2020 in 12 Photos

I almost feel responsible for the unexpected way 2020 went, because it was the first year that Phillip and I got our acts together enough to sit down on January 1st and plan out our entire year. We should've known that was asking for disaster.

We were going to travel! Use every one of his vacation days to the fullest! It was going to be such a great year!

And in a lot of ways, it was a wonderful year for our family — just not in any of the ways we were envisioning.

This year I blogged less than I have in any other year, probably because for the last nine months the kids have all been home 24/7. By the time I'm finished getting everyone snacks, it's about time to go to bed.

In January, I watched Cool Runnings with the kids, stayed up late reading a book about cadavers, and got a cold for the first and last time this year. (Turns out that when my kids aren't allowed to lick other kids at school they bring home way fewer germs. Weird.)

I wrote 56 practical tips for raising independent kids, my daughter chose an unusual violin mantra, our Christmas tree from 2019 just wouldn't die, and we went to the library and ended up watching a fire dancer.

I learned in February that if you've never seen 6 excited kids meeting 10 excited puppies, you don't know what chaos is. 

My 8-year-old got in trouble for running up a $200 tab on her school lunch account (guess it's all that independence I wrote about in January.) I tricked Phillip into making a triceratops cake and remembered why I was so exhausted when the kids were little and I had to drag them all to the store all the time.

We got new couches and I took a 90-minute dip in a sensory deprivation tank. I also took a shot at being wise and cobbled together 30 lessons I've learned from 15 years of parenting.

Watching everything grind to a halt in March felt like watching a car accident happen in slow motion. The kids were slightly disappointed when all their things were canceled, but we adapted. Having home church and spending so much time together ended up being a huge blessing.

Phillip finished his grow-a-beard experiment and ended it by trolling his parents into thinking he'd shaved it into a bushy 1980s mustache.

Lastly, an obscene amount of traffic suddenly started arriving at my post 20 Things to Do When You're Trapped Indoors with Tiny Humans, which unfortunately was a sarcastic post I'd written years ago that was no help whatsoever for beleaguered parents in quarantine, so I decided to write a real one.

Quarantine still felt like an excessive April Fool's joke, but we tried to make the best of it. Phillip made some serious progress on finishing the basement while the kids and I floated homemade boats in our driveway puddle and made up themed days of the week.

We watched General Conference and made one teensy visit to urgent care so the 6-year-old could get his head stapled shut. Apparently where there's a will there's a way, and kids can hurt themselves even when they aren't allowed to leave the house or see other children.

My blog joined Instagram but just between you and me, I think I'm about 10 years to old to even be on the platform. I have no idea what I'm doing there.

We called 911 when my 11-year-old fell and had a seizure, and in tamer moments, we made our own ice cream and I celebrated my 38th birthday.

After a full year of pleading from the 8-year-old, we finally caved and got two pet rats. Though we love Scout and Piper, both turned out to be pregnant and we lost both litters in the most traumatic way; none of us even want to talk about it.

We got in touch with nature and made birch beer floats from scratch (we boiled sticks from the woods and everything) and played with a mole we caught in the yard. 

On the blog, I published some musings on when you're done having babies as well as a roundup of 7 Zoom features I wish I could use in real life. 

In July we bought a van! Our old one was on its last legs and hardly made it to the dealership. I also wrote what reality shows would be like if parents wrote them.

With nothing else to do all summer, our calendar was wide open for our annual pretend trip around the world. Usually we have enough free time to cover 4 or 5 countries; this summer we covered 9. 

This month we lost our minds over falafel in Israel (in general it was a really good summer for international food), visited a butterfly garden in Mexico, and got totally confused about how Komodo dragons work in Indonesia.

In August, we took a family camping trip to the most beautiful campsite I've ever been to in my life... even if it did have pit toilets.

In our continuing fake trip around the world, we learned about Morocco, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Somalia (my favorite moment: when we sat down to watch a movie about Somali pirates and the standard pre-show warning came on that "piracy is not a victimless crime.")

In real life, we sourced two huge couches from Facebook Marketplace and put them stadium-style in the basement to watch movies, I fell in love with Alanis Morisette all over again, and the kids entertained themselves with a bag of rice and a package of balloons for an entire weekend.

Society hesitantly decided to try life again this month. My 14-year-old had a weird outdoor masked violin recital and the kids started hybrid school, which sure made for different "first day of school" pictures than in years past.

We met our friendly neighborhood black bear for the first time (but not the last one), my 9x13" pan shattered in the oven, and I was almost maimed by shards of glass from an exploding bottle. 

It was an exciting month.

I could not stop drooling over the fall colors in October. This unedited picture was taken with my about 15 minutes from my house. (I don't have a nice camera, I just live on the cover of a Hallmark card.)

I enjoyed the simple moments like watching a tree removal company at work with my little boys, and even when our town made the jerk move of cancelling trick-or-treating at the last minute we still had a great time at home. 

I got trapped in a giant hedge maze with a child who needed to pee and stayed up until 2 A.M. making a massive rainbow surprise birthday cake. On the blog, I suggested some new parenting-related dictionary entries for consideration by Merriam-Webster. 

In November, I started teaching my oldest how to drive, Phillip turned 40, and we took a quick couple's trip to a little artsy town on the coast while our kids held down the fort at home. 

A friend's teenager taught me how to use a record player and my 9-year-old talked us into letting her get a crayfish named Phredd. Phredd kind of creeps us all out, but it's not his fault. We're just not that into disgusting-looking crustaceans.

Since we didn't really go anywhere (remember all those plans we made at the beginning of the year? Pfft.) Phillip took all his vacation in a big chunk at Christmastime and got a ton of work done on the house. 

The kids drew names for "Secret Sibling" and told the secret immediately, but I guess it's the thought that counts. We also waited too long and couldn't find a Christmas tree anywhere, so we had to improvise and I actually loved the end result.

2020 was an unconventional year that called for bottomless reserves of adaptability, understanding, and resilience. Pretty much everything from March onward was either canceled or bore little resemblance to how it usually looks. 

But it was a year where my kids became better friends and our family scripture study became more regular and meaningful. I think we're all thriving, and a lot of it is directly due to the unique circumstances 2020 handed to us.

Happy New Year's, and see you in 2021!

(Want more? Never fear, you can still read the Evans family's "12 Photos" updates from 2019. 2018. 2017, 2016, and 2015!)

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7 Quick Takes about Shady Google Assistants, the Butterfly Effect, and A Little Holiday Trigonometry

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

My 16-year-old has been giving away handmade cards to our friends and family during the holiday season, and a few days ago she came to me. 

"All of a sudden I'm getting a bunch of ads for greeting cards," she said. "Is Google spying on me?" 

I started to answer, but my 14-year-old just picked up her phone to ask Google Assistant about it directly. This was how it defended itself against the accusation:

I don't know. That sounds, as the kids say, immediate sus.

—2—

Lately I've been on a homemade snacks kick. I kind of always am, but now I'm actually making the recipes instead of just Pinning them.

First I tried these green smoothie bars (except I made them in muffin form,) but nobody liked them. Some were more diplomatic about it than others. I asked my teenager what she thought and in a super-positive voice she answered "They taste... healthy!" Bless her heart.

I had more success with fruit leather. For my first attempt, I chose a banana orange recipe and was told by several of my kids that it's "like eating banana bread." I mean, actual banana bread is way less work so maybe next time I'll just do that, but still.

—3—

You all know I love parenting books, so I was intrigued when I saw this TED talk entitled "Why Most Parenting Advice Is Wrong." 

Several times this week, I've caught me debating myself over the content of this talk. This TED talk is the verbal equivalent of the optical illusion that is two pictures at once, but no matter how hard you try you can't see them at the same time. Do we matter or don't we?

Whatever the answer, we can at least agree with speaker's choice of opening metaphor. In comparing parenting to the Butterfly Effect, she likens children to the hurricane — and we all know that children are always the hurricane.

—4—

My 14-year-old, who is a cashier at the grocery store, was so excited to go to work on Christmas Eve. She could barely contain her excitement as she told me, "It's my LAST DAY of listening to Christmas music!"

As much as I love little Michael Jackson singing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," I can imagine it would get old after 40+ hours.

Everybody likes Christmas music, except for people who work in retail.

—5—

Our family has had to improvise a lot this Christmas. We usually stay here for the holidays, but COVID has impacted our plans in other ways.

For instance, looking at Christmas lights. We drove around and picked the house with the best light display like always, but instead of ding dong ditching a plate of thank-you cookies at their doorstep we just left a note in their mailbox. (That was a little disappointing, because watching my teens take a running leap into the van as Phillip peels out is one of the highlights of the season for me.)

We also couldn't find a ham for our traditional Christmas dinner. I planned to pick one up on my regular weekly shopping trip and they were out, and Phillip later went to three different grocery stores before he came in triumphantly announcing, "I got the last one in New England!"

Lastly, there was a run on Christmas trees. I guess it makes sense, since everyone is staying home and getting a tree instead of traveling and enjoying their mother-in-law's tree or whatever. We planned to get one sometime this week, but by then it was too late and the places we looked at were sold out.

—6—

The truth is, we didn't really look too hard for a tree. Our family is good at adapting, and I didn't want to take the last tree away from someone who would be devastated not to have one on Christmas.

We'd be fine with a substitute; it could even be fun. But what? We thought about making a full-size dowel Christmas tree, but by the time I priced it all out it was too expensive.

Here's what we came up with: 

Using boards left over from replacing our front porch (I believe the Pinterest term is "reclaimed wood,") Phillip built a 6' triangle. Cutting all the angles correctly requires some pretty intense mathematical calculations, so we jokingly call it "the trigonometree." 

The boys helped pound nails around the sides at 4" intervals. Then we strung Christmas lights from the nails, propped it up on the wall, and hung ornaments from it.

Don't worry, it's anchored to the wall with a nail and some wire.

In the end, our one-time makeshift solution was something we liked so much that we're keeping it to use again. Not every year, but it will definitely be back.

Sincerely looks like something you'd see on Instagram.

—7—

A few nights ago, it occurred to me that we should get a 2020 ornament. We always buy an ornament whenever we go on vacation, so decorating our tree at Christmas is like taking a walk down memory lane.

We didn't go anywhere this year, but it was such a significant event that I decided to order this ornament from Etsy. It says "the year we stayed home."

Because we were lucky enough to enjoy good health and a good financial situation, "the year we stayed home" was the most magical year of my life. 

Instead of going their separate ways to their separate activities, my younger kids were having school recess together in the yard and my older kids were hanging out and binge-watching shows together. The unexpected gift of so much time together led us to grow spiritually and emotionally more than I thought possible.

I think that's definitely worth having an ornament to remember it by, don't you?

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7 Quick Takes about Sorcery with Bread Products, Adjusting Your Rear Climate, and a Middle-Aged Person's Rant about Appliances

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

My oldest daughter was given a copy of the French version of Harry Potter. 

As she read, she was sharing a few choice differences from the English version with me, like the fact that Hufflepuff becomes "Poufsouffle" or that Voldemort's middle name is Elvis so the letters make sense as an anagram later in the book.

But my personal favorite is that all the French witches and wizards run around with magic baguettes. I mean, "baguettes magiques."

Upon further investigation, my daughter found that the French word 'baguette' refers to any small, thin object. Like chopsticks and, I guess, the loaf of bread.

Okay, but still. 

I'd pay money to see a shot-for-shot remake of the original movies, but with Hogwarts as a bakery and all the students performing their spells using rolls of delicious French crusty bread.

—2—

I told you how I've been enjoying the heated seats in my new van, and how much the kids are enjoying inventing new names for the heated seat feature.

But now there's a new joke.

It all started when my daughter got off work early and got cold while waiting outside for me to come pick her up. When I pulled up she jumped in the van and immediately started searching for the button to turn on the heated seats.

Her outstretched finger hovered over the console, moving from the picture of the heated seats to the words "rear climate" and then back again, unsure of which one to press.

We burst out laughing, sure that the designers of the console never anticipated the confusion. The phrase "rear climate" refers to the temperature in the backseat, but you have to admit it causes some momentary uncertainty when you're looking to adjust the climate of your own rear end.

—3—

My kids were arguing with each other over who was the weirdest, and in what way. 

I was committed to staying out of it, but the discussion ended with my 16-year-old telling me "Your uterus is a weirdness amplification machine."

Which is something the baby books frankly don't tell you to be prepared for.

—4—

When I wrote our family's Christmas letter to mail out with our cards, I really had to hold myself back from just complaining about appliances the entire time.

Not only have all the appliances that were in the kitchen when we moved here 10 years ago died, we're also starting to go through the replacement generation.

Our fridge was a very nice fridge, and it died this summer after about 5 years. Then our oven, which was also a splurge item for us, started getting finicky about recognizing when the door is shut. In November, our microwave (which was not our first or our second, but our third microwave since moving here) died.

We didn't replace it for a month, we were so mad.

We decided we were idiots to keep buying new appliances that would break immediately, anyway, so this time Phillip went on Facebook Marketplace and bought a used microwave for $50.

When he got home I asked "How'd it go? Did you get the microwave?"

Phillip laughed and said, "I got it. The guy had it out in his barn, so I'm following this stranger out to his dark barn thinking, 'I'm going to die for a $50 microwave.'" 

But it turns out he wasn't a serial killer and the microwave works great. We'll see for how long.

—5—

The next day, our washing machine's spin cycle broke down. This wasn't totally unexpected. In fact, it's a miracle it hasn't had problems until now. It's the original one that was here when we moved in, and since then we've used it for 10 years doing an average of a load a day.

I had to remove the wet load of laundry from the washer and wring it out by hand before throwing it in the dryer, which was awful. I will never again romanticize anytime before 1908 when the electric washing machine was invented.

One thing I love about being married to Phillip, is that when I tell him something is broken he immediately takes it all apart, spends 30 minutes on YouTube teaching himself to be a Kenmore repairman, then diagnoses the problem and orders the part needed to fix it.

—6—

The reason Phillip was able to get to the washing machine so quickly is because he's on vacation. He's taking a long stretch of vacation from now through New Year's when we'd hoped he could get so much done on the basement, but unfortunately that's not the way it's been going so far.

We could look at it two ways: either it's super lame that the minute he gets free time everything breaks, or it's really fortunate that everything broke when he had the time to fix it.

I'm trying to have the second attitude, and it's working about 55% of the time.

—7—

When I was a kid and my mom worked as a prepress technician, sometimes when they needed extra help assembling the newspaper inserts in the back room they'd call in the kids of employees to help. A bunch of us would stand in a row at a long table in front of stacks of papers that we had to pile together in a certain way and stuff in envelopes.

I carry on that same proud tradition with my own children now, except that instead of getting paid in cash they're working for cookies, and they're stuffing envelopes with our Christmas card and letter and putting stamps on them. I love seeing my table of busy little elves hard at work.

We were set up assembly-line style and my daughter, whose job was sticking on these Snowy Day stamps I got from the post office, asked "Are these Teletubbies?"

Sorry, Ezra Jack Keats.

So merry Christmas from Po, I guess. Dipsy, Tinky-Winky, and Laa-Laa say hi.

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7 Quick Takes about the Current State of Everything, Christmas Avocados, and Sweatshirts with Double Meanings

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I was doing a little online Christmas shopping and just started laughing when I read the COVID disclaimer at the bottom that started "Due to the current state of everything..." 

That's how I feel right about now, too.

Pandemic notwithstanding, this is the two-week period of December when everything — the Christmas cards, the mailing, the shopping, the decision-making about who gets what — needs to be done all at the same time. Every year I try to avoid having a meltdown, but it came this weekend just like clockwork, anyway.

My mom pointed out that between brainstorming and shopping for 6 kids plus receiving, wrapping, and labeling gifts from out-of-town family, I pretty much have the equivalent to a PhD in Logistics and Supply Chain Management.

And even PhDs need to cry in the bathroom sometimes.

—2—

Phillip's boss sent out holiday gifts and one for our family arrived this week. 

The boxes were filled with fruit and gourmet chocolates. Not only were they delicious, but after we ate them I realized I could wrap the empty boxes back up to make a pretty Christmas decoration that cost $0. 

Which we all know is the best kind of decoration.

—3—

The fruit in our Christmas box came packaged in sheets of green foam to keep it from bruising. 

I discarded the sheets but something about the color just called "avocado" to my crafty 9-year-old, who saved one of them from the trash and responded accordingly by making this:

The most kawaii avocado you'll see today.

Before I knew it, someone had stuck the avocado on top of the mini tabletop Christmas tree in our dining room, and now I'm pretty sure we have the most unique tree in town:

Helps us all to remember the avocado that appeared on that first Christmas night.

I'm not really expecting company this Christmas, but if this were a normal year I'd totally forget it was there and give someone a great big laugh at our unconventional tree topper.

—4—

Every night, my 4-year-old starts his bedtime routine by opening negotiations over how many minutes I will lay down with him.

Recently, his older brother has been reading a book of random facts and I know he's been listening because he started out the haggling last night with "a googolplex Graham's number minutes."

As the fact book will tell you, a googolplex is 1 followed by 10¹⁰⁰ zeros, and Graham's number is the largest named number in the universe (so big I don't even really get what it is.) 

And that's why I love having little kids. Tell me, what's better than having someone who wants to cuddle with you for googolplex Graham's number minutes?? Nothing. There isn't anything better.

That said, I do have other kids to put to bed after him and more Christmas stuff to freak out over after they're all asleep, so he and I negotiated down to 4 minutes and everyone seemed happy with the compromise.

—5—

My 16-year-old, who likes to think through the ethical implications of things and is also very familiar with the way children work, showed me an interesting video of a 2-year-old solving the infamous "trolley dilemma."

If you haven't taken an introductory psychology class recently, you might not be familiar with the trolley dilemma. It's a popular thought experiment: you see a train barreling toward 5 people. You can save them by pulling a lever to switch the train to a different track, but that track has one person on it. Do you do nothing and watch the five die, or do you pull the lever to save them even though it means killing one person?

Anyway, this toddler's solution to the thorny moral dilemma wasn't at all what I expected. But taking into account everything I know about 2-year-old boys, it was actually exactly what I should have expected.

—6—

This is a picture of me in one of my favorite sweatshirts. I have Reynaud's and I'm always freezing (the heated seats in the van are on from September to May around here,) so this shirt is perfect for me.

Ironically, it's a really warm sweatshirt.

I was passing my 14-year-old on the stairs when she said, "Wait, what does that say?" 

When I turned around, she read it and then went, "Ohhhh. I thought it said, 'I'm so getting old.'"

Either interpretation is fine, really.

—7—

For the most part I like virtual lessons because they eliminate drive time, but sometimes they can be difficult when your house is louder than a Led Zeppelin concert in 1977.

Phillip was having a voice lesson on Monday night and I needed the kids to all be quiet, so I sent them upstairs with the iPad and gave the 12-year-old instructions to "find something appropriate to watch."

He did not disappoint.

I'm not sure how he arrived at it, but he found a cool video that combined learning and curiosity with humor and a squirrel launch, and I completely approve.

He showed it to Phillip and I after the lesson and now Phillip keeps saying "We need to do something with the squirrels in our yard." 

Sorry but no, that's where I draw the line. We have excessive squirrel problems as it is. Literally the only thing stopping them from completely taking over this place is their lack of opposable thumbs. I'm not tempting fate by purposely enticing them and all their friends into our yard.

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7 Quick Takes about Christmas Card Peer Pressure, a Year of Unexpected Family Time, and Trying Not to Ruin My 7th Grader's Life

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

You people are all annoyingly on top of your Christmas game. This week, before it was even December 1^st, we got four Christmas cards in the mail.

FOUR.

Considering that we haven't even finished raking the leaves in our yard for winter, I'm a little intimidated.

—2—

The early Christmas cards reminded me to start writing my own family's year-in-review newsletter, so at dinner I asked everyone to brainstorm ideas.

After claiming that "we didn't do anything this year," which was sort of true, each family member was at least able to think of a few new developments with them this year (learned how to read! started 4th grade! got my braces off!)

I still didn't have much for the 4-year-old, so I turned to the rest of the family and said, "Help me out, guys. What has your little brother been up to? What does he like to do?"

Completely serious, the 6-year-old immediately answered, "Fight with me."

So it's going to be a very entertaining Christmas letter, I can tell.

—3—

How do those of you in big families do sibling-to-sibling gifts? What's worked for us for the last several years is something we call "Secret Sibling." 

The kids all draw names at the beginning of December and are supposed to do something nice for their secret sibling each day. On Christmas, they creatively reveal who they are.

Despite repeated warnings not to reveal whose secret sibling he was, the 4-year-old announced it almost immediately. The next day, the 12-year-old's secret sibling left a piece of gum on his pillow and he figured out who it was since he knew only one kid in the family was in possession of gum at the moment.

I guess this year, the emphasis is more on the 'sibling' and less on the 'secret.' I tried.

—4—

Lately my 6-year-old, who is a beginning reader, has been obsessed with this set of illustrated scripture stories we have. Whenever he's quiet, we know he's got his nose buried in one of them.

A few days ago he approached me and asked, "What does 'Denny Jesus Christ' mean?"

"Huh?" I answered articulately.

"What does 'Denny Jesus Christ' mean?"

Denny? Like the restaurant? Like my name with a 'D'? What is this kid talking about?

"Umm... can you tell me where you heard it? Like, in what context?"

Of course he's 6 and has no clue what "context" means, so he shrugged and said, "In the scriptures. Like 'Denny Jesus Christ.'"

Finally I asked him to show me, and this is what he meant:

From the illustrated Book of Mormon stories.

Whenever I read the scriptures from now on, the word "deny" will be pronounced "denny" in my head.

—5—

One thing I've really liked about this semi-quarantine time is that without very many evening activities left, we're all home together every night. We eat dinner together and we always have everyone there for Family Home Evening, which is kind a like a weekly family devotional.

This week at Family Home Evening, we learned a Christmas song that the younger kids would probably be learning at church right about now if they were having their regular singing time hour, and then we got out the Nativity set and the scriptures and had them arrange the pieces as we read verses to them from Luke 2.

This set has been around forever. The fact that we aren't missing any pieces is a legit miracle.

Then we made and ate sugar cookies and nobody can complain about that.

Looking at this picture with everyone in the same room makes me so happy. This is why, when I look back, I think I will remember 2020 as one of the luckiest years of my life.

—6—

My 7th grader was doing online school, and I happened to overhear all of this because I was sitting at the other end of the table reading my scriptures.

In the middle of class, my son's teacher called his name and asked, "Did you go somewhere this morning?"

"What?" my son said, confused.

"Did you go anywhere special?" 

"No," he said, looking down at his polo shirt. Admittedly, it did look pretty dressy, but it was probably just the first rumpled thing he'd pulled out of his dresser that morning. (He was also having a particularly good hair day, if I do say so myself.)

"Oh," the teacher said. "Well, you just look so... dapper today."

He gave me the side eye off-screen and the teacher said, "Is that your mom over there?"

My son turned his laptop to face me (luckily I'd showered and gotten dressed already or I would've been hiding under the table) and the teacher asked, "Doesn't he look dapper today?"

I looked at the on-screen grid view of all my 7th-grader's classmates thinking, "Okay. I'm pretty sure my 12-year-old doesn't want his mom gushing to his entire class about how handsome he is. What is the absolute least embarrassing thing I can do here? Just evaporate?"

Maybe I should have hidden under the table, after all.

—7—

It's December, which means that my church's annual Light the World campaign is happening. They do it a little differently every year, but the basic idea is to do something every day to emulate Jesus and feel closer to Him by Christmas.

Yes, it's December 4th, but that doesn't mean it's too late to start participating. I've learned in the past that doing good things imperfectly is better than doing nothing at all.

You can download a daily service calendar or learn more about Light the World at the official website if you're interested. Good luck!

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