2020 Vision

Our new year began with new furniture thanks to my sister's recent move to Seattle. We spent a lot of our first weeks getting the house ready to bring in the new items, getting rid of/donating the old ones, and organizing everything once we got it. Fortunately we did all the heavy lifting and got it all out of their house and into our house just hours before our snow week began.

One of the things we donated was our changing table, which in recent years has become more of a cat perch. We replaced it with this storage case, but the cats still took up their usual posts.

The kids went back to school for the first full week of January, then they had most of the next week off for snow. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as last year's snowmaggedon, but we still had 3 and 1/2 days of school cancellations. Miraculously Tyler slept in and and the kids entertained themselves without even asking for TV or their tablets until around 10:30am. I felt like we'd entered another dimension! Tyler went through the pop-up Harry Potter book and then the illustrated books to try and find where the events matched up. He also made good use of the new desk cousin Alex had handed down to him.

Once I summoned up the energy to get the kids in their warm clothes we played in the snow until we were all cold and wanted to come in. The snow was compact enough to make snow balls, but as evidenced by Allison in the picture on the right, they fell apart it you tried to throw them.

I told the kids they could play their devices after we got the new Christmas stuff put away, which of course meant they got distracted playing with all their new toys and didn't get them put away for several hours. At the end of the day they hadn't had any more screen time than they would normally have on a school day. Oscar came home for lunch around noon, which told me the roads couldn't be too bad, so we went to the YMCA in the afternoon. It really wasn't a bad snow day at all. Last year the roads were so bad we had 10 full or partial school cancellations and were stuck inside with cabin fever for most of it.

The roads weren't as good they next day so we did stay home. We watched Snow White while I pointed out to the kids what a great leader Snow White is. "She delegates jobs to the dwarfs very well without too much micromanaging. She'd make a great boss. Instead of imposing on their hospitality she offers to work for them in exchange for room and board." After that we read Snow White books, played babies and mommies puzzles with Allison, and played the Eye Spy Disney card game with Tyler. Allison spent a decent amount of time working on her dinosaur reusable sticker book and Tyler and I got a great workout playing Kinect Adventures for nearly 90 minutes.

The roads were a bit better in the morning, but school was still cancelled because more snow was predicted in the afternoon. I took advantage of the time to workout at the Everett YMCA and took the kids swimming there when I was done. The snow didn't start until we were maybe 3 minutes away from our house. We timed our outing perfectly! After that it came down pretty hard. I was glad not to be out in it.

That evening we had a Family Home Evening about Nephi slaying Laban. Oscar and the kids baked gingerbread Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, and Laban and his sword.

School was in session again the next day, but it started two hours late. Lia came up with a few more things for the kids, like Toothless the dragon. The main roads were considerably better, but not in our complex. Walking Tyler to the bus stop was slippery and challenging.

Even the next day it was still a bit challenging to walk them through our complex. The weekend brought warmer temperatures and rain which easily took care of the remaining snow. Here are the kids at the bus stop on Friday and on Monday. This is why the Seattle area tends to just wait the snow out rather than keeping enough plows to really take care of it. Last year was a rare exception.

The kids had the following Monday off for Martin Luther King day. We finally got around to visiting the Edmond's Family Fun Center. I bought a voucher for it in 2017!

The Frog Hopper was extra long, which they loved. Tyler and I also enjoyed a game of mini golf.

And the kids had a great time playing in their indoor play area. 

I actually bought the voucher specifically for this indoor play area so we could have another option for play on rainy days. It was even better than I was expecting, though the big roller slide was super slow. The roller slides they play on at the farm and at Hauges Homestead Park are all fairly fast, but Tyler had to push himself to get all the way down this one. At least he found the zipline and really enjoyed that. It was slightly too tall for him to reach, but some bigger kids would help him out and pull it over to him if he couldn't reach it.


Here's my sweet Allison practicing praying about the Book of Mormon during our Family Home Evening. So precious! Later she had her dinosaurs do it too.

The picture on the right is an impressive drawing Tyler made of Pete the Cat.

Tyler had a fever and stayed home the following Friday, so we kept him at home on Saturday just to make sure he didn't share his sickness with anyone else. Turns out he was perfectly fine by then and full of energy. Here he is playing Jenga Dominos with daddy.

And here he is spending nearly an hour on the exercise bike while wearing a thermal shirt and sweatpants. How was he not crazy hot?!

Here's Allison in her cute patriotic dress and Tyler photobombing her.

And here are the kids running on the track at the Everett YMCA. Kids are allowed on the track as long as they're closely supervised, so Oscar takes them up there to get some exercise in before they go to the adventure zone.

One day we brought home kiwi fruits, which Allison had never tried before. She was eating cucumber slices when I said "I'm going to get you a kiwi too." She then replied "is it a type of cumber?"

Allison broke her glasses in January, but she was due for an exam anyway. We have vision insurance now, but we had to go to a new doctor in Redmond since our old one doesn't contract with our new insurance. Tyler came with us since he had the day off for staff training day. After the appointment we drove a bit further east out to the Sammamish YMCA (where Tyler wanted a picture of the Lego creature he'd made) and then even more east to Snoqualmie Falls. We'd had a ton of rain recently, so it was massive! The rain had cleared up by then, but we still got fairly wet just from the spray.

Absolutely roaring!

After that we drove west to Woodland Park Zoo. We really make the most of our days off! We did mostly indoor stuff since it was so cold outside, but we still had plenty of fun.

We did see a little bit outside, like the jaguar, peacock, and the gorillas. Fortunately there are several heated indoor viewing areas, like the birds and the reptiles, so we could see the outdoor ones for 10-20 minutes and then go warm up inside.

And we spent well over an hour inside the Zoomazium. Allison was a busy girl drumming and taking care of stuffed animals in the veterinary clinic.

Tyler mostly worked on building with these wooden slats before branching out to the other areas.

Allison bounced around pretty much  everywhere, though she really liked sitting on the stone elephant's trunk.

After that we started walking towards the carousel, not realizing the zoo was closing soon. I'd thought it was closing at 6:00pm, but I guess in the winter it closes at 4:00pm, so unfortunately the zoo closed before we made it around to the carousel. We saw the lions, the two hippos, and the small komodo dragon (it's about 1/3rd of the size it will eventually grow to). I'd read that the hippos were going to be moving to another zoo soon, so we're glad we got to see one of them before we left. We couldn't find the other one.

The following week Allison had her first dance with a boy at Ashley Taylor's Quinceañera. Sammy Watkins is a great sport!