The Rona

Guess who's dumb and went and got the Rona? 

I had it at the beginning of January. I was lucky - it was pretty mild. Body aches the first couple of days, then just sooooooooo tired. I lost my sense of smell about a week in. Had nausea on day 9, which was weird. But it was all pretty mild. 

I think Cole might've gotten it, too. 

This homie had a fever one night and threw up early the next morning, but then he felt fine. 

Caulder got really super tired one night, went to bed at 7, slept til midnight, then couldn't go back to bed, so he listened to the 4th Way of Kings book on Audible for the rest of the night. He felt fine the next morning, except his inner monologue sounded exactly like the narrator from the book. 

So I'm not sure if they had a mini version of Corona, or something else, but all in all it was pretty minimal for us.

We still had lots of people bring us dinner and treats, so Rand keeps asking if I can get sick again so he can miss school and people will bring us food. 

I'm not sure if this actually happened, or if it was a fever dream that I managed to somehow capture on camera. 

 Either way, I'm glad we got it over with and no one got very sick. 

We Will Pay for This

There was no crying. No loud mewing or scratching at the door. 

Just a single paw sticking out from underneath to let us know we'd accidentally trapped her in the hall closet. 

And a promise that one day, she'll have her revenge. 

 

It's Happening

 You guys, I'm not ready for this. 

Christmas Break

Over the holiday break we spent lots of time at Yaya's visiting with Aunt Darby. I got zero pictures of her. Maybe she's a vampire and you can't see her reflection?

Rand and Benny spent lots of time wrestling and playing pretend. 

Daisy is still the cutest dang thing on the planet. 

Cole and I hiked up the Santaquin Canyon road in a snow storm one morning so I could try out the new nano spokes Santa brought me. The canyon still isn't open, and we've missed it so much. It's so pretty.

The only way to hike when you've got wind and snow blowing in your face. 

I think the mutt really enjoyed it. The cold didn't slow him down at all. 

We also played the pie game, which Parker and Kenzie gave us. Letting Tukk and Rand play together was not my best choice. Rand almost murdered his brother. Again.

And mostly we just sat around being lazy. We'd planned on taking a trip to the Grand Canyon because Cole and I were both off work the whole week between Christmas and New Year, but we kinda didn't feel like it. We hardly ever just stay home with nothing to do, so it was nice. 

We went to a movie for the first time in a whole year and had almost the entire theater to ourselves. We took the kids out to dinner for the first time in months and months. And we watched a LOT of TV and movies. 

It was nice to just spend a week vegging out together!
 

Christmas Day

Christmas was SO MUCH FUN this year. Rand was super excited about everything. He woke up early every morning to find the Elf on the Shelf. He tried to sneak a couple of presents open when I wasn't looking. He loved the video Santa sent him and was so relieved to find out he was on the good list. It was magical. 

The only hiccup happened when we got our Santa letters back from the North Pole. We send our letters to Santa via the Mona post office, because my mom has connections, but one of her elves put Caulder on the naughty list. The letter told him he'd been naughty, and he knew what he'd done. It also told him that to get off the naughty list he needed to leave Santa milk and cookies, and by milk, he meant wine. And by cookies, he meant, well, cookies.

Caulder thought it was hilarious. Rander was seriously traumatized. He couldn't understand how someone as nice and perfect and heroic as his Cauldy is could EVER be on the naughty list. I mean, if Caulder can't make the nice list, what hope do the rest of us have???

I tried to convince him that Santa must be joking. He said, "Yeah, but Mom, sometimes Santa doesn't joke."

He worried about it for weeks. On Christmas morning, the first thing he said when he woke up was, "Do you think Cauldy got any presents?"

He loooooooves his Cauldy. He was so relieved when there were actually presents under the tree with Caulder's name on them.

Caulder wanted to start a new tradition On Christmas Eve (I think it's Danish?), so before we went to bed everyone opened a book and some chocolate. The tradition is that you can lie in bed reading your book, eating your chocolate, and waiting for Santa to come.

We left cookies, milk, and blueberries for Santa, with carrots for the reindeer.

Sometime in the night, the big man made his appearance and left all this:

Tukk was the first one up. I left my watch in his room and told him he couldn't wake everyone up until at least 7:00 am, so at 7:01 he ran into our room doing the dinosaur dance of joy and about to explode with excitement.

I had to go wake Caulder and Rander up, but we all converged into the living room and started opening gifts. 

Rand loved his toy vending machine and the giant art kit he got. 

Tukk's big gift was an electric scooter.

And not to worry – Caulder got his bookshelf.

My favorite quote from Christmas was during the "Caulder's on the naughty list" angst, when Tukk said, "He's so nice there's no way he's on the naughty list. But he asked for a bookshelf, so he might be on the boring list."

I love the aftermath pictures. They're my favorite part of Christmas.

We even got a surprise visit from this guy! We haven't seen him since October, since we're all trying to keep him from getting Corona. It was so fun to have him show up on our doorstep and ask if we had any food, because he was hungry. 

He spent 30 minutes describing his morning poop ritual in detail and had us all rolling. His final words of advice: "I've decided you really shouldn't live past 70. I don't recommend it."

He is still sharp as a tack and HILARIOUS. 

We spent the day playing with all the new toys, drawing, and putting Caulder's shelf together.

I think it was our best Christmas ever. 

A Very Corona Christmas

Corona cases are still out of control in Utah, so we were excited when we heard we'd be able to go see Caulder's choir group perform IN PERSON.

Each student could only bring 2 people, and we were assigned seats so we could social distance, but it was still so fun to see him perform again.

Cole was working, so Yaya came for the big event.

Rand got a cute new scarf from his kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Larsen.

It was perfect for snow angel making.

These two seem to have declared a truce during the holidays. Vin spent the entire month lying under the tree. Soos stayed nearby, either jealous of her new spot or watching to make sure she didn't try climbing the tree.

And we spent a night driving around looking at Christmas lights. We love the lights on Salem Pond.