It's Been a Rough Year

 I guess the thing to do is talk about how our family has coped this last year with Covid-19. 

 

So, at the end of 2019, word was just starting to come out about this new virus that was apparently coming out of China. Its a coronavirus strain that they think made the jump from bats(?) to humans. It is a pretty contagious disease (maybe), that has caused lots of illness around the world. There is a big battle right now over how deadly the virus actually is, and how the government counts coronavirus deaths, and whether or not hospitals were ever overloaded with COVID patients, and how the government and pharmaceutical companies fast tracked a vaccine, and how the government and all the doctors are telling everyone how we all need to get the vaccine or else we are bad citizens (which just makes me not want to get one), and the whole world getting basically shut down for a whole year while everyone tried to figure out how to stop a virus from spreading (which didn't work), and people wearing masks, and making masks being a new business opportunity for lots of individuals and organizations, and everything getting really expensive because the world shut down and companies ran out of stock of everything. Toilet paper was a precious commodity for a while. Also, the Church made everyone do church at home. And no one could see anyone or go anywhere, because of lock-downs. Schools did virtual classrooms, I work remotely still, Rachel's music classes were over Zoom (a video calling program), kids had Zoom birthday parties, people had Zoom weddings, Zoom Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then there was Zoom church. It has all been pretty interesting. Now, with a vaccine available, governments are slowly allowing people to do stuff again, but only if you wear a mask, or have a gold star on your chest (not really) or a vaccination card that can be lost, stolen, forged (easily) or lie about your vaccination status, because there is no central directory that anyone can access (yet).

ANYWAY! Our family has had a pretty good time though it all. We still went to California to the Bohlin's cabin, we went to families houses, had real birthday parties, went to Arizona to stay with Pat and Judy for a week. We did our best to include everyone who was not scared for Thanksgiving and Christmas, got our Christmas tree from the same guy at work. We pulled Noah out of public school and put him into a home school group that met regularly in person, and Ammon kept attending his own home school group. That was kind of a logistical nightmare, planning on where those groups were going to meet on which days and scheduling it so we could get them to different places. Since I was working at home, I was able to take some of that responsibility so Rachel could keep her music studio open. She helped teach one group, and I taught the outdoor class for the other group.

Church has started up again, meeting for sacrament and 2nd hour classes, but the timing still hasn't been figured out in our ward at least. I got called to be the Assistant Ward Clerk, and that has been an eye opener into the state of the ward. I now know lots of things that I don't want to know. I am also now responsible for maintaining our neighborhoods well property. So I have to go over to the pump house every other day or so and monitor how much water is being used, how much chlorine is in the system and send reports to the county Health Department. fun stuff.