Still Going

Julia did test positive for COVID.  That put everyone but Samuel and I back in quarantine.  Since I had been isolating for my own symptoms since before Julia was symptomatic I did not have to quarantine, which was helpful because I'd already missed a week of school.  (In fact, assuming I was a false negative, I'm suspicious I actually gave Julia COVID because I slept in her room with her shortly before I felt sick while Jeremy was isolating from his exposure.)  Samuel did not have to quarantine because he'd just had COVID a week and a half before.  Keeping everyone seperated to keep potential exposure and sickness from happening is really complicated in a family of seven!

Blog Worthy!

 Nicholas turned 8 and we are now a car seat-free household.  Revolutionary.

Good Thing Catholics don't Believe in Fate

  because otherwise I'd be tempting it.

I've always wanted a mother's ring and 8 years after the last baby seemed safe.  The stones are a little out of birth order because I decided the in-order color combo would bother me more than knowing they weren't in order.  It goes Thomas garnet, Samuel peridot, Julia amethyst, Philip aquamarine, Nicholas garnet and I love it.  Thank you Jeremy!

In the Midst of Our Quarantine

 Thomas turned 16!

He has 2 more hours to drive with an instructor and then he can get his license.  Quarantine messed up getting that done the week before his birthday.

We love you Thomas!

Making the Most of It

I found isolating to be delightful.  How often does a working mother of 5 have so few responsibilities?  

My holding-down-the-rest-of-the-fort husband didn't enjoy it so much.  I tried to be sympathetic.

After taking care of responsibility #1, finding subs and sending off plans for the week, I settled back to make the most of my time.

I reread the entire Harry Potter series.  So fun.

Jeremy and the kids brought me up my meals. No cooking for 10 days?  Hasn't happened since my dorm days. That circa 1980 goose tray of my grandma's that was on its way to Goodwill turned out to be super useful. 

We played some socially distanced battleship, and later, after my mom and Lynn sent a lovely care package, Guess Who.

My wonderful sister in law brought me all the papers my students had handed in at school on Thursday.  Good thing I was done with Harry Potter by then.  It was a big pile.  Responsibility #2.  She brought me more on Friday.  They are almost all graded and entered into the grade book.  I thought I had a 6th grade math manual here and I don't.  I am able to find the student book online but not the manual.  I'm not doing all that math, it can wait.

I also read The War that Saved my Life and it's sequel, The War I Finally Won on my Kindle along with The Assignment.  10 books in 11 days (had to finish up the last one the day after I got out) we have to go way back to high school to find the last time I could've managed that.  

Covid is still stupid but I'll give it one point for giving me a 10 day staycation!

Covid Comes to Town

Well, we've had a small turn with Covid and we're all just fine.  It was actually two separate occasions that overlapped by one day.  Which turned out to be good.  But I'm ahead of myself.

Jeremy and his mom rode together to watch Samuel and Thomas wrestle On Friday Jan 8th.  Two days later, Raleen tested positive so Jeremy had to quarantine.  He stayed in our bedroom and I bunked in with Julia.  He tested negative five days later so he could be done with quarantine on the 14th.  

In the meantime two kids on the wrestling team tested positive but they were lighter weights so Samuel and Thomas were not in direct contact with them and did not have to quarantine.  Then the morning of Thursday Jan 14 Sam took his temperature before heading to school and it was a little high.  It didn't go down in the next half hour so he stayed home and we signed him up to get tested.  At school they started to realize more wrestlers were feeling sick and the whole team was put on quarantine until the following Tuesday.  And that night we got Sam's positive results.  That put all of us but Jeremy in quarantine.  Since Jeremy had been isolated all week he was not exposed to Sam.  That was super helpful because he could run to the grocery store and cook.

And just to keep things hopping, I had woken up with a sore throat a couple mornings that week but I often do because of allergies.  By Thursday after school it was clear I wasn't feeling right either.  I started isolating, Sam was isolating and we wanted Thomas away from the three littles because he'd had the highest risk exposure since he'd been with Sam and the other wrestlers.  Complicated.  

Friday there was a big snowstorm so we had a snow day which was nice.  Our test site doesn't test on weekends so I tested Monday morning. Negative. I did a telehealth with my doctor who thought I might have gotten a false negative and advised me to continue isolating until 10 days from when my symptoms started.  That put me back to real life Jan 25.  My symptoms were mild, I seemed to have a different one off the list each day but only one at a time.  Sore throat, headache, body ache, chest congestion, cough.  I feel fine now but it sure would have been nice to get my "get out of quarantine free" card for testing positive!

Tuesday all four of the other kids tested negative, praise Jesus!  They could go back to school on Friday.  

Wednesday Philip threw up twice and slept all morning.  I thought we were back in quarantine for sure.  I contacted our school nurse, who relayed the information to our health district and they said since all he did was throw up, everyone, including the now totally recovered Philip, could return to school. So off the four of them went on Friday.

Sunday morning Julia woke up with a 99.1 temperature and a headache.  We isolated her to her bedroom right away.  Since she's still in the 14 day window from her exposure to Sam she'll need to test again.  But it blizzarded Sunday night so they weren't testing yesterday.  We'll take her today (assuming it's not cancelled again) and are praying she is still negative.  After a couple hours Sunday morning she's been fine, so here's hoping.  And we had snow days yesterday and today so that helps some.  If we get her results tonight we'll know if we're back in quarantine or good.  I'm hoping since I was isolated I won't have to quarantine even if she is positive.  

Samuel is done with his ten days and is feeling fine again too.  He had congestion, headaches and lost his taste and smell.  He's slightly annoyed about the snow days.  He won't have to quarantine if Julia's positive since he is now in the "can't give or get covid" 90 day window.  That will get us almost to the end of the school year!

Stupid Covid.

Happy Birthday Nicholas!

Happy 8th Birthday to our best snuggler, work-avoider, and mess maker!

He chose just to open one present on his actual birthday.

He and Daddy started putting it together, but it's more complicated than Legos and they haven't sat down to finish it yet.

A couple days later he got new pigeon socks from Lynn and Logan and fam.  He'd loved his old ones so much they had huge holes and had to be thrown away.

The next day we did a little birthday party Zoom so the family could see his cake and watch him open presents.  Julia did a great job on the Minion cake!

Here are his guests.

Why did Julia do the cake and why is our family not all in the living room with the birthday boy?  Well that's another post...

 

Sledding

The big kids got invited to go sledding with friends on Devil's Hill.  Turns out it's actually a minimum maintenance road near a friends' house They had a blast. Thomas got an impressive scrape on his forehead from a tree branch that then broke open during his next wrestling match and when the trainer it sprinkled on the blood clotting stuff it got in his eyes and stung but that's a whole different story.

Jeremy and I took the two little boys to sled on the dam.  I was hesitant to go down myself because I'm pretty sure last time we went, years ago, an especially big bump on the very same hill threw my back out a bit. It's a little intimidating.

It had been so long since we last went to a sledding hill Nicholas didn't remember it.  I wish I'd video taped his first run when he yelled, "This.is.AWESOME!!"  This face gives you a little bit of an idea how much he liked it.

Philip had a grand time as well.

Eventually I did do one run and so did Jeremy.

Is this Jeremy or Philip?  Not sure.

I'm pretty sure they give the hill five stars.

Other Things Happen in December too

Building

Spider climbing

Snow moving

Even though the snow was deep, it's pretty!

Son bothering hugging

And my least favorite, unhooking the dryer vent in an attempt to see what's wrong.  

It was the heating element so the vent unhooking turned out to be unnecessary.  Boo.  Thankfully  Jeremy replaced it after we got the new part a couple days later.  We only had to take two loads over to Steve and Raleen's to dry.  (One was in the dryer when it broke and the other was already in the washer.)  Turns out that's four loads at their house but Julia got some good Grandma time.
 

Nothing Bundt Fun

I have to admit that when I opened my gift from Lynn I thought, "Why did I put a Bundt pan on my list?"  Bundt, it was worth it!  Turns out everything looks cooler when baked in a Bundt pan, which in turn, makes the baker look cooler too.  ;)

Breakfast:  Blueberry pancake casserole

Dinner: Tamale round

Dessert:  Old fashioned doughnut cake

All delicious and amazing looking.  Good thing I read "how to grease a Bundt pan," because so far everything I've made came right out.  I'm sure there'll be a disaster eventually, bundt for now I'm happy.

 

But Covid CAN Delay Christmas Celebrations

Jeremy's sister's family had a Covid exposure so our Christmas with his family is postponed for now.  We're looking forward to being with them soon!

Even Covid Can't Stop Christmas from Coming

And that's the beauty of Our Savior's birth!

Christmas afternoon and Dec 26th we enjoyed being with Beth and my parents.  We'd seen my dad a handful of times at football games, and I spent a weekend with Beth visiting my aunt Pat but we hadn't seen my mom since school started so it was good to be with them!

We weren't real dressed up since we went to Mass Christmas Eve but the pictures are still nice.

Lynn and her family stayed at their house so here is the sister's picture.  Maybe Beth's eyes are open in mom's picture?

Everyone enjoyed their gifts.

There was lots of fun after present opening too.  Games were played, Lego sets built and puzzles put together.  Lots of talking, eating and laughing too.  No lutefisk but we aren't Swedish enough to really miss it...just the people we used to eat it with.

Thank you Jesus for being born for us and allowing us to share in your joy!

 

Christmas Morning

We went to Christmas Eve Mass so Christmas morning we had nothing to do but open presents, eat and enjoy being together.   So we did just that.

Nicholas with the tree and gifts is reminiscent of my Grandma Irene.  She always wanted a picture of the youngest kid and all the presents by the tree.  

Santa brought everyone fun things.  The siblings hit it out of the park this year, the highlight being Thomas receiving his own personal mini blender from Nicholas.  Another of my personal favorites was the ornament I found for Nicholas.  Each year I try to find each kid an ornament that has to do with their current activities or interests.  I found Nick a Nutella toast ornament.  He eats slightly toasted Nutella toast for breakfast whenever he can, so it was perfect!  Jeremy and I got nice things too.  My birthday, mother's day, Christmas gift will be arriving in the next couple weeks.  A mother's ring!  My grandma had one and I've always wanted my own.  It felt safe to get one after almost 8 years of no babies.  :)

After a tasty breakfast, where we forgot to eat the special almond bread (no worries, that meant G&G and Beth got to try it too) we headed out to see my parents and Beth!

 

Coming along

Amidst Christmas preparations, things have been moving along in the basement too!  It looks like a real room!  Ralph (of Mr. Ralph fame, he was Philip's favorite person when Philip was 4 and Ralph let him check on the main floor bathroom progress every couple hours while he was working in there) came spent a week mudding the family room and various other cracks around the house.  He also installed the doors in the basement and textured the ceiling down there.  Jeremy and the big boys are priming the walls now.  Turns out Jeremy and I had different color visions so we have some samples to try out.  One is red with a coordinating tan color and one is blue with a coordinating grey.  We'll paint a little of both and then figure out which direction we'll go.  After that is flooring.  Carpet or a wood looking laminate with an area rug?  There will be a path that gets walked by everyone from the steps to the furniture, bedrooms and bathroom.  That makes me feel like laminate and an area rug, but it's a basement.  Carpet would be warmer. And what do we do with the steps if we don't carpet the basement?  I don't think I want laminate steps.  Would it look weird to carpet the steps but not the family room?  Decisions, decisions.  

 

Yummy Preparations

We all know my favorite part of preparing for Christmas celebrations is making treats!  It was a great treat year.  Unfortunately for all of you we didn't share much because, as in everything this year, stupid covid.

This new bread was SCRUMPTIOUS.  It will be made again and again and again.  It's vanilla almond bread.  I don't know a lot about brioche bread but I think this is a variation of that.  This has mascarpone and ground almonds in the filling and then it's rolled and twisted to look beautiful.  It's a little over browned because my new oven browns things so.much.better than any oven I've ever used and I'm still getting used to it but it still tasted great.

The kids helped with various treat making.  Cherry rolls, candy cane topped cookies, dipped pretzels, Chex mix, cinnamon roll sugar cookies, home made Dots pretzels, maraschino cherry, chocolate chip shortbreads and of course, what I hope to be remembered for, white chocolate peppermint fudge.  Thomas, probably purposely evaded the camera when he made delicious spinach artichoke dip.  Oh, and Philip is wrapping in one of the pictures.  I let go of giving pretty, coordinated gifts this year (usually, for the sake of getting the right present to the right Christmas, each celebration gets a different wrap) and had the kids wrap everything that wasn't for them.  Some of the children used interesting methods and maybe a lot of tape and the gifts definitely weren't coordinated but it saved me a late night!

So many delicious carbs.

Among many other, much more important things, Christmas was tasty!