A Socially Distancing Weekend

Ben took Eliza hunting/shooting Saturday morning and she had a blast!  She's a great shot!  I hung out at home with the other kids, practicing piano and doing housework and generally improving our personal talents.

When we were all together again and the work was done, we headed up to Timpanogos to enjoy the snow one more time.  Since we've tried to take advantage of opportunities to ski as much as possible, we haven't done much else in the snow.  So that Saturday night we really enjoyed sledding, building a snowman (mostly Luke), and snowball fighting (mostly Ben and Cat).  Bonus: we spotted a family of turkeys on the side of the road while we drove up to Aspen Grove.

After dinner that night we put together a scavenger hunt for our nearest cousins, whose yard we're pretty familiar with.  We knew that a playdate wasn't a good idea but thought it would be nice to provide something fun and unexpected.  We came up with 10 clues and placed them around the front and back yards once it was dark.  The kids dressed in black, with Jack taking my instructions to "act like a ninja" so far that he actually wore his plastic Dollar Tree ninja mask.  I was hoping we could surprise them completely but Ben insisted we give them a heads' up.  It was for the best - they definitely heard us outside but Joe-Z was able to brush it off so the kids didn't suspect anything.  Our kids LOVED setting up the scavenger hunt, and the next morning we had so much fun watching a video of cousins running all over the yard until they found their surprise in the mailbox.

I liked the idea of bringing treats to people (while maintaining a proper distance) so much that we prepared a couple more deliveries, both of which were within walking distance, so we had the added benefit of spending some time outside when we made the drops.

Eliza also made herself a stress ball using cornstarch and a balloon.

One of the highlights of the week for me was the fact that our CFM lesson included Jacob 5.  Jacob 5 is not one of my favorite Book of Mormon chapters but when I read this Instagram post, I had to admit, the timing seemed inspired.

Combine this with Sheri Dew's article on Compensatory Blessings and we ended up with some good material to supplement the traditional teachings about Jacob's epic olive tree allegory during the week.