Adventures of Eric and Rebecca before COVID shut us down

 Eric got to baptize his only son.  It was a pretty special day.

Then we got to go on an awesome vacation to Newport Beach for work! I had fun with the other wives.

And the next morning had a blissful 14 mile run up to Huntington Beach and back!

Then the boys finished working and we were super cool and went boogie boarding!

We felt so awesome, even though we were the only crazy people in the water in February!  Just look how cool we look walking out there......

Until a thing happened.  Josh and I both got stung on both feet by stingrays!  We hadn't seen the signs telling you to do the stingray shuffle, and I even saw a stingray at one point and didn't think anything of it.  We had NO IDEA the pain we were in for!  It hurt a lot getting stung, like being stabbed!  But as soon as we got out of the water it just multiplied, these shocking waves of pain just radiating up my legs, I could barely walk back up to the boardwalk from the water, I was bleeding all over and almost crying already.  Luckily a shop owner knew we needed hot water, so he helped us out.  It was excruciating!  I kept crying when another wave would hit or the water started cooling a little, and Josh was groaning a lot.  We also laughed a lot, to keep from crying!  Eric sat by me and took care of me, Jessica was so sweet and Emily and Nate took care of everything else so we could just deal with our pain.  I was kind of glad I wasn't the only one who got stung haha. It hurt SO MUCH!

This is how it looked later that night when the bleeding finally stopped- after 1.5 hours on the beach with our feet in buckets we transferred to the hot tub at the hotel for a couple of hours. The heat was the only thing that helped with the pain- we found out it was a heat-seeking venom, so if you leave it in it keeps spreading in your body.  But super hot water draws it out.

By the next morning it wasn't terribly painful anymore, but I couldn't walk much or the stings would start bleeding.  but I could ride a tandem bike!  

We rented bikes and rode for an hour, it was cute.

Of course the engineers had to stop and check out a house under construction with a cool cantilever.

That afternoon we went to hang out at some tide pools, and by then me and Josh's stings were forming blisters.

We didn't let those stingrays ruin our vacation!! My feet were swollen and I had to wear my shoes tied very loosely, but I hobbled along. 

After that I didn't run for a week- I went to the gym and swam or did the stationary bike.  But then we went to St. George for the soccer tournament and I had this awesome 15 mile run planned with Marcie (layla's mom), plus I was training for the Boston Marathon which was only 2 months away at that point, or so I thought!! So I didn't want to give up my exciting plans..... so we still ran and it was AWESOME, a gorgeous, epic landscape and a challenging course and we went FAST because marcie is super fast.  My foot felt great!  But then the next day it turned all black and purple and started oozing again, gross. This pic shows the 

one on my heel, the worse one.        

And here's the one on the other foot, on the pad of my foot under my big toe, it was never as bad but it did turn all red and swollen after the 15 mile run haha.

So when we got home I went to instacare and was treated for a "stingray attack", the doctor was excited because it was the first he had seen haha.  Here's my feet at the instacare. I had to be on antibiotics and he said not to run for 10 days..... I made it 4.  

I handled the running this way: after a run if my foot got red or swollen, I would soak it in hot epsom salt water- hoping it would draw out the poison still left in there. (my mom's idea and it did help!) It still took weeks to heal!  It was bad enough that I went back for an x-ray to make sure there weren't any tiny pieces of stingray barb in there- they must have just been microscopic.  Anyway here is is a few weeks later, still ugly with dark colors under the skin and scaby parts on the outside. 

But I'm happy to say, it completely healed eventually.  And the marathon got postponed and then cancelled anyway.  I did the virtual one in September and it was fun.  But I didn't get my trip to Boston and I'm so sad still!

I will also just take a moment here to mourn the loss of our trip to Japan.  That should have taken up a nice hefty chunk of the blog book this year!!  We had the tickets and the passports, but Japan closed it's borders due to COVID, and just barely in October is letting people with work visas (Brad) back in!  So we couldn't have gone any time from March into the foreseeable future.  And mary and Brad are packing up their house in Japan next month and moving home for good because he is retiring.  So we have forever lost our chance to go there with a free place to stay= probably not ever going.  I'm SO SAD for the kids, and me and Eric.  It was going to be such a cool experience for us all. 

Anyway, on that sad note here are my only other two pictures for this post, sorry it ended up being all about my nasty looking foot!!! hahaha stupid stingrays!! And the sad thing is I've always liked stingrays, I thought they were cool.  But after such a painful experience, I will never be the same!

Here's Eric and I with our Lego parks.  And the laptop screen with our Wallwork book club!!  My Grandmom, mom, aunts, sisters, and cousins!  It was SO fun and a great way to connect.

Katelyn’s love/hate relationship with online school

I discovered I don't have any pictures to support the title of this post!  haha I guess I didn't take any pictures of her doing her school work on the laptop in her pajamas at 3pm :) 

So for her the pros were: sleeping in every day for months!!  

school in pajamas

Cons: Assignments were confusing and she couldn't get immediate help from a teacher

Some classes had much harder assignments than the had in person

Most classes just went to boring mode- read and answer questions

Most teachers used this horrible online program that already had everything set up= easy for the teachers, but the assignments didn't always make sense because the teachers didn't write them.

Basically most of her teachers took the lazy way out and it was really frustrating.  But it was nice to only do school work for 2-3 hours a day. 

Which left plenty of time for reading and playing with siblings!!

Kate had fun at Topaz mountain.

and she rocked the sidewalk chalk day with some ADORABLE cartoon foods!  This one was a popcorn bucket.

Lego master park:

close up of the popcorn

such cute eggs:

I added this one because I didn't see it when I did the other posts.  Owen and Whitney chillin on the back step together eating goldfish.  So cute.  They got along pretty well during quarantine, it was wonderful.

Kate was a good sport about family games during quarantine!  Lack of other socializing was a good motivator.

Her playdoh self portrait was a book with a face!

Easter morning.

She was kind enough to stay behind with Emma/Maris on bike rides. 

And she did the Chopped challenge even though she doesn't like being adventurous with food. Yay Katelyn!

Katelyn’s year- pre quarantine

Katelyn had fun doing ice skating again! No idea why these pictures are sideways....sorry!

And skiing a couple of times.

Upside down pic, but I just wanted to show that Katelyn was a HUGE help creating the awesome Great Hall we made for Owen's birthday party!

And being the voice of the Sorting Hat and teaching Potions class!

And her poster inspired this cake :)

She was brave enough to try rock climbing, even though rappelling at girls camp was scary.

This was her last trip in the backseat.  She has been a good sport for so many years, I'm so grateful that she sat back there to keep the peace for so long.  Whitney gets carsick and is very touch- and sound-sensitive, and the baby needs to be closest to me, so Katelyn was an amazing big sister and sat in the back for so many hours.

Katelyn got to live her dream right before Quarantine, she got to be in the high school play as an 8th grader.  It was Peter and the Star Catcher, and they did a fantastic job!

Here's Kate in front of the stage being a fish, she was a Mermaid so that's what she did.

 

Kate being a mermaid

Kate had a one line solo in the Mermaid song, she did great!!

Kate in the mermaid grotto with Peter

in her costume for one scene where she played the sister in Peter's fantasy family.

Kate in the congo line with Black Stash (captain hook)

singing in the finale

It was a great show and she had a blast!!