Owen becomes a laptop pro

The first thing I post about Owen's year is always-- his birthday :)

Owen's birthday dawned super misty, it was perfect for a Harry Potter party!

Katelyn Owen and I had spent hours the day before setting up this Great Hall, complete with enchanted ceiling and house banners.  I thought it turned out so cool!!

The cake was also a success thanks to fondant. 

View from inside the great hall- you can see the "Enemies of the Heir Beware" sign and the wall stickers.

The front room was all decked out as the shops from Diagon Alley, complete with dressed-up shopkeepers.

Owen and his friends after visiting the shops.  Then we went through platform 9 3/4, rode the train to the great hall, and did a sorting ceremony with the sorting hat, where we gave them a scarf from their house.  Also we had rigged a phone into the hat, so Katelyn was the voice of the sorting hat from the other room!  It was fantastic!!

The Harry Potter obstacle course!  First, the young wizards had to crawl through the tunnel,

kill a dementor with expecto patronum, disarm Whitney with expelliarmus,

summon a book with Accio (it was taped to a remote control car controlled by Whitney)

and rescue lego wizard minifigures from the room full of multiplying jewels in gringotts (metal bowl haha)

It was a success!

Singing happy birthday!

Potions class with Katelyn and Whitney!  The recipes we used in Whitney's party were a big hit again- 8 year olds love to mix, measure, and eat sweet things haha.

Brief intermission for some basketball pics!  Owen had a fun time doing the city basketball class.

Back to the party!  

We played Quidditch outside in January....

and had Spells class before the obstacle course, to teach them the spells they would need.

It was so so fun and we can't wait to do it again for the little girls someday.

more basketball- Owen improved his dribbling, passing and shooting.  He is excited to play real basketball for the first time next year.

owen opening presents on his birthday.  He loved this baby yoda I commissioned my Aunt Kim to crochet for him. :)

and of course Legos.

Owen had a great birthday, and then a week later was able to get baptized!

It was a great day.  And so crazy for me as a mom to not be the one helping him change after like the girls!  It was cool too, he asked his grandmas to be the witnesses, since Women can do that now.

We had a fun weekend with Donny and Christine and their girls, my parents, Mary, Kurtis and Lauren, Jonathan, and Ryan and Cortnee came to the baptism too.

The other things Owen got to do before quarantine were:
Enjoy Katelyn's play

Go skiing a couple of times with Dad and the girls!  So fun, he loved it.

Owen had a blast rock climbing with the Cravens when we went down there in February.  He and Ryder were all over the place.

And he did great when it was his turn. He also enjoyed the pool at the condo....

and played with Lydia, and Champ, their new dog.

And lastly, he got to dress up as Eric for hero dress up day, adorable.  And he and I went to Bricks and Minifigs on a date!

AAaaand then the world shut down.   The title of this post is "Owen becomes a laptop pro" because he had to learn how to do so many things on a computer that he didn't know how to do before, just to survive online school!  He had a couple of hours worth of work every day, and we figured it all out, then he got better and better at it until I hardly had to help him at all.  The thing I usually did was type for him when he would get exhausted on long writing assignments.  Since he hadn't had a ton of typing practice!
Sadly I don't have any pictures of him doing his schoolwork....he didn't enjoy it much haha.
But here are the pics of all the random stuff we did in March-May.  At the time it felt stifling, and like we couldn't do anything we wanted to do. Looking back it seems almost idyllic though!  I knew it would be a time I looked back on with fondness, but it was still hard to accept all the restrictions in the moment and try to just enjoy it.

So here's Owen doing playdoh masters (with the crazy braid mohawk!) and Blowing us away in Lego masters with his cool playground.

He and I were a team for Chopped, and he did some puzzles with Eric and Whitney.

Wacky Wednesday fun!!

Loving chopping rocks at Topaz Mountain!  And crazy braid day.

Park time after the 6 week quarantine, and bike trail time during. It felt so good to go somewhere, anywhere!

Reading to his sisters ;)

Painting, and the chalk day!  Sadly I can't find a pic of him on our giant chalk racecourse, it was amazing.

Bitter herbs for passover

hiking and camping day.

Easter!

Enjoying snowpainting in the last snow of April

painting prayer rocks and the fake plane ride for international day.

Wheeler pioneer cabin and cemeteries with Grandma and Grandpa on Memorial Day.

Grandpa's new hot tub!  and a Come Follow Me lesson.

Owen loved glowstick dancing!

And here's a teaser summer picture I accidentally uploaded- Owen and Maris at the SF reservoir.

One unexpected side effect of COVID was Owen sleeping in a lot, and then not being able to go to sleep at night.  And then stressing about it so much that it became a huge problem.  I am very proud of him though- we read books together about anxiety and came up with calming methods and I started waking him up at 7:15 every morning and we used the occasional melotonin and he prayed for a lot of help, and he hasn't had a hard time falling asleep in months!  He still stresses about getting home in time in the evening from activities so there's time to do his whole routine, but he's working on that too.
Owen learned a lot about himself and how to solve problems the first half of this year!