March Snow

The first week we were home from school, it snowed a ton overnight.  While I was shoveling the driveway, I realized it was perfect snow for a snowman so I made the kids come out and help me.  It was lots of fun and our snowman even had maracas.  Isabel made everyone delicious snow ice cream. It was really good!

March Madness.

So somewhere in the middle of March, the coronavirus or COVID 19, that we'd been hearing about a lot for quite some time hit the US.  School were shut down and pretty much everything else.  Wyoming trailed behind other places in closing down because frankly, it's a small population and we had no cases here for quite a while after it was hitting other places.  Eventually though Elena's swim season was cancelled, and then all school was cancelled.  Wyoming, I think, hoped everything would normalize soon, so they didn't start online school right away and the first two weeks was just vacation for us.  Toilet paper and other stuff was sold out in every store, hence all the funny memes.  We actually had been ready to buy our usual big case from Costco, and couldn't because there was none.  Luckily, my work sold us a case.  So we're good on toilet paper.  And I had stocked up on a bunch of flour and things like that when I organized our food storage the first time (before reorganizing twice more after each flood).  So we're all good for now.  Basically my family handled the whole thing by sending Coronavirus memes to each other every day.  I made the kids read a lot and practice piano and not get screen time till after 3:30.

And we painted some.

Jubal left me this adorable note by my car.  I didn't even realize he could write that well.  Awww!



We installed our new exercise machine after the second flood.  It's kicking my hiney.

One day I got a call from a random stranger (she had seen my kids in primary, but being the Spanish Branch, I actually didn't know her or her me) because Jubal and Efraim had followed her daughters home and they were happily watching a movie together at her house.  That kid is going to kill me.



Made rye bread.

And Moroccan shortribs.

St. Patrick's Day feast. Yum!  Elena made the Irish Soda Bread Scones and they were delish!


I forgot what this was called, but I liked it. And my lovely new plates from Christmas.


Leo made cookies with the kids.




Still a lot of xbox.

I made the girls practice sewing some.

Sebas got awesome new shoes from Abuelito and Abuelita for his birthday.


Tanagrams, sort of.




Efraim being a three year old.


Olive oil citrus cake.



Lots of yummy ham and cheddar soup and bread to go with it.

The last day the kids had school, I went to Utah and stocked up at Costco, and I was going to buy a frame for a bigger version of this picture, but Andrea, my sister, gave me this frame and I like the size better, so happily I canceled my order soon enough to get a refund. 
And this happened at the boutique framing/furniture store in historic downtown Ogden.  Efraim had massive amounts of water diarrhea and it went everywhere.  As you can see I ended up giving him a bath in the sink.  And luckily all their cleaning supplies were in the bathroom so I wiped everything down with Lysol wipes afterwards, but I had to leave him there naked while I ran to the car for a diaper (they kindly watched him for me). The store owner never even said one unkind thing about the whole mess (I did clean it up, but trust me that doesn't happen most places.)  I love Utah and people that have been around kids.


So that was the beginning of our quarantine.  I am so, so, so grateful that our house was all back together from the floods and leaks right before this all happened.  So grateful.

Flooded again.

Our house flooded again towards the end of February.  Thus ended normalcy. 
Leo and I were in Utah buying furniture for our room off of KSL.  So Isabel saved the day when I told her where to turn the water off.  These were the books I ended up throwing away because the pages were melded together, they were right by where the water was squirting out.




 So we went back to trying to dry out all the carpets.  The guys who relaid the carpets said that if it happened again we would have to replace all the carpet.  Sigh.  Meanwhile there was a leak from the main floor toilet that required another ceiling repair in the food storage room.  So grand total 5 major leaks and two floods in two months.  It was a pretty rough couple of months.

Me trying to salvage my other books.  Luckily they are usable albeit awful looking.

Thankfully my embroidery program dongle was fine despite all the packaging being wet.



So sad my Ragged Victorians calendar was pretty much ruined.

And this is me trying to make sure all my sewing machines still worked after the first flood.  I had never put them back yet, so they weren't reflooded.  Just the blue one had a bit of rust on the bobbin case.  So phew!  Not too much damage there.  Anyway, toward the middle of March everything finally got fixed and painted and walls and ceilings repaired and I had everything put away again, except my sewing room.

  
It still looked like this, only worse because one picture doesn't really capture the piles on the floor, etc.

And then miraculously I finally had it all cleaned up and put away!!!  It took forever and a pandemic. But it was done.  Yay!


This is my WIP (Work in progress) closet.  Each bin has a different project at some stage of development.  Scary, eh?