Thursday, August 6, 2020

Covid July!

The whole Covid thing has been the pits for so many people all over the country and the world.  I think has bee the pits, too.  But I can also see many blessings for our family. One blessing is that we have all stayed employed.  One blessing is the added time we've had to spend with our families.  A blessing for the dad and me is that we had Susan with us for an extended period of time.  She needed it, and we needed it.  For that, we are thankful!

The grandad has been making camping chuck boxes for several months.  It's been an off-again, on-again project.  He finally has them ready to finish with the varnish!

Susan and I made masks for the school year ahead!


We cooked chard, and then we broiled the chard stems.  Not bad!

It has been 100 years since my Grandma and Grandpa Mitchell lost their baby girl, Clara, to the Spanish Flu.  Grandma and Irene left me the clothes that they saved from Clara, and I decided to put them in a Shadow Box to display.  The picture in the box is the only one I could find anywhere.
Angela saw that the picture I had had a tear through the middle, so she fixed it for me!  I love it.  Clara's name is written in my Grandma's handwriting!

Susan had a hankering for these, so we bought some and fried them up!  They were a tasty adventure!

Susan was watering the beets, and she found these ready to pick in the garden!  She discovered she loves roasted beets!


Another puzzle!


Susan and I picked a bunch of goji berries from our little bush!


Hiking up near McGaffey!  This is our fairy trail!


We love video chatting!


In spite of everything, it was a great month!

Steve and Angela Brought Their Crew for a Visit!

I talked to Steve and Angela one day, and they asked if we thought it was safe for them to come and visit us.  We hadn't seen them since Thanksgiving (thanks to Covid-19), and that was just too long.  They had been staying at home, and felt safe.   if they were distancing, washing and wearing masks, we felt they were just fine!  They called later that day and said, "Can we come tomorrow?"  Yay!  They even got a quick covid test before they came to make sure they were okay.


Micah is making a picture for the pantry door (replacing the refrigerator for my art gallery).

Erika wants to make one, too!

Micah and I read a book called "Cook-a-doodle-do."  The animals in the story make strawberry shortcake.  (They use a sifter, so we did, too!"  We decided to follow the recipe and make Strawberry Shortcake, too!




Our finished product!  It was delicious!  (I baked the cake in the InstantPot for our recipe this week!)


We celebrated a day of Pioneers on Pioneer Day Weekend!  We are making a turkey for the turkey hunt.  We needed to shoot a turkey for our dinner!

We also went fishing!









Now we're shooting the turkey (with Nerf darts) for dinner!





There's the turkey!  (Or turkey breast, at least!)




Steve and Angela brought their souvid cooker (I have no idea how to spell that), and that's how these modern-day pioneers cooked their prey.

We played Yahtzee with the big, wooden yard Yahtzee dice that the grandad made.  I took a picture of my scoresheet, because it is the highest score I have ever seen. I got two Yahtzees, I got the bonus on the top, and I didn't have to scratch anything!  In case you can't read it, I got a score of 410.  But I guess I didn't take any pictures of actually playing the game.

The journey was hard, and Erika fell asleep.

We had a lunch of crepes before commencing the big walk!



Pioneers sang as they walked and walked and walked.  We sang every pioneer song we could think of as we treked around the yard!








Then we had a parade.  Micah and Erika threw candy to the people who were watching the parade.  He remembered that's what the kids did on Independence Day last year, and to him, it wasn't a parade without throwing candy!  (We had to do some scrounging, but we still had some Hi-Chews that the Hi-Chew company sent me last year!




It was a fun day!  

I bought a crossword puzzle book -- Monday puzzles (supposedly the easiest day) from the NY Times.  If these are the easiest puzzles, I must not be as smart as I thought I was.  We all took turns picking up the book throughout the days, and working on puzzles!  So far, we've finished 48 of the 200 puzzles!
Grandad turned 60!





We had a party to celebrate!


Celebrating in the sand tent!

This was the surprise part of the party for Grandad!







Instead of cake, Steve made Creme Brule cooking it with the souvid cooker.

It was beyond delicious!

Suzu made dad a new ear blankie for his birthday!  She made him one several years ago, and it's getting pretty ratty.  The dad still isn't ready to part with it, though.

We went on a picnic and hike up near McGaffey.  Angela was bummed that we didn't get to shoot the turkey with real arrows, so we made a target out of an old styrofoam cooler and shot it up in the mountains where it was a little safer that shooting in our backyard.



I don't know if you can see it, but another trail of cows went by to their watering hole.  It wasn't as many as last time, but it was still fun!

I put these in because I though they were of our hike, but I see that they are just pictures of a walk in town, but here they are anyway!




It was a fun day, and a fun visit with our Utah kiddos!  We are so glad that they came!