Early Fall 2020

Our ward put on a virtual talent show in mid-September, so we made a video compilation of Tyler's many creations. The positive response to it has continued to fuel his creativity. 

I snapped this incredibly cute picture of Allison when she turned to look at the camera at just the right moment. She was so proud of herself for making a scene from Wild Kratts with Martin, Chris, and a Cheeta.

Here are some recent funny quotes from Allison.

"It had a weird taste I didn't like. I like the weird taste now."

"I'm gonna have some water to cool my breath down."

Oscar does a reasonably good impression of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. He was doing it for the kids the other day, crouched down like Gollum, and Allison excitedly exclaimed "he's an Elmo frog!" I'd never really thought about just how similar Gollum's voice is to Elmo's.

Kids playing at Mariner park

Fry has no problem sitting in the middle of all the mess. Nibbler does have a problem having his nails trimmed, which is why I have to put him in this kitty straight jacket with zippers to pull out their paws.

Here are the kids enjoying a day warm enough to play at Edgewater Beach. September had wonderfully warm weather, which would have been perfect if it hadn't been so smoky.

There was a lovely sunrise on my walk one morning followed by meeting the missionaries at 92nd Street park that evening.

We had one day that was around 85 degrees, which is pretty rare for us in September. We made sure to enjoy it at Silver Lake. 

The primary came around on September 9th to make a parade for Allison's birthday. Her primary teacher, Aimee Hall, gave her this surprise growing dinosaur inside an egg. The kids thoroughly enjoyed watching a T-Rex hatch out. 

On her actual birthday we decorated for her party at home

She dressed up as a fairy princess. Unfortunately the outfit is a leotard, which made it really hard for her to use the bathroom, so we had to swap it out for another dress.

Her first gift was the dinosaur Oscar had hidden and brought back from 6 Flags. He'd also had to fix it with Epoxy since it'd broken in transport. 

We did squeeze in a little bit of park time since Allison loves to play outside.

Here are some videos of her opening her gifts. The 2nd video was a gift that was given to her after we'd used several of the toys to decorate the cake with.

Here's her dragon cake with figurines on the back

Miss Allie got pretty spoiled! For the previous several months she'd requested many different birthday cakes - dinosaur, dragon, mermaid, fairy, unicorn, etc. Since she kept changing her mind we decided to just make her a sheet cake and layer it with a bunch of mermaid cupcake toppers and small toys from a unicorn dreamland bucket I found on Amazon. For the last few days before her birthday, though, she was convinced daddy was going to make her a dragon cake.

Oscar

attempted to make one for her last minute. We layered its back with several of the toys and Oscar made it look like the dragon was eating mermaids in the front. There were full size mermaids on its back, so we told Allison those were his mermaid friends and that he was eating their mermaid enemies.

Here it is lit up with dinosaur candles last seen on Tyler's 5th birthday.

And videos of her blowing out candles

Unfortunately we had some car and house problems in September. The battery in the Prius died, which was a bit challenging since it was blocking our other car. Oscar had to push it out to the guest parking in order to use our other car to go buy another battery. We also had a leak coming from our Master bathroom, which damaged our drywall. 

Cute Tyler fell asleep in the car one day. 

Here's sweet Allison playing at a school playground.

Oscar smoked a roast one day and did it so well he wanted to eat it all the time, even cold.

Allison, who normally tortures the cats, actually got Leela to purr one day.

Distance learning for Tyler began on September 2nd, but didn't officially start for Allison until the 8th. She didn't want to wait though. I had to print her off some activities so she could have some school too. 

She was very proud of herself for drawing this face.

Here's some of Tyler's school art.

Allison joins in on Tyler's music lessons. Here she is sweetly singing "No More Pie"

And singing "Had a Little Rooster" and doing Beat Buddies.

Part of Allison's lessons is on getting use to wearing a mask. Her teacher gave her 3 masks to put on her stuffed animals. She wants to put them on her animals herself, but can't always manage it, so if she can't do it she puts the animal (like this little pink unicorn) in timeout "because she wouldn't wear her mask."

Here's Tyler doing one of his PE lessons.

The kids often surprise me. Allison's teacher had told her to look around the house for buttons. I of course immediately thought of clothing buttons. She thought of electronic buttons on her dinosaur, like this one.

Distance learning 2.0 has been challenging. It's a lot more work and requires a lot more from parents than the distance learning we had in the spring. Writing a schedule on the board helps Tyler a lot with transitions. Before this he'd struggle to get back to school work after his break.

Here's Allison doing her tucker turtle pose when she needs to calm down, tuck, and think.

And doing some of her artwork. 

Here's Tyler's pumpkin art. He's a great little artist, but he's a bit of a perfectionist Whenever art is assigned it often makes for a long school day.

Here's Allison singing about the 5 Little Pumpkins and having a book read to her on Epic.

And here she is practicing feeding her squirrel acorns with tongs and making emotional faces in the mirror.

This is cute. Allison is singing the "My name is Michael" song both normally and in a rawr voice when she pretends the dinosaur is singing. 

Kiddos having fun at Silver Lake

I've started taking them out to a day camp in Snohomish twice a week. Ludus, the company I'll be performing in Beauty and the Beast with, runs it. I get to give myself a break, give the kids an opportunity to socialize, and financially support my theater. It's a win, win, win! Sometimes I take a walk out there in Snohomish just to get a change of scene. With the mist and fall weather you can see that spiders are EVERYWHERE.

Here they are at a nearby park after camp.

On the first weekend in October we took them up to Carleton Farm. I was happy to see fall farm festivals would be open this year and bummed when I read they wouldn't be doing the activities my kids like most (jumping pillows, corn pits, rope swing into a bunch of hay, etc.). I warned the kids their favorite stuff wouldn't be available and asked if they even still wanted to go, to which my sweet Tyler responded "can we just go and pick out a pumpkin?" I realized the kids are more excited to do the things they can do during this pandemic than disappointed about the things they can't do. After months of far more time at home and far more time staring at screens than usual, they long for any sort of outing that gives them a sense of normalcy, 

We did pick out pumpkins in addition to playing in the kids corral playground, taking a ride on the bucket train, launching pumpkin and apple cannons, and eating pumpkin doughnuts and drinking apple cider slushee (which is my new favorite form of apple cider). It was a lot less activity than they usually get in on a farm day, and we paid slightly more for it than we did last year, but it was truly wonderful.

Roller Slides

Cow Train

Amusing Tombstones

Cute kids in a pumpkin patch

The kids were fascinated by the squash flowers

Here are our colorful pumpkins. The long orange one is taller than it looks in this photo. The yellow one turned orange by the end of the month.

Family measurements

Here they are at a couple of parks just before I left to Mississippi for Amy's wedding.

In Mississippi Amy picked me up from the airport then we headed out to a cabin in the woods for her Bachelorette party. I found it fascinating that the trees grow in the middle of the lake just behind the cabin.

We took a walk in Hattiesburg the next day.

I also took a walk on this trail on Friday and again with Heather on Saturday. It's just outside the venue where they got married and had their reception. I'd drunk a slurpee at lunchtime, which made me freeze with the air conditioning, so I had to head outside for a walk in order to warm up. 

Here's Amy and James sharing a cookie at their rehearsal dinner.

I enjoyed getting a mani/pedi and getting all glamed up the next day.

We had masks that matched our dresses.

For the next two nights I stayed at a hotel. My toilet broke apart while I was sitting on it. That's definitely a new one for me!

Fortunately they moved me to a new room. The hotel itself was a bit questionable and smelled like pot, but the rooms were clean and smelled fine.

I ordered in some tasty Mediterranean food that evening.

When I got back the kids put up window clings and we had a few more days of distance learning before starting our drive to Utah.

Before leaving we explored a park we'd never been to before - Lowell park in Everett. We'll be back!

Tyler finding a huge stick

Our ward put together a virtual primary program for our virtual service the following Sunday. Here are the kids' sweet videos about why the gospel inspires them to show love and kindness.