Random Cuteness

Sometimes there are just those random photos on my phone that don't really have an explanation, but they are cute and I want to share them. So here is some random cuteness from this past month.

This last one actually does have an explanation. Alyssa did this hairstyle on herself, but had a hard time making it look nice and even, so she wanted to try it on Ashley. Ashley doesn't normally like to have Alyssa do her hair, but she was willing to let her try this time. It looked super cute, but Ashley did NOT like how it felt on her head. We barely convinced her to keep it in long enough to take this picture. She is more of a ponytail every day kind of girl. :)

Danny's 40th Birthday

Danny celebrated his 40th birthday this past week. The girls had their first in person Young Women's activities in almost a year that night, so he chose to have his birthday dinner on Tuesday the 9th instead of on his birthday. We went to black bear diner. The boys loved their cute beary pancakes.

we had to make the celebration, on his birthday fairly quick and we were glad that Gawbie and Grandpa were able to join us for it (they also have not been in our house for almost a year). We had fun blowing up 40 balloons with reasons why we love daddy. He got to pop all of the balloons and then we taped the reasons to a big poster. Ashley did NOT like the balloon popping, but the rest of us thought it was fun.

He requested angel food cake for his cake and we barely fit all 40 candles on the cake. It was fun trying to get them all lit before too much wax got on the cake.

He also opened presents from each of us, but I didn't get any pictures of that. We love having Danny as our Father/husband. He works hard at his job and plays hard with us and we couldn't ask for a better man in our lives.
 

Brown Snow?

 We had this snow storm hit on the afternoon of Ashley's birthday party that was unlike any other we had ever seen in all of our years of living in a cold climate. It started off normal enough, but after about an hour, I noticed that my windshield would not stay clean. I thought it was weird that so much of the filth from the road was getting kicked up onto my car. But after awhile, I realized that the dirt was in the snow that was falling from the sky. It was disgusting. And it happened to fall on an afternoon when we had all of our cars out of the garage, so they all ended up looking like this.

Not only did it leave the cars looking like we had all gone off roading, but the driveways, sidewalks, streets, houses, and anything else outside also looked like this. Our weather was fairly mild the following day, so instead of waiting in the hour long carwash lines, we hooked up our hose to the house and washed the cars that we drive the most. It was warm, but not warm enough to wash all of our cars. After researching the cause, we learned that high winds to the north of us kicked up a lot of dirt into the air which then stuck to the falling snow and dirtied the world around us. Super annoying!!

This is what the snow looked like after being collected and letting it melt in a cup. Really gross.

Ashley's Birthday Party

This year was Ashley's turn for a birthday party. Because we were in quarantine, she was unable to have it on the weekend of her birthday as we originally planned. She wanted to invite 10 of her favorite friends, but because they came from both the neighborhood and her school, we talked her into only doing school friends. She decided to take them to this place called Labyrinth. It has this main hallway, and off of the hallway, there are a bunch of different doors that lead to rooms. Each room has a different theme with different challenges. Some of them are physical challenges, some of them are mental challenges, and some are a combination of both. If you succeed in the first room to complete the challenge, then it unlocks a door so you can move on to a second room. Most of them had three rooms total. They were there for a couple of hours and only finished all of the rooms in the series 2 or 3 times. There were probably 15-20 different start rooms. 

After Labyrinth, we stopped at a bakery and got them each their treat of choice. Then Ashley opened some gifts and we took them all home. They had a lot of fun and asked if we could do it again the following week.

 

Lula Update

Lula was getting pretty scruffy in January. Since we were in quarantine, we couldn't take her into a groomer. I was able to find a mobile groomer that could fit her in on the last Wednesday in January. We were finally out of quarantine that day, but it was so much nicer having the groomer come to us. And the couple that groomed her were super nice, too. They struggled a bit on her underside because she was a week away from having another litter of puppies.

She looked so much better after the shave.

The following week, on Thursday, Lula started acting funny just after lunch time. For the last 2 litters, the breeders had happened to see her a day before she had her puppies. She was due to have this litter on Friday or Saturday, so they hadn't checked on her yet. When she started whimpering and I noticed some wet on her pillow, I called them. They came over and checked her temperature and took her to their house. She had the first puppy within a couple of hours. This ended up being a smaller litter, only 4 puppies. The last one was born around 4:30pm. We let all of our kids see them born this time.

I haven't gotten a picture of her with all four puppies yet. This is shortly before the last one was born. 
 

Ashley in the School Spelling Bee

A couple of days after Ashley returned back to school from quarantine, she had the opportunity to participate in her school spelling bee. They were given a pretest and narrowed the contestants down to the top 24 spellers. She made it to about the 4th round spelling "humor," "nutrients," "indecipherable," and then getting out on the word "dissuade." She spelled it with just 1 "s." She did really well and we are happy that she was able to participate(only possible because she was able to take the pretest through technology), and that her grandparents in California were able to watch via technology.

 

Hula Hooping

While we were in quarantine, Tyler surprised me with his hula hooping skills. I had no idea that he knew how to hula hoop. It reminds me a lot of Alyssa at his age. She can keep a hula hoop going for days, if she didn't get bored with it.

 

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.