May Happenings

Now that June is halfway over, I'm finally getting around to posting about May.  I'm writing this in the middle of the night while I'm at work, so hopefully it makes sense.

May actually had quite a bit of fun in it.  I already posted about St George, but there were other notable things.  First and foremost, we finally got a trampoline!  I'm calling it the pandemic trampoline.  We've tried to talk Jake into getting a trampoline for years, but no luck.  He was sure it would blow away, and someone would get hurt, and where would we put it on our acre?  But one day, when the pandemic was crushing us, and Sage was barely hanging on, he caved.  Sage asked him, looked at him with her puppy dog eyes (she's really good at those.  I'm immune.  Jake is not).  And he said yes.  There was much rejoicing.  Sage asked every day if it was going to come.  Zack had it put together in no time, and Jake even helped a little.  He even jumped for a second, but I don't think he's touched it since.  So now we can't say nothing good came from covid-19.  Trampoline!

School ended.  It kind of sputtered and slowly died this year.  There wasn't really a set end date.  Zack was done with new assignments, but then took the full extra week they gave him to finish up his work.  Because why would you get your work done before it was actually due?  Kate was finished with everything like a week before Zack and Sage.  Sage was mostly done but kept having random zoom meetings to finish up.  This was her last year of elementary school, and her spanish teacher is going back to Spain this summer.  So when he started crying during their last zoom meeting I may or may not have gotten a little teary.  I hate how school ended for everyone this year.  And I don't even want to think about what school will look like next year.  For Sage's final 5th grade event we got to drive through the front of the school and wave to all of the teachers.  They put pictures in the lawn of all of the 5th graders, and she got to talk to her teachers for the last time.  They also said her name over the loud speaker and rang the bell for her.  I brought Kate with us for the sole purpose of taking pictures and video since I would be driving.  She got some pictures, but somehow missed getting a video of the bell ringing.  Why did I even bring her??

Zack started working immediately after school was done.  He's very excited to be earning large sums of money.  I'm also excited.  He's not much for pictures, so he managed to escape the last day of school pics.  I decided the day that everything was officially over we would all go to Red Ledges and eat dinner and swim to celebrate.  Well, Jake ended up going on a long bike ride.  He only joined us for the last 20 minutes.  And Zack was so hot and tired from work that he refused to come.  So my great idea for a family celebration turned into the girls and I celebrating on our own.  But we still had fun!

The other big news of May is that we finally got the pond up and running again.  It only took 3 years to complete this project.  And it'll probably break again.  Would I fill the pond in if I could?  Yes.  Maybe with time I'll enjoy it more, but right now the pain is too fresh.

Proof that Jake once jumped on the trampoline

And that he even helped put it together

One of Mel's friends (Ellen) and Sage have become pen pals.  She made Sage this super cute bag.  Sage loves having a pen pal!

My Mother's Day present.  I love it all, but mostly that I didn't have to build this (I mean help build it.  Let's be real)

Our first get-together since covid!  They love our chickens!

Jake made delicious food for Mother's Day.  He's a really good cook when he has time.  He's good at everything.

Bike tune-up night

Flag out for our high school seniors

On top of Covid our mountain bike trails burned down.  Luckily they didn't ruin the trails putting the fire out and they were back open a week later.  A strange kind of pretty.

We got the garden planted.  Kate has become our garden expert

5th grade graduation

Sage wearing all of her different school shirts.  Too bad she didn't get to do much of anything for these shirts.  Stupid covid.  This is her Wrangler shirt

She got to be a junior coach for a month and help all of the kids at recess.

She was supposed to do Girls On The Run.  I think they had one practice.

Some of Kate's art projects

No more school!

Sage and her friend Kami

Sure love Red Ledges

Beautiful morning run

This happened.  I put it off as long as possible. 

Luckily it's in the barn, not the house.  Chester is scared to death of it and now refuses to go in the barn.  Now I wish I'd put the elk in the house.

Sage kept hitting her head while we were working on the pond.  She took matters into her own hands.  Can't say she isn't resourceful.

It's done!  Well, we need lots of plants.  But the main part is done!

Pandemic St George!

I've decided that if I add the word pandemic to something it gives it a little more excitement and drama.  There wasn't much drama with this trip, but there was a lot of excitement because we got to leave our house!!!  I have to say this trip was pretty amazing.  Like so amazing that a week later I'm still thinking about how wonderful it was.  So I guess we REALLY needed to get away. 

I think a big reason St George was so wonderful this time is that we had a pretty great group of people there.  We got to hang out with Tracy, her sister Jackie, her granddaughter Saylor, and Laura and her kids.  Saylor is a year older than Sage and having her there was amazing.  Sage was happy and entertained the whole time, which meant I didn't have to entertain her.  So wonderful.  We had just the right amount of playing and sitting next to the pool.  Jake and Zack and I went on a ride Friday morning.  They went easy on me, so we had a fun time.  We spent the afternoon by the pool and ended the day with a family bike ride in St George.  I love that we're starting to ride as a family.  Almost as exciting as the first time we all got on the same ski lift! 

On Saturday Jake and Zack did an extreme ride that I was happy to not participate in.  Then we had more pool fun.  It felt so good!  That night we showed everyone how fun it is to hike at night!  We went on a beautiful hike right above the city.  It was really fun to be able to see the city lights the whole time.  We ended up hiking with less headlamps than we should have had and made a few wrong turns, but it just added to the adventure.  I think even the teenagers had fun, which is saying a lot!  So thank heavens for St George.  It was beyond amazing to get away.

I looked back and Chester was sitting on the seat like he belonged there

These three had a lot of fun

It was pretty hot during this ride.  Sage dramatically thought she might die

Sage did her presentation on Mexico for us.  In spanish of course.  She's getting pretty good!

Sage tried to get up the courage to do a front flip.  For like 2 hours.  No lie. 

Our view on the hike

The kids all had glow sticks

We survived!

All of us mountain biking together!

Jake pretending to do yoga.  And lining his arms up exactly with the horizon

Still Here

Well, we're still here.  Social distancing.  No where else to go.  Trying to not lose our minds.  Trying to figure out if this is really even happening for any good reason.  Probably we'll never know the answer to that.  We definitely have a routine going on, which is good as I can't survive without routine.  Breakfast at 8, then the kids get going on school work.  Kate and Sage are usually done around lunch time.  Zack finishes at some point in the afternoon.  He's much happier when he's busy, so I'm not complaining that he spends so much time doing school.  Sometimes the afternoons get a little long, I'm not going to lie.  We've been doing this long enough that any newness has worn off and we're maybe starting to get on each other's nerves a bit. 

We continue to do puzzles.  The Johnson's gave us a puzzle that was almost harder than I could do.  I say I , because I've realized when the puzzles are hard the kids don't help much.  We've been working on the pond area getting that finished.  Finally.  We've got lights installed, pumps installed.  Almost done!  We're all trying to grit our teeth and just push through and finish so that when this is all over we can go play instead of working.  Fingers crossed.  We went to the salt flats for the first time last week.  Definitely a been there, done that, kind of thing.  But still cool and we had fun playing.  Until we all got we too hot and thirsty.  It was a good field trip.

Sage has probably been struggling more than any of us.  Extroverts definitely have more of a struggle with all of this.  Who knew it would some day pay to be an introvert.  Anyway, she tends to break down in tears at some point every day.  One week she was really struggling and told me she had lost her smile.  She decided she wanted to plan a family party.  She figured out what she wanted to do and then we ordered supplies on Amazon.  Unfortunately, they weren't going to get here until May sometime.  Two days later she came into my room so excited that her party supplies had already come!  It was a miracle!  I truly think God knew she needed a boost and got those supplies to us quick.  She told me she found her smile and put on a great party.  We had pizza, played games, danced, and watched a movie.  It was just what we all needed!

Jake continues to work, mostly business as usual.  Definitely grateful for that.  He feels like it's a little slower and customers are a little more patient, so that's a good thing.  I am enjoying the extra family time.  I feel like we're all getting to be better friends, which is awesome.  And I'm getting used to having nothing on the calendar.  So much so, that the rare moments I have something I almost forget and can barely get myself there.  Grateful for the chance to decide what we want to keep doing, and what we want to stop when this is all over.  I think everyone's hoping that as we enter May things will slowly start opening.  I hope that's the case.  Anyway, here are some pics of what we've been up to.

What I look like at work right now

Sage made delicious muffins

Lots of mountain biking happening.  Thank heavens for good weather and not a lot of snow this year!

Doing Grandpa's challenge

Sage got a new bike

Pump track fun

Sage painted this shirt

Our kids wrote down all funny covid jokes they could think of

We got chickens.  We'll see how long it takes Chester to eat them.

Party time!

Another Grandpa challenge

Jake and Kate are growing all kinds of seeds to eventually go in our garden.  

Salt Flats

Our family's efforts at jumping in a picture.  Hilarious

Kate and Sage keep experimenting with cute hair dos

The puzzle that almost won