Pandemic Sunday Walk

One of our good friends created a picture scavenger hike in the neighborhood.  He had posted 25 photos on Facebook and the challenge was to find all of them in the neighborhood in the following week and turn in your answers for a prize.  Clever idea so off we went.....

 

Our score sheet to record the addresses where we found the items---

The directions were that everything could be seen from the front yard or the porch of the houses in the neighborhood.

Here are some of the items that we were looking for----

We spent about 1 1/2 hours and only found 15 of the 25....but it was fun!  Our intent was to go try again, but the week didn't work out for that to work.

So appreciate the clever things that people have been doing to connect with their neigbhors during the time of the pandemic.

Have You Touched this Spiky Fish?

Liam showed his mom a puzzle piece of a puffer fish and she told him that I had touched one before.  He didn't believe her so they called me on Facetime and we got to talk about how I touched one when I was scuba diving.

When we were scuba diving in the Philippines, we found puffer fish from time to time in the water.  If you touch them, they "puffed up" to protect themselves.  Liam wanted to know if it hurt to touch them, but I told him that we touched them very lightly so that we didn't hurt them or ourselves.  I told them that we would push them back and forth between us in the water like the fish was a ball. Liam would then turn to Jessica and repeat what I said.

I think he was impressed that I have touched one, although I don't think he actually knows what scuba diving means.  That will be a future discussion.

Photo from the internet
Like the one I touched

I love Facetime!

Mission Prep This Week

When you get on the missionary portal (which you have to do a lot), it has a automatic count down of how many days until you enter the MTC.  Today we have 176 days until our assignment begins.  It seems like a lot of days (and a long time to wait) but then will I think about all of the things that we need to do before then--I am grateful for every one of them.  It has been nice in some ways that we are in the "Stay safe-Stay home" pandemic situation because many of the activities and community events that we are involved in are not open currently.  Our life is more centered at home than at any other time in our lives.  It MAY give us enough time to get most of the things on our list done.  We will see.

One problem with working on our list is that we are older than we used to be (profound, I know. :) )
Doing tasks in our yard like filling our holes left by some tree removals leaves us feeling more tired than five years ago.  However, we are grateful that we can still do those things.  Gary continues to be amazing as he works in our basement in our repair and update project in our basement.

While Gary has been engaged in family history research for the last five years, I have been drawn to the importance of sharing family stories.  I think I mentioned that I started a private Facebook group for my grandchildren called "Sweet Dreams, Little Ones" where I share once a week a story from our family history.  I share little things like about flying kites or bigger things like my memories of my grandfather who died when I was four.  I write the stories and then also tell them by using Facebook live.  My hope is that as they get bigger and learn to write, that they could post questions that I could answer as well. Yearly, I will print them out in a book. This all stemmed from an idea that my sister had (she has started a blog called "Grandma Tells a Story."

As we have started this process, we realized that these stories are part of the life history of our nieces and nephews as well.  As a result, we have decided to 'reactivate' a blog for our extended family and include the relevant stories there for our whole family to enjoy.  All of these types of activities are part of the spirit of Elijah and the "turning the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to their children." 

What are you doing to share your family stories with your family now and in the future?

Changing garden

How quickly the plants and gardens have changed outside my windows---

The green of the lilac bushes are now bursting with purple flowers....

out my west bay window in the bedroom

And my tulips have quickly lost their blooms--faster than usual it seemed like, but we did have some hot days this past week.

Now the purple blooms of a plant I can't remember it's name are everywhere, towering over the tulip leaves.

view between the slats of the east bay window
in our bedroom.

Some close up views--

And another hint of purple as these buds prepare to bloom in a couple of days--

 

To counterpoint all of the purple flowers--the view out our dining room window and my funny bush with little puffs of yellow.

 I love how these bushes and bulbs bloom each spring in a certain order without much work from me.  However the summer/fall plants require a bit more work from me as most of them are annuals.  Still waiting for after Mother's day as that seems to be the best date for me although everywhere in my neighborhood people have put in flowers.  It seems if I do--a freeze will certainly arrive.

Enjoy your garden this week!