Remember this.

i'm sitting here right now with [merryweather] (that's her name today, but i keep changing it because i haven't found a name that matches her personality yet) on my lap, and let me be the first to say that despite the fact that everyone is hoarding chicks like it's TP, they were worth the early morning drive to IFA and they are such an emotional release for everyone in our family. i sit here almost every night and watch them wander the kitchen, picking up our crumbs, pooping everywhere, chasing each other, and my heart is just full..... lol (and my hands are full of lysol wipes. but worth it!)

but really, i just wanted to write all this down so in 10 years when we want to remember the details of this season, we'll have it handy. so here we go.

what we're dealing with here folks is : COVID - 19 aka coronavirus, corona, just covid...

honestly, we didn't really take this seriously until our church cancelled everything. and i mean everything. that has never happened before and once that happened, i think it hit me that this wasn't going to just jump over the US, but it would definitely land here and probably have a huge impact. i know it was naive, but everyone experiences the "immunity mentality" at some point. and the weekend before we had had sam's birthday party, so i thought "as long as everyone keeps sanitizing, life can go on as normal."

but then a week later i started getting all these emails saying our church was shutting down meetinghouses, temples, missions, etc... and i dropped the kids off at home, went to target (DID NOT GET TP OR WATER, because that really doesn't make sense, unless you REALLY ARE clean out.) grabbed tylenol, soap, hot wheels, birdseed, some Hearth and Home nonsense, you know the target drill. and came home and felt prepared.

but it was so strange because the kids school didn't officially shut down for another week. (and i thought i was naive... ) so we were left in this limbo as parents of, well, do we send them to school because it's still open? or take a page from other states and keep them home, assuming it's coming for us fast and we need to "stay safe?"

we decided to keep them home, and after a lot of backlash from parents, their school ultimately closed (begrudgingly) and we weren't left to wonder if we were doing the right thing.

(sam's party before all this. PSA: put your kid in martial arts. the respect they learn is AMAZING. "yes, ma'am" is like my new favorite phrase.)

and the first week (march 15th), i think the general feeling among parents was excitement. many parents i talked to were excited to try out homeschooling and take learning into their own hands. (i think really, they were just excited to sleep in and wear their leggings all day. cause i know that's what i was really pumped about... ) we were all swapping curriculums and schedules, ideas and crafts, it was really inspiring and encouraging to know we weren't tackling this alone!

the first week, people really started to get crazy about all this "hoarding provisions" business. we went up north to meet my brother and his wife and go on a cheese factory tour. cause, yes, i love cheese and factory tours are like my heaven. ain't no covid crap gonna stop me from eatin' cheese.  but when we got there, the tours were shut down because there was a 45 minute line to get MILK, because milk was "sold out in the valley..." how? how can that be? fact: if people hoard things, naturally there will be a shortage. and there is no way on this planet we call earth, that you can drink 450 gallons of milk before that expiration date. i don't care what you say. you gonna puke.

oh, and let's not forget that on the 18th, there was a 5.8 earthquake. it was crazy. aj was at the gym (they were still open), i was in my last REM phase of sleep and i woke up to aj jumping on the bed. oh wait, no, that's what i thought was happening, but really it was just the quake. i hopped out of bed and was running around the house blind as a lunatic bat out of hell (no contacts in). none of the kids got what was going on, so i grabbed them just as it was ending, put them all into my bed and just waited.

there were after shocks during the day, but it just added to the weirdness of the entire week. i will say i was less scared than i thought i would be and more thrilled that i got to experience something so cool and still survive and have no damage to report. call me weird, but it was very interesting!

and the quake really was the push we needed to fulfill one of our life long dreams to get chickens. so we woke up early one morning and went to IFA and brought home 5 babies. they're all different breeds, but all laying hens who will live in our side yard. each kid named their own, remie's is charlotte/rocket (depending on the day), sam's is speedy, shepherd's is quaker (they were all born on the day of the earthquake, so we thought it was appropriate), mine is merry weather (?), and aj's is crash (after the stock market).

and BOY ARE THEY CUTE. seriously, i'm obsessed. they grow so dang fast, but they're 4 weeks old and they're still pretty fluffy and cute. can't promise much in the next 10 weeks, but for now we'll take them. they're super low maintenance, beside the fact that they just learned to fly, so they're hopping out of their box and leaving surprise poops around the house. so we are working on their next housing solution.

but really, these little babies have brought everyone so much joy and i love watching the kids take care of them. i highly recommend it to any family, who can handle extraordinary amounts of poop in their lives...

(oh yeah, this ^^^ was from my birthday. but everything was closed, so we literally ate a rotisserie chicken in the back of the car because it was snowing and we needed to escape the house.. lol)

but back to life. so first week was interesting, but fine. the second week, that was a different story.

we were hanging from a thread. and i know it wasn't just me. i received multiple texts saying other moms were growing grey hair at alarming speeds, so i felt validated. but it still didn't stop the tears. from any of us. 

so let's just gloss over that second week of this. no one wants to remember that.

now we're on week three, and i know at this point there is no point paying attention to what week it is. as far as i'm concerned it's march 97th. but the weather this week has been amazing, spring is definitely here, and i've figured out the optimal routine for us. the kids do lots of playing, some work and some screen time, and i'm okay with all of that. and i think so are they?!

in addition to getting chicks, i highly recommend getting a scooter. not for your kids, for YOURSELF. it's amazing. go ahead, call the cops and tell them i'm being reckless scootering around with sheppy on my back. once they hear him laugh while i ride, they'll end up buying themselves a scooter. so in the end i win.

oh, these are our neighbors. i know what you're thinking... "first the endangerment with the scooter, then actively ignoring social distancing by hanging out with the neighbors?? listen, we've basically been in quarantine together since this started. so we've made a pact that we won't hang out with anyone else and "stay safe together." so i don't wanna hear it:)

i had to put this picture in because it's so real. sam is being a turd, shepherd is the victim of his passion, and remie is about to slap him away. and our neighbors are just like "seriously, again? what is with these people?" this is just so dang real.

but we've started a new week, new chance at rising to the occasion. we're gonna kick butt. (probably not, but i'll hold to that as my standard.) for those of you struggling to kick butt also, tomorrow is another day and another whack at life. in the words of my celebrity crush (aj approved):

k, love you all. keep the faith.

xoxo

reasons to reconsider buying a home:

the learning curve has been STEEEEEEP. and i mean like we thought we were naive before... oh boy were we wrong. now i realize we are like naked-newborn-babies-out-in-the-cold-naive! so i've compiled a small list, kind of as a PSA, for anyone who is thinking of not just buying a home, but even just moving into one.

consider the following:

1. if you OWN a home, you become the landlord. although this title sounds elegant, it's nothing but exhausting. when something goes wrong, you just send a text to yourself reminding yourself to a) try and fix it, and succeed. b) try and fix it and make it worse. c) call someone who really knows what they're doing. before you know it you've got 15 messages from yourself.

2. reasons you might call your landlord:
   
a) large quantities of spiders apparently also inhabit your home. i.e. black widows (DEADLY), wolf spiders (LETHAL), jumping spiders (UNPREDICTABLE), etc.

   
b) the toilet doesn't like to be flushed in the early morning hours, resulting in an "old faithful" type wake up call. (i myself have experienced this and it was very confusing to find sam crying, soaking wet with his pants still down. i truly thought "holy smokes, how bad did you have to pee????" but i also didn't have my contacts in yet... so....)

c) your gas might get shut off. apparently this happens when people don't pay their gas bill. we also experienced this first hand on night 2 in the new place. as the previous owners didn't pay the bill in the month leading up to us moving in (totally get it, just wish we knew about it...). so that resulted in 2 nights of Scandinavian type temperatures. i kept rolling over wondering if i was going to wake up to that scene from star wars where Han Solo is... ya know.... frozen... !!! (i still remember that terrifying scene from my childhood. haven't seen the movie since.)
 

d) you have a gas leak. fear not, you might be very worried about spontaneous explosions. i absolutely was also, but the gas guy (?) was very cool about it, so i pretended to be, too.

e) you will go to tear out some old linoleum in a closet (wondering why it's there in the first place..) only to learn that there is asbestos under there!! what a surprising delight! isn't homeownership so full of wonderful twists and turns?? i've never met a hazmat team before, what a treat!


3. there are weird noises. like did you know that radiators from 1921 sound exactly like someone using a crowbar to break open the side door? the noise is identical. but don't worry because after a few nights of slapping your roommate/spouse/co-landlord, you'll get used to this terrifying noise and realize that just the right amount of melatonin can drown it all out.

4. now that you have a yard that you're supposed to take care of (because we all have judgy neighbors who give you that side eye when your "english garden" gets a little out of hand...), you'll find it infuriating when people let their dog poop in your yard. now i understand almost everything my parents have ever complained about. and honestly, aj says it best "i don't hate dogs. i hate their owners." so i haven't figured out how to handle this as a landlord yet, but i'm thinking it'll involve some sort of "poop detection alarm" and a slingshot.

ANYWAY. i hope you find this helpful. if you decide to move into an actual home, you might want to reflect on how bad you really want it. thankfully, it was due time for us and we really wanted it. so these things are all just little "haha's" in our day, but still boy do we feel like babies.

i will say though, that when the kids run outside at the butt-crack of dawn and want to eat breakfast in their playhouse, i'm delighted to say "YEAH!!" mostly cause that means i get to eat breakfast alone in a quiet warm kitchen, but it sure does make life easier to have more space and say yes more.

and i do want to give a shout out to our village for all the support. seriously, we've got some cool people in our village and we're grateful for every one of you.

all the love!
-amanda

ALSO. house pics in the next post. we're doing some reno work now, so it'll be much more fun to see when it's all finished. but seriously appreciate all the enthusiasm!! we kinda love it:)

still breathing.

we might not be cool as a cucumber over here, but indeed we are ALL still alive, breathing, kicking... all of it. i'm aware that i dropped a small bomb, then left everyone hanging. so let me catch you up. 

everyone is here in utah! after my last post the kids and i flew out here, big kids started school, and AJ and i went back to SF to pack up our life there. we literally packed every single day, all day and it took 2 days. with sheppy with us, we then drove back to utah and continued the house hunt. 

basically nothing great has happened... YET! but i will say that we have a house under contract and we should close on october 23rd. send us all your good ju-ju, cause we're done being nomads. we're living in downtown slc right now in a super cool building, but it's still not home.

>>> trying to protect his grilled cheese. never have i laughed so hard in my life than when that chicken hopped up on the table and gave sam a mini heart attack.

we went to the new house yesterday to show the kids for the first time and they were out in the backyard in minutes and playing in the playhouse (yes, there's a dreamy little playhouse in the back), and i thought "well geez, this could be life. how boring and wonderful."

i feel like after leaving manhattan life went from 100mph to 50mph. it felt nice! i didn't realize the hustle we were constantly feeling. then we moved from SF to SLC and i feel like it went from 50 to 25. there are fewer stresses and life just seems to be slower. i don't know if it's all in my head (wouldn't be surprised. i've become quite lazy since living here... lol) or if that's really the case. but don't tell me if it's otherwise.

since we've been here, so many things have happened that leave me laughing inside thinking "omg, my kids are becoming utahns..." let me explain.

the day i introduced fry sauce, remie exclaimed (between spoonfuls), "MOM, I LOVE THIS STUFF."

when we went to peach days in brigham city (a small farming town), and they saw the parade, they about lost their minds. apparently senior citizens singing disney tunes are more entertaining than i thought! oh maybe it was because they were throwing salt water taffy... that would make more sense...

>>> she got taffy in those cheeks.

>>> peach days. no joke, the BEST picture we got of everyone.

then when i took them to the deli counter and they saw "frog eye salad" and asked to try it, of course i said YES! like who hasn't tried it and who doesn't love it? do people eat that anywhere else in the world? or just utah? let's share that salad like we share selfies, THAT would really bless the world. but they loved it. they said it was "the best salad they ever tried." #truth that is an accurate statement.


>>> watching a utah thunderstorm roll through.

>> view from the roof. not many skyscrapers, but still pretty.

oh, don't even get me started on that time when i took them to "thirst." i thought it was a dessert place (cause daily desserts are a thing for us now), but turns out it's one of these "dirty-soda" places.... you know, like you don't just order a "clean" diet coke, you order a "dirty" diet coke with coconut, grape, lime, tigers blood and pina colada flavoring. because why not? so yeah i took them there, they ordered the "lux luthor", (what the heck is a lux luthor???) and after drinking like half both kids are writhing in pain from the sugar overload. after that i decided to dial back the "utah novelties" lest they become obese by christmas.

see what i mean?? utah is such a quirky place, but it provides so many laughs for our family that i don't think we're leaving anytime soon. oh and also, i'm done moving for like 57 years. so once we're in the house, we're there. like i'm gonna die there. put me right below the playhouse. then the grandkids can walk all over me, just like their parents did... little punks.

and cause you're all so amazing and always asking about sheppy. let me just tell you: he is a little champion. so big, so smiley, laughs sometimes, and even keeps that little heart in check. his history (which the doctor at stanford gave to me and is LITERALLY the size of a harry potter book) has been sent to primary childrens and he'll be seen there from now on. but his heart continues to stay in check, even when sam scares the crap outta him (i mean that literally). i'm so impressed with this child.

>> big guy on his big day. don't even know what those other faces are doing. don't ask me to explain any of their behaviors. it's a mystery to all of us.

>>> nothing like a summer wedding. only cost me a box of tic tacs to get this picture.

butttttt hopefully next time we talk, i'll be writing you from the living room of my 1920's home in the SLC hills. but if not, and i'm still writing you from my rental apartment, don't be surprised. cause we all know our life is so unpredictable it's dumb.

love you all. come visit us! we might even take you up to the moun'ains.

xx