Coronavirus Craze

It's insane to me how in so short of time the world has changed so dramatically. At the end of 2019 and dizzy showed up in China by the beginning of 2020 it showed up in America and by March of 2020 the whole country is pretty much on lockdown with social distancing and staying home.

We're still finding ways to entertain ourselves and occupy our time and there is no shortage of school work and busy work being supplied by the district as we learn from home. Instrument lessons continue even if I'm the one teaching them, but somehow life is more relaxed, simpler, better, filled with the love and spirit of the Lord.

It's amazing how in a crisis the promises of the gospel and Christ's blessings become first and forefront in your mind and provide you the peace and comfort and happiness you need.

Camping With Cousins

So my niece Haley is basically awesome sauce!  And through a set of circumstances we became ridiculously close in the last two years of her high school.  That closeness led her family and mine to become more close than we had been.  It was such a good experience and it made leaving that much harder.  But before we left, we took a combined camping trip up to northeastern PA to the Aaronic Priesthood Restoration Site. 

Coastal Camping

I love going away with my kids for mini, unplanned vacations.  There are some places that I feel more comfortable going with my kids than others without my husband.  The beach is at the top of the list.  So inevitably each summer I take a weekend or two or a couple days mid week and we go to the beach and camp it up.  It's fairly cheap and we're great survivalists. 

Give us stuff for a fire, junk food like hot dogs, chips, S'mores, and we've got dinner and give us sandwich stuff and tons of fruits and vegetables and water and you have our lunches.  Last power pack those days with the often denied sugary breakfast of Poptarts and my kids are in seventh heaven.  The other nights we eat out.  We spend all day on the beach, all late afternoon at the camp playground and all night on the boardwalk. 

And I just happily watch it all, taking pictures where I can, joining the fun when asked and thanking my lucky stars for how good my life is turning out to be!

Camping ?!?!

Yes our family loves camping.  And not the camper style camping, although that's fun too, but the tent and sleeping bags, cooking over fire living in the woods style camping.  Some people like to camp but need to do it for a week to make it worth all the packing.  But I think that is where our family is different.

There's a bit of survivalist or fundamentalist that we can easily revert back to.  Sleep, eat and water it up and we are fine.  So we can escape for a weekend easily with a tent, sleeping bags, loads of junk food (hot dogs and s'more supplies) and a case of bottled water.

Travis took the boys for their first camp of the season.  I thought I would love them being gone and I did, but I also felt like I was missing out.  Good thing there are many camping trips in our future this summer (here's hoping - anyway).