January Wrap Up

Lydia and Austin.

The Haderlies came down for a few days around Camille's birthday. They went to a trampoline park. 

In school they have been learning about the Golden Spike monument and they put together an entire play about promontory point with singing and dancing and even trains meeting. 

Lucy climbing and showing her cool tricks. They kids had been climbing on this and showing us how they could stand one foot or do other special things - so Lucy did the same and kept saying, "watch me."

One day I took this picture of Caleb playing with Lucy and Austin and I loved it because Caleb had just come home from preschool and started playing with them, so he still had is coat and backpack on. I love it. 

Making pancakes in the morning. 

Homeschool January

Did you know that Utah Statehood Day is January 4th? Well, for these Utah History loving homeschoolers this whole month of January has been full of Utah Celebration! 

Utah Statehood Day

We started with our own Utah Statehood Day Celebration, including Utah pancakes for breakfast and then a Utah Celebration with pioneer games, line dances, flag decorating, and, of course, jello eating.

Utah State Capital

We also went on a tour of the Utah Capital building, which was so beautiful and so neat to see.

Plus a plethora of regular homeschool shenanigans like taking 100 books back to the library, making stickers with procreate and our cricutjoy, math tanagrams (Austin), playing with playdoh, and watching documentaries at night while coloring dog coloring books. 

Some fun sewing projects took up a lot of our time. The girls sewed aprons and matching bonnets and Austin and I finally sewed together his quilt that he's been collecting fabric for. 

And last but not least, it was our turn to host the monthly bookclub for the girls. Lydia chose to read Doctor Dolittle and our family listened to it on Audio together. This is what I wrote for her learning log about it: 

Lydia selected a book for her homeschool coop book club: The Story of Doctor Dolittle. She planned several activities for the group gathering and discussion and wrote three questions to contribute to the group discussion. At the book club, she helped lead the discussion, drew pictures of animals, and made a sponge boat as part of the group activities. She had a great time and we enjoyed the book. (A note: we didn't realize before that the original version of this book has explicitly racist content. We had a good discussion about how things have changed and how grateful we are for people who stood up against awful things that were commonplace and how we can be like that now. We highly recommend the adapted version of the Story of Doctor Dolittle for it's fun and creative premise.) 

COVID-19 Update: January 2022 (Omicron Variant)

The last COVID-19 update was in August during the Delta variant COVID-19 spike. In late/December and now into January we've been hit with the Omicron variant. It is way more contagious than any previous versions - which is really saying something since COVID was already really contagious. The case counts are off the charts. 

You can see total case counts across the US have spiked to more than 800,000 on a 7 day rolling average and it happened in almost no time. Fortunately - when cases spiked back in January 2021 there was not really anyone vaccinated. Having so many people vaccinated has made all the difference right now. Hospitalizations are still as high as they were back then - but if not for the vaccine, it would be overwhelming. 

For Utah - you can see a similar trend - although we have not quite hit our peak. In January 2021 the 7 day average cases peaked around 4,000. Omicron quickly surpassed that in our average case count is above 10,000 now. It would actually be much higher, but the governor said that we are running out of tests, so if you have any symptoms of COVID, then you should assume you have COVID and just stay home, but not get tested. The U of U conducted random testing of people who had no symptoms and found that 1/8 had COVID 19, which means that 1/8 people that you see on the street probably have COVID and don't know it. It has been quickly spreading through our neighborhood with tons of people getting sick. Hospitalizations are at an all-time high and hospitals are almost full. 

Here are a few recent headlines:

 

As a family - we've been doing well - but have been trying to avoid be around others very much to avoid COVID-19. Here are a few pictures from the last couple of weeks. 

Church at home. We've been able to do church at home and this week the kids got to watch primary at home (they had it in person and on Zoom to watch)

Here is Shantel giving a talk:

Caleb and Lucy walking around on a broom during at home church. 

Meanwhile, both Shantel and I got our COVID-19 booster shots in the last couple of weeks and Lydia and Austin both got their first COVID shots. So that is really good and will hopefully help us. We are hopeful that this wave of COVID will be really intense, but hopefully passes within a couple of months. 

Shantel and I on a date walking around the SLC temple to see the construction. 

It has been so interesting - because people are so COVID fatigued that most people are unwilling to do anything to slow COVID-19 down. While it is certainly different than it was last year at this time - it makes no sense to do nothing because our hospitals are still full and at risk of overflowing. It has been hard to figure out exactly how to handle this latest surge and to know how much to quarantine vs. still letting our kids do some things with friends. It has been so tricky - but we are doing our best to keep them and others around us safe and healthy and doing the best we can. We are almost 2 years into COVID - and I expect that I'll provide an update for the 2 year mark, and that this will likely be with us for a long time.