You would think that during quarantine, while we are all stuck in our houses that you could not possibly get a concussion. But little miss managed to do just that. Relaxing in the hammock reading a book, no less.

Yesterday Liberty sat up in the hammock and it flipped over depositing her on her head. It hurt a LOT. There’s not much grass left under that spot. She felt sleepy and tired the rest of the day and had a horrible neck ache and head ache. This morning she woke-up still in pain and was super sensitive to light so the Dr. wanted us to bring her in.

It was eery being at the pediatrician when it was empty. They wouldn’t let us in till they’d checked our temperatures. Sure enough the Dr. agreed it was a concussion. She sent us for an X ray to make sure her neck was ok.

Nothing is broken so we just get to sit around and do nothing and wait for her head to heal. No screens, no reading, no schoolwork. We set her up to listen to audio books so at least she has that. She is already hooked on 39 Clues which is a forever long series thank goodness.

Luckily Grandpa came by with a treat for her and she perked up a bit.

Levi has always had a long list of things he wants to do or learn. He is searching for the one thing he can be really good at. Thanks to Covid 19 he has had plenty of time to learn and practice many new skills. Note, it will look like all these things happened on the same day because Levi is wearing the same things in almost all the pictures. But they didn’t. Levi just likes his tan pants the best and he wears that sweatshirt EVERY SINGLE DAY. If you don’t believe me, you can watch as the grass in each picture is a little greener. lol.

Levi set up his own exercise program and gets up each morning to work out, read his scriptures and shower all without any reminders or nagging from me. He has spent a lot of time learning about World War II, he taught himself Morse code and he decided to clean out our garden boxes so he can plant a garden. He’s been reading up on how to grow tomatoes and carrots. Levi got Liberty excited too and she is going to plant strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. I don’t know exactly when we will be able to go buy said plants for planting however, as the lines outside Home Depot wrap around the building due to crowd control inside the store, and the parking lot is full all the way to the back. Thanks to Covid 19 the only thing people can do right now is work on their yards and houses. That’s at least one company that is doing well.

Levi’s garden is admittedly science, but he has also learned all kinds of disgusting details about any number of insects and animals that he likes to share at the dinner table to gross out his mother. Next time you are with him you should ask him about why ants are so cool.

We first homeschooled Reagan and Cade when they were tiny. We took a break for several years and then tried again with all three boys and a little Liberty. Now, thanks to the Coronavirus, we get to homeschool for a 3rd time. I will admit I went through a process to get to OK with this idea.
Phase 1: Mad at the ridiculous school district that wouldn’t offer any remote learning because some kids didn’t have access to the internet.
Phase 2: Happy that I had two months of school left in which to teach the kids the way I always wanted to, but couldn’t because I felt too responsible for them actually learning stuff. In other words, we could have fun with this! They could learn what they wanted to learn, “feed the curiosity” as our friend David Weiss used to say. I could do what I wanted with them.
By the time the school district decided they wouldn’t get sued after all, and that they would indeed be sending out remote learning plans I was in…
Phase 3: Mad the school district was going to send my kids a bunch of work to do because I had a better plan. Once I had that plan I couldn’t wait for spring break to be over so we could get started.

Before I get into a report on homeschool I wanted to mention something fun we did during spring break. I decided to have a reading contest to make things more exciting and to get my older boys to read, something, sadly, they very rarely do now days. I offered a big money prize for the kid who read the most books. The older boys never even tried, but Levi and Liberty read literally the entire two weeks of spring break. They would keep tabs on how much the other one had read and would skip computer time just so they could get ahead, they got up early in the morning to read and would only eat if they were sure the other one wasn’t reading. It was AWESOME! In the end, it was a tie so they decided to split the 1st and 2nd prize.

We have been homeschooling for three weeks now and it’s going great! We aren’t having the same problems many, if not most families are having because we’ve done this before. The kids jumped right back into homeschooling. We have a routine and structure and a purpose. Now that the schools are finally sending stuff, we’ll add that in where it works, but I’m letting the kids help decide what of that they want to do. They have to do one hour each in the following subjects: Math, Reading, Science, History and Outside time. They also get to do an hour of free learning whatever they want. On “Fun Friday” the kids get to learn whatever they would like in the morning and then I get to choose a fun activity for the afternoon. We’ve done Mom’s favorite movies the last two weeks. (It takes great fortitude of spirit to listen to your kids make fun of your favorite childhood movies) Today was a Harry Potter read-a-thon. I’ve been reading Harry Potter 5 to Liberty (and Levi, though he’s already read them) and we are nearing the end so we read all afternoon under the cherry tree. Here was our view-quarantine isn’t so bad after all, I mean, if you gotta be stuck at home wouldn’t you want to be stuck under this?

Here’s what Liberty has been up to:

She’s the dream homeschool child. She wants to do everything, learn everything and is thrilled to be home. Among other things she decided to learn all the major bones in the body and then made a labeled skeleton.

Now she’s moved onto major body organs.

Liberty loves history so we started reading the Story of the World series I used long ago with the boys. She wants to do ALL the coloring pages I had to force the boys to do and she wants to do every activity especially if it involves a craft. We started with Ancient history and it includes ancient Jewish history, so here she is making Joseph’s amazing technicolor dream coat.

Libby was sad she was going to miss the Oregon Trail simulation that her class was going to do and so I asked her teacher for the materials so we could do it as a family. At dinner every night we circle up the wagon trains and make decisions that determine our fate on the OR trail. Her sweet teacher also sent a historical fiction book about the Oregon Trail that she knew Liberty would like. She finished it in just a few days and then decided she wanted to do a book report on it. This is obviously not as detailed as her teacher would require, but she was very proud of it.

I still had a 6/7 grade math program around, ya know, just in case a global pandemic required homeschooling again, and Liberty begged to do it once she got fed up with Kahn Academy. She thinks she’s super cool doing math a few grades higher than her own. She has her dad’s math genes so we’ll see how far she can get.

Stay tuned for Levi’s adventures in knife throwing, the bow and arrow, dart board, sling shot, card tricks, gardening, obstacle course making, WW II and Morse Code.

Our first week of “Virus Vacation” was not much different than normal. We let the kids play in the culdesac with a few neighbor kids and told them to steer clear of older people. We let Reagan get together with friends if they were outside. They were ingenious enough to figure out how to play video games together outside using a sheet and duct tape. He kept going to work at the movie theater and we kept going to the store when we needed to. What was different was my mindset about germs. Every surface had become a threat. The grocery cart handle, the amazon box on my porch, the kitchen counter, EVERY door knob. How much should I clean everything? How often? I knew I would drive myself crazy if I tried to keep up with constant cleaning of every surface, so I didn’t try, but I could relate to OCD people in a way I never had before. I was after the kids to wash their hands every time they walked in the door from being out. I used hand sanitizer every time I got back in my car. I tried for maybe one hour not to touch my face, but gave up on that one pretty quickly. There was an underlying fear about the most basic things sitting on my counter that I have never experienced. How could we live like this indefinitely? We’d all go crazy. Even the people outside our home like the grocery clerk, or the neighbor kid were potential carriers and therefore a threat to some extent. Then the President/CDC mandated social distancing and no groups larger than 10 and our email inboxes began to fill up with endless cancellations. Recitals, choir festivals, concerts, Prom and SAT.’s Cancelled. Doctor and dentist appointments, soccer and track season. All Canceled. Restaurants started closing, then movie theaters (including Reagan’s), then playgrounds and YMCA’s. All Closed.

By the 2nd week of spring break (the real spring break) we had the first case of community spread and the governor hinted at an important announcement the next day. We knew that probably meant a full shut down so Rock went out that night to grab a few last things at the grocery store before there was another run on the stores. It was 9:50 and he had his cart half full of the items from my list when they suddenly announced they were closing in 10 minutes an hour earlier than normal. He had to check out before he could get everything. He then tried two other stores. Both closed. That’s how we learned stores were closing early at night so they could sanitize and opening early just for Seniors. Sure enough, the governor gave the Stay Home order the next day, March 25th. We could go out to get groceries and necessities and to exercise but only with members of our own household. Not a quarantine, but that’s what a lot of people were and still are calling it. A bummer for sure, but at least I wouldn’t have to be quite so OCD about the germs and the cleaning.

Reagan watched the governor’s Stay Home press conference with me that day and I was grateful he was hearing the bad news straight from the governor. I knew this was going to be hardest for my teenagers. It meant no friends. It meant the one who had just barely gotten his license wouldn’t get to use it much, and the other who was getting ready to take drivers ed, wouldn’t be learning to drive anytime soon. Both boys had just recently had their first kisses and would not be allowed to see them again for who knows how long, at least not in person. Texting, usually, the bane of a parent’s existence, was now going to be a life line. But the littles would feel it too. There was a knock on the door one day after all this started and Libby opened it to find this little note from her friend.

This same little friend had a birthday last week but couldn’t have a party. So we ordered a gift from Target, used the curb side pickup service and took it to her. Here is a picture of Libby and another friend delivering presents 6 feet away.

So now we do zoom playdates, zoom birthday parties, zoom church even! Zoom zoom zoom!

All the restaurants in town closed their dining rooms but are still doing take out, so to keep them all in business we are eating take out at least twice a week-once for date night and once during the week with the kids. The kids love it. And I won’t lie, I do too.

The state school board extended school closures through at least April 20th, though I’m betting it will be closed the rest of the year, so the Hymas Homeschool is back in business. Stay tuned for all the awesome learning we’ve been doing even in the middle of all this Covid Craziness.

“Beware the Ides of March”, Shakespeare told us. I think of Caesar and his ominous warning every March 15th. This year we actually had something to beware of. Like a slow motion train wreck headed right for us we watched as the coronovirus consumed one country after another and then one state after another. We now find ourselves in circumstances unheard of in modern times and I wanted to document the experience.

On Monday, March 9th, I decided to beef up our three month supply, just in case. I started at Costco after hearing the horror stories from other states. I arrived twenty minutes after it opened and made a bee line for the toilet paper, trying to walk nonchalantly as quickly as I could to the back of the store. Twenty-two minutes after they opened I got one of the last ten cases of toilet paper. I spent the rest of that day shopping. Every store was out of cleaning wipes, hand sanitizer and bleach but the stores weren’t too crowded and the food was still fully stocked on all the shelves. By the end of that week the stores were crowded with people, but wiped clean of everything except candy and goodies and I was sending tampons to a sister in another state because she couldn’t find any.

On March 12th, church was canceled indefinitely. No large gatherings. From there it was like watching and listening to a massive humming machine shut down one circuit breaker at a time. You could almost hear the power down sound. Colleges-SHUT DOWN, graduations-SHUT DOWN, Broadway-SHUT DOWN, Disneyland-SHUT DOWN, Major league sports-SHUT DOWN, Missions, Temples and schools SHUT DOWN. Every hour there was some aspect of life in America, my life in America, shutting down. I have never been a news junky, but I could not tear myself away from the news, addictively checking every hour for the latest updates, closures, projections and numbers. Always numbers. We watched as the number of deaths climbed around the world and the number of cases rose in all the states around us. Idaho waited with baited breath for the first case. That’s when the time warp started. Where one day seemed like three, and I didn’t know if it was Monday or Thursday. The speed with which everything changed left me feeling dizzy, unable to keep up.

Ironically enough, the first Covid case was confirmed in Idaho on Friday the 13th. We took my parents to dinner for my mom’s birthday the next night . We were all a little nervous. Should we even be out at a restaurant? What if the cook had it and didn’t know? Did they clean our table enough? Was that someone coughing over there in that booth? Things I never would have even thought of before. We talked as casually as we could, the gloved waiters were polite and friendly, but there was an air of tension. We told ourselves it was a big birthday and we needed to celebrate. We told ourselves we’d be good social distancers from then on. Social Distancing. Two words I’ve never seen pushed together, to mean we have to stay apart.

The Ides of March dawned with one question; when would Idaho start shutting down. It wasn’t really a matter of if, but when. We saw our future as we looked at all the states around us. I tried three times unsuccessfully to do something church related with the kids that day as it was our first day of “no church” church. They just wouldn’t settle. They were wound up, I was wound up, even the weather was wound up with a thunderstorm. We were all waiting to hear whether, now that coronavirus was in Idaho, they would close the schools. Our high school was completely out of hand sanitizer and the very idea of trying to keep an elementary school classroom sanitized made the teacher in me shudder. I wouldn’t wish that impossible task on anyone. Our school district couldn’t make up it’s mind, however, and first it was-“Schools will stay open.” and then, “Just kidding, schools will be closed!” Apparently parents and staff had risen up in rebellion, so the district had no choice. lol. They claimed it would just be until after spring break, but we knew better. Schools around the nation were already closing till May. So just like that, our kids were out of school for two weeks, possibly more. And for some reason, just that much information made us all feel better. The kids were thrilled of course. And I was grateful to have them home where they would have less of a chance of being little spreaders. Two weeks of spring break at home; we could do that. We hadn’t planned to go to Disneyland or anywhere exciting, so no cramp in our style, there. Although, when I told Rock they had canceled church he said, “Woohoo! Let’s go to Disneyland! Oh wait…”

We had lots of space, food and toilet paper. Now all we could do was wait. Wait for Covid 19 to make its way through our state, watch as it wreaked havoc on our country and economy, and wonder if it would wreak havoc on our lives.

Stay tuned for more Covid Craziness at our house.

I know I have a picture somewhere of him in this car the day he came home from the hospital but I can’t find it. So this one, taken the same day, will have to do.

In other news, we had a death in the family. Our first pet died last week. The kids had a funeral for Snickers the Hamster, complete with gravestone, pallbearers and mourners.

And last in the news, Cade is now a Broadway star. Actually he’s in the Ensemble in the high school musical, Cinderella, and only has one line, but he’s really great on stage.

The drama this year, that preceded Christmas morning, was pretty intense. This was the first year that everyone had their own room. In the past, the boys have slept together on Christmas Eve and opened their stockings together VERY early in the morning while Liberty, Rock and I sleep till the very late hour of 7:00 AM. But this year they all wanted to try something new or at least a variation of some kind. A large portion of Christmas eve was spent arguing about where to sleep and how to open stockings and where to open them and who to open them with. It was quite ridiculous, and you’d have thought these were life and death decisions based on our dinner conversation that night. After much lengthy discussion, some slamming of doors and some hurt feelings, we managed to find a solution they could all agree on. It was a little different and a little the same and Rock and I got to sleep till 7:00 so that’s all I cared about.

It was fun this year to see the kids excitement at giving gifts they paid for and picked out completely on their own. I didn’t get all of them, but here’s a few.

We had a relaxing day playing with toys, sleeping and eating lots of junk food. Levi and Cade worked on their amazing 3D puzzles. Cade finished his on Christmas and Levi a few days later. Here are the finished products. They actually work!

That evening we joined the rest of my family for Christmas dinner. Thank you to all who gave us gifts and made our Christmas Merry.

Last but not least, here is a sweet video from Christmas Eve. Levi playing Silent Night for the first time on the guitar.

Christ the Savior is Born!

On Christmas Eve we watched A Christmas Story with the kids. I have not seen it in many many years and I laughed so hard I cried. It was absolutely hilarious and made funnier by the shock and horror my kids experienced while watching it. Shock at seeing me laugh so hard I cried, and horror at the “child abuse” they saw before them on the screen. They laughed nervously at the bullying and the soap mouth washing and the beating that Ralphie’s friend gets for teaching him a bad word, oh, and Santa shoving kids down a slide. It was disturbing to them to watch things they have no reference for because in their world such things would never happen. We coddle kids so much today that all that stuff has been done away with-and for good reasons, don’t get me wrong. I just think that our society does way too much for it’s children and they are no longer tough or resilient because they don’t have to experience anything hard. That movie portrayed a world my kids could not even relate to. Watching their disturbance was disturbing for me. But oh how my sides ached from laughter when Flick sticks his tongue on the pole. Never. gets. old.

Speaking of hard things, Reagan got a little taste of hard when he was scheduled to work on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Luckily he was finished on Christmas Eve in time for dinner, which by sheer luck, we managed to get this year. We usually do pizza and eggnog on Christmas Eve but this year we decided to do what the rest of my family does and order Happy Terriyaki. We planned to go pick it up about 5, but Alli informed us just in the nick of time that they closed at 4:00 on Christmas Eve. Rock immediately ordered online and was the last order in before they closed up shop EARLY. My parents and sisters were left high and dry with no Happy Terriyaki dinner on Christmas Eve…….so they ended up going to a Chinese restaurant where the workers sang them Christmas carols, “Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra.” Just kidding.

No Happy Terriyaki may not seem like a big deal, but my parents and sisters feel about Chicken Terriyaki much like Ralphie’s Dad did about turkey in A Christmas Story. They are still new to Boise and it isn’t quite home yet for them, so Happy Terriyaki, something they know and love from Washington, is an important part of Christmas Eve. The Wesels were in for a little Christmas miracle of their own. Lucky for them, we had also watched A Christmas Carol that day and I was feeling the Christmas Spirit, (which spirit- past, present or future, I couldn’t say) so we shared our Terriyaki with them. They typically eat about 1 dinner apiece and they had to share two dinners for 4 of them, but we figured maybe the magic of the manora light or the miracle of the loaves and fishes would kick in on their behalf.

We enjoyed our Happy Terriyaki, eggnog, and Nativity reading-performed now days by the Toys From Libby’s Bedroom theater group.

Levi was particularly wild this year and that made for much craziness the rest of the evening. Usually they will at least hold still for a picture after they open their Christmas Eve gifts, but not this year. I thought this was supposed to get better as they get older.

I must be getting old because I didn’t even get a picture of the reading of “The Night Before Christmas” So we will just put in an old one, back when they were all small and cute.

Liberty’s school had a Christmas sweater day and since I am too cheap to buy her a Christmas sweater she made herself one.

Baking Day!

This is only one kind of cookie we made that day. By the time we were done we had made gingersnap cookies, almond bark cookies, peppermint bark, and chocolate dipped pretzels.

Spreading Christmas Cheer

Christmas Sunday

You can’t see the boys because they are too cool to sit at daddy’s feet anymore, but they are there and they still love to listen to Rock’s rendition.

Reagan is moving up in the world. He just started a new job at a local movie theater. He gets free tickets, lots more hours and he got to see Star Wars before opening night at a midnight showing. He is really enjoying it so far.