2020 is Kicking our Trash

So, 2020 has been a rough year.  I know it's been rough all around (Australia wildfires, worldwide pandemic, racial riots, etc), but I feel like it's presented a very specific set of trials for my little family.  This may sound like a whining post.  Maybe it is. 

It all started in February.  One day we found out that my paycheck tax withholdings had been wrong the whole previous year and we owed a lot more tax than we expected.  When we got home from picking up our tax stuff from the accountant, our front window had been shattered.  That was a bad day.  A few days later the girls got their first big stomach bug, and then Matt and I got it.  A few weeks later the pandemic hit.  Then the earthquake. In the meantime, my company was going through rounds of layoffs and morale was plummeting at work.The next few months were fairly stable.  In June we had to build a new deck on our cabin because a hole had rotted through the old one. In August our air conditioner went out and after a few repairs we had to replace the whole thing.  Two weeks ago the president of our division at work came for a surprise plant visit. Most of us kind of assumed he was going around to decide which plants to shut down.  But the decision that came out of the visit was that they want to start sending new business to our plant and start hiring again.  It was the first good news we'd gotten at work in months, and we were finally able to breathe again.  Such a relief.  Three days later, on a Friday, I was sitting in my office and I saw the HR manager walk into the general manager's office (right next to my office).  A few seconds later the general manager came into my office and asked if I had a minute.  I've seen this scene play out enough over the last few months to know what it means (not good), but I also knew that it was nothing but good news that week, so I was confused.  The confusion was short-lived.  I went into the general manager's office and they were somber and said it wasn't good news.  They had to do another round of budget cuts and I didn't make it.  They said a bunch of stuff, but the only thing I really heard was that that was my last day at the company.  I packed up my office and left.  A few minutes later the accounting manager (the only person left on the finance team) came out and talked to me.  She has to print the checks for people getting laid off so she had found out about an hour before it happened.  She said besides me, they got rid of the operations manager (the number 2 guy at the plant), the last person left on the sales team (who had been there 34 years), an engineer, and some production people.  It kinds of sounded like they were hitting every department they could, and finance hadn't been hit yet.  Besides being a little scared about having to find a new job, the only other thing I felt was relief.  It's been such a long year and a half at that job.  My boss left a couple months after I started and I never had any real training to learn how the company worked.  I've been trying to figure out everything as I went and it was hard.  Besides that, it's been a constant gamble whether to stay or go since the layoffs started.  I lost the gamble, but at least I don't have to worry about it anymore.  I'm free to look for something else now without worrying about leaving the finance team in a lurch. I just hope I can find another job soon.

Three days later, on Monday afternoon, I saw a facebook post by someone in our ward that it was going to be windy that night.  So before we went to bed, Matt moved his scooter under the carport, we scooted the barbecue grill closer to the house, and we went to bed. Wow, we had no idea what was coming!  At 3:38 I woke up to the sounds of things hitting the roof and windows.  I looked at my alarm clock, turned over, and tried to go back to sleep.  But the wind got stronger and didn't stop. Next time I looked at my clock the power was out.  I didn't sleep anymore that night.  I listened to the wind and things blowing around outside.  I heard a couple thumps in the distance that were unmistakably trees falling over.  I just laid there all night waiting for morning to come so I could see how much damage had happened.  Finally it was light enough to see outside, so I got up and went and looked out the living room window.  The girls' little tykes plastic car had flown over our hillside and was in the middle of the road.  Besides that, we had a a few broken branches on our scrub oaks, but nothing else.  Our power was still out, but I figured it'd be on in good time.  The wind was still going like crazy outside.  Matt had to go check on the communities he manages, so he got dressed and went out.  The closest community is about a 3 minute drive away.  He called 20 minutes after he left and said he had just gotten there.  He said trees were down all over and roads were closed so he'd had to go way out of his way to get there.  He spent the rest of his day fielding calls and calling people to move trees and fix carports and buildings.  He also mentioned that he had talked to his contractor friend who lives not far from us.  This guy lives around the corner from an electric substation down the street from us.  He said he'd watched poles at the substation fall over during the night, and he'd seen explosions on the transformers, so he thought it might be days before we got power back on.  I was shocked.  That's when I started realizing this might have been a bigger storm than I realized.  About then the ward council started sharing reports about how the ward was doing.  Several houses had extensive damage from downed trees and power lines lying across the roofs and yards.  The girls and I spent the day inside, watching the wind blow.  At one point, we were sitting by the big living room window, and it felt like it might actually blow in.  The window was bowing in towards us pretty strong.  So we went and played in their room for a while.  The wind kept blowing strong all day and through the next night.  Our house was squeaking and creaking.  It sounded like somebody was walking around upstairs, even when we were upstairs and there was nobody above us. When Matt finished work that afternoon we drove through the neighborhood (as much as we could).  It was shocking.  Our neighborhood is fairly forested, and a lot of yards lost all their trees.  Houses have whole trees sitting on their roofs.  Power poles are snapped in half, with transformers laying on the yards.  Some streets were undrivable because electric lines were too low to go under.  It was really distrastrous and sad.  Since we didn't have power we decided to find some fast food.  But there weren't a lot of fast food places nearby that had power, and since nobody else had power, everybody was out looking for food.  We drove around for 1 1/2 hours looking for dinner.  At one point we found a Little Caesars that was open.  I went in and the lobby was packed.  I asked some people how long the wait was.  They had all ordered an hour before.  I just turned around and left.  We eventually ended up in a Burger King drive through that took about half an hour.  It was nuts.  We had breakfast from the same drive-thru the next morning. Yuck. By Friday morning we had emptied our fridge and freezer.  We'd bought some ice and hoped to keep the freezer food, but everything had thawed by then.  Over the next few days, the whole neighborhood just went house to house cleaning up, chainsawing, piling branches in the gutter, and hauling trailer-fulls to city-designated areas.  As individuals got power, they'd offer laundry, dinner, phone charging, etc to those without power. On Friday night, just as we were sitting down to some more take-out by candlelight, we heard a strange sound.  We all looked around, and realized the fan on our fireplace had turned on.  It took us a second, and then at the same time Matt and I both looked at the oven clock and realized the power was on. Yay!  From 3:38 Tuesday morning to 7:00 on the dot Friday night!  We finally had power.  And we were among the first in our neighborhood.  The people across the street from us didn't get it until Sunday afternoon.  Most of the rest of our ward got it late Sunday night. As of now (Monday afternoon), a few people are still out.  Yesterday church was canceled so that we could keep cleaning the neighborhood. We've spent the week watching hundreds of trailers full of branches, logs, and other debris go past, and watching the neighborhood help each other for 14 hour days.  It was awful but also great.  

As one last little nail in the coffin to the horrible week, yesterday we went to visit Matt's mom.  When we got home, we heard air whooshing out of one of the tires.  Matt got right back in the car and took it to a tire place and just left it in the parking lot.  They called us this morning and said it had 2 screws in the side wall.  I'm sure we picked them up from all the stuff that's in the road with the chainsaws and trailers and everything.  They say bad luck comes in threes.  I think in our case it comes in multiples of threes.

Some of the tree removal trucks that have become very common on our street

These cranes were all over our neighborhood yesterday fixing the hardest to reach power lines (I'm guessing they were picking up the trees sitting on power lines, then putting in new power poles)

One of the most common sites on our street this week- a truck with a trailer full of branches

Friday afternoon the power company guys were going house to house and climbing the poles to check the connections on our street.  This was about 4pm on the pole behind our house (you can see a guy at the top of the pole).  After they checked ours, they said our side looked good, but they'd have to go to the street behind us and see how they looked before we could get power.  They must have been good because we got power 3 hours later.

This was Friday afternoon at a house just down the street from us (between us and the substation).  Just to give an idea of how bad the storm was.  From Tuesday morning to Friday afternoon, there were still several houses that looked like this.

Another house still in bad shape on Friday afternoon.

This house used to have 3 or 4 magnificent pine trees.  It was such a pretty yard.  Now it's a really pretty open space.

Here's another view of that last yard. One of their great pine trees was still sitting on the power line on Friday afternoon.  This is right down the street from our house.  This part of the road was closed most of the week because of that power line. The electric company eventually cut off that line and put a new one in.

This is our bishop's yard.  His yard was mostly big pine trees.  We went for a walk yesterday morning and saw him out.  I commented on how big and open his yard is now (the ward spent a couple days clearing the trees out).  He said the main reason they bought their house was the privacy their trees gave them.  They lost 7 big trees.  A guy down the street from him lost four big pine trees and had a tree guy give him an estimate to remove the trees and stumps.  The estimate was $22,000 to remove it all.  Nuts!  I imagine tree companies will be doing pretty well around here for a while.

August 2020

Hattie and Tille love dressing up as Elsa and Anna

One day I took the girls to the park after work and it was super hot.  Their cheeks were really red when we got home so I let them strip down and play with the hose. They had a blast spraying each other.

The girls got some packages of new to us clothes from their Michigan cousins.  They were so excited to open their packages!

This is the best picture I got of the birthday pinata :(

Opening presents at the birthday party!

Opening presents on their actual birthday!

They love their new sparkly skirts, tiaras, and princess shoes!

 August was pretty good.  It feels like it was ages ago though, so let me think...

Matt always calls the girls, "little one".  They come in the room, he says, 'Oh hello Little One!'. That sort of thing.  One day we we loading them in the car and Matt was putting Tille in.  He said 'Hello Little One', and without missing a beat, Tille said, "Hi Big One".  It was so funny!

Hattie has learned to burp whenever she wants. It's not so cute.  She'll tell me she has a joke or a secret to tell me, and when I lean in, she burps in my ear.  Great.

A few weeks ago we were drawing pictures.  Hattie asked me to draw a picture of our house.  I drew our house with all of us playing outside on the driveway.  Then she took it and drew something on the roof.  I asked her what it was and she said, 'A yeti'.  Oh yes, of course, the yeti on the roof.  I should have known.

We took the girls in for their 3 year wellness check at the dr.  We talked to them before hand to let them know what would happen, and they did awesome!  They willingly stood on the scale and then got measured against the wall, then Hattie volunteered to get checked by the dr first.  She sat on my lap while the dr listened to her heart, checked her eyes and ears, etc.  The whole time, Tille was sitting on Matt's lap and watched very closely.  A few times she was so happy for Hattie doing well that she broke into applause.  It was so cute!  And then Hattie cheered for Tille when it was her turn.  The dr commented on how it was the best visit our girls have ever had.  Then the nurse came in to give them one shot.  We had talked to them about that part too and they did pretty well.  They were super brave and Tille didn't cry.  Hattie only cried when it was over, but still, pretty good.  Best dr appointment ever!  For their birthday, we were just going to do cake and a small gathering.  Matt suggested I get some party favors for the little kids that were coming.  Before I knew it, we had a whole Paw Patrol themed party with a pinata and paw patrol toys and a big ice cream cake and a huge party.  I don't know how this happens. But this link helps to explain it (I hope the link works):

https://youtu.be/FDciC5V7XT0

July 2020

The girls were practicing taking pictures the other day and out of nowhere hattie asked if she could send one to her friends in Michigan, and she named her cousin's one by one

The girls got to go to lunch with all their cousins and aunts on Matt's side while were at work last week. This is them waiting to get into olive garden. 

One night and one night only the girls let me do their hair before bed. It was so cute in braided pig tails!

I don't think these masks are working

Annual family pictures at provo falls

A little naked time after the bath

We walked past this church on our Saturday morning walk and the girls wanted to climb all the stairs

We finally put up the swim pool!

 

Something has changed within blogger and it's not letting me caption my photos. I'll keep trying. Also, it's cutting off the side of all the pictures. If you click on them, I think it will take you to a slideshow so you can see them better. But first, the video. One day I was playing with the girls and matt was working and he started singing this song and they started singing along absent mindedly. It's the cutest thing. I guess matt has taught them this song and they sing it all the time. I have a better video of it, but it's too long to load. For the picture with people standing around looking at trees, one day at work the quality manager came rushing in saying the was a fire out back. The general manager wasn't worried and said it happened all the time. We have train tracks that go right behind our building and I guess or twice a year the trains throw sparks and start fires. If you look closely, you can see flames right up against the back fence. 

I think the theme of this entry is sleep: the lack of it and the pursuit of it.

We’ve struggled with sleep in our house lately.  I think Hattie and Tille are in a special place right now where they still need naps if they’re not going to be hellions in the evening, but they don’t need naps if they’re going to go to bed at night.  It’s a very delicate balance and we definitely haven’t figured it out yet.

All their lives, when one of the girls wakes up in the middle of the night, we would go in to comfort her, but if we tried to leave her in her crib, she would cry for the next forever, so we would just get her out of bed and spend the rest of the night trying to sleep on the couch.  And usually within minutes, her sister would realize there was a couch party happening, so she would join us.  Sometimes we’d go weeks or even a month or more with no couch nights, and then the girls would remember they could get cuddles if they cried in the middle of the night and we’d slide back into the couch habit.  A few weeks ago Tille started a pattern of waking up every night and crying and wanting to sleep on the couch.  Sometimes it’d be at 4, sometimes 5, once it was at 1:30.  Sometimes she had nightmares, sometimes the wind woke her up, sometimes she was just done sleeping.  Whatever the case, she was done with her crib for the night and was ready for couch cuddles.  It got to the point where I really thought she was going to kill me.  It was going to be a very long and drawn out death, but it was going to kill me.  I couldn’t survive on no sleep like that.  And it didn’t matter if Matt got up with them or if I did; once I hear her crying, I’m up and have a really hard time going back to sleep.  So I had to find a better way.  Then I remembered the camera in their room.  Whenever the camera is turned on, there’s a small green light on one side of it.  I figured out how to set a timer on the camera so it turns on every morning at 6:00.  I told the girls that if the light is on, it’s morning time and they can wake up, but if the light isn’t on, it’s still night time and they need to go back to sleep.  We practiced a few times- I had them sit in their room with all the lights off and I turned the camera on and off and they got to react accordingly.  And then we went to bed.  I didn’t really have high hopes, but I had to try.  At 2:30 or some super unreasonable time, Tille woke up, so I went in there, fully expecting to spend the rest of the night on the couch.  But first I pointed out that the light was off and it was still nighttime.  I asked what she needed and gave her a hug.  She just needed to be tucked in.  Then she went back to sleep!  It was amazing!  We had 2 more wake ups that night, and both girls needed me to find some dolls in their cribs and tuck them back in, but they understood that it wasn’t morning yet, so they went back to sleep.  And a little after 6:00, we heard, ‘morning light is on!  Daaaaaadddd! It’s morning time!!!’  Since then they’ve gotten better. We still have challenging nights every now and then, but it’s definitely gotten better.

As opposed to Tille having a hard time staying asleep, Hattie usually has a really hard time falling asleep.  She tosses and turns for an hour or more before she gets to sleep.  A few nights after we figured out the morning light trick, Matt agreed to let the girls use their lullaby bear to fall asleep.  They were really excited about that.  They’ve had this bear since they were tiny, but we haven’t used it at night for a long time.  It projects stars onto the ceiling and plays lullabies.  It stays on for 15 or 30 minutes, and it has motion detection, so if the girls wake up in the middle of the night, it will come on again for another 15 or 30 minutes (depending on the setting).  The first night we had it on, we woke up at 4:00 to a cute little voice saying, “Dad! Daaaaaad!  It’s me….Tille!”  Then the bear turned on and we heard, “Huh? Why the bear come on?  Oh, bear….”  Then quiet for 15 minutes until the bear turned off, then some more movement, then the bear turned on again, then “the bear again? How the bear come on?”  Then she finally fell asleep listening to the bear.

Last time we went to the cabin, we had a pretty full house and people were sleeping all over the place.  Matt and I ended up on the futon and air mattress in the living room, knowing that when the girls woke up early in the morning, that’d be the least likely place for us to wake other people up.  As expected, Hattie and Tille woke up bright and early at 5:00, so we brought them into the living room and cuddled with them.  And, instead of squirming and playing, they went back to sleep.  We got another 3 hours of sleep!  That’s the latest we’ve EVER slept since before the babies were born.  It was so great. 

The latest sleep issue is the heat.  Last Thursday our air conditioner died. It was too hot to sleep without air conditioning so we set up a huge fan blowing into the bedrooms and we opened all the windows and it was still too hot to sleep well.  Matt had a guy come and look at it Friday.  He had to pour a bunch of freon in and give it a tune up and we had to pay way too much, but by Friday afternoon the house felt great again.  By Saturday afternoon, the house was back to the mid 80s and we knew we had bigger problems.  We sweated it out for the weekend and the guy came back Monday afternoon.  Turns out we have a pretty big leak in our coil.  The air conditioner is a top brand and is only 6 years, but since it came with the house and we didn’t buy it, the warranty isn’t good anymore.  And because of the pandemic, nobody has a replacement part in stock.  In a normal year, we’d be able to get it in a week; but because factories are shut down, they’re saying it might be 4-5 weeks before we can get it fixed.  So now we’re looking at just getting a new air conditioner.  Yikes. This is one of those times when I’d rather not be an adult and have to spend my money on boring things.  But I also don’t want to spend the rest of the summer with an industrial fan blowing all night just to be a little less uncomfortable.  And with Matt working from home most of the time, I don’t think we can have a mid 80s house. So I think we get to pay the price of a small car (or maybe, hopefully not, a super cool Jeep Kaiser) just to get our house back to where it was a week ago.

Lately Hattie has been playing the part of the big sister/oldest child really well.  Whenever we ask Tille to do something that she doesn’t want to do, Hattie will tell Tille to do it, or she’ll take away her toys and try to make her do it.  Or if Tille is having a meltdown, Hattie will look at us and kind of shrug her shoulders as if to say, ‘I don’t know what’s gotten into her, what can you do, right?’  I think Hattie wants to be a little grown up.  The other day I was washing her hair, scooping water up with a toy and pouring it over her hair, and she said, “please don’t.”  I was stunned.  It was just too polite.  I can take toddler screaming and fighting, but a polite little request was too much. 

Tille is great at giving hugs.  A few times a day she’ll come and sit on my lap and just give me the best tightest hug.  I love it. 

June 2020

Here’s our June in a nutshell:

A few weeks ago, Tille came down with a fever one evening.  She’d been kind of sleepy all afternoon and then after the bath she was really warm.  Usually the girls will play for a little bit before bedtime, but that night she just wanted to cuddle.  While Matt and I took her temperature and talked about whether she was sick, Hattie kept coming over and saying things like, ‘Is my sister ok?’, and ‘What’s wrong with my sister?’ It was really sweet to see how concerned she was about Tille.  Tille had a fever through the next day but no other symptoms.  We’re thinking maybe she had a molar coming in or something.

I think (and I’m hoping I don’t jinx us by saying this) we’re almost done with potty training!  It's been a long time coming.  For the last couple of months the girls have been doing what I call pee loops. One baby would go potty. Then the other baby would go potty. Then I would wash the first baby's hands.  Then,  while I was washing the second baby's hands, the first baby would go potty again. Then the second baby would go potty again.  And so on and so on. Often we'd have 6 or 7 potties in one session. Or other times, instead of a loop, they'd go, wash their hands,  resume playing, go again, wash hands again, play some more, etc. etc, to where we ended up going and washing hands literally at least 30 times in an hour. Thankfully those days are behind us.  The girls rarely have accidents anymore.  They wake up dry probably 2/3 of the time, and whether they wear pull ups or underwear throughout the day, they’re pretty good about going potty.  Sometimes I’ll still catch Hattie doing an awkward squat and I’ll ask her if she has to go potty and she says no and I’ll ask her if she just went in her pull up and she says yes.  But generally if they’re wearing underpants they go in the toilet.  We still have a routine most mornings where the girls wake up around 5, drink some milk, and then pass out on the couch.  Tille likes to lie down on a pillow on one end of the couch- I’ll ask her if she wants to cuddle and she says ‘by myself’, so I tuck her in- and Hattie likes to lie down on top of whichever parent has woken up with them.  Last Saturday I was the lucky one.  Hattie was passed out on top of me and I was half awake.  I heard Tille get up off the couch and walk over to her little elmo potty.  I heard her unzip her pajamas and do a little pee.  Then out of the corner of my eye I saw naked Tille walk across the living room to where we have a stack of pull ups.  She grabbed one, put it on, and a minute later was fully dressed and asking me to do up the top snap over the zipper of her pjs again.  She’s totally self-sufficient in that area!  It was so great!  Another day right around then, I was playing with the girls and Hattie got up and went into the bathroom.  A minute later I heard the toilet flush and she came back out and kept playing.  I know we’re not totally in the clear yet, but I love being so close to the light at the end of this particular tunnel.

Every night lately, this is our bedtime routine- after baths we go into the living room, the girls avoid getting dressed for as long as possible by dancing and playing and pretending to be babies (one will fake cry while the other fake prepares a bottle and then brings it over and holds the baby, then they switch), we finally get them dressed and hair brushed, then they drink some milk and we read books.  For prayer time, Tille likes to climb up on the couch from a certain direction and sit in a particular spot (maybe a little OCD?).  After prayer, they each pick a book to take to bed with them.  In their room they give each other hugs and kisses, then they give Matt and me hugs and kisses, then we tuck them into bed and leave.  When we leave, they’re lying down and look like they’re moments from falling asleep.  And always, without fail, within 2 minutes of us closing the door, we hear, ‘Tille, wake up! Wake up Tille!’  And then they talk and sing to each other, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour.  I figure as long as they’re not crying, no harm done.  They just like playing together and if they want to stretch the day out a little longer with each other, I don’t mind.  I leave the video camera in their room turned off most of the time now, but I can switch it on with my phone, so sometimes I’ll check in on them just for a minute or two, and they’ll just be sitting in bed reading to each other (in the dark, flipping through the books that they know by heart), or passing toys between their beds, or just laying down and talking.  I’m glad they like each other so much.

Two weekends ago we went to our cabin.  In the morning we were sitting around the fire and Matt and I were talking about something and I realized that Tille and Hattie were having a full conversation with each other.  They were asking each other questions and answering and having fun together.  It was so sweet.  That same weekend we tried a new hike in the Uintahs.  It’s called Ruth Lake.  We didn’t know what to expect with this hike, but figured we’d go as long as the girls lasted.  It turns out that all the hipsters and yuppies in Utah, plus their dogs, were on that trail that day, but it was still pretty fun.  Hattie and Tille did awesome!  The trail was a good mixture of flat spots and boulders to climb over.  They insisted on doing most of it themselves.  The hike itself is less than a mile.  We didn’t quite make it to the lake, but we had fun.  It was really pretty, with lots of flowers and a little creek and amazing views.  We’ll definitely try that one again.

Matt and I both had a pretty rough week at work last week, so for the 4^th of July, we decided to do as little as possible. Our neighborhood does a big 4^th of July party every year, and this was the first year we’ve been around for it, so we figured we’d go over there for a little while.  It was a potluck picnic and fireworks.  After we ate, a couple of the little kids that live down the street from us came over to Hattie and Tille and asked if they wanted to throw some of the popper things in the street.  Hattie and Tille got right into it and went and played with the other kids.  It was so cute to see them interacting with other kids, and to see the other kids being so nice to them.  I should’ve gotten pictures, but I never think of things like that until after I get home.  Anyway, after not very long, both girls got tired and asked if we could go home.  We realized it was almost bedtime and had to ditch out right before the fireworks got started.  We tried watching some fireworks from our deck after baths, but the girls didn’t really care and asked to go to bed.  They get their love of fireworks from both Matt and me. 

 

Giving each other a little support

I finally remembered to get some inside pictures of our cabin. These pictures really make it look full size- in each I'm standing at the far end of the room

Having a sucker break with cousins 

Aunt Kathryn bought the girls new dresses

April and May 2020

A month or so ago, I was out on a walk with the girls.  Several neighbors were out in their yards, including people we didn’t know.  I don’t know if this is normal or because we have twins, but EVERYBODY always stops us and says hi and chats for a minute and asks about the girls.  Usually stuff like, are they twins, how old are they, what are their names, etc.  Usually my go-to in this situation is to tell the girls to say hi, and their response is to bury their faces as deep as possible in my legs.  After the third such encounter on this particular walk, I felt like Hattie and Tille were getting really bothered, so I said, ‘do you not like when I ask you to say hi to people?”.  Hattie said very clearly, “No!”  So I told them I’d stop asking them to say hi to people and stop telling people they were being shy.  I told them it would be nice of them to say hi to people, but they don’t have to.  And it’s made a difference.  Since then, I’ve noticed them making an effort to be more friendly.  A couple days after that walk, we were on a different walk.  I saw that a couple houses ahead some guys were installing some sprinkler pipes.  I told Hattie and Tille that some guys were in the yard up ahead, and they could say hi if they wanted, but they didn’t have to.  Hattie started waving and saying hi really quietly right then and kept doing it until we passed the guys.  Tille looked the opposite direction and then made a wide berth, almost going into the street, to avoid looking at the guys as we passed the house.  But that night when I asked them what they had done that was nice that day, she looked down and said, ‘say hi’.  I think she was disappointed in herself for not saying hi.  She’s gotten better.  Now she’ll wave and sometimes say hi when we pass people.  Hattie will usually say hi. 

Hattie and Tille are both very curious lately.  Hattie asks why about EVERYTHING.  And then she follows up every answer with more whys.  When we go for walks she wants to know what everything is and why it’s called that or what people are doing and why.  Hattie’s favorite thing when we’re outside is to point at bird poop and ask ‘bird poop, why?”. And I have to make up some answer, like, ‘I guess the bird couldn’t find a toilet on time’, or “I guess the bird isn’t potty trained.”  Tille will ask questions also, but she is usually more content to just watch the neighborhood and listen to Hattie ask questions.  But they both want to know the name of everything.  They’ll point at something and say, “name?”.  They want to know the name of trees, birds, flowers, cars, houses, etc.  They’re getting pretty good with the different types of birds and flowers in the neighborhood.  There are a few boys in the neighborhood who ride their bikes up and down the street.  The girls always ask, “What that boy name?” I’ll tell them, and then I can see them trying to get up the courage to say hi.  So far they haven’t been braver than to wave, but one of these days I think they’ll say hi.

Tille likes to sit and read books to herself.  She’ll pick a book out and start reading, and I’ll ask her if she wants me to read it to her.  She’ll say no, and she’ll just go on reading it to herself.  She knows most of our books well enough to say a lot of the lines pretty well, or at least comment on the pictures, so she can get through them by herself.  At bedtime especially, she’ll choose one of the scripture picture books and read it alone while Hattie chooses a different book for us to read to her.

Matt got the girls bubble bath last week, and they love it.  They sit in the bath and have bubble fights and shriek and laugh and have so much fun.  It’s the best.  Afterwards, to get the bubbles off of them, I decided to try giving them a shower.  I really didn’t know what to expect, but they really love it.  They just stand under the water and don’t move.  They let it go all over them, and when I tell them it’s time to get out, they say, ‘No, more, more, more!’  They LOVE a long hot shower.  I get it.

Matt's sister has a big garage with a swing hanging from the rafters. The girls first went on the swing in December and finally got another chance this weekend. They would have stayed all day if they could have. 

Bubble bath!

We put the Elmo potties and a roll of toilet paper in the living room so the girls have easier access. I was in the other room for a minute and came back to find the living room toilet papered. Now we keep the toilet paper on a shelf and give it to the girls as needed. 

A couple sundays ago we went for a walk around beus pond. There was one family of ducks with a baby. Hattie got bored watching them, but Tille wanted to keep watching. 

I drew hopscotch on the driveway with sidewalk chalk. The girls loved it and hopped how I showed them for a minute, and then did an army crawl on it. This was the result. 

Grandma took the girls for a hike in the wilderness behind our house. They were really excited to take me up there after work. They especially love the hand chairs on our hill. 

We had a picnic in our driveway one day.

After our walk one day the girls decided to be puppies all the way up our driveway. 

 

This is a walk we took with some cousins around a little nature park near our house. 

March and some of April 2020

It’s been an exciting month!  And also not at all!  I finally got a laptop and started working at home two weeks ago.  My first day working at home (it was a Friday), I made it to 10:00 am before the general manager at my plant asked me to come back to the office because I couldn’t even open one of the files he needed me to work on, let alone work on it and save it.  So I worked all that day in the office.  My boss (I got a new boss, more on that in a minute), decided I should plan on coming in to the office at least every Monday because I have a ton of reports to run on Mondays and it would be really hard to do on a laptop.  So I’m still in the office at least once a week.  My plan was to be super busy on Mondays and then try to take it a little bit easy the rest of the week so I could watch the girls at home.  So far that hasn’t worked out.  Three weeks ago was the first day of our quarter end close.  Month end close is always super busy.  Quarter end is always that much busy plus a lot more.  That morning, we had a conference call with our corporate office, and they announced that we had a new controller.  It’s a lady who’s already a controller at a plant in Oregon, and now she’s going to take on our plant also.  We’ve been without a controller for 9 months, which means that almost as long as I’ve worked here I’ve been trying to do a lot of controller duties, without knowing nearly enough about the company.  So it’s really good to now have a controller who knows a lot about the company.  But it was terrible timing to have her take over on the first day of quarter end.  Since she’s already in charge of one plant, she knew just enough to review all our files in detail and want me to rebuild a lot of the reports I run ( after I had run them and sent them to her for approval) to do it her way.  So on top of being already super busy for quarter end, now I was double busy doing everything a few times, and not really understanding what I was doing since I never really understood it in the first place and have just been treading water since I got here. That’s kind of how the last few weeks have gone.  And now the general manager is giving me lots more work, I think under the impression that since we have a controller taking work off me, I have more time, but actually she’s putting a lot more work on me.  So I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been at this company.  Add to that that I’m now trying to work from home while Hattie and Tille want to play (last Friday Matt had gone to an appointment and my boss was asking a bunch of questions over email, and Hattie and Tille were climbing on my chair asking me to stop working), and it’s a storm.  Our company is also struggling with the economy now. We’ve had a couple big rounds of layoffs this year, with a huge one last week.  So right now I’m really torn between being jealous of all the people I keep hearing talking about all their free time and new hobbies during quarantine, and being grateful that I still have a job, even if it’s sucking all the free time I had.

Besides that, here’s what’s going on with us:

I had a birthday! 10 years ago I turned 30 and my birthday left a lot to be desired.  But I told myself that by the time I turned 40 I’d be married and my husband would throw me a huge surprise party with all my friends and it’d be lots of fun.  Surprise, surprise!  Covid had other ideas.  Matt made it a really good day though.  He got me a huge bouquet of really pretty flowers and a new dress and a gift card for a massage as soon as spas are safe again.  We got Mexican food and the girls are still singing happy birthday to me.  And I realized that I like the idea of birthday parties, but I really don’t like being the center of attention so a big surprise party wouldn’t be my kind of celebration anyway.  So that was probably the perfect party for me.

In other news, what’s the deal with aging?  I feel like I’ve aged a lot in the last few months. More and more, my hips and knees hurt if I stand up wrong, my shoulder has been hurting for the past couple of weeks from laying on it wrong, and seriously, allergic to toilet paper?!  What?!  Why?!  And by the end of every day, I just want to lie flat on the floor while we watch tv because my back has had it.  I’m done getting old.

Now for a few cute stories of the girls.

Last week or maybe the week before, they started doing a naked dance.  I don’t know where it came from.  Just one night after the bath before we could get their diapers on, they ran over to the window and started dancing.  It’s so funny to watch.  They get so into and move and shake.  Now every night they tell us they want to do their naked dance before we put their diapers one.  Sometimes they keep doing it after their diapers are on. A few nights ago they were seconds from getting into the bathtub and Matt turned on their favorite dance music in the other room.  With the bathroom fan going, he didn’t think they’d hear it.  But they immediately ran out of the bathroom and we had a naked dance party in the living room for about five minutes.  It was great fun.

Every night before bed Tille (and sometimes Hattie) runs to the toy shelf to pick a stuffed animal to take to bed with her.  She always has to have a ‘beddy tear’ (that’s how she says teddy bear and it’s adorable).  They also have little fist-sized animals that must have come from a happy meal that Aunt Kathryn brought them a while ago.  Both girls call these animals their happy meals.  They’ll go to bed and then realize they need something and cry asking for their happy meals.  If anybody was ever listening in on us, they’d think we’re terrible parents, sending our babies to bed with happy meals every night.

When we’re driving in the car, we can never hear what Hattie and Tille try to say to us from the backseat.  Their voices are just too tiny.  One day Hattie kept trying to tell us something and we couldn’t hear, so Matt told me to tell her to use her big voice.  Apparently, he knew what was coming.  From the back seat, suddenly there was a big booming, almost man voice, telling us about the cows or something that she had seen out the windows. It was so funny.  Now whenever we tell her to use her big voice, she uses that big booming voice.  It cracks me up every time.  I would never imagine that my tiny Hattie could produce that sound.

The girls' favorite treat right now is ice cream cones 

Easter egg hunt in our front yard! Tille is in yellow, Hattie in blue

Just chilling with their milk

Nice selfie 

When i got home from work a few weeks ago, the girls were working on getting their pants off so they could tap dance. Hattie in pink, Tille in white. And then they danced for a while. They each had one glove on because in frozen, when elsa sings Let it Go, she takes off one glove and throws it into the wind. So when I get home from work they always get my gloves out of my coat pocket and start singing the song and throwing my gloves around. 

Being cute on their slide, Hattie in front, Tille in back

One morning i was getting ready in the bathroom and i could hear the girls giggling. I went out in the hall to see what they were up to, and they were just lying side by side talking to each other. 

Corona

This is mostly just for my own sake, I wanted to write down what was going on in the world right now so I'd remember what it was like. Feel free to read it, but sorry if it's boring. 

Virus Timeline

January

We’re hearing there’s a new virus called Coronavirus in China.  They’ve been dealing with it for a month or two.  It’s really far away.

Mid-February

Somebody in Washington state who just came home from China has been diagnosed with Coronavirus and is in quarantine in a hospital.  The situation is under control.

A few more people in Washington have been diagnosed.  Still, not a big threat.

Late February

Apparently, Coronavirus is a family of viruses that has been around for a while, and this is a new strain called Covid 19, meaning Corona Virus 2019.  Sweet. A few more people around the country have been diagnosed.  A couple people from Utah who are on cruise ships in Asia are in quarantine.

Wait, now one of those people from the cruise ship has come back to Utah and is in the hospital.

Early March

Somebody else in Utah just returned home from a cruise and has the virus.  They’re under self-quarantine at home. That makes 2 people in Utah. 

Saturday March 7- We haven’t been grocery shopping in a while.  I go to the store and buy everything, just as a good big weekly shopping trip.

Monday March 9- all the national news channels are talking about Covid, but it’s still not a big deal in Utah.  Life goes on as normal.

Wednesday March 11- I have a dr appointment that I’ve been waiting a couple months for.  On the way to the appointment, I hear on the radio that a third person in Utah has been confirmed to have Covid.  I also hear that so far sporting teams, and the Jazz particularly, have no plans to adjust their seasons or cancel any games.  At the dr, I find out I’m allergic to most toilet paper. You can imagine how fun the months leading up to this appointment have been, and how comfortable this dr appointment is.  Awesome.  I need to go to the store and get a certain brand of fragrance-free toilet paper.  But Matt has to work tonight and I have to go to young womens, and Matt has to work again tomorrow, and the girls have a cold so I don’t want to drag them to the store, so I’ll get it on Friday or Saturday.  No biggie.  At young womens, people are saying that the 3^rd person who was just diagnosed in Utah is a member of the Jazz, and the NBA has canceled the rest of their season.  That kind of begins a panic mode in Utah.

Friday March 13- Matt goes to the store to get a few basics; we’re out of milk and juice and he’s going to get me some special toilet paper, and he needs to get some cough drops and cold medicine.  Except he drives to two stores and both parking lots are packed and he’s heard rumors of people waiting in line for an hour or more to buy milk.  He doesn’t have time or energy for that.  When I get home he goes to a different store that we suspect might be less crowded.  He’s back in less than an hour, which I take as a good sign, but he says they were completely out of all milk products and the toilet paper shelves were totally empty.  What’s up with the rush on toilet paper?  What do people think is going to happen? I wish I had known on Wednesday that I did actually need to get toilet paper that night.  I had no idea Utah would be thrown into mass panic within hours.

That same afternoon, we get an email from the church that all church meetings, activities, and gatherings are canceled until further notice.  I think that’s when it really gets real for a lot of people.  Once the church cancels everything, Utahns take things seriously.  I don’t know if it’s that same day or a different day around then, but we also hear that schools are closing for at least two weeks starting the following Monday.  Everybody is being asked not to gather in groups of more than 100.

Saturday March 14- Matt has a pretty bad cold so I throw on some non-pajamas at 7 am and go to the grocery store, hoping to beat the crowds and get there while the shelves are still stocked.  It’s as crowded as mid-afternoon on a normal day. I make a beeline to the milk and get enough to last a week or two.  Next stop, toilet paper.  The store clearly hasn’t gotten a shipment in and the shelves are still empty.  So I’m still using toilet paper I’m allergic to.  Whatever, I’ve been using it for months and being uncomfortable- another few weeks won’t kill me.  I stock up on a few other things- not even really stock. Just get the basics to get through the week.  And, because we need something good, I get some fancy pastries from the bakery. 

A teenage girl in our neighborhood is scheduled to get baptized this afternoon.  We’ve been encouraging all the young women in the ward to come and support her.  Now we’re being told not to have more than 20 people there.  So we’ve just stopped reminding people about it.  I was asked to speak at the baptism, and it ends up being a really good gathering.  I think we have 21 people total.  It’s kind of a nice last get together for those of us who come.

We spend the rest of the day in the house, playing in the yard, and going for a walk.

A few times over the weekend I catch myself thinking we should buy some ammunition to defend against the inevitable zombie invasion; or how can we build up the wall in our backyard so that zombies can’t get over it into our house?  Then I have to remind myself that this isn’t a zombie apocalypse movie.  This is a fast moving illness that the majority of the population will recover from.  It will likely have long-lasting consequences on the economy, but not on the ability of the dead to form mobs and invade my neighborhood.

Sunday March 15- We have our ward council meeting by conference call.  So strange to sit in the basement in my pajamas having ward council.  One of the first things we talk about is funerals.  We have a lot of elderly people in our ward, and if/when this virus gets bad in our area, we’re going to have funerals. And most of the people who will want to come to the funerals will be the people at greatest risk. There’s a long silence as we all consider that.  In the end we decide the ward can’t host funeral luncheons until this is all over.  It makes me so sad to think that these people who have been neighbors for 50 years or more won’t be able to celebrate each others’ lives.  And a woman whose daughter died right before Christmas and was planning a memorial service for her next Saturday is going to have to put it off.  She was already dreading having to do this, now she’s going to have to dread it a little longer. We also talk about how to take care of the widows/widowers/homebound/etc in our ward.  The best way to keep them safe and love them is to stay away from them.  Most of our ministering for the foreseeable future is going to have to be online or over the phone.  We were planning a big ward activity for the first week of April to teach the older members in the ward how to use technology and gospel apps.  If only we’d done that a month ago, we might have been a little more prepared to serve them in this time.  It is a pretty somber ward council as we try to come up with ways to take care of the ward.

The whole weekend, I feel like the world is ending and it seems so strange to think that I would be going back to work on Monday.  Why go back to work?  What was I working for anymore? What was the point?  So it’s actually kind of nice to get back to work on Monday and see that things are still normal.

Monday March 16- Back to work.  Life is still functioning.  I’m still running all the same reports.  It’s a little harder than usual because not everybody is here to get me what I need, but basically it’s business as usual.  I’ve asked for a laptop in case I need to work from home.  I’m being mostly ignored on that request. The stores are still too crowded/out of stock so we’re starting to get a little nervous about diapers and other essentials, but we’re ok for now.

On the way home from work I’m listening to the radio and I’m pretty sure I hear babies crying in the background.  Are the radio news anchors working from home?

Tuesday March 17- I’m being told now that if I need to work from home I’ll get a laptop. I bring up the point that if I need to work from home, it’ll be too late for me to come in and get a laptop.  They say if it comes to that, they’ll decide if I’m a critical employee and if so they’ll ship one to me. Otherwise, I can take a sick day.  Great plan.  First off, I run several reports that management uses every day throughout the day.  Some of those reports nobody else knows how to run.  Second, I’m not sure HR is thinking ahead to how much work goes into setting up a laptop with all the programs and systems that each worker needs for their individual jobs.  They can’t just ship me a laptop and expect me to be up and running within minutes.  I’m going to need someone to show me how to login from home, how to link to all the different programs, etc.  And I doubt very much that whoever ships me a laptop will know all the programs I use.  And HR has already told us that if we’re exposed to someone who gets sick, we have to be out for 2 weeks.  So even if I’m not sick and can easily do my job, they won’t let me come in.  I’m interested to see how this is going to play out.

Also, on my way into work this morning, the radio anchors mention that for the first time in their careers, they’re working from home (confirmed my suspicions from my drive home last night).  They’ve got their studios set up at home with screens to see each other so they can kind of interact. 

There’s a diner I pass every morning on my way to work.  Every morning for the past year, I look in the window and see the same people sitting at the same barstools at the counter eating their breakfast.  This morning, the diner was closed. The lights were off the blinds were half down.  It was so weird.  Life is starting to stop.

Wednesday March 18- Sitting at work, running my morning reports a little after 7, and it sounds/feels like somebody is pushing a big cart past my window.  Except it’s getting bigger and bigger and people further in the building are starting to notice it.  Wait.  It’s an earthquake.  Seriously?!  Plagues aren’t enough?!  Yep.  Started with a little rumbling, then shaking, then the building is swaying.  It lasts 20-30 seconds. I call Matt.  He says he and the girls were snuggling on the couch and the girls got pretty scared but they’re all ok.  After a few minutes, the safety guy at work comes around and asks us all to evacuate until they can make sure the building is safe.  We go out and stand in the rain for a few minutes.  The news reports a 5.7 magnitude earthquake in Magna, by the airport. We’re hearing reports of aftershocks, but I don’t feel any.  There’s another earthquake (4.4 magnitude) about an hour later that lasts 5-10 seconds (it was a confirmed separate earthquake, not an aftershock). Oh boy, another little aftershock (4.6 magnitude) while I’m eating lunch a little after 1pm.  Just about five seconds, but enough to make my stomach drop.  I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.  This is all some really scary stuff.

Thursday March 19- We have a conference call with all the other plants in our division at work.  I find out that my plant is the only one whose finance team is still working onsite- everybody else is working from home.  We bring up the fact that only one person on our team (of 4 people) has a laptop.  The division controller tells us we all need laptops and he’ll make that happen.  Later in the day our IT person tells us he can order laptops but they’re 6 weeks out- won’t do us much good if we’re quarantined in the next week or two.  Plus, my laptop alone, because of the capabilities it would need, will cost $3000.  So the plan for now is that if we’re quarantined, we’ll all just take our whole computers home and set up a home office.  Works for me.  We also find out that some plants are in lockdown areas- their employees are under state mandate not to come to work.  We all expect to be in the same situation any day or hour.

The state has now ordered all dine-in restaurants to close.  They can still offer carry-out options, but nobody can stay and eat inside the restaurant.  I notice on my way home from work that a few restaurants have set up carry-out stations in their parking lot, with numbered parking stalls for easy pickup.  I also notice that parking lots that are usually bustling by the time I’m driving home from work are empty. 

We’re also being told now not to gather in groups of more than 10.  In less than a week, it’s gone from no more than 100 to more than 10.  Things are changing so fast. I never know from one day to the next if I’m going to be coming back to work or if grocery stores will still be open or if we’ll still be allowed to go for walks in the neighborhood.  Some people are saying this will last two weeks, some a couple of months, some up to 18 months.  There’s just so much uncertainty in life right now.  Mostly, I wish I could be home.  I’m hearing of people losing their jobs and companies closing already, so I’m glad to still be able to work and earn money, but I wish I could be home so if things change even more drastically I’ll be with my family.

Here’s hoping for a quiet weekend!