Life at Home - Online School Begins!

The earthquake this morning was a bit of a wake-up call. We finally filled up the empty water barrels in our basement. 

The lines to get into Costco. 

The lines to get into Costco - they went down to the end of the store, wound around the carts and almost back to the entrance of the store! We didn't go in.

A sign in front of Costco showing what is out of stock.

Mikey had two baby teeth pulled today. One wasn't even close to being ready to come out and had HUGE roots. Poor kid has a giant hole in his mouth. Getting ready for an expander to make room in his little mouth for permanent teeth that need to come in. 

Moroni lost his trumpet today during the earthquake!

Our first day of Online/Quarantine School began with an early morning earthquake! It was a big one, the largest one recorded in Utah since 1992. It was a 5.7 magnitude earthquake with the epicenter around Magna, UT. It was just after 7am. Jeff and I were awake but the kids were all still asleep. I was standing by the bed when I heard a loud rumble, like a GIANT semi-truck roaring down the street, but I quickly knew it was not a semi but an earthquake. I threw on a sweatshirt and raced upstairs to check on the kids. Lamps were rocking, pictures were rattling and the whole house was shaking. Mikey thought Isaac was jumping on his bed. Kate thought there was a ghost under her bed haha! ;) Calvin knew it was an earthquake and woke up to his snake terrarium shaking on his dresser, worried it would fall off. The kids were all okay and it was over pretty quickly but definitely had our hearts racing! The kids all fell back asleep and we just let them sleep while we cleaned and filled up our water barrels in the basement, charged our solar batteries and added a few more things to our shopping list. It was a bit of a wake-up call!

I guess there were over 90 aftershocks today but we only felt the one at 4.6 around 1pm. Actually, just the kids felt it. Jeff and I were in the drive-thru at Chick-fil-a getting everyone lunch before Mikey had to have 2 teeth pulled. (That was his requested "last meal" - all restaurant dine-in is closed but they still had their drive-thru open). No one was hurt or injured in the earthquake but there was some damage. Matt's work up in Salt Lake (L3 communications by the airport) had cracks and structural damage and their house had some settling and a gas leak outside. In Salt Lake, the Moroni statue on top of the Salt Lake Temple lost his trumpet! The SLC airport also had some broken water pipes and closed for several hours.

Online school went well today. (I think). It honestly took the kids less than an hour. Kate spent maybe closer to 2 hours. I hope they are actually doing everything they are supposed to. It's all new and hart to know what the expectations are and no one really wants me hovering over their shoulder supervising so I guess I'm just trusting that they actually did it! Fingers crossed!

Jeff and I tried to go to Costco today to get a few small things. The entrance was closed off and you had to wait in a crazy long line just to get in. I heard it was efficient and organized and everyone was patient and good but we didn't want to wait in the lines so we just left. We went to Smith's and got a bit of cheese, dishwashing detergent, peanut butter, and Pam spray. I've been helping a few people with food orders for my calling. I heard today that there was a 2-hour wait at the Bishop's storehouse to pick up the order!

We're trying to figure out how this whole "quarantine" is supposed to look for our family. The kids are still playing with very small groups of friends and we are spending lots of time together as a family. Yesterday Calvin taught us how to play spike-ball and I think we'll go play pickleball here in a few minutes. I read out loud to the kids last night and we've done scripture study each morning. This might work out to be a time to create better habits! Of course, they also spent probably 2 hours playing video games, oops! It's a bit of a bummer that the weather isn't supposed to be great for the next two weeks. Yesterday was actually a gorgeous Spring-ish day. Everyone played outside for hours. Today we woke up to pouring rain but it stopped by noon and then we got to go outside. It's supposed to be cold snow/rain all week.

Isaac found Calvin's old bike and he and Jeff replaced a popped tube and he rode his bike a few miles to Alpine to hang out with some of his friends. They have a friend with a bike track and jumps in his back yard and spent hours riding bikes today. He felt pretty independent! And now he's worn out from biking all day. I love that!