Happy Birthday Kyle!

Yesterday was Kyle's birthday...37 years old! Our birthday celebration was pretty low-key. No big party, barbecue, or pinata this year! He spent the day working, taking a quick break to say hello to Kim and my parents who stopped by to wish him a happy birthday. Of course, everyone had to stay outside and there were no birthday hugs. So lame. We ordered take-out for dinner. He requested burgers and fries, and since he was breaking all his food allergies anyways, I also picked up some good beer, and we made real brownies for dessert. 

After dinner, he opened up his present and cards. Annaliese made everyone a paper airplane so we could have a contest to see which plane flew the farthest. It was pretty cute and Dad won every time!

Every time I do one of these birthday posts for the girls, I always ask them a few questions so we can remember where they are at. I did the same for Kyle this year.

Favorite food: Cheeseburgers 
Favorite memory from the past year: Either the anniversary trip to Alaska or getting his coaching certification
Favorite family activity: Playing hoops or biking

Annaliese's favorite thing about Dad: "He tells really good stories."
Haleigh's favorite thing about Dad: "I like him because he really likes me."
Lydia's favorite thing about Dad: "Going on a hike with Daddy." 

With this next year, we are hoping for more coaching clients and overall growth with Gillette Solutions, more opportunities to get outside and hike and take 'adventures,' healing from the chronic pain, and the ability to see how God is busy working in our lives!

Easter

As with the rest of life right now, Easter was a bit different than we are used to. Instead of a big fun family get-together, we did online church, an online Zoom call with the Gillette side of the family, and our own Easter egg hunt in the backyard. I didn't even get the girls' Easter dresses! But it was nice outside and we still had a good day celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Making breakfast together

Morning snuggles with Shelby

Hunting for Easter eggs

Easter 'baskets'

Throughout our neighborhood, people hung Easter egg pictures in their windows and drew chalk games on the sidewalk, so we spent some time in the afternoon walking around. There are some creative people in our neighborhood!

The Easter Tree

'Do 10 Squats'

This house had a scavenger hunt sent up- Haleigh was searching for things in their yard.

Spring Break...just kidding!

Last week was supposed to be Spring Break...Grandpa and Grandma Gillette were supposed to come visit...we were supposed to spend the week doing fun things together. But Spring Break has been canceled. Grandpa and Grandma had to stay in California. However, I still have the week off work and we are still going to try to do fun things.

The girls had less school work last week than 'normal' so that everyone could rest a little bit and catch up on things. It has obviously been quite an adjustment to do school online and everyone be home together all the time. One morning Grandma and Grandpa Hendricks stopped by; Grandma painted rocks for the girls and created a scavenger hunt for them. I hid the clues inside and then we video-chatted with Grandpa and Grandma who were waiting outside while the girls followed the clues. All of their rocks were hidden out in the front yard so they were able to see Grandma and Grandpa, although it's hard to not give hugs!

Searching for their rocks

 We also did a few Easter activities, like decorate Easter eggs and make homemade Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs.

Very yummy peanut butter eggs!

We've been going on frequent walks through the neighborhood and one day the girls decided it was going to be 'an adventure.' They were super cute and brought their stuffies along and made our normal walk much more exciting!

  

That's Haleigh and Annaliese up on top of the dirt pile.

We also decided that we needed some real interaction with our cousins; one day Malachi and Elias came over and the next day Ben, Kelsey, Owen, and Mallory came over. We all stayed outside in the cul-de-sac and the kids did surprisingly well at social distancing! We fit in a little bit of school work, lots of coloring, and quite a bit of outside time this week.

It's so fun to be able to interact with their classmates...so thankful for technology and things like Zoom!

Haleigh learned how to ride her bike!

Math practice...we've found lots of fun games online to practice addition and subtraction.

It definitely wasn't the Spring Break we were hoping for but we managed to have a good time and we all survived. With each week that passes, it's getting harder and harder to be apart from people and we are finding creative ways to see each other! I keep telling Annaliese that this is going to be a time people look back on and say "Remember that pandemic in 2020..." 

March

As I've mentioned in the past few posts, March was an interesting month. It started off well, with Haleigh's birthday party and plans for more birthday celebrations for Malachi, Grandpa, and Grandma at the end of the month. 

Instead, this coronavirus took over and plans changed. March 13 was the last day of school for awhile and starting March 23, we began implementing online education. This has been a bit challenging, especially since the girls go to school in Spanish! We were able to borrow a computer from a friend and now, two weeks later, are getting a better feel for how the program works. We try to get outside every day, but with a stay-at-home order in place, it can be hard to do even that!! 

We take each day one at a time. We try to set up a routine. We try to come up with fun activities and things to keep us busy. And we do a lot of video chatting! 

Last weekend was cloudy and windy but we needed to get outside so we drove out to Semiahmoo and went for a little walk. 

That black dot in the middle out on the sandbar is a bald eagle!