With the influx in COVID cases (current variant: omicron), we are back to "distance learning." It's supposed to be for just this week, but we've been there, done that, and we all know it's best to be ready for anything.
I'm currently being held hostage at my kitchen table by my four school-ing children. Last time we were distance learning, I didn't have to worry about Eva since she was in preschool. Now Eva is doing the same work that Zoe was doing when we started distance learning two years ago, which means I'm pretty much a professional first grader.
Zoe is on a Zoom meeting with her class as I'm typing this, and all the kids are telling the teacher about how they have COVID or someone in their family has it (side note: Zoe's teacher is amazing. I am so impressed with her! Zoe has had such fantastic teachers thus far in her schooling).
Our kids had a long weekend with no school on Friday (end of quarter) and no school on Monday (Martin Luther King Jr Day). We were supposed to go to Hamilton on Saturday (we got tickets for Nicky and Daisy for Christmas), but this week's shows were canceled due to... COVID! We'd been doing our best to stay healthy because we were worried that one of us would end up with COVID, and we wouldn't be able to go, but it turned out there was an outbreak in the cast.
Thus far, we are still COVID-free, but pretty much everyday, I find out 2-3 people we've recently been with have COVID, so we can't possibly continue to dodge it. Scotty is supposed to go to Disneyland (a la a thrice rescheduled "brocation") in a few days, and it seems unfathomable that all 10 "bros" will make it. A few have had COVID in the past couple of weeks, so they're good to go. The rest are ticking time bombs.
Over the weekend, we had the internal battle of "should we completely lock down and try to keep Scotty healthy, or should we go forward with life being as cautious as possible?" We decided to still go out and do things, but do so with as much safety and vigilance as possible.
On Friday, I took the kids bowling. It ended up working out rather well because we were the only family there!
We also went to Raising Cane's and waited in the super long drive-thru line for lunch (our local restaurant opened on December 14 - I only remember because it was my mom's birthday). Most people have told us that Raising Cane's is "just okay." We concur.
After lunch, we went to the school to pick up the kids' Chromebooks and other materials for distance learning.
That evening, my friend Christie brought me a birthday present. You may call me Patrick.
On Saturday, Scotty and I decided we really needed to get out of the house, so we went to Thanksgiving Point. First we went to Farm Country, and it was really fun! We got there shortly after they opened, and there was no one there yet. We bought some food for the animals, and they were all rather hungry, being early morning and all, so they were super excited to see us and quite competitive for our attention.
We took a tractor ride and Zoe rode a pony.
Then we headed to the Butterfly Biosphere because Scotty had never been there before.
(We have a pass to Thanksgiving Point that let's us get into all the venues).
We weren't quite ready to go home, so we stopped at Cafe Rio and got some lunch. I had a few gift cards and rewards, and then three vouchers for free desserts, so we got a lot of food for free.
After Cafe Rio, we stopped at Scheel's to ride the Ferris wheel and eat some ice cream. They used to have those multi-flavored syrupy ice cream cones for super cheap, but now they just have the classic vanilla, chocolate, and twist, which is fine... but also disappointing. Our neighbor works at the Ferris wheel, and he hooked us up with free ice cream (which wasn't our intent, but a much-appreciated surprise).
After Scheel's, we headed to the zoo, where we also have an annual pass. We scoped out the animals and rode the carousel (except for me because after 15 years of taking my kids to the zoo, I feel like I deserve to not ride the carousel and sit on a bench instead. Plus, I wanted to check up on news about Tonga).
If that wasn't enough, we also had a birthday party for my nephew to go to that evening. So you might say that Saturday was a bit busy.
On Sunday, we had church where we were few in numbers and have returned to social distanced seating. We have also moved all additional meetings online. Nicky blessed the sacrament for the first time (milestone alert!), then he and Scotty took the sacrament to the homebound (where Nicky was able to bless) while I had an online meeting.
We went and visited Scotty's parents (which is what we do most Sundays), and then we came home and made crunch wraps with some gigantic tortillas we got from the Food Bank (we have a lot of Food Bank food being distributed in our area, and we have multiple neighbors that bring us offerings from time to time. Our next door neighbor brought us a few packages of the giant tortillas, and we've had fun making LARGE food items with them).
On Monday, we didn't have any secure plans. We ended up going back to Thanksgiving Point because they were having a "Day of Service" where we could help put together snack kits for Granite Education Foundation. Some of my in-laws came, and after we finished the service project, we thought, "Heck! Let's all go to the zoo again!"
So we did.
Then Scotty's mom offered to have the kids come to her house to play (glory hallelujah! I needed a break from them) so Scotty and I snuck off to Leatherby's and then came home and watched a show (i.e. I watched a show while Scotty slept on the couch).
When the kids came back home, we had Family Home Evening and then went to sleep to dream about all the places we might have picked up COVID over the long weekend.
Now here we sit with open laptops, living our best pandemic lives and wondering... what excitement awaits us this week?
Whoa!!! Your did everything this weekend! I'm so impressed... And incredibly jealous of your leatherbees. We wanted to copy them fully for our ice cream shop model but I didn't want to deal with fryers. We do drown our sundaes though in honor of them though!
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