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Coronavirus. Minnesota. May 6.

The grass in green, the trees are budding, the sun is shining and life keep chugging along. Our Governor extended the “stay home” order until May 18th, but I feel that the natives are getting restless. There are so many people out at stores and I’ve even see traffic change over the last couple of weeks, it’s as if people are saying “okay, enough now” with their actions. Lots of people wearing masks in stores, but the toilet paper is back in stock! Yay! Unfortunately now, ziplock bags have taken a hit and it always seems I’m late to the game and in need of whatever the rest of the world decided to stock up on, so I had to settle for my “not favorite” brand of ziplock bags. (First world problems, I KNOW.) After reaching a low of $1.34/gallon, it seems as if gas prices are rebounding, up as high as $1.79/gallon (seems weird to think that that is “high”!) in some places! Our farmers, especially pig farmers, are in a bind. Many processing plants have had COVID outbreaks and had
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Coronavirus. Minnesota. April 19.

Well, here we are. Going on our 4th week of “stay at home”, still without our internet upgrade, which means you can often hear one of several people in our hone yelling out “WIFI PLEASE!!!”, which translates loosely to “for the love of all that is good and holy SHUT YOUR WIFI OFF!!”. I still find myself heading to the store more than ever and feel like we are single handedly keeping dairy farmers in business with our milk consumption. Yesterday we learned of the first confirmed case of coronavirus in our county, “confirmed” being the key word as I’m sure there have been many unconfirmed cases up to this point. Last Thursday came the order at work that masking for ALL employees is now mandatory, unless you are in an office by yourself, which, praise be to God, I am because wearing a mask makes me feel short of breath and these days that feeling is a doomsday sentence. Minnesota has not yet hit “peak”, which I’ve heard is projected to now not be until around July 4th because we M
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Coronavirus. Minnesota. April 13.

We’ve now been on “quarantine” for 2 weeks and 3 days with a new extension until May 4th. I have a high school senior who is taking this like a champ while she watches event after event get cancelled or postponed. In the big picture, senior events don’t measure up to protecting people’s lives but in the life of a senior, these missed milestones are momentous and sad. All the kids have adapted well to “distance learning” with the biggest gripe being our snail-paced internet service. For posterity’s sake, I’ll document it here (I’m sure someday we’ll be shocked we even survived with this speed of internet): our internet through CenturyLink provides speeds of “up to 1.5Mbps”, a recent speed test during typical usage showed our speed to be at 0.6ish Mbps. Kinda tough to support 4 kids learning at home on those speeds, but we’re making do! We’ve also recently learned (and upgraded) that we are eligible now for speeds up to 10 Mbps, however our install is indefinitely delayed because
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Coronavirus. Minnesota. April 3rd.

Long ago, I started this blog as a place to document life with 5 kids. To keep track of memories and events and funny kid antics and...just, life. I discovered that my brain processed life through words and I found so much joy in documenting the happenings of our life. I’ve been off social media for lent, but when the coronavirus started to disrupt daily life, I began snapping pictures to make a “Pandemic” memory book someday. Just today it crossed my mind to start to journal this historic time on this dusty old blog of mine. So here we go...a bit of a late start, but better late than never, right? Ellie and I traveled to Jamaica in January for a girls trip and there were murmurings about a virus in China...but China is a half a world away so these murmurings were nothing more than a blip on my radar. Shortly after returning from Jamaica, the news started to ramp up a little, and I’ll be totally honest, I didn’t pay any attention to any of it. We traveled as a family to Florida
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Missing him.

Sitting in a quiet house, up early (because: Daylight Saving Time) and my thoughts are filled with my little brother. Most days I am doing well; I can talk about Jack with ease, laugh and smile at the memories I have of him, and talk with my kids about the lessons Jack’s life has taught us...but this morning? This morning the tears are quick to come. It started with a text from one of our Deacons at church letting me know today’s mass intention was for Jack and that he is praying for him. Then I realized it was 4 months ago today that we learned Jack had passed away...and when I think back to that day, when I allow myself to go back to that moment in time, in my parents driveway, finding out that my brother was gone forever, the grief washes over me like a fresh wave. I know that these tough days are par for the course, that for the rest of my life I will be caught up in a wave of grief now and then, but I also know that I need to choose joy. I need to choose happiness, mostly for
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My Beloved Gram

Oh, my friends. Where do I start? The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of heartbreak and abundant love.   On September 26th, after fighting Myasthenia Gravis for so many years, my grandma left this earth...and took a piece of my heart with her. I miss her so much, but feel guilty for wishing she were still here as she had suffered and declined so much in the last few months, but oh, my heart. I have realized that I miss my healthy Gram. The Gram I used to cook with and laugh with and shop with and talk with. Her disease took the best of her and I am grateful she is no longer suffering, but nonetheless, my heart aches. The blessings in the midst of the heartache were beautiful, however. I was able to tell her goodbye and that I loved her so much, while she was still lucid. I never, ever want to forget her heartfelt reply, "Oh, I love you TOO much." My sweet Gram, I love you too much, too.   She taught me so much and I swear to you, every chi
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Life: An Update

Oh, my friends. So much has happened since that last snowy post in April !! First of all, SPRING CAME!!! Yahoo!! Dare I even say, SUMMER CAME!! (And, possibly went, too, but that is still left to be determined!) We Minnesotan's like to joke "I hope summer falls on a weekend this year". Thankfully, it appears to have done just that...with temps in the 90ºs on Memorial Day weekend. Now, we're a cool low 70ºs...blech. Gimme the heat, man! (I promise my husband isn't a grumpy guy...he just doesn't like to smile for the camera!) Anyway, life is plugging along, as it usually does with the days flying by and me wondering where on earth the time is going. We have just about 2 weeks of summer vacation under our belts and I'm perplexed at how I now have one kid grown and raised and graduated from college, one high school junior, a freshman, a 7th grader and a 5th grader. If anyone can tell me where the last 10 years went, that'd be great. 😳 My sweet
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