Wedding Celebration and Quarantine

We had the opportunity to attend my nephew, Nathan's, wedding luncheon and open house on December 30th. It was a nice afternoon and evening, catching up with family, and celebrating Nate and Lisa joining their lives together. 

The day after the Wedding, Danny woke up with a fever. We took him to get tested for COVID that morning and by the next morning(New Year's day) he had received the test results that he was positive. We decided to try our best to keep him isolated in hopes that no one else in the household would catch it. Of course, the damage had probably already been done, as we had spent all of Wednesday together and he was likely contagious that day(we felt terrible about exposing all of the guests at the wedding). 

I was the only one that went in and out of our bedroom while he was sick, bringing him meals and other things he needed from other parts of the house. I also slept in the room with him, because I had already been exposed. I figured I might as well sleep comfortably. 

After 6 days of him being confined to our bedroom, I took Camden and Alyssa to get tested with me. I figured if all three of us came back negative, then we were likely safe from getting it. None of us had symptoms or any reason to believe that we were positive. Camden and I came back negative, but Alyssa came back positive. She started having symptoms the following day. She decided to stay in her room to keep the germs mostly contained. 

Because she was positive, it reset the  quarantine period for the rest of us who were negative. I decided to take Tyler in the following day to be tested, as well(we couldn't convince Ashley to be tested). He also came back negative.

Our quarantine period finally ends tomorrow after almost a month. Danny and Alyssa both had fairly mild cases of COVID. Their fevers lasted about 3 days and were usually pretty low. They both lost their sense of smell, though Alyssa said she didn't loose all of hers. They also had chills and weakness. We think Ashley had it, too, because she lost her sense of smell for a couple of weeks. But she didn't have any other symptoms, so we weren't sure enough to send her back to school earlier. 

It's kind of nice to have it behind us. I don't know how I didn't catch it. And for how contagious that they say it is, I'm amazed that the boys didn't ever have any symptoms either. We are just glad to almost be done with it and back to normal again.

Ashley is a "Tweenager"

We celebrated Ashley's 13th birthday in quarantine and on Sunday. We had to be creative to make it exciting for her. the day started with balloons falling into her room. I had limited supplies, so it didn't look as impressive as I had envisioned it, but she still thought it was fun.

For her presents, Danny made her "A Series of Unfortunate Events" themed scavenger hunt. She loves that book series and the Netflix show, so she loved it.

Her cake was also in the same theme as the scavenger hunt. It was appropriate since it was her 13th birthday and there are 13 books.

I had to order supplies off of Amazon, and they barely showed up in time, but she loved the cake so I considered it a success.

We love our Ashley girl. We had to come up with a new term - "tweenager" because Ashley does not want to be considered a teenager. She says that people always say that word like it is a bad thing. I guess we will have to be careful not to let it slip over the next 5 years. Ashley is still a child at heart. She still loves to play imagination games with her friends and her brothers. She LOVES dogs!!! She does not like school, especially math, but she loves being with friends. She is our best eater, always willing to try everything I put on the table. She loves going on family vacations and outings. Mostly, she just loves to have fun. 

On a side note, she got these magnet balls for Christmas and discovered that they stick to certain parts of the wall. She decided to make a fun design for us all to enjoy. It didn't last long because a lot of us stick close to that wall as we come down the stairs and head towards the kitchen. We kept accidentally bumping them and ruining the design.

 

Alyssa turns 15

Alyssa turned 15 on December 25th. She is growing up way too fast for me. This is the first year that we have seen little hints of annoyance that her birthday is on Christmas. We try our best to separate birthday and Christmas, but she is constantly questioned by others about how it is to have a birthday on Christmas. As usual, we did our Christmas stuff in the morning and her birthday stuff in the afternoon and evening. She requested French Beneigh's for her birthday treat instead of a traditional cake. 

And, just like most years, she requested to go out to dinner to the Japanese Steakhouse.

We were going to take a picture, but our chef arrived as we were posing and then we forgot after that. After dinner, she opened her presents while both sets of grandparents watched on facetime. 

I didn't get any pictures of it, but she invited all of her friends over to celebrate on Tuesday, the 29th. We bought the girls dinner at Costa Vida and then the 3 boys joined them a little later for jackbox games. They had a lot of fun.

She was supposed to take her permit test on Jan 4th, but we had to quarantine because of COVID, so we had to reschedule for the 19th. She is so excited to start driving.

 

Wisdom Teeth Removal

Alyssa had her wisdom teeth removed on December 18th. She was really brave for the procedure, especially when they put the IV in(she is really scared of needles). They had a bit of trouble getting the bleeding to stop afterwards, but other than that everything went smoothly. 

Once she was home, we settled her in on the couch in our room so that she could sit comfortably and reclined. The bleeding didn't really stop until about 6 hours after she got home which was a little worrisome, but once it stopped things improved a bit for her. Ice packs were her friend for the following 3-4 days. She kept ice on her cheeks almost constantly. She still got a little puffy, but it wasn't too bad. The worst mark left was a bruise on her cheek.

She got sick of soft foods after about 1 day. We had trouble finding things she could eat(that she actually liked and wanted to eat). She was so happy when she could eat chicken again. I think this last picture was taken about a week after the procedure. She looks almost back to normal.

She did not like having to rinse her mouth with salt water, at first, but I think she got used to it after the first few times. She is glad to have that behind her and she was the first of all of her friends to have it done.
 

Random Kid Pictures

Here is a catch up post. The kids are constantly asking me to take pictures of their "cool" creations. The boys are especially guilty of this. So when I unload my pictures onto the computer, I find that I have a lot of pictures of the kids posing with things, or holding something for us to see. This first picture is an exception. We were taking Alyssa out on the tennis courts until the end of November and then within a week, she broke the strings on both of her rackets. Apparently this is going to be a common occurrence with her since this is the third racket within 1 tennis season that she has had to have restrung.

Ashley had to teach an FHE lesson on Psalm 23(the lord is my shepherd) for a school extra credit assignment. She did a great job planning it all out. Her treat was a marshmallow and pretzel sheep.

Ashley had a Christmas Choir concert in December. Most people watched it online, but I went since she had a solo in one of the songs. They were all socially distanced and most were wearing masks. She did a great job.

Now, here come the random pictures...

A heart shaped chicken nugget.

A lollipop of lollipops

Balanced markers

A magic track car running and balancing on it's back two wheels

I asked Camden to write out the alphabet for practice and he went above and beyond

A design on the Blockus Board

The boys made a bat cave on their bunk bed

A train track creation

The game Suspend - All of the sticks balancing

Camden's Tom Turkey in a Luigi disguise

A cereal man

Another angle on the bat cave

A lego creation

A dino egg bath bomb

A really big chicken tender

A chicken star

Crazy hair day at school

You're welcome for all the randomness

 

Holiday Fun

We had a nice holiday season. We had Thanksgiving here at home and made a last minute invite to Danny's sister's family to join us. It was a small group. We ate, played games, and let the kids enjoy some cousin time. 

Our house elf, Peter, made an appearance this year. He started in the jar to be COVID-safe. They kids were excited to have him around all month. 

One of our neighbors did a traveling Santa on the first Saturday of December. They had a sleigh that they pulled behind a truck and made their way throughout the Jordan Willows subdivision. The kids were excited to see Santa and get a candy cane. 

Santa also made an appearance at our house on Christmas Eve. The kids got to sit on his lap and tell him what they want for Christmas. He also delivered some gifts from Gawbie and Grandpa.

We had the Kilgore's over, again, on Christmas Eve. We had dinner, played games, did a gift exchange, and then had a visit from Santa. We also opened some Christmas gifts while we were together. The little ones sure love Ashley. They all wanted to sit next to her on the couch.

The kids got new jammies on Christmas Eve. We opted for non matching ones this year. 

We slept until 7 on Christmas morning. After finally getting the birthday girl out of bed, we took our usual picture on the stairs and headed downstairs. 

We had a lot of gifts this year. We give our kids a budget for buying gifts for the family. Some of them like to buy multiple gifts with that budget in order to give more. As a result, we ended up with a lot of gifts, some of which were worth a dollar or less. 

We had our usual waffle breakfast in between stockings and gifts. I think we were opening gifts until about 11. And then everyone enjoyed their gifts for the next few days.

Basketball

Tyler and Camden got to play basketball with the city league during the months of November and December. When they started, neither of them even knew how to dribble a ball. They definitely learned a lot during the season. Although, I think their favorite part was being with their friends. 

By the end of the season, Camden was the most aggressive defender on the court and he was even able to make a few shots during the game.

2 of the boys on his team are also in his class at school, so that was also fun for him.

Tyler got to be on the team with his friend, Tanner, who also happens to be in our ward and in his class this year. Tanner's dad was their coach so Danny got to sub as a coach for a couple of Tyler's games. Tyler was the smallest kid on the court and got a bit distracted(like he is with anything he does) at times. But I think he still had fun and we saw some improvement with his skills by the end of the season.

He was definitely best at defending. They had colored wristbands to mark the child from the other team that they would be guarding and he stuck to his person better than anyone else, when he was actually thinking about it.

They did have a 2 week shutdown right before Thanksgiving. As a result, their season ended up being one game less than it was supposed to be. But we are glad that they were able to play as much as they did. And they seemed to have fun with it.

Halloween

I know this is a little late in coming, but we just unloaded some pictures off of our phones and found these Halloween pictures that I never posted. Even in the midst of the pandemic, we let our kids go trick or treating this year(Alyssa just went over to a friends house to hang out). Danny created a social distanced set up to hand out candy and the neighbors loved it.

He stood at the top of the ladder and dropped candy down the blue candy chute.

Tyler was a storm trooper this year. He has developed a new love of Star Wars, thanks to his 2nd grade teacher. 

Camden still loves Super Mario Brothers and Luigi is his favorite character. 

Ashley was a character from her favorite book series, "A Series of Unfortunate Events." She is Violet.

Alyssa dressed up with her friends as crooks.

They had fun trick or treating and we managed to stay healthy in the weeks following so I was glad that we let them go.