It is hard to believe that it has been 6 weeks since school and church have been closed down due to the coronavirus. I feel so blessed to be in our new home during the stay home stay safe order. There is much more outdoor work and play opportunites for the kids as well as more space inside the house too. Although I miss Jose dearly, living in this house has been a huge blessing for our family.
Monday, April 20th
For new hair style Monday, Ashley wanted to try out waterfall braids.
There are waterfall braids on each side of her head. They meet in the back of her head and come together with an elastic.
Carlos happened to have Monday evening off which we were excited about. We had our first BBQ at our new house….and I forgot to take pictures! We had delicious carne asada. Next was family home evening. It was Ashley’s turn to teach the lesson.
We played an articles of faith bingo game that was given to us by our dear neighbor Cathy before we moved. It was pretty fun. Even Ian enjoyed playing. We were happy to have Carlos with us for FHE.
Tuesday, April 21st
The letter of the week this week in David’s homeschool pre k for this week was letter J. As part of recognizing words that begin with the letter J, David gets to pick out a book to read each day that’s title focuses on a letter J word. This day he happened to pick the book, The Jungle Book 2. After school was over, we had a late lunch picnic in the family room and watched the movie.
Wednesday, April 22nd
After a misunderstanding this morning, we decided to take a break from school for the day. We worked on cleaning up the house instead. Ashley worked on her room, while I helped David and Emily with theirs. Once Carlos woke up, he and David cleaned the bathrooms together.
Emily and David’s beds 
David with his pokemon poster
Although Emily and David’s room has been unpacked for a few months now, the only thing we had not done was hang things up on the wall. David was super excited to hang up the pokemon poster that his big bro Jose gave him before we moved. Take notice the teddy bear hanging over Emily’s bed. She used to be scared of it when she was 2. She said she didn’t want the teddy bear, so I gave it to David when he was born. After all this time, Emily apparently didn’t remember this. When I went to hang it on David’s side of the room, she was upset. I explained why David had had it over the last 5 years and she was still upset. Kind little David stepped in and said, “I want Emily to have it.” How sweet!
Thursday, April 23rd
So, many of you know I love my day planner , organization, setting goals and journaling. This week I set a goal to notice something remarkable about each child everyday. Then, at the end of the day, write it down! I only ended up writing two of the days but here is what I wrote for today:
Emily & David – For today I am writing about the two of them together. They may not realize it, but they are best friends! Yes, sometimes they argue, sometimes they are rambunctious and play wildy or loudly, but they are also kind and sweet to each other too. They are my little bursts of joy and they make my heart full and grateful. How remarkable.
Ashley -She is really catching on in her homeschool Spanish class. She is so smart! She also started listening to her math lessons on zoom this week. (There were 96 kids in 1 zoom meeting). She also had her first YM/YW meeting on zoom this evening. She was nervous about doing both zoom meetings, but she stayed brave and got though it. Trying something that you are nervous about for the first time and sticking it out is remarkable.
Jose -Tonight he drove an hour and 15 minutes (one way) to come say hi to the kids and I and to get and give hugs after a long day’s work (9:30am – 6pm). He did this even though he knew he had to work the next morning at 4 am! It especially meant a lot to me as today had been exactly one month since the last time we saw him. It is remarkable that my 19 year old son would drive all the way to visit his mom on a busy weeknight. Bless his heart!
Elder Juarez – He is serving a mission. That, in itself is pretty remarkable to me! How did I get so lucky as to have a son who is serving a mission?
Friday, April 24th
I made these cheesy lasagna roll-ups for dinner tonight.
I believe this is becoming a family favorite….especially when ground beef has been hard to come by at the grocery store as of late.
For family game night we played a couple rounds of good old fashion, Go Fish.
Saturday, AprIl 25th
No pictures today. I trekked out to go shopping for our family for 2 weeks worth of groceries. A task that can be hard when we are not having a pandemic. While shopping, my cart was full before making it through the whole store. So I went shopping somewhere else for the rest of the items we needed…then I would have to go back into the same store twice. During all of this I started feeling a little irritated about the situation…after a little while I humbled myself and thought I shouldn’t be upset at having to do this work on my own and having to wear a mask, or for having to buy so much at one time etc. I should be grateful that we have the means to buy groceries for our family.
Sunday, April 26th
Right now, we are loving that we can do church whenever we want on Sundays. 🙂