May 2020

 WEEK 1 (May 1st - 9th) - This was the week Katie came with Baby Deantre to stay for awhile.  Things with covid in NYC were crazy and they weren't allowed to even leave their apartment so they decided to come out for the next few months.  Katie agreed to quarantine at the ranch for 2 weeks to not spread anything to the rest of us.  We did drive up there to give her the sacrament since it had been about 8-10 weeks since she had had it.  We did the sacrament outside on the deck and when Kasen went to pass it to her he didn't know what to do so he put the bowl down on the ground and slid it across the deck.  It was very funny.  This Corona virus is so new that no one knows how to navigate it, how contagious it is, how to prevent the spread, etc.  We have been staying home and not interacting with anyone, but we did go down to Jake and Megan's house so Jed could rope.  We stayed outside and Kasen and Jagger chased Mallory's new duck around.  Kasen has been very into building with his legos and he built this new living quarters horse trailer.  Ava and Kasen have been in their "Habits for a Successful Life" teen class online and Ava had a great idea to make goal jars.  She helped everyone decorate a jar that they could then write goals down on pieces of paper and after they were accomplished the goal could be put in their goal jar.  Then at the end of the year we could read them and see how much we accomplished.  It was a great idea.  Ava painted her jar turquoise and braided rope around it so it looked nautical, Kasen made a football jar, Kinsley painted a cat on hers, and Dallin had someone help him paint a tiger on his.

It's been pretty quiet with all this social distancing.  Dallin got a hold of my phone for selfies, we've taken walks and thrown rocks in the ditches that are full of water now, Kasen made a shoe display in his closet, and also the burn he got from the branding iron started to heal. 

We realized at about 5pm on May the 4th that it was Star Wars day (May the Force Be with You/May the 4th be with you).  Ava showed everyone how to draw BB8 or R2D2 - I have no idea what thing that is for sure as I've never watched a Star Wars movie.  But I thought their drawings were excellent.  We decided to go for an evening walk and Dallin needed the stroller and Kinsley needed to be pulled in the wagon.  I was thinking "I'm not sure why these kids are acting like they can't use their legs" when all of sudden Jed shows up on the street riding his horse for our family walk!  Like father like kids I guess.

The main event of the week was Kasen's 12th birthday!  It is so awesome that he is twelve.  This has been a year we planned on being full of temple outings and he only got the chance to go 2x before Covid shut down temples worldwide!  It has been a blessing for our family that church policy was changed so that he was able to get the priesthood at the beginning of the year instead of his birthday because he has been passing the sacrament each Sunday for us.  For his birthday I made a strawberry poke cake.  It was my first attempt but turned out very delicious.

For his birthday we decided to go down to the greenbelt for a family outing.  I'm not sure I've ever taken the kids to the waterfalls at the greenbelt before.  The water was really rushing down and we stayed for a few hours to enjoy the nice weather and scenery.  There weren't too many people out but we weren't the only ones at the greenbelt.

 

We weren't sure that Dallin could make it 2 days until his birthday so we celebrated his birthday on Saturday instead of Sunday.  I thought there would never be a kid so excited for their birthday as Kinsley has been, but Dallin might have even taken that excitement to a new level!  I think he asks 20x a day if it's his birthday or not and has for the last 2 months.  So first thing in the morning he opened his presents. 

Then he got his own special cake made by Ava.  It was perfect for him!  For his birthday outing he wanted to go to "Pirate Park".  It's the park in Rigby by the fairgrounds, but it has a big pirate ship there so hence the name.  It is a pretty great park and honestly if I was a kid it would be my favorite place too. Kids have much better parks and playgrounds than we had as kids!

We walked over to see the army tanks and when we looked at the lists of names from citizens of Jefferson County that served in the war we were surprised to see Neal Erickson and Dewain Foster - both of the kids' great grandpas.  We knew Great Grandpa Erickson had been to the war but not Grandpa Dewain.  We called Grandpa Foster to tell him about it and he was surprised too.

This week we had an unwanted and surprising event happen in our basement.  Well we noticed it a few weeks ago, but their looked to be water damage on the ceiling of the basement bathroom.  They came to look and discovered that our shower in the master bathroom was leaking.  So they had to totally replace our master bathroom shower cut into the basement bathroom too to fix the pipes.  We have had some really annoying water issues in this house and I really wanted to just throw a match on the place after this big thing.  This has actually been a process for about 5 weeks but here are the during and afters. 

 

 The weather has been really nice so we've been taking advantage of being outside and going for walks and playing games in the backyard.

WEEK 2 (May 10th - 16th) - Sunday was Mother's day and I always love the cards the kids make for me each year. Jed is also really good at picking out pretty flowers each year.  I still got a Mother's day song too during church!

Another week of staying home and playing on our little piece of property.  I'm starting to feel like I'm living in the movie "Groundhog day".  Kinsley and Kasen tried to make their own kites this week, we had jumping contests, and the kids started riding horses each night when Jed rode at night.

Virtual school has been going fine.  Kasen has a zoom everyday and never misses because he likes seeing the kids in his class.  There was a contest in the community to write a paper on why agriculture is important to learn and study and Kasen submitted something and actually won!  His paper was really awesome. He got to read it on zoom to his whole class.

The cows are now out in Osgood to eat grass so Jed and I drove out there to check on them.  It is a long ways out to Osgood!  There is nothing for as far as you can see except farm ground or open land.  The calves are already getting so big.  While we were out there the sky was so pretty.

Dallin has been very into taking my phone and taking pictures of himself lately.  They are so funny.  I can't imagine not having Dallin in our family.  It sometimes is crazy to think about how we were not planning on having any more kids after Kinsley.  He is so silly and full of energy.  One of the things I love most about Dallin is that he shows so much emotion on his face and he is so expressive.  For some reason, it seems like every night we either have Dallin or Kinsley come up to our bed while we are asleep.  I'm thankful we have such a big bed because it is not an inconvenience to have a little one in with us -  a lot of the times I don't even know they are sleeping with us until I wake up.  Although I notice a little more with Dallin because he is not the most peaceful sleeper.  I usually get a foot or hand to the face with him.  Kinsley is like a little princess sleeping.

 

 Kasen has been working on roping nearly every night.  He has WJ running slowly now when he is roping the dummy.  He is getting pretty good.  We went down to Jake's house again for more roping practice.  On the way down we had a dance party in the car to some of Ava's music.  Right now she really likes older music liked Jackson 5.  

It was a beautiful afternoon to be outside.  Kasen and Jed roped their hearts out and the rest of the kids played with cousins. 

WEEK 3 (May 17th - 23rd) - This month is really flying by!  I just love having everyone home.  I can't believe that we will finish the school year with homeschool.  Dallin agrees with me that it is pretty great having everyone home too.  Even with all the extra people to play with he still likes hanging out with me the most I think - although he has started sleeping with Ava every night.  When we asked him why he needs to sleep in Ava's bed and not his own he said, "Because it's softer and because Kasen sleep farts!"  

I'm not sure I wrote about this yet or not, but back in February I was feeling annoyed that we weren't spending as much quality time together when we were all home.  I felt like too much time was being wasted on the tv so I instigated a rule that during the school week there would be no tv at all unless it was an educational show for school.  We started that and it wasn't too hard because there were a lot of activities at night.  Then with Covid we suddenly didn't have any activities at night or during the day for that matter.  Part of me almost went back on the no tv rule, but then something (divine) told me to just keep going with it.  So we have kept the rule of no tv during the week.  The only one who breaks the rule is Jed who thinks he has to have the tv on to go to sleep.  Not only has this helped during the day for the kids to use their imaginations more, but has also been very nice in the evenings when everyone is home.  We have played board games, card games, wrestled, had dance parties, and just been around each other more.  The kids have gotten more involved in learning apps and Ava, Kasen, and Kinsley have all started using Duolingo to learn new languages.  I have to be careful though to not let them trade tv time for another type of screen time.  It is frustrating how screens have so much addiction that comes along with them.

Ava has been finishing up her classes and had a few projects to complete.  She is always on top of all her assignments and keeps herself busy during the day.  She has started reading some of the classic novels and has made a goal to read 100 by the time she graduates high school.  She is definitely the example in the house of making and achieving goals!  She also helps us enjoy music more often.  I am much more prone to never turn on music unless it is classical music, but Ava will turn on her music at least once a day and her and Dallin have epic dance parties. 

The kids have a love/hate relationship with some of the extra homeschool things I do with them.  We are doing a history program from The Good & the Beautiful curriculum which I have found to be quite interesting - but the kids really complain when I tell them it is time to do history.  They mostly hate the audio recordings.  I just love learning about history.  There are so many places to go and things to see.  If I could I would travel full-time and take the kids all around the world to teach them about people and places and events.  I can't remember exactly what we were talking about but something about being cold or walking in snow so I had the kids stand on ice.  It was actually pretty funny.  Sometimes I think I would have been a good school teacher.

This week was one for the history books because we got two new pets.  I never ever ever thought I'd own a cat, but after living in Eagle with our stray cat that came around and seeing how much she helped with the mice control I actually really love cats!  They are pretty self-sufficient and don't need a lot of attention from me.  So when Katie told me that our cousin Jarred was trying to find a home for two kittens I told him we would be interested.  He brought over two of the cutest little kittens we'd ever seen.  Kinsley was in actual heaven.  She named one that had shorter hair Finn (like Huckleberry Finn because he is more adventurous) and the other Fluffy because her furr is very fluffy.  She goes out and reads them stories all afternoon and holds them and sings to them.  Hopefully we will keep liking them as they grow.  All the kids quite like the new kittens.

Katie finally finished her two week quarantine so we all decided to go up to the ranch and have a sleepover to celebrate.  It was a little disappointing to see there was still snow up there though! 

WEEK 4 (May 24th - 31st) - This week started off with celebrating Memorial Day.  We all met at the cemetery to visit the graves.  First we stopped to see Grandma Melba and Grandpa Dewain at the Rigby cemetery.  We also walked over and showed the kids that the fields by the cemetery were named in honor of Grandpa Dewain. 

Next we drove down to Idaho Falls to visit the Manwaring graves.  Sydnee had brought the book from Nessie about Granpa Basil and she read us some stories about him and Grandma Manwaring.  My heart felt so much gratitude and pride in both sets of my grandparents as I thought about them this day.  They all sacrificed so much throughout their lives.  My grandmas were both widowed at such young ages and left to raise their children on their own.  I am so grateful for my heritage and the lives my grandparents lived.

Monday we went out to see our Erickson family members.  Grandma Erickson walked us around the cemetery to show us some interesting graves.  The cemetery in Lewisville is pretty amazing in that it has a lot of pioneer history there. 

This week the kids officially finished this year of school!  Ava graduated from middle school and will be in high school next year!  Kasen graduated from elementary school and will be in middle school next year!  Kinsley finished 3rd grade with flying colors.  Dallin will get to go to preschool next year.  It will be exciting come fall!  Here are their first day of school pictures compared to their last day of school pictures.

To celebrate we went to Fizz Bizz and got Italian ice treats and then the elementary school had set up drive by locations so the students could say goodbye to their teachers.  Kasen had written a poem about 5th grade that was chosen to be in his class yearbook.  It was really good.

When we were at the ranch we decided as siblings to each take a week and plan some fun activities to do together while Katie was here.  I planned the first week and we invited everyone over on Sunday afternoon for dinner and obstacle courses. 

Mid-week we planned a science and adventure day up at the ranch.  We went up and Ava showed the cousins how to make some explosions and dye playdooh.  She also taught them how to make slime.  

Kasen was in charge of the adventure part so he led a hike up the mountain to Fort Foster.  It was a pretty hot day and the first part of hiking is in open sun so only about half the group made it.  As we were walking James was really complaining so I said, "Just think of the reward we will get when we get to the top James!"  He said, "It's impossible - the only thing I can think about is laying in the shade and dying."  I couldn't stop laughing. 

We drove over to Swan Valley for ice cream before we finished the day.  I swear that ice cream is the best ice cream in the world!  Another activity we planned for our week was meeting up at Pirate Park.  Dallin really wanted to play their with his cousins.

The last day of the month was Sunday the 31st.  This was Sydnee's week of planning activities so she invited everyone over Sunday afternoon for food and fun.  The cousins had a baseball game, jumped on the trampoline, and then Heath wanted to show everyone his motorcycles.  They are little electric ones so everyone wanted to try.  When it was Kasen's turn he drove around like Nacho Libre.  Ava was a little too big for the electric bikes so Sydnee got out the real dirtbike.  It was Ava's first time and she rode up the field.  She almost fell off the back when she started.  

I forgot to mention that Saturday we drove up to Humphrey and enjoyed nature. Jed also had to fix some fence before we could haul our cows up there so he and Kasen worked on that most of the time.  The rest of us went on some hikes and explored.  Last time someone was up there they had made a little fort with tree branches we discovered.

Here are some other random pictures from the week: playing games, a little stomach bug, and some moments from home church.  In one of the primary song books we found some handwriting on one of the songs that divided up parts for me and my siblings.  We must have done a musical number at one point in our childhood.  We decided to recreate it, but wow we were awful.  I'm not proud about the fact that it appears the kids all got the Erickson musical genetics.