Each year that goes by I struggle to remember the adventures, growth and changes our family goes through. I'm taking a look in review of 2020 along with a goal to each month in 2021 sit down and reflect soon for better details on our journey. (Clearly, a goal that hasn't happened yet...as I'm publishing this December of 2022 with not a single month to account for outside of these 5 months from 2020).
January
We started out the new year with a trip to Leavenworth. For the past couple years we've tried to get the kiddos out to the snow. Sometimes that snow proves to be harder to find and sometimes we have to leave early due to too much snow. We stayed at the Icicle Village Resort, where hot chocolate was always available and where the hot tub and pool were outside and we visited them both every day in the freezing cold.
Sleigh ride! Where of course, we'd make friends with the resident dogs.
The kids had been to Leavenworth many, many, many years prior, but not with much memory of it beyond where we stayed (at the Sleeping Lady) while Kenny had a work conference. As well as, that it poured rain the whole time we were there and Adalyn didn't sleep a wink while we were there. It was time to make new memories of Leaven worth. We had fun browsing stores and eating (Mongolian Grill became a HUGE family favorite).
Though we didn't get any new snow while we were in Leavenworth, our drive home through the pass was full of fresh stuff. Thankfully, Kenny, was cool as a cucumber.
In January we said good-bye to Vice, Kenny's Nissan Versa, and welcomed in a Mazda which we never named. I started a goal of doing a hike every week which was part of our pre-training for our big Enchantment hike planned in July. Kenny and I made an attempt to go vegetarian for the month of January. That lasted days for me and maybe a week for Kenny.
A big new adventure for Shane was Snow Bus! Every Wednesday for 2 months he headed off to the mountains to go snowboarding with a group of other fellow EAS classmates. He left school around 10:30am and got home around 7:30pm. It was certainly a whole new set of freedom for him. A story I think he'll always carry with him, was when one afternoon, a friend he was on the slopes with got hurt and he had to find help for her. It was a whole ordeal!
We also saw snow at home in January, which means school was canceled for a couple days. Which is always a highlight for the kids.
February
Mid winter break lands in the dreary month of February. Where I decided that the kids and I needed to attempt to fill the week with something besides being at home all day, so we took at staycation in Redmond (a town neighboring Kirkland). We stayed in a Hyatt in the Target parking lot and it had an indoor swimming pool and hot tub. The kids spent hours in the pool room, where it was humid and hot and I pretended that we weren't still in WA where it was actually pouring rain outside.
We also tried out this huge indoor trampoline place south of us. It was absolutely bonkers busy there (basically all of western WA was on mid-winter break, too). It took us 45 mins in line to check in. The kids were not happy about being there, but in the end it was a nice way to blow off some steam.
We saw Sadie turn 16! At this point we knew every moment we had with her was special and at any point she could pass. Her hips weren't great, but she was happy!
Now here is where some foreshadowing begins for the rest of our year. Mid to late February, I had a bought of sheer tiredness and a headache I just couldn't get to go away (I don't normally have a headache and if I do it's from dehydration and easily fixed). It lasted about a week. I vividly remember standing in the kitchen one day and jokingly saying to Kenny "Do you think I have that Coronavirus thing?". We both laughed it off and went on with our lives. The exhaustion and headache eventually went away. Being tired isn't a new concept to a parent and headaches aren't uncommon, so I didn't think much more of it.
March
The month our lives all changed before our eyes. When things happened that none of us could have ever dreamed up or imagined. The first week of March, Shane and Kenny were sick. Kenny described it as the worst cold he's ever had. Shane rarely gets sick. He had a fever and chest pains. He would constantly tell us his lungs were burning. He coughed at night and had a hard time breathing. We took him to the doctor and they said it was Pneumonia and treated him with antibiotics. This was before all the Covid protocols and madness was put in place. He got better after about a week but still had a cough. He didn't go to school for a week and missed the only baseball tournament his select team played in all of 2020. On Wednesday, March 11th, Kenny and Shane boarded a plane to Arizona to go to spring training. The world was starting to feel dicey at that point. That was also the day school was shut down. Kids were sent home and weren't to return for one week while "we slowed the spread". In Arizona, on Thursday, Kenny and Shane headed to the ball park to watch a game, as they were driving there spring training was canceled. They decided to cut the trip short and come home on Friday instead of Sunday. Adalyn and I had a pedi-mani booked that Friday that we went to. That was the end of life as we knew it.
As that week turned into two weeks, then three weeks, then months. The kids never returned back to school. "Remote learning" was a joke for Adalyn as a 3rd grader. Shane struggled under massive amounts of pressure as a 6th grader at his choice school called EAS (Environmental Adventure School). An already challenging school, where expectations where quickly changed to an online learning/do it on your own curriculum. He was depressed and angry. The aspects that they worked their bottoms off for all year, like field trips and special events, were all canceled.
My job went to remote teaching. I had 2 classes of 18 toddlers that I was all of a sudden suppose to do my gig via zoom with them. I worked harder in March then I had ever worked before, changing up content and curriculum to fit something we had never done before.
We were doing all we could to make the most of the situation. It was temporary. We could certainly do this for a couple weeks!
Shane doing school and talking on the phone. Life as a teen in 2020.
Adalyn doing her 1st Zoom with a huge amount of friends. It was utter chaos!
Adalyn and our kindergarten neighbor spent endless hours and days together outside when school shut down. This friendship got her through some of the darkness early days of this miserable situation.
Kenny and I continued to train for our Freedom Hike in July.
Adalyn saying hi to her best friend from a distance. Makes me think of Romeo and Juliet.
Adalyn turned to her artwork and made some of the best creations I've ever seen from her.
Birthdays turned to drive byes and drop offs. She made this for a friends birthday.
Birthdays turned to drive byes and drop offs. She made this for a friends birthday.
April
April brought us sunshine, Kenny's birthday, a canceled trip to Arizona for spring break and Easter. There was hope school would return after that and life would go back to normal. Sadly, that didn't happen.
We rang in Kenny's birthday with homemade macaroon's and dinner in the park.
Watching church online for Easter was a very surreal situation.
Mosaic caulk art.
Easter egg hunting, egg dying and the arrival of the Easter bunny made the day feel a bit more normal.
We spent a lot of time lunching together. Why not make it fancy!?
The sunshine we had during April, along with all the time Adalyn could play with our neighbor were glorious' gifts from God.
We did a lot of reading!
And a lot of puzzles were completed. This was my most favorite puzzle I've ever done! Children's books in a puzzle format. I literally couldn't sleep the night I started it because I just wanted to finish it so badly.
We continued to hike and spend time outside.
And then there were those details of haircuts!
May
Hope became despair. Sadness became anger. Life couldn't sustain at this rate. Shane struggled daily at school. He was angry and his little heart was broken by school and life via a computer screen. We slogged through each day trying to find every silver lining we could find. We were safe and cared for. Yet what was going on around us was just flat out wrong on so many levels.
Mother's Day...we visited a garden store, said hi to some animals and took a hike.
Mother's Day breakfast by Adalyn.
A friend made and sold beautiful cider boxes with succulents. I was inspired to make my own, Kenny and I created these as one of my Mother's Day weekend asks.
My fabulous Mother's Day gift: a hammock!
Our dryer broke! Luckily, we weren't with out a dryer for long.
We saw propaganda pop up all around us.
We took a trip into Seattle (before Seattle became held hostage by mobs and rioters).
This is the gum wall. Below gum art!
We were able to get a few bike rides in.
We loved on Sadie as much as possible. She hit a point where she stopped eating. We though for sure we were near the end.
Oh, peonies! How I love you. This was my 2nd year of my 4 peony plants.
They tripled their flowers this spring.
A quick Sequim visit, where we left Shane to have some R & R with Mema and Papa.
Even when it rained, Adalyn played outside with her neighborhood buddy.
Spa day and baking! All the ways to fill the days.
June
June brought us the end of school which was the biggest relief ever! Four months of "remote learning" had left Adalyn with very little education and left Shane exhausted and frustrated. It was time to shake off 3rd and 6th grade and attempt to have a summer of fun. The camps that were booked back in January were unfortunately canceled for a variety of reasons which brought about another round of sadness and grief. Every corner it felt like there was a hit.
We headed right out to on a little get-away the weekend after school got out. Just a an hour and a half away to a place called Lost Lake, in Shelton, WA. We fell in love with our place on this quiet and quaint lake. It was a perfect escape.
A pool seemed like the best way to ring in summer!
Unfortunately, it was used only a handful of times and most of those times were in the rain.
I wrapped up my 7th year at LWTG as a Parenting Educator.
It felt good to bring that school year to an end.
Shane turned 13, teenager in the house.
We kept his celebration low key with 5 of his friends coming over to hang out.
Shane was able to keep in touch and hang out with many of his friends over the summer. They went to the lake and did a lot of bike riding around the neighborhood together. It was such a soul filler for him. As fall arrived and school started back up, friendships started to fall off, which has created despair for our teenager. Being a teen is hard enough as it is, let alone, being isolated at home with little social face to face interaction.
Bald eagle attempting to catch a fish!
We came home to a nest right by our front door with 4 eggs!
There would eventually be 6 eggs in total.
Watching the process of these eggs turn to baby birds was a major highlight of my summer.
Kenny celebrated Father's Day by watching his children do yard work along with a few games with his new pickleball net.
The A-Team (Adalyn and her cousin Arli) got to spend a few hours outside together.
Shane decided to be helpful!
This girl needed a bath! Since she kept hanging on, we gave in and bathed her.
You can tell what she thought about that.
Time with Adalyn's best friend, Madison. I adore that they love playing with their dolls together.
Time at the lake with friends.
Kenny and I continued to hike. As our training hikes got longer and longer, it got harder and harder to do them because they kids weren't in school and it was extremely challenging to get a kid sitter. Since our long hikes required to go further away we weren't comfortable with the kids being home alone. Luckily, as summer arrived, the kids' most favorite kid sitter Marissa, was able to watch them. It was a huge blessing for all of us. They needed someone else to be around and we needed to train and a break from them. Training got harder and harder for me as the lengths and elevation increased. My right knee quickly became painful and wanted nothing to do with elevation. I spent many a hikes upset and frustrated. I eventually decided that hiking the full Enchantments wasn't in the cards for me.
July.....
I found this blog post unfinished. I was actually surprised that there was so much content on it. I never got around to finishing it.
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