Pond Removal

April 17, 2020
The afternoon began with this pond intact, fully-functional, and half-filled with black sludge water.  It was many hours of all six of us moving rock and emptying the nasty, stinky muck.

 I feel a bit like Ariel with the rocks we pulled from this one place.  Look at this stash, isn't it neat?!  There are thousands of dollars worth of all different types and sizes of rock.  Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what we're going to do with them all.

 We stopped for dinner of delivered pizza, breadsticks, and soda.  It was not only a splurge for the pizza as payment for their work, but for delivery.  Randy does not ever have things delivered!  We sat down around the table, ate till we were stuffed, and got back to it.

 It felt SO good to see this space without the massive pond.  Like it was cleaner somehow.  I can't wait to see it finished.

April 18, 2020

Coming along.  It doesn't look like too much of a difference, but the vines and leveling had us both a sweaty mess after hours and hours of hard labor.  It gets better by the minute.

April 19, 2020
I loved the statue too much to try and sell it.  Now that it's our choice to have her, I gave her a name.  Aphrodite.  Aphy for short.  Her base is now a flower pot.

April 20, 2020
We shaped the vines I wanted to keep, that looks more like a large bush than vines, and, in an effort to use some of the nicer big stones, made a "river."  I'm pleased with how it's coming together.

We tried to go and get more river rock, but the stone quarries are all shut down right now.  We'll have to wait to finish this project.  That seems to be our theme this quarantine: start a project, take it as far as we can ourselves, and then wait on the world to open back up to finish.

We brought Caden's cemetery light out.  We brought him home tonight.

Sunday Drive

We took a little drive today, to break up the never-ending boredom of doing the exact same thing every single day.  Nothing big, just a drive to see the location of the temple site in Moses Lake, Washington.  It's an hour and fifteen minutes away, but that didn't stop our boys from taking a nap on the way.

The kids used to balk at us when we'd suggest a drive, any drive.  The tune has since changed.  "OH MY GOSH, I LOVE CAR RIDES!!!!!"  They practically pranced to the car... and immediately started arguing about who got to sit in the middle two seats, even though NO ONE could remember our seating chart that rotates each month to be fair because no one could remember the last time we drove anywhere.  Yep, things are still just the same at the Dirks' house.

Remember

I want to remember that we take these masks with us wherever we go, always just the two of us, never our kids.  When going inside a store, we take a Ziploc bag with two Clorox wipes to wash our hands and cart and car parts before and after the shopping.  The moment we walk in the door, we wash our hands with soap and water.  We don't live in fear, but we are very cautious.  We carefully consider if our trip is really a need, choose our stores wisely, and venture out if we deem it worthy.  I miss doing things without so much thought, but I don't feel as if we are living in fear and not living a good life.

I had a thought the other day: my life hasn't changed much since 2014.  The shock of needing to stay in one room-- be it the hospital or Ronald McDonald-- or even our house for that one week we got to come home during treatments, was had by us years ago.  Needing to consider the health of a loved one because of ventures outside or people visiting.  Finding enjoyment in the one thing we could do: walk outside but not touch anything.  Being separated from extended family even though they were close.  Going to the store (grocery store only) because we need food, never buying extra.  Even quickly leaving to quickly return.  I've lived this kind of life for a very long time.  While I haven't lived within the confines of cancer care for two and a half years, I do find that I have craved and needed to stay home in recent years.  I rarely left, even when I could, always considering how much energy and emotion it was going to take out of me.  If I was going to the store, I'd grab a quick 2-8 items-- get in, get out, as quick as possible-- and go straight home.  While I wasn't worried about a virus, I did feel the need to just be home.  While I hate so much about cancer care, it did prepare me for this.  The shock of this unknown situation and effects is something that I felt but didn't quite understand the breadth of when that first ER doc said, "We've ordered Life Flight.  They'll be here in 10 minutes." Our lives have all been changed in the blink of an eye, something we had no way of knowing could ever happen to us.

Engage-aversary

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of our engagement, so I gave Randy the gift of curled hair, makeup, and nice clothes for this picture.  He hasn't seen me done up for many a week, so it felt nice to get spruced up for him, even if I changed out of my cute clothes minutes after this was taken so we could watch a show together in comfort. 

I am so grateful he asked me to be his.  I love him so much more than I ever thought possible.  We may not be in that honeymoon stage of new love, but what I feel for him has more substance and background and life to know that the honeymoon stage, while fun and special, is nothing to what is to come with real-life experience and work.  We truly do have a love story that any young girl would dream of and hope to have when she grows up.  I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

Slow Leak

We found a water leak from the main line a few days ago.  They told us they turned off the water, but we continued to get a steady flood in our backyard, so we called them to come out again.  Again they told us they'd turned off more valves, and again we continued to get a steady flood.  They told us they'd figure it out when they finally came around to do the work.  Yesterday at 8:00am (on the dot, which I find interesting) they rang our doorbell, ready to work.

 It wasn't hard to figure out where the water was coming from when you looked for the air bubbles.  They dug and found the hole to never truly drain.  See the pump to get the water out, the dirty spot soaking into our grass? (Which is still there and still wet to this day.  It makes me sad that they had to ruin our backyard to fix this)

 After about 30-minutes of continuously rising water, they decided that all of the valves they had off were not helping.  They went to de-pressurize the whole neighborhood.

From our dining room window.  Directly in the center of the above picture you can see the pressurized water shooting 6'+ into the air.  This happened for over and hour.

 Once the "Old Faithful" didn't produce as much of a show, they came back and dug out a little more before heading to lunch.

 This leak is the culprit. 

With the water turned off, they were able to dig out more.  That hole was now large enough to have a grown man up to his armpits lifting that heavy, wet mud almost above his head onto the pile.  They got it all fixed (that man was soaking wet by the time he was done, but said he didn't have time to wait for the leak to stop so he cut the pipe and allowed it to gush out on him while he worked), buried, and told us they'd come back in a few days with fill dirt, since the leak-- which most likely had been there for years and just manifested above ground-- had eroded away quite a bit.

 They did a really good job backfilling it, but Randy and Keilie worked for another hour making it exactly level.

I'm glad this is all fixed.  We have plans for this space.  Next order of business is to rip out the pond that I love the idea of, but not the actual thing.

Hunt

Before bed on Saturday night, Randy and I plotted our revenge for the six games of Hide-and-Seek in the form of hiding places for our Easter Egg Hunt.  Over the years, through many different parties and hunts, I've accumulated over 200 plastic eggs.  I don't have many things that people could categorize as "hoarder," but my Easter Eggs are at the top of the list.  After filling only 21 eggs per child, I decided to save a stash of candy for Randy and myself, and fill four large eggs as an ultimate prize.  Some years we've only done one large egg, some years we've done cash, this year I stuffed them with fifteen plus candies in four, to make up for the quarantine.  But Randy wasn't going to make them easy to find.

"Steph, I just thought of the best hiding spot!"

He rushes out to the garage, comes in, and with a grand flourish that endeared him to me even more, cut a massive hole in the bottom of our Kleenex box.

"That way, they'll feel down into the tissues, but probably won't expect the egg!"

He was right.  We had to help the kids find about 10 eggs (remember, there were 84 small ones hidden around the bottom level of our home-- thank you stupid wind), but let them fret and stew about the large eggs for a while.  And by a while, I mean an hour and twenty minute Easter egg hunt at the Dirks' house.

"Ask us to play Hide-and-Seek one more time.  I dare you!"

I think our kids have got the message: When we plan, we plan.  Our night-before Easter shenanigans played out in a much more fun outcome than our night-before April Fools debacle.  When it was over and they were emptying their eggs and counting their candy, we all planned fun times ahead to when they brought their kids to Grandpa and Grandma's house for diabolical egg hunts with many little eggs, and the golden goose egg of all time.

The cause?!

I'm starting to wonder if some of my fears and anxieties will ever really go away.  Something happened last night that has me questioning how long it will take if it ever will.  But first, backstory.

A few weeks ago Tyson and Brennon were rollerblading down a steep hill around the corner.  Tyson, thinking he was being wise, decided to take along a 5' paint roller handle as a sort of brake system.

"Mom, I was just going so fast, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to stop, so I used the stick to kind of slow me down.  But the end of the stick got caught in one of the cracks-- you know the breaks that make the cement square?-- and it jammed me in the stomach.  I immediately felt like I just needed to go to sleep."

For hours after, he was doubled over, gasping, moaning, and crying.  He threw up for a bit, but it was the pain that worried me.  I researched all of the symptoms of internal bleeding, wondering if we needed to rush him into the ER or something.  Randy talked me down, telling me of a time the same sort of thing happened to him when he was a kid, and that he felt better after a few days.  Tyson was feeling much better by dinner.  I hadn't thought about it since, until last night.

After getting Tyson some nausea medicine around lunchtime yesterday, I went back out to finish up the yard work Randy and I have been doing the last few days.  When we came in to begin making dinner, Tyson was near tears.  By the time we were sitting down for dinner, he was in tears.  Here is where my anxiety kicked in big time.  This wasn't from a pole slamming into his gut, making him hurt and vomit.  We couldn't figure out what it was, seeing as the boy hasn't left the house in three weeks.  As I hovered over the hunched, skinny back of my son puking into the toilet, rubbing and tickling his back as he wretched, I found myself sick to my own stomach with feelings I know all too well.  The flashbacks started.

As I looked at his stomach from every angle, I remembered the first time we saw Caden's stomach.  I remember reaching out to touch it, it was so round and distended, asking him when the last time he went poop was-- because who immediately thinks there is a pineapple sized tumor in their child's abdomen?!  As I pressed his stomach, Caden sucked in air so fast and told me how much it hurt around his clenched teeth. I remembered the pain I caused Caden, and gingerly pressed Tyson's belly, certain I was going to find a rounded tumor just below my fingers.  I cannot tell you how scared I was to find a hardened mass below his skin.

And then the questions started to pour out, questions I have asked a hundred times, questions to understand things down to a molecular level. No longer can my kids say, "I don't feel well."  I have to have very detailed descriptions of every aspect.  Question after question my anxiety grew as I became more and more certain that another of my sons-- the one that reminds me most of Caden in so many ways-- was going to be sucked into a hellish world of needles and pain and then taken from me.

My family is not allowed to fake throwing up in my presence.  The sound does things to me.  But Tyson wasn't faking.  It was a living nightmare to see Tyson's skinny frame bent over a toilet, so defeated looking and exhausted after a particularly hard wretch.  There is a difference when you know what's causing the pain and puking-- like his rollerblading accident a few weeks ago-- and this unknown vomiting without a clear reason.  And in my head, the clear reason is going to be cancer, because that's just my luck.  My mind is not a silver-lining place from time to time.

 Ty asked Randy for a priesthood blessing, and then we tucked him into bed down by us.  Even seeing his bed in this front room, though it looks different from when Caden's bed was in here, was hard.  I had to talk myself down many different times last night.  I'm grateful I was able to, but the anxiety shot so high so fast, I truly did wonder if I would ever get to the point where a stomach ache can just be a stomach ache, where I don't immediately begin to convince myself that my children are going to suffer, and suffer, and then suffer and die.

He didn't throw up again after his blessing and was able to sleep a full twelve hours.  The sun is shining, my kids are healthy, there is arguing in the home-- my world is once again right this gorgeous Easter day!  I miss my Caden, but I don't miss witnessing him throwing up and knowing I can't do anything but take him back for more chemo.

Fortress

I have hated the upkeep of the pond in our backyard since the first week we moved in.  I LOVE the sound and love the look of beautiful, clear water falling down the rocks, but the placement of a pond under trees does not allow for clear water for more than a few days.  We decided to start disassembling it now that we have unlimited time together with nothing better to do than move rock around.  Let me tell you, the rocks they used are gorgeous, which you couldn't really see under all of the vines.  As soon as we saw these rocks, we knew we were going to move them to our island.  Hence the addition of my beautiful Dogwood and Burning Bush.  I have plans to order some tulips (since I can't go to the Tulip Festival this year as planned) and hope to have more color pops next year.

(How many can say they got to go to an island during the quarantine?!  I can!)

I wish landscaping wasn't so expensive.  I don't mind the work of landscaping, but I do mind the cost.  I love looking at and shopping for flowers, love working in the dirt, and love, love, love standing back to look at the work you've done to make your land your own.  I hope to see a block wall fence in this view someday, too.  I think the red of the wall would pull the colors of the house and roof together beautifully.  I would love to have an extended backyard and a more definite front yard.  I once had a friend that said she didn't like fences because it made homes look more like fortresses.  I want the fortress look.  My goodness, I love my home, inside and out.

Night Riders

When your dad owns an Amazon business that sells reflective vests and chest lamps.

Flood

Kennewick Irrigation District turned on the water this week.  Lucky for us, the main irrigation line that feeds about 50 homes in our neighborhood broke directly under our firepit area-- I have always wanted a wading pool of stagnant water!  Come to find out, this will be the second time KID will have to come and dig out this same spot.  I'm glad we don't have to pay for this repair, nor do the work, but I do worry they're not going to do a good job returning this area to the beauty it is.  Maybe they'll extend the work to include helping us rip out our pond...

Seek

We continued with our General Conference game of choosing one word for each candy bowl.  Because of the pandemic, we didn't want to purchase too much, so we didn't get as much as we normally do.  Wanting to save it for more than just Saturday, I tried to think of another fun game to implement.  I think I came up with a good one.

I printed off empty Bingo boards.  Jesus Christ was the center of our boards.  Starting with Randy and going in order of birth, we each chose just one word to place wherever we wanted on our own board.  Because you didn't know which word was coming next, you never knew exactly where to put the word.  If the word you were thinking of was said by someone else, you had to think of one on the fly.  It worked out perfectly to have each person choose four words.

Listening for those words to be spoken, we'd race to get a Bingo before everyone else.  Once a Bingo was called, we had them read back the words they had covered (to make sure that everyone heard that word as well) and then everyone would clear their board and begin again, the winner getting a small treat.  We kept track of Bingo wins, with the one that won the most getting a tally for the Covid Competition.  It was a hit!!  We'll definitely do it again.  Brennon won the most, even though Keilie and Randy tried to be smart with their word placements and not just random.

Trying to be as fair as possible with game choices, we decided last week that after each game played, we'd roll a die to see who chose the game next. 1- Tyson 2- Brennon 3- Shelby and so on.  As soon as Conference was over, we rolled a die and began our competition in earnest.  3:00pm-9:30pm was nothing but games.  And arguing.  And heated discussions.  And cheers and screams.  And FUN!!!

 This is Mira's place when we're playing Croquet.  She is our mascot, cheer squad, and audience.

  After the first few games, she got a little bored and took a quick nap.

 And then found something to do to entertain herself.  Honestly, she makes everything better, even if she isn't participating.

**I always want to remember that we played a game where I won and Randy came in dead last.  I also want to remember the time that Tyson went from going through one hoop and immediately going through another hoop halfway down the course.  The screams of surprise and joy from our family were deafening.  He ended up winning three hoops ahead of the closest competitor.**

Because we have to be fair, if your number is rolled-- you choose whatever you want to play.  If someone else plays a game that you don't like/want to play-- too bad.  So when Keilie suggested that we play Hide and Go Seek, we couldn't say no.  Only rules: No hiding in the garage or outside.

Humblebrag: We played 6 rounds of this game before we all agreed that we'd exhausted all hiding places.  Guess who won the most rounds, meaning they were the last to be found?!  Me!!  Here is a picture of my most proud win (sorry for the horrible lighting).

 I pulled the bookshelf away from the front window just a touch, and then used my yoga poses to pretzel myself in this space before Brennon came in from the backyard (straight line of sight from the back door) after counting to 45.  I had to hurry because moving it was kind of hard with it being full of books.

I'm going to make light of something that isn't very funny right now, but if I thought that Covid was taking breath away, it was nothing to me trying to breathe behind this bookshelf.  I didn't want each breath to be heard nor nudge the bookshelf itself, not to mention how my lungs were wrung from being bent and curved and shoved into such a small space.  My arms and legs were burning and quivering by the time they called me the winner, sweat falling from my head from exertion, heat, and breath in such a small space.  I have never been more proud of my limber body than I was at that moment as my family gasped in surprise as I unfolded myself and peeked over the top.  Our kids will never forget that their parents (can you imagine Randy hiding under Tyson's bed?! He totally did!) played Hide and Go Seek with them.  I'll say it again: quarantine for us has been the most fun bonding time ever.

CURRENT TOTALS:

Randy: 19,  Keilie & Brennon: 16,  Tyson: 14,  Shelby:11,  Stephanie:8

Statue

As we drove away from cleaning Caden's grave last Saturday, we came upon a new addition to the cemetery that took my breath away and made me emotional.

 Randy and I now have plans to do something similar near Caden's grave, with a dog that maybe holds a shoe in its mouth.  Or a ball.  Or socks.  Or a stuffed animal.  Anything, really, since her quirk to greet everyone with something in her mouth isn't specific to one item.

Today between Conference sessions, we went as a family to visit Caden.  Yesterday marked two and a half years since our Caden passed away, and we have all felt a little closer to him as we have watched Conference (Remember his promise to himself to watch every session and Heavenly Father's tender mercy that he could October 2017), as well as the messages that remind us of him and our sealing.  Mira jumped when she saw the dog, and would not look at it again, which wasn't a surprise from our endearingly nervous sweetheart.

We sure miss Caden.  It seems unimaginable that he's been gone for so long, that we can live in a world where our child isn't growing before our eyes.  It's confusing, as most things are with his death, to be grateful that he's not alive during this pandemic.  How grateful I am that I don't have to fear his suppressed immune system during this time, in addition to the stresses of cancer care.  I miss him, but I'm grateful he's already gone if he has to be gone at all.  And that breaks my heart in a way I never could have thought possible.

Stains

We've known since moving in that our fence was not the best.  The placement of one side is just weird, the construction of the fence is not the greatest, and the wood/stain has looked years too gone from the moment we signed the purchase agreement.  We'll eventually do a block wall like everyone else has in this neighborhood.

We got a letter from the HOA last year stating that we needed to stain our fence by a certain date or possibly face charges.  The previous owners left some of the old stain, so we hooked up a paint sprayer and got it done in one night.  DONE!  It looked great the night of, but by the next morning looked hideous.  We're not quite sure why it happened the way that it did.  We knew then that our fence truly was the ugliest in the neighborhood.  Before all of the stay-home orders came into effect, we' purchased some stain and waited for a nice day.  We thought it would be Tuesday: tornado in Richland.  Wednesday: hail storm.

 Before

After

Before

 After

 Do you see the clouds rolling in?  It had been sunny when we started and progressively got cloudier as we went along.  Both Tuesday and Wednesday were supposed to be "overcast" and ended up having some very weird weather, so we knew we couldn't really trust the weather app.  I was worried that we'd get this first-coat done and the rain would wash it all away, even though there wasn't rain in the forecast.  Funny enough, even while the winds were raging and the hail was falling (and rain over the past few weeks), the app still just showed overcast.

 I had a nice, bumpy crust from head to toe.  Good thing it was easy to scrub off. 

I woke with a start, put on layers, and rushed outside.  The fence still looks great!  I had to giggle at myself for the little exhale of breath when I realized that the morning-after this time didn't leave me with an even uglier fence than when we began, like last time.  I am thrilled.  I hoped it would compliment the green of the house and our brown roof, and it does.  I love it when projects come together exactly as I'd imagined in my mind. 

I'm so grateful that we purchased the stain before everything went into effect.  We have truly been following orders and only purchasing things that are a necessity, and staying home/away from others the rest of the time.  I had big plans for my front landscaping this year that will not happen as long as these restrictions are in place.  I'm super grateful for the restrictions but sad that I won't be able to go to the Tulip Festival this year and buy the tulips I wanted from last year.  Our yard will stay a clean slate for another year.  Silver lining: Without all of the beautiful flowers to capture our attention, we can now more fully focus on that beautiful fence!

Cleared

It's kind of cool that COVID-19 cleared everything from our month but Randy's birthday.  It makes it a little more special this year, the only thing we have to look forward to as a family.

Fools!

We went to bed last night with an idea to prank the kids for April Fool's today: Tell the kids that a low-ball offer that we never thought they'd accept had been accepted for a home in the Kennewick School District.  We thought that moving away from the district, schools, ward, and friends would get a rise from the kids and then there would be a relief when the prank was over.  It didn't work out that way at all.  Randy sees the outcome as a true success, but I see it as an epic fail.

We needed the house to be one that we would actually buy since I already live in the house of my dreams, so we couldn't just choose any home in Kennewick.  This ended up being the mistake-- we should have said we were moving into a fixer-upper because the kids fell. in. love with the house.  I didn't think they'd believe that we would put an offer into a dumpy home, but I never could have imagined the emotions that the home could bring.

"Are you serious?  That house is awesome!"
"If you're messing around with us, I'll never forgive you!"
"I hope we get this house so much!"
"Should we start packing?!"

To take the prank even further, we had Amanda, our property manager, send us a text saying that our offer had been accepted, and then showed them the "Pending" from the house we'd chosen.  The kids were catatonic, I was heartbroken.  We thought there would be some anger, some protests, some tears maybe, but instead, they were jumping for joy, ready to start lovingly packing their nick-knacks in bubble wrap.  Sick to my stomach at what we were doing to our kids, I went to lie down in bed.  Randy followed, snickering, telling me it worked out better than our original plan.  I wanted to cry.

A few minutes later, the boys came in, asking when we thought it was going to happen, when Shelby walked in and said, "Today is April Fool's!"  As one, the kids turned to look at us, "WAIT!  Was this all a joke?"  Randy bust. up. laughing.  Of all of the kids' faces, Brennon's broke my heart the most.  He looked as if someone had slapped him.  "You guys are jerks.  This is the meanest thing you have ever done to us!"

Randy LOVED it!  The kids had a hard time believing anything else we said the rest of the day.  If we said we wanted to play a game, they'd get excited, and then falter and say we didn't mean it.  Brennon for a while didn't even acknowledge Randy, ignoring him completely.  There was no relief, no excitement that they weren't moving away from everything they've built since we moved to Richland, only sadness that they weren't moving into such a cool house.  Randy will tell you it was awesome, but I have to ask which party ended up being fooled: Parents or Kids?!