A Bunch of Chicks

Remember the chicken that Malia made in her sewing camp? Remember that I said she wanted to make chickens for pretty much everyone she knows? Well, she had this grand plan to sew chickens for everyone who would be attending our girls’ trip to Cedar City. She spent the week before gathering info about favorite colors and crafted a chicken for each of her aunts and cousins who would be attending. She was going to give everyone their chickens when we arrived in Cedar City and the plan was to have at least one chicken in every picture we took on our trip. It was going to be so much fun. And then…Covid happened. She had finished all the chickens by the time we found out we couldn’t go and that was one of the things she was upset about. She had worked so hard, had spent so much time, and now her wonderful plans were spoiled. She still planned to gift her flock, but she felt like it wouldn’t be special anymore. I assured her that it would be. When you put thought, time, and effort into creating something wonderful for the people you love, it is always special. Nonetheless, it was one of her great disappointments.

Today we had lunch at my parents’ house, and we knew that Rachael and her girls would be there, so Malia carefully packed her chickens into a backpack so she could distribute them to those in attendance. When we arrived, we were surprised to see that both Patti and Esther were there too. Yay! The only one who was not present was Sarah, but since she lives in Idaho, that was not at all unexpected. Malia gave out her hens and everyone loved them. While we didn’t get the fun trip part, they were still a special gift that she had created for each of them. 

One random tidbit about all these chickens is that the only planned road trip participant who doesn’t have one is me. I guess that tells you where I fall in Malia’s list of important people. But I’m not offended. Honestly! I think it’s funny. 😂 And I LOVE that she loves her family!

The Best Laid Plans aka. Covid: The Plague that Keeps on Giving

Sometimes life doesn’t turn out the way you planned. We all know that. And sometimes disappointment follows in the wake when plans are upended. We’ve all had a good dose of that in the past two and a half years, but over the past months, I’ve begun feeling a bit of normalcy return to my life. I felt like I could make plans and actually expect them to happen. Yes, I’m still cleaning stuff like crazy, and I don’t expect that to go away any time soon if at all, but overall, our lives have taken on a more normal routine. 

Having said that, once again the newest curse word I know, Covid, has reared its ugly head. Matthew went to bed with a headache on Monday night. On Tuesday he woke feeling much too warm. Headache plus fever in the old world would have meant Matthew stayed home for a few days until he felt better and the rest of us got on with our lives in the meantime. In the new world, it means three home Covid tests, all of which came back positive, many tears, some panic, a mad dash to the nearest county location to double (or quadruple) check, and then a need to actually deal with the reality that Matthew has Covid.

Matthew feels terrible, physically of course, but also emotionally. He is guilt ridden that he’s the one who brought it into our home. For two and a half years we’ve managed to avoid getting sick and now, as the world seems to be spinning in its old, happy way, we have drawn the short straw. But there’s no way he could have known and nothing he could have done to avoid this. He hasn’t knowingly been in contact with anyone who is sick. No of us have. We can speculate about where it came from, but there’s no way to know and no one to blame. We’ve tried to assure him of this, and I think his mind is quieter than it was last night, but I suspect there is still some emotional baggage. 

Having said that, one of the reasons he feels so terrible is that Malia and I were supposed to go to Cedar City with my sisters and three of my nieces for a girls’ only trip to the Utah Shakespearean Festival. We’ve been planning for months, and we were both super excited to go. But with someone in our household sick with Covid, our plans have been cancelled. The others are still going, but Malia and I will be hunkering down at home, waiting out our quarantine and hoping the rest of us don’t get sick. Kevin and I can still go to the store and all that as long as we are masked and don’t develop any symptoms because we are up to date on our vaccinations. However, that pesky sense of normalcy got the better of me and neither Matthew nor Malia has gotten boosted as they should have, so Malia has to stay home. We have reassured her that she can still go outside to walk, ride her bike, etc. as long as she isn’t around other people, but I’m not sure it’s all that comforting. She had big plans for this trip, and she is absolutely devastated. I’m terribly disappointed too, but I’ll can easily admit that I’m nowhere near as crushed as she is. It’s hard for me to see her disappointment. Covid has stolen yet another bit of her life away and there is nothing I can do to change that.

You know those white elephant gift exchanges where there is always something really cool that everyone fights over, a bunch of “meh” kind of stuff and then that one terrible gift that no one wants? I feel like we just left the party with the skunk scented deodorant.

Homeward Bound

In direct response to yesterday’s subpar hotel breakfast, we started our day at IHOP. We don’t go out to eat for breakfast pretty much ever, so it was actually a nice treat. And while it didn’t quite hit homemade pancake standards, it far exceeded the standards of the hotel food we choked down yesterday. One of the hard things about travel is the fact that Matthew and Malia can’t eat out much, but we let them choose what they wanted to eat before we left home, and they were pretty pleased with what they had. Matthew ate his hot breakfast sandwich with gusto and Malia thoroughly enjoyed her Pop Tarts and Captain Crunch, a couple more things we don’t usually have around. They did get to partake of the on-menu orange juice which helped a bit. I’m always so proud of how they handle the food stuff. They don’t complain about what they can’t have. They help plan their meals before we leave home, we try to supplement their choices with some special additions as much as possible, and they are troopers about the whole thing. Not having them be able to eat what the rest of us have is hard for me though. Depending on where we are and how long we are gone we can cook for everyone, but on a shorter trip like this where we don’t have a trailer to pack in lots of food items and no full kitchen in the hotel, it just isn’t practical. We use the space we have to make sure we have safe food for them, knowing that the rest of us can eat whatever is available. But it is hard to eat out knowing that they would love to be able to and can’t. It feels like we’re rubbing it in their faces. But they are rock stars about the whole thing and I love them for their stalwart attitudes.

Sometimes the drive home at the end of a vacation seems extra-long since all the excitement is past, but we actually made a few neat stops that made today’s trek home enjoyable. As we were exploring the Cedar City area several days before our trip, we discovered that there is a national monument that we could see on our drive home. Cedar Breaks National Monument is the much-overlooked baby brother of Zion and Bryce National Parks. But you know what? It was spectacular. And even in July, it was not busy at all. We were all so glad that we discovered it. We took some amazing photos, had a picnic lunch, listened to a ranger give us a ten minute explanation of the millions of years that led to Cedar Breaks looking like it does today, and jived with her comparison of the three geological wonders to musicians: Cedar Breaks is whoever is popular today (she lives without cell service or internet in the canyon so she isn’t up to date on current pop sensations), Bryce is the Beatles and Zion is Mozart. It was a metaphor that worked particularly well for my crew.

Another hour down the road we stopped in Fillmore to see the Utah Territorial Statehouse Museum. This is one that Kev knew about, but I did not. It seems that in the early days of settlement in Utah, Fillmore was slated to be the capitol. It was located in the center of the territory and had a good supply of water and building supplies. The first wing of what was planned to be the state capitol building was constructed with plans for the rest to follow as funding was acquired. However, Fillmore’s moment in the spotlight didn’t last long and the capitol was moved to the more highly populated Salt Lake City. As a result, the remainder of the building was never constructed. The existing wing is now a museum, and it holds a variety of interesting mementos. I think my favorite was the pump organ that is located on the top floor. It is still in working order and visitors are allowed to play it. We just happened to have a skilled pianist in our party, so Nathan took a stab at the instrument. It didn’t take him long to discover that pumping the pedals was hard and trying to remember to pump while playing was a challenge. It gave me a better perspective for the references to children pumping the pedals while someone else actually played the organ.

The last leg of our journey home was filled with more Red Vines and more Corn Nuts. Add some beef jerky to the mix and the cacophony of smells in the car was . . . interesting. By the time we arrived home, the tub of Red Vines was pretty much obliterated. My crew consumed the entire thing in three days which is not great, but I’m ok with it because it is not an everyday kind of a thing. In general, our diets are healthier than that. And it was vacation after all.

We arrived home just at dinner time and breakfast for dinner is always super-fast, so I whipped up some pancakes. We could have done something else, but it made me feel better to give Matthew and Malia an opportunity to enjoy a part of what we ate for breakfast. They were quick to agree that it was a great idea and it made me feel a bit better about their hauled from home morning meal. I love my kids and being able to provide them with a large variety of tasty food so that they don’t feel left out any more often than necessary is one of my main goals as a food allergy mom.

Let me sum up the past three days with a few successes:

Vacation success #1-after three days together I still have four living children and they all still like each other.
Vacation success #2-my 9-year-old is learning to love classic literature.
Vacation success #3-all my kids have become somewhat addicted to Corn Nuts. (I’m not sure why I consider that a success, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I had to force 50% of my kids to try them and five seconds later they were hoarding the whole bag.)
Vacation success #4-we visited two cool places that I didn’t know existed.
Vacation success #5-we had a wonderful time.

This week has been a much-needed break for all of us. The past year and a half have been very emotion and stress filled. We all needed a chance to let go of all our day to day worries and enjoy some time together. The next six months will hold more changes for our family and having this time together has been a blessing.

 

Relaxation

Today was a low-key vacation day. Sometimes we get so many activities packed into our vacations that there isn’t a whole lot of time set aside for actual relaxation. One of our goals this time was to really just take it easy for a bit. So we ate breakfast at a leisurely pace (and that was only in part because the free hotel breakfast was not one of the better ones I’ve had and we were all a bit reluctant to consume the drier than the desert baked goods) and then drove over and walked the Cedar City temple grounds for a bit. That gave everyone an opportunity to take some pictures. Temples and flowers seem to be two of the kids’ most loved subjects to photograph and the temple grounds always have amazing greenery which makes it a “two birds, one stone” situation. After our jaunt to the temple, we played some games and just hung around until lunch time.

After lunch we attended our second show, the musical “Ragtime.” Kevin and I have seen this one before, but none of the kids have so it was a whole new experience for them. It was a long show, and a sad one, but it was enjoyed by all. Malia much preferred “Comedy of Errors” because it was funny, but she did a fantastic job sitting through the show and said that she liked it too. We ate dinner and then stopped at the grocery store to pick up ice cream that was safe for all, took it back to the hotel, and proceeded to eat way too much ice cream. Occasionally eating more dessert than normal is just one of those vacation things, right? We had a bit of a sugar coma after the ice cream and then we hit the pool for a late-night swim. Malia loves the pool and for her one of the perks of a hotel stay was access to the pool, so we all joined her for a dip. When we had swum long enough to have raisin fingers, Kevin and the kids headed out to do some star gazing. I was a party pooper for that activity though and stayed at the hotel for a bit of a relax before bed. It was late, after all, and I don’t do well with too many late nights in a row.

That may seem like far too many activities to make it a relaxing day, but it actually was. We didn’t need to rush from one thing to the next or hustle through meals to make sure we time for everything. We did take time to play some games and just talk. It was a good day, enjoyed by all. And there was a surprisingly small amount of bickering between my quartet of offspring. That is always a sign that everyone is feeling pretty darn mellow.

And as a parting comment, we stopped in at the gift shop and did indeed find a “book of that” which is just the right reading level for Malia: Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. Malia has already claimed dibs as the first reader.

 

“Is There a Book of This?”

Earlier this year as things started to re-open, Kev and I started talking about what to do to provide some experience gifts for our kids this year. All of last year’s gifts were cancelled and since we had no idea what this year would bring, there were none given this past Christmas. We did tell the kids we hoped to be able to do some fun things, but in December we had no idea what those things would be. In January we decided to take a leap and scheduled a short trip to Cedar City for the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Tickets were on sale in hopes the festival would be able to proceed and hotel reservations were available in spades. We decided that even if the festival was cancelled again, we would drive down and entertain ourselves in one way or another. Luckily for us, the festival was able to proceed despite cancellations of some things such as backstage tours which would put the actors and other staff in direct contact with a whole lot of people.

This morning we abandoned our typical domain and headed south. For some reason, car trips always provoke a craving in my family for driving food and for us, driving food is licorice. I don’t know why, that’s just the way it is. And in our opinion, Red Vines are the best licorice. For some unknown reason, the Red Vines that come in the big tubs are always the softest and freshest, and therefore the best of the best. However, with only a three-hour drive ahead of us, I was reluctant to buy a bunch of driving food. But Kev’s mother knows us well and supplied us with a big tub of vines for the drive. Daniel was the willing lone man in the third-row seat for the first leg of our journey and when he cracked open that tub, the entire car smelled like Red Vines. Sugar: the smell of the open road. With that scent in our noses, we were well and truly on our way.

Sometime last week we were having a conversation about vending machines. That led to a reminiscence of my teenage vending machine foods of choice and a memory of Corn Nuts, a snack I haven’t had since I graduated from high school. I remember really liking Corn Nuts and my kids had never even heard of them. That was far too tempting so on our first gas/pit stop, I grabbed a bag of the original flavor Corn Nuts and after ascertaining that they were safe for Matthew and Malia, I informed my offspring that they were going to try them. Daniel and Nathan for willing participants in the experiment. Matthew and Malia, not so much. In fact, I pretty much had to force feed them Corn Nuts. The funny part is, once they tried them, both Matthew and Malia liked them and between the two of them they finished the majority of the bag. Once it was empty, Matthew declared that we would be needing more Corn Nuts. Apparently Red Vines now have a salty companion. 😜

Once we arrived, checked into the hotel and had dinner we headed over to SUU to watch the show on the green, which was fun. We also sampled the much-hyped festival tarts, which were not worth the hype nor the $5 apiece we paid for them. Then we moved on to our first show which was “The Comedy of Errors” by none other than the bard himself. I’m a fan of Shakespeare’s comedies and this production did not disappoint. It had a 70’s setting which made for some fun costume choices and the pacing was non-stop. The entire show ran just over an hour, and we all laughed. Even Malia enjoyed herself. We thought that the old English might hamper her understanding of the plot, but as always, Shakespeare produced is infinitely more understandable than Shakespeare on the page. In fact, she enjoyed the show so much that as we walked out of the theater at the conclusion of the play, she asked, “Is there a book of this?” I laughed and responded in the affirmative. Yes, there is most definitely a book of this. 😂