤦‍♀️

😍😍

He fell asleep in the middle of playing and of course opened his eyes right when I took this.. 🙄 Also, I was holding him after this and felt 2 pieces of play food low on his back underneath his pajamas and I don't even understand how they could have got there... 😂🤔

I don't know why my kids like to eat off of clothespins... after finding the play food in Nolan's clothes, I went downstairs to see them doing this. The world as I knew it is officially over and we live in wackoville. 😂