Co-vid 19 ~ A Global Pandemic

At the beginning of 2020, we started hearing about the coronavirus affecting China. The virus was spreading fast and people were sick and dying. They had shut down the country.

Then a few cases started spreading throughout the world. Now it's in the United States. Now it's in Canada.

March 11. Utah State University announces that all club sports are cancelled, including college rodeo. Hanna emailed the president of USU and requested that they still allow the rodeo team to compete at that weekend's rodeo. She was so responsive and wrote back and forth to her late into the night.

March 12. We are driving to Lethbridge to watch the high school basketball zones. We hear on the radio that the Chief Medical Officer has announced that all gatherings of more than 250 people have been cancelled. Then they cancelled the games. The girls team was warming up, and they cancelled the games. We went to Wendy's for dinner since we were already in Lethbridge. Then I went to buy groceries at Costco along with the rest of southern Alberta - since we were already in town and who knows what the future will bring. Toilet paper was already sold out.

March 13 - Significant snow blizzard so they cancelled school

March 15 - Sunday night. School is cancelled in Alberta.

Then each day something else was cancelled or closed:

Church

Temples

Rodeos

Olympics

Professional Sports

US/Canada border

Non-essential businesses

Then they started sending all of the missionaries home from the affected countries. South America, Africa, Philippines, etc. Any missionary who had any listed medical problems also got sent home. These missionaries were all temporarily released and then reassigned in their home countries a few weeks later. The majority of them were so sad to be ripped from the people they serve.

What a crazy world.

My kids were secretly happy that school was cancelled but that only lasted a few days. Then the teachers had a steep curve to start teaching online. Then my kids started missing being in class and having social interaction with their teachers and friends.

Austin still had to work every day - talking about the the virus, co-vid19/coronavirus, over and over.

I still had to work every day - it was just at the beginning of tax season. I tried to go in early so I could get off earlier in the afternoon.

All of a sudden, we had crossed every thing off our calendar, except birthdays.

Even Austin who goes to a ton of church meetings each week, now no meetings.

Hanna's Missionary Photo Shoot

 

All Dressed Up With No Where to Go

We still get dressed up for the Sabbath Day each Sunday even though we had church in our living room.

 

Essential trip to Utah

Because of the global pandemic of the corona virus, the US/Canada border has been closed since March 21. They only let "essential people" cross. It has been torture having this border between us and Jill and Hanna. Plus anyone coming into Canada has to "quarantine" for 14 days.

After much pondering and discussion, we decided that Lucy, Carly and I would go to Utah to get Hanna's horse, help her shop for her mission, see Jill, and do our school clothes shopping. Austin couldn't commit to coming and then having to quarantine for 14 days because of his job, calling, crazy world we live in, etc.

The border agent at the US side grilled us and asked if this was essential, and why it would take a week to pick up a horse, and why Lucy and Carly were coming, and if we knew we were exposing ourselves to the corona virus. But she let us through because we are US citizens.

We stopped in Idaho Falls at a rest stop to see my parents for a few minutes on the way down. We parked the truck and trailer at Steve & Karma Albiston's house in Logan and then used Hanna's car to to tour the state. Hanna came running to us when we got there!

Friday morning we had breakfast with Hanna's friend, Bryn Cranney. She has done so much for Hanna, and it was so fun to meet her. Then we did some shopping on our way to Jill's house.

We had a very fun visit with Jill and Larsen. We ate at the Cowboy Steakhouse, ran a 5k while hot air balloons were in the sky, went on a whitewater raft trip down the Sevier River, watched a couple hot air balloons fill up on Main Street, and had the Sacrament and church at their house.

Then we drove back and stayed the night at the Bennett's new house. Doug & Emily and Diana came over, too, and we had a fun visit with them. On Monday morning we met the Whipples at Kneaders for a short 50th birthday celebration for Nathan Whipple. Then more shopping on our way back to Logan.

On Monday night, we met the rest of the Cranney family for dinner at Angie's. Hanna was friends with Will and Brynn Cranney since she moved to Logan through the college rodeo team. Then Tate came home from his mission, and she has been hanging out/sort of dating him since. Most weekends during the co-vid shutdown, Will, Brynn, Tate & Hanna all went to stay with the Cranneys in Oakley, Idaho. So Tate's parents wanted to meet us, so they came all the way to Logan to have dinner with us. It was fun to meet them. But we had to sit at 2 separate tables because they only let 6 people at a table and the tables had to be 6 feet apart.  They are a fun family. Hanna loves them. And they must love Hanna:)

More shopping all day Tuesday. Jill and Larsen came to Logan on Tuesday night to spend the day with us. We were going to swim at Bear Lake, but it was only 60 degrees plus it was windy. So instead we went to Tony Grove Lake and walked around the lake and had a picnic. Then we went to Bear Lake, and Carly swam but the rest of us were too wimpy. We had raspberry milkshakes and headed back to Logan. We had pizza at the park and hung out with Steve & Karma. We stayed at an AirBNB house in Millville that had a hot tub, so we enjoyed that for a few minutes.

On Thursday, we had to drive to Salt Lake to get the horse papers stamped by the federal vet so we can take Lena across the border. We did two more shopping stops on the way back and then went to a few stores in Logan. Then we unloaded all of our shopping into the horse trailer and went and moved Hanna out of her apartment and put all of her stuff in the horse trailer.

We stayed at Steve & Karma's that night so we could leave very early on Friday morning to make it across the border and get home to start our quarantine. We had a smooth traveling day, and the border agents were very nice and there was no problems.

We were so happy to be home and see Austin!
Hanna said goodbye to Steve and Karma, and then she cried her way to McCall, Idaho to join the Cranney's at their family reunion.  Steve & Karma have been her family in Logan, especially since the pandemic started. She has gone there every single day to ride her horse and visit them. They have done so much for her. She has gotten so close to them.

We accomplished all that we set out to do. We were successful in our missionary shopping. Lucy & Carly got the things they wanted on their school clothes lists. I have to be honest though, it wasn't an easy trip. I spent much time worrying about having to drive back and cross the border. I experienced anxiety like I never had before. Hanna is ready to leave on her mission, but sad to leave her Logan life. She is going to miss her people. One night, she was crying and said, "Why didn't I listen to dad? He told me not to get to close to any boys. Now my heart is going to break." During that evening tear party, the funny part was when Jill was asking her about our mission shopping and asked if we got shoes, and Hanna through tears of crying/laughter said yes, I got skechers. 3 pairs of skechers. Grandmas wear skechers. It was a funny moment. Lucy and Carly missed basketball camp while we were gone, and our Bear Lake didn't turn out as fun as I had hoped. And now we are supposed to stay on our property for 14 days of quarantine in case we have corona so we don't spread it.

But hopefully we will remember the fun times and that all of the stress won't matter in a thousand years:)