Quarantine Life

Life in quarantine had it's ups and downs and was an unusual time, but I was able to find quite a few things that made it kind of fun. 

The first weekend after everything shut down, one of my neighbors requested help making masks for a retirement facility from anyone who knew how to sew. I offered to make some, so she dropped off a kit for 20 masks. All the fabric and elastic was precut and she sent me instructions on how she would like them made.

I was able to make them in and return them in just a couple of days. Later on in quarantine, mask making would become a huge movement. Jenny made around 500 masks through a project in Utah to make clinical masks for medical workers, it was a collaborative effort between Intermountain Healthcare, University of Utah Health, and Latter-day Saint Charities. 

I had been borrowing my mom's sewing machine, then she needed it back for her own quarantine projects, so I bought one for myself during a big sale at Joannes! It's such a cute little sewing machine! And I would be needing it for a service project I started while I had so much free time, I will cover more about it in my next post.

Zoom meetings became a big part of our lives. The fam would zoom 1-2 times a week to check in with each other and make sure everyone was ok, and to get some social interaction outside of our homes.

We celebrated Monty's first birthday over zoom!

The Burtons, Madisons and I were supposed to go on a big trip to Greece, Albania, Italy and Spain this summer that obviously got canceled. But one of the tour companies we were going to use in Greece started offering online zoom classes on Greek mythology as one of their Covid pivots. We signed up for one that taught about the connections between Greek mythology and Harry Potter. It was so fascinating!

We were asked to wear our Hogwarts house colors. I am a proud Hufflepuff and was excited to represent my house!

I also went on walks, a LOT of walks, as a way to break up the day. It was basically the only thing we could do to get outside. I discovered a lot of beautiful new walking trails.

One day on one of my walking trails, I found sweet, encouraging messages someone had written for all us walkers.

Since walking around the neighborhood had become such a big activity for everyone, one of my neighbors thought it would be fun to create a scavenger hunt each week for all the kids. She posted a schedule of the theme for each week, and everyone who wanted to participate would put pictures in their windows. I thought this was such a fun idea and had such a great time participating! It was so fun to pick which pictures to put in my window each week, then I would watch a movie and color them in all sorts of fun colors.

The themes were:

March 17 - Shamrocks

March 20 - Silly faces

March 23 - Animals

March 26 - Encouraging Words

March 29 - Flowers

April 1 - Jokes

April 4 - Easter Eggs

Since I live on the corner, I have a lot of windows that are visible from the sidewalks, so I would always put up multiple pictures.

Since all the restaurants had to close their dining areas, the governor asked, when possible, people order curbside take out to help our economy and to help keep our favorite, local shops in business.

I did my part:

Gourmandies (a couple of times)

Super Chix 

I had heard about this place for a while and had really wanted to check them out. This was the perfect time to do so!

Tsunami 

As for my cooking, I was all about the comfort foods. I made german pancakes several times (it took me weeks to find flour, I ended up getting some from the bakery at Gardner Village, they began selling their pantry items since it was impossible to find them at the stores, and it was a huge life saver)

One time there was a heart bubble right in the middle.

I also finally found the perfect recipe for homemade brownies that taste just like the box version!

They were soooo delicious. I had half a pan for dinner one night ....

A lot of people had a quarantine snack of choice, frog eye salad was mine. It is beyond random, but it is so good, and it made me so happy every time I had some.

Once it was obvious that quarantine and Covid-19 were going to be around a little longer than just a couple of weeks, I had to get back to eating healthy again. Since grocery shopping had become so difficult and we were supposed to stay out of the stores as much as possible, I thought this was the perfect time to sign up for meal kits and learn some new cooking skills.

The first meal kit I signed up for was Green Chef and I would order their Keto meals, all veggies and lean meats, no potatoes or grains.

Their recipes were so delicious and generous! They made beautiful meals.

This was the first time I had ever fried an egg or cooked shrimp! I was so excited to be learning new things!

After I had done Green Chef for a couple of months, their meals started to get a little repetitive. With the keto meals, they try to keep the carbs under 10 grams, so there was really kind of a limit of what veggies they could use. I have never eaten so much cabbage and mushrooms in my life.

So I switched to Home Chef, because I was intrigued by their oven ready meals, where you cook everything in a provided oven tin. The carbs were a little higher on these meals, ranging from 15-25 grams, so still not super high, but higher than the Green Chef Meals.

These recipes were super simple and really flavorful, I really enjoyed them!

I had so many loving friends and neighbors stop by to check on me to make sure I was doing ok since I live alone and wasn't able to work for a little while. I felt so loved and looked after, I appreciated every text, call, message, doorstep drop off, quick stop by, and porch chat.

(Side note: notice my awesome press on nails! I was having withdrawals from not being able to get my nails done, so I went through a press on phase before I gave in and bought a gel nail kit with the curing light and everything.)

Disney has been releasing some of their park recipes to help keep the magic alive while all their parks are closed. When they released their Mickey beignet recipe, Laura made some for me and delivered them to me in a paper bag full of powdered sugar, just like how you get them in the parks! 

They were so delicious!

My ward's relief society has been so great at checking in with everyone and making sure everyone feels loved and not alone. My RS president and ministering brother (who are dating) dropped off this adorable plate of cookies one day.

One night, I got a cute heart attack from the whole RS presidency.

I put it on the inside of my door so I could enjoy it for a while, it was really cute.

On Star Wars day, the Griffins dropped off the cutest surprise ever.

A Chewy maple bar! Maple bars are my favorite, and this was from the Lehi Bakery so they were extra delicious.

Ready for my marathon!

One night I had a lovely socially distanced hang out with Angie on her back porch and she had a box full of delicious goodies for me from Buttered! 

Every single one of them was so good!

Social distanced hangouts became a way for me to see some of my good friends who have to be extra careful because of underlying conditions or pregnancies. It was sooooo good to see them in person after months of zoom hangouts. Even though we were pretty spaced out, it felt so good to be hanging out in person and it was fun to hang out outside.

Lu had Ang and I over for a Hamilton watch party on her back porch when it was released on Disney Plus. We are all HUGE Hamilton fans, so it was so fun to watch it together. Lu had gotten each of us a Chip s'more cookie for our movie treat!

It was so great to have so much time to really savor and spend time on scripture study, online institute classes and other gospel studies during quarantine. The weeks leading up to conference, I worked my way through David Butler's study of the Priesthood. It was five online classes and they were so good and filled to the brim with awesome information and insights to the priesthood, I really loved them and learned so much. They were the perfect way to get ready conference which was celebration of the 200th anniversary of the first vision.

This years April conference was historical for so many reasons. One of those reasons, was President Nelson reveled a new proclamation, which he read to us for the first time from the Sacred Grove. Since the Church was organized, only five proclamations have been issued, with the last being “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” presented by President Gordon B. Hinckley in 1995, so this was pretty exciting.

The new proclamation title is: “The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: A Bicentennial Proclamation to the World.” and it is beautifully written.

After conference, Emily Belle Freeman and a few other wonderful ladies, created a course that would study one line of the proclamation each week for the next six months. I had really been missing the preisthood curriculum of working my way through a series of classes, so this was just what I had been needing. It is beautifully organized and Karin and Mom are doing it too, so we have a zoom meeting once a week to discuss each weeks reading.

And lastly, experiencing the unpleasant, up the nose, brain tickling Covid test rounded out the entire quarantine experience. I didn't think I had it, despite questioning a sore throat that wouldn't go away and a tightening in my throat and chest (turned out to be allergies) I got tested as part of the Test Utah campaign. They were trying to test as many people as possible to get as much data as possible, so I signed up to be tested.

I went to a drive through testing center in Orem.

These large white testing tents were popping up at many of the hospitals and insta cares.

The test administrators had to be covered in layers of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), it felt just like being in a zombie apocalypse movie. For me, the test hurt so bad and then my nose and brain stung for a good 30 minutes after as I drove home. Other people said it wasn't as bad as they were expecting it to be. I think a lot of it depended on who administered the test, mine was rather aggressive .... 

As expected, my results came back negative, but now I know what all the fuss is about.