My 40th

Andy brought some big balloons and flowers home the night before my birthday.

                                                 

My friends Katie and Becky came for lunch and brought my favorite food from Beehive Grill.

Another friend, Karen, sent 3 boxes of Crumbl cookies to my door!

I spent the day working on a puzzle, reading and doing whatever I wanted.

Mom and Dad came that evening with a pie and sang to me.

    Ben helped me blow out my candle of course :)

It was a lovely day and I feel great entering into my 5th decade!

An Easter Surprise! (And Some Other Things)

My mom got making some masks and offered them to family members before donating them.  She was so thoughtful to make a couple of cute, fun ones for her youngest grandkids.

Ben got a "Go-Go" one and actually let me try it on him without a fuss.

As our gym closed my workout friends and I got creative to keep in touch.

Karen started it by having us all send our wedding pictures to each other through our group text.

That was super fun to see!

Then, Jennie suggested we take turns issuing challenges to each other each day.

Some of them included: writing a thank you card to someone and sending it, taking a walk and waving to everyone you saw, creating a time capsule with your family, organizing/dejunking an area and painting finger/toenails a favorite color.

It was a fun way to keep sane during the quarantine.

One night I came into the living room for scripture study and prayer and I found my boys like this...

Another fun all boy pic...

With the order to stay home and resulting free time I finally got around to making my barn quilt!

I received the wood kit for my birthday in 2018.  I asked Andy to put it together for me for Christmas 2018.  Then it sat around for over a year while I tried to decide on a design and colors.  As a matter of fact, Andy put it back under the tree for Christmas 2019 since I hadn't done anything with it yet.

I finally decided to go for a classic design and very minimal and neutral colors.

Andy was so kind to hang it for me once it was done.

I love how it turned out!

Abby's Young Women leaders are so awesome!  They did many things to stay in touch with the girls and let them know they were thinking of them.

This was one of my faves...

On Easter Sunday we received a surprise visit!

Jo and T showed up on our doorstep.  They had hid Easter candy around the front yard and had the kids come out and hunt for it...

It was the cutest thing :)

This was the best we could do with social distancing.

The week after Easter the kids made some cookies for their young women young men leaders while wearing their masks :)...cuties!

Quarantine Luau

On March 27th we were supposed to leave for Hawaii.

Boy, were we disappointed when it became apparent about a week before we were to leave that our trip wouldn't happen.  So, I ran to the dollar and party stores and bought what I could for a homemade luau.

I was going to have Andy pick up Rumbi for dinner but they had already closed their doors.

He ended up getting Mo' Betah's and Chik fil A.

                                                                                              

                                          

We watched Moana and had a grand old time.  I felt bad we couldn't do more but such is life with Corona Virus abounding.

                                                 

I love my family and am so glad they were willing to roll with the punches and have positive attitudes about everything.

                                                  

March Madness

March ended up blowing us away with all that happened...and didn't happen :(

These are just a few moments from March and moving into quarantine.

First, here's another one of Abby's cute creations...she painted her phone charger :)

As things started getting kind of crazy at the stores, people started looking at their 72 hour kits.

I hauled ours out and Matt had fun trying on his clothes that we had packed away for him about 1.5 years ago.  He's grown a bit :) (note the flip flops)

Just some beautiful clouds over the Welsvilles...

When the schools decided to close they arranged for parents to come pick up packets for at home schooling.  They made it cute with balloons and signs and things.

We were lucky that Ben really likes his aide and enjoyed getting on the computer to see her three times a week.  Otherwise, it would have been a real challenge getting him to come sit in his chair and do school work.  He had about 6 or 7 different goals that we worked on.  His best was probably shapes.  However, this experience was a real eye opener for me and I will have some strong opinions at his next IEP as to what his goals should be.  I've always known what they were but seeing them in action helped me realize what is beneficial to Ben and what is not.

In the packet that was sent home there were loads of worksheets and crafts and things.

The first day Abby tried to help him with a worksheet and he would have none of it.

I felt bad because of all the work the teachers had gone to to put everything together, but after Abby's attempt, I didn't push any school work on him beyond working with his aide.

I didn't get pictures of the other kids doing their school work...I don't know why :( but we fell into a routine and after a few weeks it looked like Matt getting on the desktop every morning...Abby on the chrome book either at the kitchen counter or a couch and Josh on my laptop somewhere in the house.  They would spend hours a day...especially Abby.  There was definitely a learning curve...we got an email from one of Matt's teachers a week or two in saying he was missing a huge assignment.  Well, Matt hadn't been aware of it because he had been looking in the wrong place on Canvas for his assignments for that class.  Kind of messy.  Abby had to exercise 30 minutes every day and upload a picture of her doing it for her PE class.  She also got online every Friday for a meeting with her seminary class.  I don't know how to fully describe the experience but none of us loved it.  

Ben enjoys spending time with Abby.

One of his techniques is to throw his toys and books up on her bed and then has her pull him up on with her.  Her bed is higher up off the ground so he's like a little prince on his throne up there :)