Ella's 6th Birthday!

In the midst of the chaos and uncertainty in our lives, I did the best that I could to make Ella's 6th birthday special today.  We started off the day with our traditional buttermilk waffles with whipped cream and strawberries.  After school time and lunch, I hosted an outside, 15-clue scavenger hunt for the kids as the replacement for our daily exercise activity just to help Ella's day feel a little more special.  Although a torrential downpour complete with hail came right after I had finished hiding all of the clues, it luckily only last for about five minutes or so.  As a result, the kids were able to complete the hunt without getting too wet which I was grateful for as it took quite a bit of time to set the entire thing up.  After the scavenger hunt was complete, we all came back inside so that Emmett could take his afternoon nap and the kids could have their TV time while I made Ella's birthday dinner.  Ella enjoyed watching a movie from the cozy comforts of her awesome, blanket fort that I had helped her make yesterday on the couch. After the dinner was made, my parents arrived at 6 p.m. to help us celebrate.  Although we knew that it was risky to have them come especially due to their advanced ages and also against our governor's mandate to only leave the house for essential activities, we decided to just go for it since all eight of us are currently healthy.  I tried to lay down some 'ground rules' before my parents came to help them stay six feet away from us throughout the evening.  I set up their own table in the foyer so that they could eat dinner and dessert in a separate area from than us.  In addition, I asked them to remain in the same spot to watch Ella open her gifts in the living room.  Although my mom did a pretty decent job following the rules, my dad had a very difficult time practicing 'social distancing' and was found all over the main floor of our house less than six feet away from all of us several times throughout the evening.  Oh well.  The best laid plans often go awry.  As wonderful as it was to have them join us for Ella's birthday, I hope that we didn't infect anyone with an undetected Coronavirus.  We enjoyed eating Ella's requested dinner of orange chicken with all the fixings, watching her open up her collection of gifts, and singing "Happy Birthday" to her before she blew out the candles on her Ariel-themed cake that I had made the day before.  I was grateful for this chance to gather together during such a crazy and stressful time to celebrate our special girl who joined our family six years ago.  Ella has been such a source of energy, excitement, joy, and laughter to our family these past six years.  She is seriously the cutest, little girl around and we just all love her to pieces!

Ella smiling before blowing out the candles on her birthday waffles.

The four kids about to begin the scavenger hunt around our yard.

Logan reading a clue to Ella and Lia that they had just found on one of the swings in our backyard.

It was a bit of difficult to manage Emmett while chasing the kids all over the front yard and back yard several times.  He kept on tripping on the uneven ground as he is still getting used to walking in shoes outside.  By the time the hunt was over, his pants were almost totally wet from falling so many times on the wet ground.  Oh dear.

Lia, Logan, and Ella finding a clue taped to our neighborhood mailbox.

Ella enjoyed a fruit roll-up from inside her blanket fort while watching a movie.

A shot of Ella's legs sticking out from her blanket fort.

After a wardrobe change and fresh hair-do, Ella was all ready to go by the time her birthday party started.  Here is our cute girl posing in front of her gifts.

Grandma and grandpa enjoyed eating dinner from the little table in the foyer.  I told them that it was almost as good as having a romantic, dinner out at a restaurant somewhere!  I just had to take a picture of this as we have never hosted family or friends for dinner at their own table inside our front door.  This is such a sign of how strange our times are right now.

The kids and me enjoying our dinner in the dining room.

A close-up of Ella drinking her Martinelli's sparkling cider that she requested as the drink for her dinner.

After dinner, we retreated into the living room for gift opening.  As always, Logan immediately made a pillow fort in the small couch to watch from while the birthday girl opened her gifts.  I don't know why, but Logan has been doing this for every birthday we have had in our family for the past few years.  What a silly boy.

All four, Hartland kids sitting together before Ella began opening her gifts.

Ella opening up her first gift.

Ella showing off her Disney, Ariel Lego set from grandma and grandpa.

Much to my chagrin, Emmett has been playing with my giant, Easter eggs over the past few weeks and bouncing them around like basketballs.  He kept himself thoroughly entertained with this activity while Ella opened all of her gifts.

Ella showing off her new, Ariel backpack and stuffed, Anna doll.  She definitely loves Disney princesses as much as her older sister did when she was the same age.

The birthday girl and her mama before lighting the candles on the cake.

Ella showing off six fingers while wearing her new, Ariel nightgown.

Ella smiling while listening to us sing to her.

Ella blowing out the candles on her cake.  After blowing multiple times on the cake, Ron muttered under his breath, "Ugh.  That's a lot of coronavirus."  Oh dear.

After cutting and serving the cake, we put a candle on grandma's piece and sang "Happy Birthday" to her since her birthday is tomorrow.  If Ella had been born one hour and nine minutes later, she would have shared her special day with her beloved grandma.

Ella thoroughly enjoying her birthday cake!

Happy Birthday, Ella!  We sure love you!

Her Last Night of Being Five...

I had to sneak into Ella's bedroom tonight to take these pictures of her sleeping during her last night of her life as a five-year old. I just think that she is the cutest thing and there is nothing cuter than her sleeping all wrapped up in her beloved, "Comfy Warmy" blanket that she has loved since she was a baby.  I cannot believe how fast these past six years have gone.  I feel as though she went from being a toddler to a little girl in the blink of an eye!  Here's to a few more years of her being my little girl before she gets all long and leggy and grown up acting like Lia. :-)

A week of firsts...

Although I mentioned both of these events in yesterday's blog post, I thought that they deserved to have their own, separate post.  This week, both Ella and Emmett had a fun "first" in their life--Ella learned how to ride a bike without training wheels on and Emmett got to go for his first ride in a baby swing. 
After Ella requested that her training wheels be removed last week, it dawned on me that we could totally take advantage of all of this extra time at home to help her learn how to ride her bike without them on.  Being the athletic, independent, and fearless girl that she always has been, it came as no surprise to me that she figured it out in three short sessions.  Ron took her out for a little session last Sunday, March 22nd, on our sport's court where she began to get the hang of it.  On Monday, March 23rd, I took her out during our daily exercise time to work on riding her bike again.  Within a matter of minutes, a massive hail storm hit that sent Lia, Logan, and Emmett running into the house, but Ella and I persevered and kept on going.  We continued to work on riding in straight lines and taking turns on our neighbor's long and flat driveway during the entire hail storm.  It is a mothering memory that I will never forget and I am so proud of Ella for sticking it out through the crazy weather with me!  On Tuesday, March 23rd, Ron decided to take a break from working in the office to join us on our walk up to the junior high in our neighborhood.  Although I was just planning on having Ella walk with us (since the hill there and back would have been too difficult for her to ride on), Ron offered to help her ride up the hill and back since I had to push Emmett in the stroller.  This turned out to be such a great idea as it allowed Ella to ride her bike on the large, flat track once we got to the school.  The second Ella started pedaling on the track, it clicked and she was off!  Ella starting riding lap after lap after lap on the track with total confidence.  It was so exciting to watch!  Since Tuesday, we have gone on a few more walks around the neighborhood with Ella on her bike.  Although she is totally comfortable riding on flat ground, she is still figuring out how to go up and down hills with proficiency; however, I know that it will come within a short matter of time since we doing in this activity several times a week right now.

And she's off!

Ella riding towards me...

and right by me...

and past me.

And away she goes!

In addition, baby Emmett had a successful and fun first time trying out his baby swing on our swing set.  As I mentioned in the previous blog post, Ron found the time on Wednesday to install the bucket swing on our set.  After heading out to the backyard yesterday for our exercise time, the kids all asked if I could put Emmett in the swing.  After wiping off the rain with a towel, I put him in and he loved it from the first second.  After pushing him a few times, I asked Lia to take over so that I could get some pictures and video.  It was just the cutest thing to see him smiling from ear to ear the entire time.  I was able to get several pictures of him with this huge, open-mouth grin on his face!

An adorable shot with Emmett at the front with Ella and Logan swinging behind him.

I just love this picture due to the look of pure happiness on Lia's face while she is pushing Emmett.

And one last adorable photo of my darling, baby boy!

Our Life at Home these Days...

Well, we are almost two weeks into this new phase of life and we are finally starting to get into some sort of routine.  Things have started to get a little easier for all of us as we are adjusting to this new way of doing things.  In addition, I finally have just accepted the fact that everything and anything has been or will continue to be cancelled on our calendar.  At first, I was so mad and frustrated by all of this that I found myself emotionally fighting against everything that was cancelled.  After so many disappointments, I finally realized a few days ago that there was no point in fighting against any of this as I would never win.  So, I have just accepted this new way of life as our new normal and with that acceptance has come a new found sense of relief.  As disappointed as I was to cancel our Spring Break trip to Hawaii in just a few days (after the governor of Hawaii declared that all visitors arriving after March 26th would have to self-quarantine for 14 days in their hotels/condos) and to learn that Spencer's wedding is completely cancelled for the time being due to all LDS temples being closed, I have started to see some silver lining in this awful situation.  There are actually some good things that have come as a result of our family lockdown that never would have happened at this time of the year otherwise.  These include Logan starting to read chapter books for the first time in his life, Ella learning how to ride a bike without training wheels, Ron working less hours a day which always puts him in a better mood, family movie nights happening on school nights, and baby Emmett getting to try out his bucket seat on the swing set for the first time.  NONE of these things would have happened had we been in the throws of our busy, hectic, middle-of-the-school-year schedule.  So, with that said, I am grateful for the 'positives' that have come out of this global pandemic.
Here are some random pictures from this past week in quarantine...

After a first week home of no set schedule (due to some items on the calendar that had not been cancelled and beautiful weather that pulled us outside for afternoon outings), I finally established a daily routine at the beginning of this week for Monday through Friday.  I intentionally did not put a time limit on each activity which allows the schedule to be flexible throughout the day which has been helpful.  This is how our daily schedules goes as of right now:

Breakfast, play time/get dressed, school time (during Emmett's morning nap), reading time, lunch, exercise time, TV time (during Emmett's afternoon nap), activity time, dinner time, scripture time, and bed time.  'Play with Emmett time' gets fit in whenever it can as the poor, little guy has kind of gotten lost in the shuffle with all of this change.  I no longer have the time to sit on the floor and play with him like I was trying to do on a daily basis while the kids were still in school.

Although we have managed to get outside for exercise time almost every day since school was cancelled, there has been two days when it was too cold and rainy.  Luckily, YouTube has an abundance of children's exercise videos to choose from which is what we did for our exercise time both of these days.  Lia and Ella loved it and Logan not so much.  Emmett had a good time wandering around the room while his siblings completed their cardio workouts.

It has been fun to have a family, movie night on a school night two evenings this week.  We rented both of the new Jumanji movies to watch and just laughed our way through both of them.  Since Ron and I have been big fans of Kevin Hart and Jack Black for years, we even found the movies entertaining.

After missing out on YW for three weeks in a row, Lia's class president decided to start hosting a virtual, weekly activity for the first time this week.  Here she is playing a game of charades with her class while her younger brother and sister looked on.

Although Logan has always enjoyed being read to by either Ron or me, he has never really read chapter books to himself in his free time.  Luckily, a few weeks ago, he came home from school telling me about a book series that he was interested in due to a few of the books being in his classroom.  Within a few days, I ordered the entire series from Amazon with the plan to give him the first half of the series for Easter and the second half for Christmas.  After reading his library book within the first few days of being home, I secretly pulled out the first book from my closet to give to him.  He was so excited that he read the entire book in one day!  He has now read five books in five days.  Thank heavens I have 14 books in total to give to him as the public library and his school library are both closed.  It has been so fun to see Logan getting in touch with his 'inner bookworm.'

After 2.5 days of working at school last week, Ron came home last Wednesday and set up the 'command center' for his high school in our home office.  Although he works a full day in the office with a short lunch break, it has been so nice for him to start work later in the morning and end work earlier in the evening.  Plus, I just love having him in a happier and more helpful mood each day.

The biggest bonus of this second week at home was finding the time to help Ella learn how to ride her bike without the training wheels on.  Although she totally was ready to learn last summer, we just never found the time to teach her between all of our trips, a newborn baby, and just being too exhausted.  After her request, Ron took off her training wheels this past Sunday and spent some time with her in the backyard on our sport's court.  I then went out with her during our exercise time on Monday and helped her practice some more.  By the third day, it totally clicked and Ella rode several laps around the large track at the junior high right up the hill from our house.  It has been so fun to watch her learn this skill this week!

Lastly, Ron found the time to swap out one of the big kid swings for the baby, bucket swing yesterday.  Today during exercise time, the kids asked me to put Emmett in it for the first time and he LOVED it!  It was so cute to watch him smile from ear to ear while Lia pushed him and I took pictures and video.  After Logan took over, Lia started pretend-jumping out of the way every time Emmett swung to the front of the swing set.  He thought this was the funniest thing and he just laughed over and over and over again.  We were all dying at how adorable this was!

Our Bendy Girl...

Although Ella started taking ballet classes January 2018, I didn't enroll her in a legitimate dance studio until this past fall.  This change has definitely brought about some improvements in the quality of dance instruction that she is receiving.  One of these improvement is the emphasis that her ballet instructor, Miss Jax, gives to stretching and completing the splits.  We had NO idea until this school year that Ella was flexible. No idea.  As a result, we were so surprised to learn that Ella could already do both her forward facing and middle splits.  This especially meant something to me as I studied ballet for ten years and almost mastered the splits on my left side, but I never got anywhere close on my right side or with the middle splits.  So the fact that Ella could do all three of these spplits right away without even trying is just mind blowing to me!

This past week, I was looking at her dance studio's Instagram page to try to find out information on when it would be closing due to the Covid-19 virus.  After scrolling through several pictures, I was stunned to find a picture of my Ella posing in her middle splits.  Apparently, her ballet teacher had taken this picture of her back in December and had posted it on their Instagram account with the following message:  "One of our Level 1 dancers got her middle splits last night."  It was such a shock since most of the pictures on the dance studio's Instagram page are group of class pictures that are posted...and then suddenly there was an individual shot of my little, 5-year old.  Needless to say, Ella surprised me again!  Oh that girl.  

Our Approach to Social Distancing

As we've slugged through this first week of being home together full-time, I must say that it has been difficult for all of us.  Although we all love our summer break and our various vacations throughout the year, this has been different.  We all miss our routine and the consistency in our lives that comes with it.  Our "home school" is not as effective and as meaningful as what my children would be getting at school.  My kids miss the after-school activities that they would have been participating in and the time with their friends that they would have been getting at school.  In addition, I have been more stressed and anxious about this ever-spreading virus and the possibility of getting quarantined not only in our state, but in our home.  Every day, either Ron or I run to the grocery store to stock up on more items just in case our governor orders the "Shelter in Place" mandate.  In addition, I have learned over the years, that I am most happy as a mom when my house is neat and organized and when I am accomplishing items on my to-do list which has not happened at all this week.  So, I am getting more cranky and so are the children.  Sigh.  I keep on telling myself that this will all end one day and that it could always be so much worse.  However, I must say that the silver lining on the cloud this week has been the stunning and unbelievable weather that we have been blessed with.  We have had sunny weather in the high 50s and low 60s all week long which has helped to make P.E. time so much more pleasant and enjoyable and it has just helped to ease the pain of this transition in our lives.  And since I am still not entirely on board with this "social distancing" concept that is being encouraged everywhere we go, I invited my sister-in-law and two nephews to join us at the beach on Wednesday and my friend, Heather, and her three kids to join us at the river on Thursday.  It has been so nice to get outside to enjoy the fresh air and the sunshine and to watch our kids....well, just be kids when the world feels like it is falling apart.  Here are some photos I snapped of our outdoor adventures the past two days...

Since Ron came home from work half way through the day on Wednesday after learning that his high school campus had been closed indefinitely, I was able to leave Emmett home with him during his afternoon nap both days.  We met Natalee, Trenton, and Riley at Owen Beach on the Puget Sound to spend a wonderful afternoon on the beach on Wednesday.

All five cousins playing in the sand.

The cool, silhouette picture of all five cousins while going on a walk on the paved path after playing on the beach and in the forest.

A cousin, group photo with the sun in everyone's eyes.

Mama and her kiddos.

The group striking a funny pose.

On Thursday, we met Heather and her three kids at the Carbon River in Orting.  After walking down the path, we found our favorite beach completely empty and enjoyed it to ourselves all afternoon long.  All six children played happily in the sand and in the water working on their various projects.  The two little girls built an elaborate sand castle.

Lia and Sienna decided to join in and help the boys build their bridge out onto the river.

Logan and Conner standing on top of their bridge that looked very impressive by the time we left.

Lia and Sienna working on building up their "sand deposit."

A group picture of all six kids on their awesome bridge before we left to go home.

And on a totally different note, I had to include these two pictures that I took during my morning shopping adventure to Costco Thursday morning.  After Ron and I had gone grocery shopping five times in the past week, I decided that I should go to Costco one more time to stock up on some essentials like toilet paper, diapers, wipes, and water that we already had a decent amount of in case the "Shelter in Place" mandate is ordered in the next few days in our state.  After hearing what a crazy place Costco has been like the past few weeks, I decided that it would be best to get there before the store opened yesterday morning in case the amount of toilet paper for sale was limited.  I pulled up to the store at 9:30 (30 minutes before their opening time) to see the longest line in my life.  The line snaked and wrapped around the store in a Disneyland-like fashion.  By the time I parked and got in line, it was 9:35.  Much to my relief, Costco opened their doors at that same time 25 minutes early.  Within 12 minutes, I was at the front of the store which I couldn't believe considering how long the line was at 9:30.  Just by luck, I learned that Costco had received a massive shipment of toilet paper the night before.  Although they had not had any toilet paper the day before, they had piles and piles of it for sale yesterday located on large pallets at the end of every aisle.  It was amazing to see how organized, efficient, and well-run this store was as they only let a few people in at a time into the store and there were employees to disinfect our shopping carts at the front of our store and employees to guide us through the toilet paper section to prevent mass hysteria from occurring.  Here is a picture of the long line in front of me leading up to the entrance of the store.

The miles and miles of toilet paper placed along the endcaps of every aisle along the "main drag" of the store.  I never thought I would see something like this in my life.