THE END.

 It’s time to wrap this party up.

It’s been nearly two years since my last entry. Time has certainly gotten away from me. I absolutely regret not sitting down to record the last two years. It’s been an insane time.

I started this blog when I was pregnant with Ben almost 15 years ago. It was the thing to do, everyone was doing it. Now in 2022, things are mostly recorded on instagram in little snack bites. We have two legal adult children now, and only two left in highschool, so I like to think I recorded some of the best days of our lives, at least the ones we got to share daily with our kids.

Kayte is entering sophomore year at NSA, she is signed to teach Latin to fourth graders at Logos, and to coach the JH cross country team. She is working on getting a school newspaper going, as well as a girls basketball team. She is unstoppable and endlessly ambitious. Will has signed to play basketball for Multnomah University in a story so clearly written by God that I will never get tired of telling it. He’s working 50+ hours a week while trying to squeeze in time in the gym lifting and shooting. He’s dunking now, and he just bought an AR with his grad money. Sara is running every day to get ready for her junior year of cross country where she hopes to defend her district championship, the team district championship, and the team state championship. Ben is daily practicing for his role as Kurt in the upcoming varsity musical of the Sound of Music and doing a little running on the side. Sara and Ben are filling in on the chores that used to be divided among all four.

In the last week, we had one of the most historically momentous days of my entire life. Roe v Wade was overturned and power was given back to the states by the Supreme Court. In my ‘oh ye of little faith’ life, I never did believe I would see the day, even after the decision was leaked months in advance. We were all absolutely floored that things went ahead. God has not forgotten us. He sees us. He remembers us and he fights for us. I’ve never seen it on such a grand scale with my own eyes before.

No one knows how this is going to play out in the days and months to come. There has been no rioting since the decision, although several pregnancy crisis centers and Catholic Churches around the country have been attacked in the last couple of months. I was thinking today how the Catholic Church has really held the line on the right to life in a way that even the evangelical churches have refused to do. 

The Supreme Court has also ruled in favor of the right to carry arms and the right to pray at a public school event. So you can imagine how livid half the country is right now for restoring rights to the people, while taking away their right to kill (in some states of course).

That is the news of the day.

Covid begins...

So. The country pretty much freaked out. New York got sick so the entire country had to shut down. Literally that's what happened. It was called flattening the curve. The country was not prepared for hundreds of thousands of sick people needing ventilators. So we were all gonna hunker down for a week or two so that we could get ready. Trump sent a military ship outfitted as a hospital to New York. A field hospital went up in Seattle. Anything that manufactured anything started making ventilators and liquor companies started making hand sanitizer (this turned out to not be their wheelhouse, yet they kept rolling at it and we were introduced to the world's most disgusting hand sanitizers. This wasn't just the liquor companies. But I blame them because I don't know who is responsible for all that nasty, gritty, smelly stuff. Yuck.) People started hoarding. No TP was to be found. I'd recently bought a ton of TP cause I do that. But at some point, I actually had to start paying attention cause you couldn't find TP anywhere. Rosauers had it at 6 AM on a Tuesday morning, sometimes. I started just hitting the TP aisle first thing every time I went to Winco. We never had to resort to getting leaves off a tree, but we weren't too far ahead of that. Clorox wipes are still not on the shelves regularly (6 months later) so even now in September I'm headed to that aisle first.

Anyway. Our two week spring break stretched in to 3, and the board got together, reviewed CDC guidelines and recommendations and started to make a plan to get kids back in the classroom. Well, the mayor caught wind of the plan and had a basic freak out. He shut the school down and then he started shutting down all the stores in town. Police went door to door and shut it all down. That last evening in the gym I ran five miles on the treadmill cause I was just so sad and I didn't want to get off. Who knew when we'd be back again. Small businesses in town were going to take a major hit. BUT, liquor stores, Walmart, all the big boxes got to stay open, and Floyd's pot shot on the border. All deemed essential. Gyms, where we build immunities among other things: shut down. Churches: shut down. Healthy people: quarantined. And one case popped up every week or two. ONE CASE at a time. 5 total recorded in Latah in March, April, May. One case. Some businesses would not survive.

Update: Tuesday, June 28, 2022 11:40 AM Came on here to tie a bow on this blog and send it to the printers for the last time. It’s a time capsule now. Goodness gracious, it’s hard to really remember how stunning everything was in 2020.
 

Ending spring break in Boise

Ok, so we were super-bummed that we did not get to go to Mock Trial this year, but we were already set on coming down and visiting our cousins so we decided to go for it anyway! We found out the kid's school was canceled for covid (that was one good outcome!) so they'd be free to hang out with us!

We brought Jemma!

Love this road!

First stop with the cousins was a field trip to Costco, cause apparently the first thing everyone did when things started getting canceled is buy the store out of toilet paper. We got in a huge line of socially distanced people waiting to get inside, and took pictures like we were at a museum. We got there right as the doors were supposed to open but they were already out of all this stuff:

Took a hike up this thing, but I cannot remember what it is called. Lots of people getting out and getting fresh air.

Then we went to MOD and they wouldn't let us sit outside, so we took our pizza to a park: open with lots of people. That would change by the end of the week. A couple of weeks after this, a mom led a charge and invited her friends to bring their kids to the park here and they took off all the caution tape so their kids could play. The woman got arrested (!!) in front of her kids and hauled out of the park. Later the arresting cop was harrassed and the mom apologized, because she really likes cops she just thought the park law was stupid. Which it was. 2020 had a lot more in store for cops. Stay tuned.

Kayte conducted her science experiment with skittles. A science experiment that would never be completed because of covid and the mass changing of our last quarter education. Another silver lining you could say.

It was a wonderful break with cousins, and we had such a relaxing time. We headed back to find out what our new reality would look like.

 

Where were you when...?

I can't look at these pictures without thinking of the before and after. We were really looking forward to this two week spring break. It had been insane really since August with sportsing, and basketball had finally wrapped up and we were free. All of our kids in a small cabin in Leavenworth. So ready to get out of town and be secluded with the fam, with nowhere to go, and nothing pressing to do.

When we left Moscow that day, we didn't know it would be radically different when we came back, and that well, it might never be quite the same. The story is still rolling.

The cabin was so nice! Right on the river with a gorgeous back yard. It was so sunny and nice when we got there.

Will was dying to make Heather's shrimp dish...a little labor intensive, but so good!

Lots of time to play games.

Will spent 75% of his time in front of the fridge: still growing!

Family Feud made its debut at the cabin. Sometimes we are very good at it. Other times we are shockingly bad.

We had a very lazy day planned for the first day there. The guys were watching some college basketball, end of season championship games that were leading up to selection Sunday. We were looking forward to seeing some games. Then I got a text from Kelly saying that Mock Trial nationals had just been canceled due to Covid, what? Wasn't covid some kind of bad flu? And as we were watching TV, games started getting canceled and people started flipping out, calling the coaches 'tone-deaf' for wanting healthy college athletes to finish playing games that they'd already been warming up for, and with teams with whom they had already had plenty of community contact. And Kelly texted me again. Mock Trial state had also been canceled. Canceled! The government buildings didn't want to host healthy kids for healthy competition. The news just spiraled from there. Sheer panic.

We turned off the TV and headed for town. Some fresh air, beautiful scenery, and some brats and beer.

Love these kids.

I laugh at this now, the kids playing on this playground like kindergarteners. In a week or two, these parks would all be roped off and the kids wouldn't be allowed back on them for months.

Such a gorgeous spring town.

We ate OUTSIDE! Love the first al fresco of the year. So beautiful.

The cheese shop!

Ice cream with just Kayte.

S'mores by the fire.

Ok, so that night it snowed. And snowed and snowed. It was mid-March and they had one of their biggest March storms ever. It snowed for a solid 24 hours.

So we went skiing!

The powder was absolutely ridiculous. Normally groomed runs were just like marshmallow cream. A beautiful day on the mountain.

And all that snow came just in time for our next advenuture: snow-mobiling!

Such a fun, beautiful day! Crazy amount of adventures: a tree blocking the path, solid impassable ice, and then one of the ladies on the tour got violently sick. By the end of the tour, it was just the six of us and one guide. And we revved it up and hit the gas.

Some of us flew a little faster than the others. 

And some suits were snazzy than others, haha.

Such a beautiful experience! I love being up in the mountains with all that snow. And then we headed back to Moscow and reality. I only wish I'd taken the TP from the rental haha. Who knew?