Fall Break 2025

When Jeremy is on trips (quite a few this year), he misses a lot (including us and we miss him, too). One thing we've made sure to do as a family, though, is when Jeremy is traveling, he calls in the morning and night for family prayer over the phone. Sometimes he joins in for family scripture study as well. It's important to keep that gospel foundation strong for our family even when we're separated.

 

Since Jeremy was gone so long on this last trip to South Carolina, he also missed Fall Break.

 

Slumber Party!

When our older children were little we had a tradition of having a slumber party the night before Fall Break or Spring Break. We'd watch movies or play video games then all sleep out in the living room together. Over time, we had less people sleep in the living room after our "party" and eventually the tradition kind of fizzled out.

After many years we brought it back this Fall Break with watching a movie and playing MarioKart while eating muffins. Only a few opted to sleep out in the living room but we did have good bonding time while we were up.

October 15 was National Mushroom Day so I wore my pajamas that have mushrooms on them and Jr. Jr. commented: That's why Jet didn't want me to have mush room on the couch. 

P.S. For dinner earlier we made shawarma for Shawarma Day.

 

The next day, we had leftovers for dinner for World Food Day on October 16.

We got some snuggles in before Nichole and I went to a Relief Society activity to paint pumpkins. 

Normally I'm hands on involved in the activities (remember the sourdough?) but this time I was content to just sit and socialize. I also was able to praise Nichole's pumpkin painting. 

 

I got Kiki's Delivery Service vibes from it and not necessarily the movie. Isn't it so cute?

 

Fall Break Fun!

I hiked up Big Springs area with the kiddos. We'd been wanting to for a while and finally got the chance. We even had sun that day. 

A couple times, Jet and I took pictures of each other. This is how they turned out. 

Jr. Jr. pointed out to me how in Jet's picture the first time, Jr. Jr. was standing by me. In the other picture that I took, Jr. Jr. was standing by Jet. Ha Ha. Clever noticing. 

When we got home we had pasta to celebrate... National Pasta Day.

The mountains were gorgeous at sunset.

I love nature and I love living here and I especially love my children. 

 

The two oldest and I had some bonding time watching a movie one evening. While we watched, Jet watched Kiki's Delivery Service in a different room. I think he heard our conversation about Nichole's pumpkin.

 

Jet requested going to the library during Fall Break so on October 20, he and I went together. He was so well behaved. He followed directions. He stayed with me. We did a children's activity in the children's wing with pumpkin emotions. He got to play in the children's area and when it was time to move on to gather books on my list, he didn't put up a stink about it. He was quiet in the quiet areas, even when we had to get a book from the quietest area in the library. He was very good at whispering. We watched construction on the new courtyard/greenhouse area. He helped me check out our books and did a good job. I am so proud of him.

He did not yell, "Tractor!" in the middle of the library. Once we got out to the van, he was able to. "Tractor! Burninating the countryside..." For those that get the reference, he yells, "Trogdor!" but thinks it's "Tractor!" If you listen to Strong Bad from Homestar Runner, it does kind of sound like "Tractor."

Since October 20 was International Sloth Day, Jet requested a book about koalas. Why not?

I love bonding time with my children. And I love how this Fall Break went.

Fall Break 2022

Fall Break: Hiking (Big Springs)

Fall Break: Dead things (Bean Museum)

Fall Break: Scarecrow Festival (Thanksgiving Point)

Fall Break: Date, Live music (My niece, Carina, performing with my sister and brother-in-law in attendance)

Fall Break: Live animals (Hogle Zoo)

Quarantine!

And then we got sick. 

It's a good thing I didn't schedule anything for Fall Break after the Scarecrow Festival since I didn't feel up to doing anything for a few days and I stayed mostly in my room.

After Fall Break we all had to quarantine.

Here's Jeremy with his "Vaccinated" shirt. Notice it says "COVID-19" under the word, "vaccinated." He made sure to wear this shirt while he had Covid-19.

I got a video of Jeremy eating pineapple (he hates pineapple) because he lost his taste for about a day or two. He wondered what it would be like to lose that sense but after a day of it he was done with that experience and lucked out with it being such a short duration. He had no problem eating the pineapple. Normally he would be grimacing and wouldn't be able to handle it so we could definitely tell he'd lost his sense of taste and smell.

Jr. Jr.'s birthday was during our quarantine. Since we couldn't go shopping for items for his birthday dinner and cake and ice cream he wanted, we made do with what we had at home with the promise that we would do the dinner and cake and ice cream he wanted later. Jr. pointed out that meant he'd get two cakes, etc.

So Jr. Jr. picked ice cream out of our freezer that he wanted and a boxed cake from the pantry and I made frosting to go with it. The frosting was from thefoodnanny.com and it's my go-to chocolate frosting when I don't have store bought frosting because it's simple enough. I put sprinkles on the top.

We skipped the candles for obvious reasons but still sang, "Happy Birthday," to him and he still got to open cards and presents.

 

We didn't do a lot of celebrating other things during quarantine but we still got creative like we did with "quarantine" last year when everything shut down. There was also some cabin fever like with "quarantine" last year.

Six Sisters' Stuff put together a series of videos about if they actually listened to internet trolls. One comment they got was how some people hate casseroles so they should take their casseroles and go jump in a lake so one of the sisters took a casserole and jumped in a lake with it. Other people complained how they use cream of chicken soup too much, in practically every recipe, so one of the sisters showed herself making brownies and adding cream of chicken soup to it. Our family get a kick out of those videos so one day while Jr. was making brownies, he made this comment, "I didn't add any cream of chicken soup. Do you think it will be okay?" I love that kid. It was so funny, I put it on Instagram and Six Sisters' Stuff got a big kick out of it, too. I told you. Creativity.

October 24 was Mother-in-Law Day. I made a general announcement, "Happy Mother-in-Law Day." I don't know if my mother-in-law heard it or not.

We may or may not have celebrated Picasso's birthday on October 25 along with Greasy Food Day. We had spaghetti and meatballs with sweet mini peppers and some of us made the food into faces.

We did celebrate National Chocolate Day on October 28 by making chocolate frogs. We used green food coloring in white chocolate which is not actually chocolate but it's a generally accepted term so good enough. I'm sure there was some other chocolate eating in there as well. The boys did most of the work but I helped a bit and they turned out great.

 

October 29 was National Oatmeal Day. Guess what I had for breakfast?

So I guess we did some celebrating, mostly after I was feeling better.

While the kids were quarantining at home, they had school work they were able to work on. Some days were harder to get going than others, though, and everyone had to take turns with the computer which wasn't always easy when everyone decided they were ready to use it at the same time.

So that's how quarantine went. We were very fortunate not to get too sick. We can count our blessings for that.