Sunday was mine and Marc’s anniversary (aka our family’s birthday!!) Seven years people! So I thought it would be fun to bust out the white dress. The girls were outside when I slipped it on, when I went outside they ran over oohing and awing. Hazel, “Mom, you are beauty-ful!!” Ruby, “Mom, that is so pretty! You should wear it all the time! I know… you should wear it when Abby gets married!”

I love it when Ruby says the family prayer. This week she said “I am so grateful to watch the butterflies fly, and the unicorns running in circles, and the new leaves on the trees… Bless baby Emery to be better and have breath in her heart.”

The girls have Alexa play The Beauty and the Beast soundtrack, everyday. So in our evening walk Marc and I were having a serious discussion about if the Muppets did Beauty and the Beast who would play what rolls. We settled on Kermit and Piggie as Beast and Belle, Buster and Beaker as Cogsworth and Lumiere, Pepe the Shrimp as Gastton with Fozy Bear as LaFou.

Ruby came in this morning while I was working out. So i took out my AirPods. She asked why I took them out. I told her it was so I could talk to her because I love her, and she just beamed. She helped me count my reps on jump squats and dumb bell swings. I appreciated that when I was getting tired that her counting always skips 13 and 15.

I can’t remember how Marc and I got on the subject of people trolling online, but I really got thinking about it. And this is what I came up with. I really do think that most people’s hearts and cores are good. We go on several walks during the day and we have met so many more neighbors recently, because people are just outside more. And everyone is more friendly, everyone smiles and waves, and everyone is eager to stop and say hello. But it is so crazy to me how such a large group of people forget their humanity when they go online. The anonymity of the internet is more potent than alcohol in giving courage to cowards to be unkind, hateful, and mean. My new motto as of late has been from the thirteenth article of faith, “if there is anything lovely, of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” I believe there is enough ugly in the world, and I chose to share the beautiful simple things.

And our sad word of the week is quaranteething- verb. To be teething as a baby while in quarantine.

Marc got the brilliant idea to make paper robots with the girls. He mentioned it at breakfast one morning, and it was all Ruby could talk about till Marc was available in the late afternoon. Naturally, we listed to Styx’s Mr. Roboto and we found a new gem Pancake Robot. So we have listened to those two almost non-stop.

The weather, magically, has stayed perfect and we are still leaving our windows open all day (knock on wood). So we spent a perfect evening on the driveway shooting hoops and driving toy cars with Eve, Hyrum, and Micah.

And of course we went on more walks than we can count, but I love them all.

We celebrated little things through the week for Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday, but one of my favorites was our “last supper” dinner. We had pita bread, hummus, pecans, and sliced apples. It was fun to talk about the foods that we eat that Jesus and his apostles also ate. Jesus taught that we need to love another and be kind to everyone.

Huong and Shima dropped us off a small gift this afternoon, and the girls were so happy it might as well have been Christmas.

And the week would not be complete without some good time spent in the hammock in the front yard

Saturday we celebrated Abby’s bridal shower in true sparkly, sequence, quarantine style. It was a drive-thru shower. No one got out of their cars and we all had rainbow masks on and bedazzled gloves. As party favors we had cinnamon rolls and rolls of toilet paper with tags that said “thanks for rolling by.”

We had a perfect Saturday evening in the front yard with the Denton kids playing with side walk chalk paint, wrestling, tag, and riding cars.

After the kids went to bed I had a “social distancing” mom party with Claire, Natalie, and Shelly. We each brought a camping chair and sat spread out on different corners of Claire’s driveway and talked and laughed together for hours. I sure love those ladies.