The day after I spent the afternoon with Mom and Nani, I got a cold. I was never worried it was Covid because I was only sneezing and had a runny nose. When I consulted the chart listing all the symptoms of allergies/cold/flu/Covid, my symptoms were consistent with the common cold.
Thankfully, it doesn't appear Mom or Nani (or Glen) have gotten sick, so I am thankful for that.
We had planned to have Ben's and Rebecca's families come over for lunch on Saturday. When I told them I had a cold, but would stay up in my bedroom if they still wanted to come here, they chose to come.
I was happy when I got a picture or two of the new baby. He is definitely growing.
It is obvious he is growing when Haley sent a comparison photo of him in his car seat on the way home from the hospital and now.
We woke up Sunday morning to our first snowfall. There was quite a bit on our picnic table, but thankfully no snow had accumulated on the driveway.
As I watched people posting about the first snowfall of the season on social media, I had to laugh when I saw what someone posted about that. For some reason, a snowstorm is a novelty everyone feels is worth posting about.
Despite my rapid recovery, I stayed home from church just in case I still had germs. Glen stayed home with me. We watched our ward's sacrament meeting talks on YouTube.
When that ended, Glen blessed and passed the sacrament for the two of us. It is such a blessing we are still able to do the sacrament in our own homes.
Looks like Kade had a fun time building a snowman. Haley's mom arrived that day to spend the next few weeks here getting to know her newest grandbaby.
Of course it has been fun for her to see Kade again. She feels like he's grown just since she saw him when they were in New York right before the baby was born.
Natalie sent a few photos of herself. She's a cute girl with some very thick, long hair. Yes, I am having hair envy!!
Nani shared a couple of photos of skeletons in her neighborhood. I can't get enough of skeletons and their owners who go to such great effort of reposing them each day.
Nani said she thought of Jeff when she saw this baseball scene as Jeff loves the Dodgers. I love the stance each player is making. So true to life. So funny!!
The skeletons near us were having fun playing hide and seek before the snow fell.
Oh no!! It looks like one of them had an accident on the slopes.
I went out on the snowy deck in my Sunday shoes, freezing my feet in the process as I pushed and pulled trying to get the picnic table over against the grill to prevent it from rolling around on the deck in the wind.
The next morning I woke up thinking the wind must not have been very bad...until I talked to Glen and Rebecca who assured me it had been a wildly windy night. So thankful for ear plugs!!! And so thankful there was not the same amount of destruction as the last wind storm.
I did realize that morning that our house was FREEZING when I went down to the main floor. It sure seemed ironic that we had gotten new furnaces a few short weeks ago so we would avoid a situation like this.
The last thing we wanted was to be without heat on a record cold day!!
Luke had a birthday as well. He is now 13 years old. We had a little FaceTime visit with him. He has such a cute smile and I wish I had thought to snap a photo of him while we were talking.
But, no worries! We turned on the gas fireplaces on the main floor and in the basement. Glen holed up in the office with a space heater and he was toasty warm. It was clean-the-kitchen-and-the-bathrooms day for me and so I was making my own heat as I worked.
The furnace company that installed the new furnaces sent a man out and found the reason that the circuit breaker kept tripping. There was something that wasn't wired correctly. We were happy he had come that same day and that by evening our main floor furnace was working once again.
Sarah was telling us how cold it was in Las Vegas when she went out running.
Abe happily reported it was in the 80s in Florida. Well aren't we all happy for him??!!??
Magnus turned 2 years old and Klarissa posted some adorable photos of him.
I will share some photos of Jacob's family when they went to Texas to watch the BYU/Houston football game. Luke is in some of these photos. Jacob's family has friends who live in Texas and it was a good reason to get together again with them.
They had a great time thinking up clever (or so they thought) sayings for their posters.
Our friend Rebecca Billat and her family were also at the game.
It looks and sounded like everyone had a great time at the game. Glen just wishes he had been at the football game with them.
About a month ago, Madison whispered in my ear, "Let's make another gingerbread house together."
Her wish came true when I was given a Halloween gingerbread house that needed assembling and I thought of her. Rebecca dropped Madison and Spencer off after their dental appointments for me to watch while she took Brooke to the eye doctor.
After our crafting project was completed, Madison and Spencer were eager to go to the basement to watch a movie.
They were finishing up their movie right when Rebecca and Brooke came home. It was very entertaining hearing all about Brooke's experience at the eye doctor.
Poor Brooke!! I could so much relate to her experience as that very thing happened to me.
I started feeling faint as soon as the doctor put contacts in my eyes, so he had me get out of the chair and lie down on the floor until I could compose myself. Like grandma, like granddaughter!!
The Goldens went home to have dinner and then came right back to our house for Kade's 2-year-old birthday party that evening. Haley's mother was with them. The Pingels also came to the party.
I didn't take very many photos because I was busy holding the sleeping baby.
Caroline got her first chance at holding baby Levi. She loves babies and this made her very happy. So happy she didn't want to give him up when it was time for her family to go home.
Kade had a fun time blowing out his candles, time and time again. He was good at knowing to wait until after the birthday song was finished to start making his many attempts to blow out both candles.
I got super ambitious once again and got the upper flight of stairs and the rest of the main floor and the upstairs carpets cleaned. It was a BIG job!! After all that manual labor, and my body aching so much from working all those hours on it, I declared carpet cleaners do not get paid enough!!
Here are the latest skeleton shenanigans.
This image rang true as I have listened to the girls in the family talk about the challenges of being forced to home school their children. So much added responsibility, that's for sure.
Sarah told us Lincoln is soon going to be able to go to school as Las Vegas is letting Kindergarten through 2nd grades start back to school.
Carson is a bit jealous as he is anxious to see what the inside of their new school looks like. The boys started going to this new charter school this year, but have never attended school in person.
Sarah now has a glimmer of hope that one day, in the hopefully near future, all three of her school-age sons will be back in the school building.
