The third week of our deliberate quarantine weekend fun: The Great Boredom Bake-Off!!  For this activity, we all picked something we wanted to bake/create, and we took turns locking ourselves in the kitchen to work on our fun food!

In order to start our day off right, we watched a few episodes of 'Zumbo's Just Desserts' on Netflix (one of our most favorite cooking shows--and we like a LOT of cooking shows)!  

After watching our show, everyone took their turn in the kitchen.  When they were done cooking, they hid their creation so that we could unveil them all at the end.  It made the day go by VERY fast! :)

Devin and Peter went first--they made a really lovely starlight vanilla cake that had strawberry cream cheese frosting (cream cheese with icing sugar and frozen strawberries all blended together)!  YUM!  It smelled delicious!  I wish I could have eaten some.  ​

Andrew went last.  He actually made a Caesar Salad with homemade croutons!  I was pretty impressed, and his salad was very good (THAT I could eat!) and went really well with my beet salad.
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Oh, What do you do during quarantine?
When all the world is closed!
Do you grow taller than mom?
Or sing like a bomb?
Or read 'till you can't feel your toes?
Is that what you do?  We do, too!

​Oh, What do you do during quarantine? 
When all the world is closed?
Do you play air guitar?
Or relax by the hour?
Or set up your dominoes?
Is that what you do? We do, too!

Weekend two of our deliberate family fun: A formal ball!  The night before, we had a big 'date night', where we rented 'Onward' from Amazon and set up our projector and big screen.  

For our Ball Day, we had a special lunch (steak and potatoes), then we spent some time making lovely refreshments like cucumber sandwiches, fruit salad, cupcakes, punch (berry lemonade), homemade applesauce, and deviled eggs.  Yum!  After our refreshments were made, we all dressed up in our fancy ball clothes, took the absolutely necessary pre-dance photos, then danced to Claire's SUPER AWESOME lineup of songs!  It was SO MUCH FUN!  We danced and sang and were crazy!  I'll never forget it.  I think it was the best ball I've ever been to.

It was so cute--the Relief Society here asked me to teach a cooking class via Zoom, so I taught them how to make my bread. :)  One of the things that I really like about doing cooking activities via Zoom is the fact that first, I don't have to clean up a HUGE mess after everyone leaves, but everyone is in their own house with all of their ingredients, so they can follow along in real time and make their own creation at the same time!  So we're all making bread for our own houses--which I think is super cool.  It's especially nice for introverts like myself who, while I LOVE to be around people, I get really exhausted from it.  I don't feel nearly as exhausted after an hour on Zoom with everyone.  I can just turn it off and I got my 'people fix' in a very un-exhausting way. :)  I think it's a great way to have activities, even when we aren't all in quarantine. :)

Besides, I also don't have to super-mega-deep clean my house...and my oven is really dirty.  I should probably see to that.

Just a few of my favorite Memes from the quarantine time...

We needed to spice things up.  A month at home with every single day melding into the other is seriously unhealthy.  Besides, we should be taking advantage of all the 'extra time' we have (side-note--I NEVER have extra time.  Ever.  Never. Ever. Period.) by doing fun things!  So, we decided we were going to have a camp out!  Well, actually, the boys were going to have a camp out, and Claire and I would stay inside and have a girls' night!  So the boys set up the tent in the front yard and made it cozy; they decided what they were going to eat and popped it all into the cooler and took it out by the BBQ.  Then, when they were ready, they 'hiked' to their campsite (walked around the tent a bunch of times), and the girls closed the door.  They weren't allowed inside, and we weren't allowed outside!  It was SO much fun!  Claire and I had a jacuzzi bubble-bath party and stayed up until 3am watching Downton Abbey and eating candy.  The next day, the boys enjoyed themselves so much, they decided to tack on another day!  We were ok with that!  So the next day the boys did lots of stuff (I have no idea what), and Claire and I watched more Downton Abbey and watched YouTube videos on how to put on makeup and made ourselves really pretty!  It REALLY made a difference and gave us all something to look forward to and something to work toward.  We've decided that we need to do this EVERY weekend--even after quarantine ends.  Doing something different makes a difference!  Hooray for family time!

Just a few days before we went on full lock-down: An outing to see live music!  It was called 'Broadway Sinfonica'--and it was a live pit orchestra with live singers singing popular Broadway musical songs.  It was actually REALLY well done!  I teared up often and Claire and I were over the moon!  Seeing things live is just so wonderful.  I can't wait to go do it again!

Andrew's dream come true!  A day spent with the Marines!  He got to be yelled at, march in line, put on different uniforms and gear, run an obstacle course, eat MREs, do push-ups, see real weapons, look at surveillance cameras, and wish he were old enough to join!

This was a fun day trip arranged by some friends.  We hopped on a bus early in the morning and spent a few hours traveling to Tiwanaku--ancient ruins that have 3 different temples (a high one, one below-ground, and one at ground level) along with some cool statues and the famous Sun Gate.  It was really interesting and nice to get out of the house for the day!

A few more interesting pictures of the protests and things leading up to our eventual evacuation.  I love the poster in the picture to the left.  The yellow sign says, "We apologize for the inconvenience; we're repairing our country.  Thank you!"  So great!

This also shows the things we saw on our walks home from church...the messages telling us to stay home and be careful...and even where all the major road blocks and protests were happening! (That would be all the places marked in red on the screen shots.)  It was certainly an interesting time!