June 2020

Much of June was spent healing Owen. We had several doctors appointments and lots of physical therapy appointments for his knee. I still can't get over how deep of an indent his knee made in my flower bed. Every time I saw it I was traumatized. If I remember correctly Ainlsey was thoughtful and took it upon herself to clean up the blood that was on the curbing where he fell. I'll forever be grateful that I didn't have to see that. 

 Logan came to visit Owen often. And we were so grateful! Owen couldn't do much and I struggled keeping him entertained when he wasn't supposed to do much other than his exercises and occasional walking. The boys got really into Connect Four. Which I thought was hilarious and endearing. How many 14 year old boys spend hours of time mastering strategy and technique for Connect Four? Only awesome ones. (On a side note of awesome things Owen does, he's been really into music lately. All kinds of music. Some drives me crazy, but a lot of it I actually like. I especially love it when he plays old classics.  My very favorite is when he blasts Frank Sinatra and sings along, in his best operatic voice. I've tried to catch him on video but I have yet to be successful.)

I found this picture of Owen on my phone. It was during our day trip to Warm Lake. We had this trip planned with some friends before Owen had his accident. We had a hard time deciding whether to cancel or go. After getting approval and guidelines from Owen's physical therapist we left the decision up to Owen. He chose to go. I think he realized that ultimately it was the difference between sitting bored at home and sitting bored at the lake. While this picture makes it look like he had a horrible day, I think he was still glad he chose to go. Even if he did spend most of his day sitting on the beach chatting with the parents instead of off playing with the kids.

And thanks to Brandt, we have a million pictures of the day! We spent the day with the McCarneys and the Demars and Brandt's sisters and their families. It was a great day.

For the kids, I think the best day of June was when we told them we were getting a puppy. Covid made me cave to Emmie.  That girl has been begging for a dog practically daily for years. (Please don't remind me that we already had a short stint with a dog.) Emmie was relentless. After polling neighbors and friends and family I reluctantly decided I could do it for the kids. I think my uncertainty was finally pushed over the edge when my dad said, "Every kid needs a dog." And then he promised he'd help watch him when we traveled. And I promptly called "No take backs!"

These pictures are from when we went to the breeder to pick our puppy from the litter. Ironically we didn't chose the one we thought we were going to chose. We chose the chubby round puppy that was significantly larger than his siblings. But he was confident and curious and immediately took a liking to the kids. We brought him home about 2 weeks after this picture.

At the end of June, and before we brought the puppy home, we traveled to Utah to go to Rachel Hansen's wedding and to drop off Ainsley for her week in New Hampshire with her best friend Elisabeth. These two are truly kindred spirits, and I hope they are always friends. Ainsley flew to Boston with the Hansens (which we were nervous about but ultimately decided this trip was worth getting Covid over.) I'm so glad she went. She really doesn't have any close friends right now and I knew that being able to spend some time with such a great thing would be incredible for her.  And it was.  I haven't seen her as happy as she was when she and Elisabeth saw each other. I literally started crying. My one wish for Ainsley is that she could have a best friend that lives nearby, but if she can't have that, I'll take a best friend that lives across the country. 

(Owen also got to meet up with his old friend Seth, which was super cute in it's own way.)

Erin was great and kept me updated with lots of pictures while Ainsley was away. Each one made me so happy!

While Ainsley was away we busied ourselves with our new puppy. Leo. We picked him up on our way home from Salt Lake. Ains was a little sad to miss his first few days home, but i assured her she'd have years to bond with our new family member. The kids were in love. He promptly peed on the kitchen floor when we got home. Potty training was scheduled to begin immediately. 

We lived in the kitchen for the first several weeks we had him. He wasn't allowed anywhere else. Owen and Emmie took the night shift. They got a true taste of parenthood! They were exhausted. The first night they catered to his every whimper and need. By the second night they were a little more willing to let him cry it out a bit. And by the third night he was happily sleeping through the night. Although we did have to set our alarms for about 7 hours after putting him to bed to let him out to go to the bathroom. But after hearing about others' puppy issues during the nights I won't complain about the early mornings!

It was the end of June when we picked Leo up, so the days were getting hot. My mom was kind and let us bring him to her house to sleep in the shade while the kids swam. We were now tethered to a puppy night and day. The kids did (do) a pretty good job of taking care of all of his needs. 

May 2020

I feel like by the time we got to May we were all getting a little stir crazy.  Luckily for us, the weather was nice and we had visitors. Kort and Dan drove here from Denver to spend Mother's day with us and to spend time swimming. And they brought Max, which thrilled Emmie. Everything was still shut down, but businesses were starting to reopen  with restrictions. Masks weren't required by the government, but many businesses were requiring them if you wanted to enter. At this point in time it still felt weird to wear a mask in public. I would guess that only about half of people were wearing them. The mask mandate for the county didn't come until later in the summer. 

The kids started doing a bit more with friends as well. Emmie, Elsie, and Susie got together a few times. It was so fun to watch them hangout with each other again. On the day of the picture below I had taken the kids to Nordstrom Rack for an incredible shoe sale. Apparently I'll risk getting covid for a killer deal on Birkenstocks and Chacos! My plan was to get in the store early, get our shoes, and get out before there were too many people. My plan was foiled however. When we were about done shopping we noticed the line. It wrapped around nearly the whole store! At this point we had worked too hard for our shoes, so we decided to stick it out. we waited forever. Emmie was stressed because Susie and Elsie were supposed to be coming to our house for a playdate and we were most definitely going to be late. After calling their mothers to move the playdate back an hour we finally made it to the car...and the car didn't start! My battery had died! John left work early and met us to jump the battery. We then drove to an autoparts store where they confirmed that the battery was dead, but wouldn't help us replace it.  We ended up at the dealership to get a new battery installed. But Emmie still got her playdate! It was just a few hours late. But they still managed to make this phenomenal cake, and we didn't get covid, and we got a killer deal on tons of shoes, so in the end I guess it all worked out.

The most memorable day in May was memorial day. We started the day with a hike up to stack rock. It is and 8 mile hike up near Bogus Basin. John was on call and Ainsley didn't want to come, so it ended up being a hike with Owen, Emmie, myself, and half of the Demars family. John offered to smoke us some meat for a BBQ that evening. So after a long day of hiking, we all came home and showered and cooked and then gathered again that night for a BBQ and Yard games. 

I still don't like to think about what could have happened that night.  Owen and a few of the kids decided to jump off the roof onto the trampoline. When Owen asked me I said no. But he went to John and told him that I said it was Okay if he thought it was okay. So John went along. My kids had done it earlier that week but there were fewer kids and more supervision. All was going fine until the first casualty. Emmie jumped and hit her head to her knee when she landed. She came inside to me and I was helping her when I heard someone scream "OWEN!"

We have pieced together that Owen told his friend to give him a double bounce when he jumped off and Owen's plan was to jump and then do a flip. He had successfully done it several times, but the double bounce was too much and he lost control. He flew backward and as far as we can tell he hit the back of his head on the bar of the trampoline and landed on all fours in my flower bed. It truly was a miracle he survived. He fell in between the house and the trampoline. He narrowly missed the house, and the cement that could have done permanent damage. 

John came in frantically telling me to get a towel for all the blood. I had no idea what was going on because I had been focusing on Emmie and hadn't seen anything. Brandt was helping get Owen to the car. Owen was in shock and struggled walking. John drove to the hospital while I sat in the back and held a towel to Owen's head catching all the blood.

When we got to the hospital they wouldn't let John and I both in because of Covid. So John left Owen and I there. I had nothing, no keys, no car, no phone, and Owen didn't even have shoes. The emergency room staff tried to keep us calm and the mood light and they all shared their battle wounds from jumping off things they shouldn't have jumped off of. Owen got 12 staples in his head. And his knee was fractured. We were finally discharged and John came to get us several hours later. We got home at about 11:00 that night. That was when the realization of how horrible things could have been hit and I lost control of my emotions. All of the what-if's clouded my mind and I couldn't hold back the tears. Owen was home and safe and would be okay, but I couldn't help but feel guilty for allowing any of it to happen in the first place. 

The next several days and weeks were long. Owen couldn't get up and down stairs so he slept on an air mattress in the family room for days. His friend Logan (that had been on the trampoline when it all happened) was traumatized by the whole situation, but was such a good friend to Owen. He came to visit constantly to keep Owen company. He helped keep Owen sane. After a week we were able to get the staples out of his head. His doctor had monitored his concussion and he seemed to be recovering from that as well. We had to visit and orthopedic surgeon for his knee. An MRI revealed that his knee was fractured but he hadn't torn any ligaments, which was a relief. Surprisingly he was off of crutches within less than a week and was just left with a brace and physical therapy. His knee recovery took the longest. If I'm remembering correctly he was still doing physical therapy in July. 

And now as I write this in January, Owen is fully recovered. He and Logan ran 6 miles tonight. Although it was a traumatizing time (probably mostly for me) it was also a miracle and I will always be grateful that the situation wasn't any worse. 

Here is Owen with the 8th graders in the neighborhood and their graduation party. Owen was still on his crutches. He had to skip the after party at Wahooz, but he had a good attitude about it and at least he got to have a little celebration with his friends. 

 

April 2020

By mid April we were fully shut down and getting into our quarantine groove. Business were closed. you couldn't go out to eat or shopping if you wanted to. It was almost eerie how little traffic was on the main roads. We would go walk around the track at River Valley and Eagle Road was nearly empty. The busiest intersection in all of Idaho had less traffic on it than it had in probably 40 years. The parks were even closed. So you could go to the park, but not play on the playground equipment. 

The kids were doing online school. But not really online. We picked up a weekly packet that the kids worked on throughout the week. And then we never turned it in. And then we picked up a new packet the next week. It didn't take them long to figure out that they were never going to be held accountable for anything the rest of the school year. John worked from home at a make shift office we set up in our bedroom. I "worked from home" for a few hours a day on a district device. But really there wasn't much I could do. Luckily the district paid everyone the wage they would have made if they had been working so I still got a pay check. 

At first I tried to keep everyone on a schedule, but as I realized we were going to be home all day every day for a long time, I found that it wasn't worth waking up early because that just made the days longer. We had good days and bad days. There were actually a lot of things about quarantine that I loved. We had never had so much time at home with our kids with nothing else to do. No friends, no sports, no school, no nothing! I can't imagine that we'll ever have that much time home as a family again. We organized most of the house. (Sadly if you were to look at my house today you would never know that it had been deeply cleaned and organized less than a year ago.) We spent time exercising. We did family 5k at Kleiner Park on Saturdays, which the kids hated. I made a workout circuit with different exercises at different stations throughout the house, which the kids were slightly more tolerant of. We had a popsicle house building competition with my family. Each family ordered 1000 popsicle sticks on amazon and we all had a week to make a house. Ainsley made most of ours, and of course knocked it out of the park. We did a lot of baking, a lot of watching movies, and a lot of reading the news. We took the kids on an outing to Bruneau Sand Dunes. We had a Dinger family talent show with all of the Dinger cousins over zoom.  And we even had an earthquake!  One that we felt! I was upstairs in my bedroom and thought the kids were shaking the house. John and Emmie noticed the lights shaking. I think John was the first one to realize what was going on. He is clearly the calm head that you want around in an emergency. I just stood still while trying to recall my earthquake training. Which never came to me. 

Luckily the weather during April was gorgeous. My parents heated their pool and we swam earlier than we have in years. We spent more time in the yard during April and May than we have the entire time we've lived in this house. John made me some grow boxes and we got around to some landscaping projects that we hadn't been able to find the time to do for years. We moved loads and loads of pavers, planted trees, built a retaining wall, put down 5 yards of bark, and put down a boarder of pavers between our rocks and grass. It looked so nice when it was all done! The kids and John also made some awesome cornhole boards. I think they turned out amazing. They were a great project and as a bonus they got a lot of good use this spring and summer. 

We went out on a limb and purchased tickets to Mexico. We were sure life would be back to normal by November when we were scheduled to travel. Boy were we wrong! We currently have a large credit with American Airlines. Hopefully the trip to Cabo with my parents will happen November 2021. 

We celebrated Easter. We actually got up and got dressed. Which we hadn't done in weeks. We were becoming accustomed to home church by now and I was starting to prefer it to regular church. John would bless the sacrament and Owen would pass it. We would read our scriptures and do our come follow me lesson. Some weeks were definitely better than others, but I could say the same for regular church. 

And now for April in photos:

Planter Boxes

Raised flower bed.

                                           Trees planted, pavers not yet removed.

Dying Easter Eggs

All Dressed up for Easter. 
(Documentation of the beginning of John's beard)

Cornhole boards in progress,

Cute kids Easter pictures.

Popsicle house competition.