April 2019- in Quarantine

April was for sure a month to remember- we stayed at home as a family all month long, like everyone else. If the sun came out we tried to go on a walk to help with our mental health!

Trying on some bunny ears I bought at Target:

Ava's tent is in my office and Audrey backed into it while I was working one day. This is when she was just starting to scoot! She started crawling just a week or so after this, at about age 8 months.

Audrey loves this toy with the balls:

Cutie pie on a walk

Cute pie #2 on a walk:

All the kids wanted to snuggle me- I won't complain!

Ava has a big frown in this picture. She was so sad to have her school canceled! So were we. And pretty soon after we took this picture they announced that school would be canceled for the whole school year.

Brent set up a marble run for the kids that provided hours of entertainment!

Ava living the life- eating a sucker in the sunshine. We did our school time outside in the sunshine a few times while Brent was teaching inside.

This was an activity I saw online that I thought was a good use of our toilet paper rolls- giving "haircuts."

Just cute.

Ava really enjoyed riding her bike- she is pretty good!

The kids were thrilled to go on a bike ride with our friends around our neighborhood.

Brent had to go to campus to get some books for his class, so he took Coen with him on a little "date" to get out of the house. Coen wanted to see Donald:

And they also played "where's waldo," where they take pictures like the below picture and I try to find Coen:

We went to take pictures with our friend (whose family we were self-isolating with). I'll post my favorite pictures in their own blog post. It worked out nicely though because we walked around one of our favorite trails ad had beautiful weather.

This is the new way I go grocery shopping.

One Saturday Brent and the kids made "Hooppy Easter" Easter egg signs and we drove around and put them in our friends' yards. It was an all day project! We did 15, and since our ward boundaries are pretty big, it took us about 2.5 hours to deliver them all. It was a fun thing to do to feel connected!
Here's Coen delivering a sign to our friends the Yaedes. This was the only house we let the kids get out since these are the ones we isolated with.

Can we just zoom in on Coen and see how cute he looks?

On Saturday night before Easter, Coen was terrified about the Easter Bunny coming. He had nightmares a couple weeks before about a bunny that was "hopping so hard." Coen was so scared to go upstairs and get ready for bed. After he went to the bathroom he wouldn't flush because he thought the Easter Bunny was going to hear it. He whispered to me "can the bunny hear me right now?" We told him that we could leave a note for the Easter Bunny to leave our stuff outside and not come in, but he was still terrified and woke up in the middle of the night. Easter morning finally came and everything was happy again.

It was so hard to get a picture of the kids- we have soooo many outtakes!

I dyed Easter eggs with the kids which seemed to take all day!

We went outside to take pictures with the bunny ears and got some cute ones!

Ava has zoom calls with her class on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 45 minutes. On the first class, all 30 students got online, and they quickly learned how to mute themselves, so they could all listen to the teacher- it was impressive!

We went to the Yaedes about once a week for a playdate. It was so nice for the kids to have friends to play with! On the warm days we did water games outside.

Audrey just happily sat on my lap during the playdates

Blocks were another activity that provided many hours of entertainment.

Coen the Pirate gator:

Brent quickly learned the tricks to working from home- nice shirt on the top, comfy bottoms:

Ava wanted just the kids to spend time in their fort:

We had our friend Karen come to our  home church every Sunday. This week Coen was King Benjamin:

It's been fun to put Audrey n a few of the outfits we saved from when Ava was a baby.

By doing the side by side comparisons, I could tell that Ava had more teeth and Audrey more hair!

During school we learned about musical instruments and the kids each drew a lot of instruments.

Ava wanted some "sister time" and I found these selfies on my phone later:

Ava asked me for my phone one day to take a picture of herself and look at a red bump on her chin. She showed me the little zit and said "I think I am growing a nipple." Hahaha I taught her the word pimple.

A friend in the ward invited me to bring the kids to her house to use her backyard. Of course I took her up on it since we hadn't been able to play at a park in a couple months! The kids loved swinging and I had fun chatting with our friend and enjoying her gorgeous yard.

We got Arbys for the first time in like ever, and enjoyed a picnic while we watched the new Disney nature movie, Elephants.

When we were watching a true life adventure where a bear stood up on his hind legs, Ava yelled "Cheeze-its!" Brent and I laughed and said "what??" She responded, "That's what you say when a bear is chasing you! That's what my friend said." It made us laugh because it was such a specific situation, and also because I don't think her friend was saying cheeze its.

Playing cards with a four year old, we experience a lot of emotions:

Coen has been such a stinker lately. I think staying home all the time without as much a of a structure has been hard for him. One of the things he has been doing is saying so many potty words!

When I was changing Audrey's diaper, he asked me, "does Audrey have a penis under her diaper?" I explained that she doesn't and the difference between girl and boy parts. Then Coen kept saying "Audrey has a penis!" I told him he was going to have a time out if he kept saying potty words and being silly. Then Coen said with a twinkle in his eye, "Audrey has p-ajamas." "Audrey has a p-inata." 

Audrey finally got her first tooth, on the bottom, at age 8 months!

We heard honking outside and so we went out to find a parade for our neighbor next-door. Car after car came by, with people holding signs and shouting things like "we love you!" and "you can do this!" He told me he was starting chemo the next morning. He just stood there and cried and waved to his friends, as probably 50 cars came by. It made me cry!

Ready for a walk!

Ava learned how to tie her shoe during school one morning. Brent taught on Monday and Wednesday mornings from 10-12. We did school during that time and then we would go get the free school lunch for the kids.

At the end of April, in just one day, I felt like Audrey grew up! Here she is, filling out her car seat...

And eating the rice/porcupine meatball dinner we are like a big girl...

and climbing up to get into things....

and pulling up to stand!

We took on a project of trying to fix our grass in our yard that was dying and full of moss. Here it is after Brent dethatched it.

We put Audrey in a cage outside one day, but I think Coen wanted to be in there more than Audrey did! Notice Coen is still in his pajamas in the afternoon. This was the new normal!