Cinco de Mayo

For Cinco de Mayo, which fell on a Taco Tuesday this year, we made homemade churros. They are so easy to make and so delicious homemade. And Jonah helped me.

No More School

Here we have what I found when I walked into the room on a Sunday afternoon. Corey had a surgery on April 16th and took two weeks off and returned to work on May 4th, so this was his last day off. But I walked into the room and found everyone quietly sitting on their devices.

We also found out at the end of April that school would not resume at all for the rest of the year due to covid-19.  So our principal of Wylie High School, Mr. Virdie Montgomery, made it his goal to visit all 612 graduating seniors at home and deliver a personal message and a candy bar.  His quest made first the local news, then went national.  I was watching the news one afternoon and saw the story about Mr. Montgomery come on the NBC Nightly news.  I was surprised and excited!  Our prinicpal of Wylie High School is the best.  He is due to retire soon.  I hope it's not this year.  So many teachers have announced their retirements this year.  Mrs. Schara, the third grade teacher of Travis and Eliza.  The choir teacher at Draper.  The principal at Wylie East.  And others are just leaving, like the choir teacher at Cooper is going to Wylie East.  Every time once announces it, I feel like I'm being punched in the gut.  I think it's because we haven't seen anyone in person for so long that these announcements are more gut-wrenching than usual.  I'm sad that when Travis and Eliza finally do their senior walk at the elementary school, Mrs. Schara won't be there, and very likely, none of the other teachers they had will be there either.

Playing Outside

During these pleasant weather months, we have been spending a lot of time outside.  We have been riding bikes and scooters, drawing with chalk, taking walks, and playing basketball and four square (with the ball I bought at Easter).  With no outside activities keeping our attention, we've had more time to play with each other, which has been good.  Sometimes it's been hard getting the kids to do anything but play with devices though.

Donuts, Puzzles, and Home Church

With the pandemic and lots of places deemed "non-essential" and being forced to close, I figured donut shops would be closed. We wanted donuts, so Travis and I found a donut recipe online that looked easy enough (other than having to pre-make the dough the night before and refrigerate it all night) and we made donuts. We don't have a donut cutter so we had to improvise with what we had, and they turned out. I was not impressed with the chocolate icing recipe but the plain glazed donuts were delicious! If we make them again, we will stick to plain glazed!

I had three free gifts from Shutterfly, so I decided to use them.  For one of them, we replaced a mug of Corey's that had a picture of Westley and Caleb on it from when they were little.  The mug fell and broke last month.  I also bought a pack of cards that had pictures of Snoopy on the back.  And for the other gift, I had this picture collage puzzle made.  250 pieces.  Not nearly as hard as the In-N-Out puzzle.

Here is what our home church looks like.  We are fortunate to have three boys who can bless and pass the Sacrament.  We do it like a regular Sacrament meeting.  We have opening hymn, prayer, announcements, Sacrament hymn, a talk, a musical number, another talk, closing hymn, closing prayer.  We even make a program for everyone to hold and I've been saving one from each week.  We have liked doing home church but we do miss seeing everyone at church.

April Random

The Kona Ice truck started coming around once a week to different neighborhoods. All we had to do was text that we wanted them to come to our house and give our address. Some of our neighbors joined in with us as well. It was a nice treat on a warm day.

The kids and Corey started working on this In-N-Out puzzle during conference and they finally finished it (April 24th!).  It was 1000 pieces.

We made eclairs one day.  A friend of mine had her birthday and I wanted to bring her something special, so that's why we made them.  We took her three of them, and we had fun eating the rest!

My roses have started blooming! 

Little Chefs and Easter

The weekend of April 4th and 5th was General Conference and during conference, President Nelson asked for a day of fasting on Good Friday. Since all of us big people were fasting for the end of Covid-19, Annmarie and Nathan decided to make pancakes for themselves for breakfast. I helped them some, but they mostly accomplished it by themselves!

And Easter was the week after General Conference.  I sewed the dresses and skirts while listening to General Conference.  I think they turned out rather well.  We did yellow this year so I ordered yellow-based ties for the boys.  Jonah and Nathan's ties look like Gryffindor Harry Potter ties. We had a nice Easter dinner and got dressed up for home church in our Easter attire and even dyed eggs.  I bought the kids a playground ball to play foursquare with along with Easter candy, which I did a grocery store pickup for those items. 

First Week of April

Someone in my ward dropped off a few bags of boy clothes that I went through and kept a few select items from. One of the pieces was this Batman jacket. Nathan got this brand new stars and stripes backpack that he is using as a Captain America shield.

Because everyone is home ALL the time (well, mostly, Dad and Westley still go to work), Willy sometimes needs a break from the chaos and has taken to hiding under my bed.

This is Eliza's Easter dress that I made.  I'm quite excited about it.

Mrs. Schara, a teacher that had both Travis and Eliza, requested pictures on FB to be posted to her wall of her former students, so we obliged and took this photo.  She was a great teacher and we were disappointed that Jonah did not also get her (third grade).