Zoom Nights from 2020

 I was cleaning up my computer desktop (I really should have taken a screenshot to add to this post. It had layers and layers of icons - it was out of control) and I found a bunch of screenshots that I've taken over the past year. I thought that they deserved their own post.

I am so grateful for Zoom. 

This year, when things shut down and we were encouraged not to gather for social events - among the many MANY more pressing concerns was an immediate cessation of our monthly date nights. We have had a babysitting swap group for several years now that coordinates swapping babysitting for each other. One family babysits the other two families' kids once a month then gets two dates while the other two families take their turns babysitting. It's THE BEST. But without that, our Friday nights became much more open. We instigated our Family Pizza and a Movie night with the kids, but that still left our after-bedtime hours free. Luckily, we have a great group of friends that didn't miss a beat. We started meeting regularly for game nights. The four of us: the Peadens, the Perkins, the Wards, and the Olsens (our four couple group started with the Rossels, but the Olsens quickly stepped in as the perfect fourth for our group). We've played countless games of Secret Hitler, Code Names, and Among Us. We even put together a murder mystery party. It's a simple thing and at times it was easy to take for granted, but looking back - I can see that it was such a huge blessing to still be able to connect with our friends on a regular basis. 

In addition to our group game nights - we've connected several times with the Perkins family over zoom. Sometimes just chatting, sometimes playing games, and my favorite times were the ones when we participated in the Utah Taste Off together. That is a company that gives you a box of food items from various brands and then you taste test and rank them according to your preferences. We loved going through each one and determining which were, in our professional opinions, the best. It was even more fun to do together, even if it was over zoom. 

Zoom church and zoom church meetings have been interesting but such a blessing. When everything first shut down, we were doing church at home completely on our own. Slowly they started adding broadcasted church back in and now we are doing church at home every other week and watching it streamed on our off weeks. It's been a blessing to still be able to connect with our ward family - and it's amazing how productive church zoom meetings can be. This is a screenshot of a Stake Council zoom call where we were trying to figure out how to safely start attending church again. 

Speaking of our ward family, I was able to help put together a couple of game nights for the sisters in our ward, which was fun. That was months ago - but now we are able to meet as a Relief Society every other week, via zoom. I'm grateful to stay connected to my ward sisters. 

We've had a good amount of family zoom game nights, too. Lots of game nights with the Peaden family playing Secret Hitler and Code names. My family has gotten really cool and we started playing Dungeons and Dragons or Risk together. I couldn't find a screenshot of the Walkers, so I'm adding a screen shot of the entire extended Walker family "gathered" for my Grandpa Walker's 85th birthday, which was also a great zoom gathering. 

I'm probably missing loads of different examples of zoom nights that we've done this year. A quick ransack of my brain reminds me to add: Lydia zoom calls with Zachary Peaden playing a dice game called House of Fire, Zooming Lydia's baptism to all of our extended family and friends, zoom piano lessons with Sister Lewis, zoom Speech Therapy for Austin, zoom presidency meetings, and zoom hangouts with friends (both kids and adults). If there was one thing that I was the most grateful for this year, in retrospect (falling behind Faith, family, financial stability, health, etc... of course) it would be Zoom.