November 2020

 The girls really wanted to go back to their favorite metro park that has a zipline they never seem to get sick of.  Little did we know, the park also recently added some rope swings that the girls had so much fun on! We have been so impressed with all the great parks around Columbus.

Richard got some really sad news this month.  His dad had contracted COVID-19 and didn't want to go to the hospital because he insisted he would be fine. He finally got bad enough that his kids forced him to go and was in the ICU for less than a week before he passed away on November 16th. Richard flew to Utah for the funeral and the girls drew cards to put in his casket. We had so many people send Richard things to let us know they were thinking of him!  We got multiple bouquets, a huge plant, gift cards, and letters.  The girls favorite thing was an Edible Arrangement! It was pretty big but they polished it all off in barely two days. 

We knew Thanksgiving would be very quiet with just our family but we tried to make the best of it. We decorated our table and made a centerpiece turkey out of vegetables, as well as paper bag teepees. We played a lot of games, including our very own turkey shoot with balloon turkeys and a Nerf bow.  We also got to play some Zoom games with my family so even though it was different, it was still a good day. 

McKenna's birthday was the day after Thanksgiving and I was really worried about it.  She always gets so excited she can't sleep and then is disappointed that the day is not as magical as she thinks it will be.  She got very little sleep so we had a few rough parts of the day but I think it was a good birthday overall. We played some Zoom games with her cousins, did a home escape room, and made mint chocolate cupcakes for her treat. She had been wanting an American girl-type doll and I bought this one that I thought looked just like her! We are very grateful for our spunky 9 year old!

The city of Dublin put together something that sounded like a lot of fun so we decided to try it out. It is somewhere in between geocaching and a scavenger hunt.  They put up all kinds of art installations (15 I think) around the parks next to the river and give you a booklet that has clues to help you find them.  Each piece of art has a hidden box somewhere on it and inside is a stamp, ink and a notebook you can write your name in. It was such a fun adventure for our family!  We only did a handful of them the first day and explored some of the parks that we went to. 

President Nelson issued a challenge to post on social media things you are grateful for every day for a week. Since I am the only one with social media, we decided to make a list of things at home instead. It came at a perfect time and it was really helpful and peaceful to focus on all the good things we have right now when there is so much going on that seems bad. 

We decided to do a virtual Primary Program this year and I thought it turned out so great! We had each of the kids record just a sentence or two answering a question based on the Come Follow Me lessons throughout the year.  Our music leader also asked a few families, including ours, to record a song. Our kids sang I Will Walk With Jesus and they did a great job! We decided to do a Zoom session on the 5th Sunday to watch the program all together as a ward.  For some reason, I was really nervous about conducting this meeting and had a lot of anxiety about it.  My anxiety definitely didn't settle down when I saw Elder and Sister Uchtdorf pop up on the Zoom!  Their grandson is in our ward so their great-granddaughter was going to be a part of the program. I got extra nervous and started shaking uncontrollably. Luckily I had already pre-recorded my testimony and an intro talk, otherwise I might not have made it through the whole thing!  It was fun to have them on there but because I was so nervous, as soon as it was over I thanked everyone and very quickly logged off.  Apparently Elder Uchtdorf stayed on and talked for a minute so I have been kicking myself ever since that I missed the opportunity to talk with him!  

We heard about a fun challenge where you would give up sleeping in your bed for a night and tag it on Instagram to a mattress company who would donate a bed to a child in need.  This is definitely the most fun way we have ever done service!

We finally got a little bit on snow on the last day of November.  McKenna and Brooklyn only played in it for a little bit but Kaylee stayed out for hours!  She even built a pretty big snowman all on her own. We don't get a ton of snow here so we have to take advantage of it while we can!

October 2020

 Richard got a new job!  He now works in the E-learning support team at OSU.  I went with him to help clean out his old office and it was definitely a little bitter sweet but he is excited to move onto new adventures!

We drove past his new building and saw that it is really close to this pretty pond where OSU does agriculture studies.  We took the girls there and walked around the little pond and Brooklyn and McKenna found a grasshopper to play with and took him around with us the whole time. 

I was so proud of Kaylee. The kids in her class were supposed to pick one word that was important to them and draw a poster of it. She chose equality and it made me so happy that she truly does see everyone the same and tries to treat them all the same. She has a very sweet heart!

 We made sure to go to Boo at the Zoo. My favorite part was the Red Pandas. We usually don't see the them very often, but this time they were so active and were going all over the place.  Then we got to see a tour come through and feed them so they were even more active!  It was so fun to watch and we spent at least 40 mins just watching them!

We also had REALLY good weather most of the fall season, it was so nice!  We raked up our first pile of leaves and the two older girls felt like they were too old to jump in the leaves anymore.  I had to get in there with Brooklyn to prove to them that you are never too old to do fun things!

We also got the girls their own pumpkin to decorate. Brooklyn and Kaylee had fun with the paint but McKenna just drew on hers with marker. Richard also bought a huge pumpkin to carve and the girls had fun helping him scoop out the guts!

We had a problem with one of our gutters and I thought I could look at it better if I went on the roof.  Kaylee has begged me for ages to go out on the roof so I let her come with me to check it out.  When Brooklyn and McKenna saw us up there, they wanted to join too so we let them crawl out Kaylees window and sit on the roof of the garage the rest of the night.  They didn't want to ever get down! It was really fun and brought back memories of how much I loved being on the roof with my dad. 

Trick or treating was scheduled for two days before Halloween and all day long it poured rain! I was really not looking forward to going out but luckily the rain calmed down and it was just drizzling when we went out. Kaylee was so sad that her friends canceled their plans to go together so we told her she could go around an extra loop in the neighborhood without her sisters and I could not believe the amount of candy she got! There were a lot less people out trick or treating and not quite as many passing out candy so everyone felt bad and gave big handfuls to all the kids. 

Since Halloween was a Saturday, and we had already gone trick or treating, we did a few Halloween crafts and then watched a Halloween movie. It was pretty low key as far as holidays go but it was still good. 

September 2020

We decided to celebrate getting through the first week of hybrid with a marshmallow roast. It was a nice relaxing way to end a very long week!  I think we will end up liking this hybrid schedule but it is harder to get used to, especially with all the restrictions they have at school. It's hard on the kids but will hopefully pay off in the long run!  Kaylee especially loves fires and wants to be in charge of the whole thing from start to finish.  

Brooklyn lost her first tooth!  And she already has her two adult teeth halfway growing in behind the baby teeth. She hadn't mentioned it being wiggly or anything so I was really surprised that it came out so easily! And she wasn't going to slow down, just a few days later she lost the second one.

We decided to get a zoo pass this year for the first time in years. We figured being on more flexible school schedules would allow us time to get out and we would need somewhere to go when we are sick of the house!  It has already been so wonderful and I'm sure we will get plenty of use out of it.

For Richard's birthday, we decided to work on the scavenger hunt that we had started clear back on my birthday! We went to the Park of Roses and a ton of different spots around Franklin Park. It was fun to have multiple clues in the same big park and it made for a fun morning.  That was one of the times I have loved having flexible learning!  We went in the morning and then Richard had some meetings in the afternoon and the kids did school.  Then we grabbed some dinner and ate at a random pond by the library.  We ended the night by picking up some churro empanadas from a lady in our ward as a surprise birthday treat. They were filled with either Nutella or Dulce de Leche and they were super good!

We were so close to finishing the scavenger hunt that I convinced the family to finish it with me the next day. We got to see the Topiary Park, search for a deer statue by COSI, run across a bridge, and find a few clues to finish it off at the Grange Audobon Insurance Center.  It ended up being a lot of fun! We will probably do another one in the future. 

I thought it would be fun to make rainbow spaghetti after Kristi told me about doing that for a Trolls party she did. The red, green and blue were so bright and fun! The purple didn't spread as well and looked pretty disgusting, it looked a little too much like worms! And I must not have rinsed the noodles well enough because when I added the red sauce, it all mixed together in a very unappetizing brown color. It was hard to get past that to enjoy the taste too much but it was a fun experiment.

Scott introduced us to a new feature on Google that inserted 3D animals into your camera so you can take all kinds of fun pictures with them.  It entertained us for a very long time! 

We finally made it to Hocking Hills! I was worried that we wouldn't get there this year since we didn't make it over the summer but we went on the most perfect day. It was gorgeous and I took way too many pictures of every angle because it is all breath taking!  We went to our two favorite hikes and made it to a new place, Ash Cave. The cave was absolutely enormous and had sand underneath from all the sandstone being eroded.  The girls played there for almost an hour and could have stayed longer if we had let them! It was the best day ever!