2020

January

We flew to Denver New Year's Eve and rang in the New Year at Alamo Car Rental at the Denver Airport. 

We had a great time with the Phillips family. One of the highlights of the trip was the Pixar exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Another highlight was celebrating Rog's birthday with his sister, Kenzie, and our nephew, Aiden, who both share his birthday.

Grandma Lori and Papa George came into town for Axel's blessing.

Our only snow day of the year was January 17th. We had a 2 hour delay and then the kids went to school. My kind of snow day!

We celebrated Rog's birthday with our friends. We also celebrated Ryan Sullivan's birthday (January 6th) and Brenton Yates' birthday (December 28th).

Performing Team Picture Day. This served as a costume dress rehearsal for the upcoming competition season.

Peyton looked so grown up with her makeup on and hair done. Especially in this costume.

February

Peyton had her first dance competition. It was such a fun day for me to see her performing up on stage. Corbyn had a basketball game at the same time, so Rog and the boys missed her performances. If we had known the other 2 competitions and her recital would be cancelled, we would have had Corbyn miss his basketball game. 

Easton's first Valentine's Day.

We hosted a little Valentine's Day party for playgroup.

We had a "fancy" Valentine's Day dinner.

We had an annual pass to OMSI that we shared with the Hobbs. We visited the Exquisite Creatures visiting exhibit a few times.

WinterFest at the kids' school. We won a raffle drawing for the Marvel basket. Peyton wasn't too excited about winning that particular basket.

March

My parents came to watch the kids and Rog, Easton, and I went on an epic 3 day Disneyland trip for my birthday. Highlights:

Seeing the new Magic Happens parade.

Mickey waffle for my birthday breakfast.

Exploring the resorts and meeting all the characters.

Pixar Nite - a special ticketed after hours event at California Adventure. This was the main event we came for!

Meeting Bo Peep, Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and Bullseye all at the same time!

We were watching Magical Kinda Mama's Instagram stories all night and found her right before the event ended. Total Fangirl moment for me. She decided to give up Instagramming a few months after this, so that made it even more special.

We came back in time to make it to Corbyn's last basketball game of the season.

COVID-19 hit and everything started being cancelled - church, school, and Rog started working from home.

We celebrated Pi Day at Pieology before the restaurants shut down and then had a few friends over for pie that night (before everyone stopped getting together).

Easton learned to crawl.

We celebrated Logan's 5th birthday with the Hobbs.

Toilet paper became impossible to find and we happened to be at the end of our supply. It took a couple tries, but we finally got some at Costco.

St. Patrick's Day.

We had a rainbow breakfast for dinner.

We went to see Onward that night because we heard all the theaters were closing down the next day.

Logan turned 5! We had a friend party planned, but decided we'd better cancel it. So we did all the things we had planned just as a family. 

We survived lots of time at home with a daily Disney or Pixar movie and a craft.

We ventured out to see the cherry blossoms.

We met the Hobbs at the coast on a cold, sunny day.

April

I had been saving boxes for a few months for an epic April Fool's Day prank.

We enjoyed a much-needed General Conference weekend.

Logan learned to ride his bike without training wheels.

I participated in the Riley Blake Designs Block Challenge and got to try lots of new classic blocks.

We found out school was officially cancelled for the rest of the school year.

We spent lots of time riding bikes/scooters in the high school parking lot.

We celebrated Easter at home.

We dressed up and had Kellen come take our picture Easter morning even though we were having church at home.

We continued our daily movies and crafts.

The teachers did a parade through all the neighborhoods in our school boundaries.

I made a week's worth of giant cookies.

Rog built a retaining wall in our backyard.

We met the Hobbs at the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge to see the tadpoles and celebrate Blake and Peyton's birthdays.

Peyton turned 8!

We celebrated 13 years of marriage.

Pizza for the kids, Cheesecake Factory for us.

Online speech. This was pretty terrible, so after a few appointments I stopped scheduling them.

May

I made Salt and Straw's Carrot Cake Ice Cream. 

We had Jake Egbert do a photo shoot with us in Hood River. It was mostly for Peyton's baptism pictures.

But we snuck in some of the whole family while we were at it.

We celebrated Mother's Day.

We celebrated Halfway to Halloween with the Disney Parks Blog. We had Mickey Pumpkin Pancakes for dinner, dressed up in random costumes, watched Haunted Mansion, and made a Jack Skellington cake.

We filled the backyard in with a whole lot of dirt!

I made a few more batches of Salt and Straw Ice Cream.

Peyton was baptized!

Both sets of grandparents came, but everyone else watched on Zoom.

June

We got new sod in the backyard.

The Black Lives Matter movement was a huge and terrible thing for Portland with violent and destructive protests going on for months. There was a peaceful protest walk in our city of Happy Valley. We happened to drive by while it was going on.  

Our school did a reverse parade on the last day of school.

Peyton got her ears pierced!

I started doing High Fitness sometime during May over Zoom. We got to start doing it in person and I fell in love with it!

Corbyn turned 10 and entered the double digits!

We celebrated Father's Day.

Easton learned to walk!

We started our Summer Fun Schedule:

Make Something Monday (most weeks we cooked something in the kitchen).

Take a Picnic Tuesday (we had to be creative because a lot of regular parks were closed).

Wet and Wild Wednesday (mostly getting wet in our yard somehow since pools and splash pads were closed in Oregon).

Take a Hike Thursday (SO much hiking this summer).

Something Fun Friday.

Rog and I went on a date to PDX Sliders and became obsessed. It's now our favorite Portland restaurant for sure!

We also rode electric scooters while we were downtown.

We got a new kitchen table and chairs.

July

4th of July High (a few days early).

We went on an epic road trip to Utah. 

We celebrated the 4th of July with family.

We got to enjoy some amazing fireworks put on by Tay and Martha's neighbors.

We went down to Arches National Park and hiked to the Delicate Arch. (It was really hot!)

Then we hit up Goblin Valley State Park on the way down to St. George.

We visited Great Grandpa Phillips.

Then we drive back up to Northern Utah. We got to visit some friends and Great Grandma Afton. 

We took the kids to BYU.

Before we drove back to Oregon we celebrated Papa George, Easton, and Grandma Lori's birthdays with Mickey cupcakes.

I taught Logan how to read.

Instead of my weekly visits to Salt and Straw for their Birthday Cakes and Blackberries in July, I bought 3 pints and made them last until the end of the year by only eating a spoonful here and there.

 

Peyton started dance camp in person. She got to pick up her costumes for her regular (non team) classes that never got to be used, so a quick photoshoot in the backyard was necessary.

Our ward finally started Zoom church. Rog was a frequent speaker (in our ward and other wards in the stake) since he was released from the bishopric back in March and called to the high council.

We swam in Trillium Lake. It's not summer until we've done this!

Easton turned one! We had a COVID friendly party in our front yard.

We had the Hobbs over to celebrate his birthday.

And we let him smash an entire cake. It was so good, I couldn't stop eating it as I cleaned it up!

Easton moved into the boy room. (And we made an office for Rog in our room where his crib was.)

I finished my Rise quilt.

August

We went camping with the Yates and the Sullivans at Tumalo State Park.

Peyton was the only girl!

We picked a whole lot of blackberries.

And grew a garden. And I put zucchini in everything.

Rog fixed our oven that broke while we were camping. (Came home and it was beeping loudly with an error code!)

Peyton made the blue jazz/contemporary team and the silver acro team.

We borrowed a projector and watched a movie in our backyard. (And Corbyn accidentally killed my laptop in the process.)

We spent a night at the Great Wolf Lodge with the Hobbs and my parents.

We continued on to Mt. Rainier National Park with Grandma Lori and spent the day hiking there.

We visited Little Crater Lake for the first time.

We tie dyed shirts.

I grew one epic sunflower.

September

I taught Peyton to sew a pillowcase for her bed.

We had our traditional back-to-school dinner on our school lunch trays on Labor Day.

We got to cheer on our Cougs. Most teams weren't playing at this point, so we were just grateful to be watching some BYU football.

Easton made the cutest little cougar fan!

The kids went back to school (virtually).

We had wildfires burning in our county and the smoke was just terrible. We watched as the air quality went from unhealthy to hazardous to extremely hazardous very quickly. It was so gross! We waited to see if we would need to be evacuated.

In the midst of it we had a major water leak. Rog was able to fix it after spending hours out in the nasty air! (We had another smaller water leak a couple weeks after this and he fixed that one too.)

After a few days of the smoke (with no end in sight) we decided to self-evacuate to Yellowstone. 12 hours of driving and when we got there the air was still slightly smoky, but much better. 

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone is one of my favorite parts of Yellowstone.

I took the kids to see the Yellowstone movie at the IMAX theater while Rog was working in the hotel room.

Old Faithful never disappoints.

Grand Prismatic Spring - I don't know how, but somehow this was my first time seeing it. (At least that I remember anyway!)

Isn't nature amazing?!

School was cancelled for a few days because of the smoke, but the kids were able to do their classes online from the hotel room (and on the drive home) when it started back up. It was orientation week, so they weren't doing much yet.

We finally had a storm come through and clear out the smoke a few days after we got home.

We got our flu shots at a drive through flu shot clinic.

Easton learned how to climb onto the table and wanted to be doing whatever Logan was doing. That made school extra challenging! He also was obsessed with biting crayons and the erasers off pencils.

October

Logan's teacher had them each take a day to be Star of the Day to help the kids get to know each other a little. 

Turns out we had a pretty good football team this year (led by an amazing quarterback, Zach Wilson). We also had a pretty easy schedule thanks to COVID, so we got to watch our cougars win a lot. (And eat a lot of good football food.)

For a couple weeks I made a pair of hourglass blocks each day and got a start on a fall quilt.

The kids rocked their Halloween pajamas.

Diana and Jason went to Turkey for a week and a half and my parents came to watch their kids while they were gone. We got together for football games, Sunday dinners, and a few other random meetups while they were here.

Rog's car had been struggling and one day it died about a mile away from our house. It took a couple jumps and me pushing it with the van to get it home. Rog spent a long day in the garage working on it and nursed it back to health.

My running watch died at the end of the summer and my brother sold me his old Apple watch to replace it. One major benefit of this was that I could start using the Strava app. I had been right behind my sister on this particular segment and I finally passed her up! 

We went to the pumpkin patch.

I took my Halloween quilt (that I finished earlier in the year) along and took some pictures of it.

One of the automatic sliding doors on our van broke. The dealer wanted over $1,000 to fix it. Rog saved the day again by fixing it himself. 

We carved our pumpkins. We went with classic jack-o-lanterns this year.

I completed a challenge on Strava to run 100 km (60 miles) in October.

Corbyn and Peyton were both selected as the Student of the Month from their classes for Responsibility. Both of them managed their own school schedules from the very beginning, so I only have to worry about helping Logan. 

Halloween High.

Our ward did a drive through trunk or treat the afternoon of Halloween. Rog handed out candy and I drove through with the kids.

Our Toy Story 4 crew. This was supposed to be the year that the kids could pick whatever they wanted to be and not go with a family theme. I bought Easton's Bullseye costume last year on clearance and I told the kids that I was going to be Jessie and Dad was going to be Buzz. They could join us or not. Corbyn decided to be a Green Army Man and Logan decided to be Mr. Potato Head, so the only one who wasn't going to be with the family was Peyton. I convinced her she wouldn't be happy being the odd girl out and she agreed, so she decided on Bo Peep.

Instead of regular trick-or-treating we did a progressive dinner and indoor trick-or-treating with the Yates, Sullivans, and Martyns. We had appetizers at the Sullivans (the Yates helped with the food there because they were in the middle of moving to a house down the street), dinner at our house (I made mummy dogs, vegetables with spicy ranch dip, and apples with caramel dip), and finished with dessert at the Martyns. We felt pretty safe getting together with this group because the Yates and Sullivans had COVID at the end of August/beginning of September and our kids play with the Martyn kids nearly every day (so we're getting it together if either family does).

November

We got to go to church in person on November 1st!

We had our Ghoulish Feast that night with the Hobbs. 

Spooky Spider Vegetable Dip (leftover from Halloween night).

Creepy Pot Pie.

Monster Cake (inspired by Sulley from Monster's Inc).

Voted ✅. It took forever, but Joe Biden was eventually declared the winner.

Corbyn ran cross country with Runner 2 Runner again. There weren't any meets this year, but at least he got to do something.

I helped Diana make this giraffe cake for Axel's smash cake.

We went on a little fall hike to enjoy the fall leaves.

Easton drew on our hall runner with a dry erase marker. Somehow I convinced Rog to let me buy a new rug for our living room. And we decided we didn't need a runner in our hallway after all. 

We celebrated Mickey's birthday with a Peanut Butter Tart.

We made our own Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. I ran and the kids biked.

We had Thanksgiving dinner with the Hobbs.

McKae needed a picture of the 4 kids together for a Christmas gift she was making for Dixie. I got them dressed up and somehow managed to get this amazing picture of them.

My first time being at the top of a segment leaderboard on Strava!

We cut down our Christmas tree.

December

We kicked off our advent activities with Christmas pajamas.

We threw a surprise, COVID baby shower for Melissa. Fitting since it was for a surprise, post-vasectomy baby - her 5th boy, so we did a basketball theme.

Rog and Peyton built a Little Library for our front yard.

Dance had to go virtual again for a few months, so they had a virtual Christmas party before class. 

I baked another week's worth of giant cookies. This time they were all holiday themed.

We visited Santa at Cabela's. Such a fitting photo for 2020. 😂

Corbyn won his Battle of the Books competition.

We had our 2nd annual Christmas Nailed It cupcake competition with the Martyns.

6 stocking were hung by the chimney with care! I didn't finish Easton's stocking for his first Christmas, but I made sure I got it done for this Christmas.

Christmas High. Peyton joined me and has been going with me ever since!

My parents came for Christmas and stayed with us for their entire visit since they were babysitting the Hobbs the last time they came to Oregon.

We had egg rolls and Christ's birthday cake on Christmas Eve.

We had an almond Danish Kringle (from Trader Joe's) for our Christmas morning breakfast. My dad served his mission in Denmark and he raved about how authentic it was.

We enjoyed a delicious Christmas feast with the Hobbs.

When you have babysitters, but everything is closed... Afternoon date in the back of the van. 😂

Our tree was still up, but we had taken the ornaments down, so I decorated our tree for New Year's Eve.

We let the kids stay up until midnight. We played games, snacked, and watched previously-recorded Disney World fireworks. It was the best New Year's Eve I can remember.

Along the way I finished 6 puzzles.

This one was started in 2019.

This was my April General Conference puzzle.

I framed this one for it to be a summer decoration.

Peyton helped me finish this 1,000 piece National Park puzzle in ONE day! I also framed this one and it is hanging in our guest room that I am redecorating in a National Park theme.

This was my October General Conference puzzle.

We spent our evenings working on this Christmas Mickey puzzle while my parents were here for Christmas, but it didn't get done until January.

What a year! Obviously it will be remembered for COVID-19, but we had a lot of fun and made a lot of good memories in spite of (or maybe because of) the virus that shut down the world.