All Negative

We are all officially done with quarantine! Jorja got out of quarantine this morning and was able to go to school. She was so happy! I spent the day bleaching all the things. I washed Jorja's sheets, bleached doorknobs and light switches. Bleached the downstairs bathroom. Everything, including walls and ceiling. I probably spent two hours cleaning the downstairs bathroom. All should be well now. We had our covid tests this afternoon. We drove down to Mike's work and then went to different drive thrus, just like last time. They called us and said everyone was negative, except my test was inconclusive. I had to go back and retake the test. I was a little nervous. Everyone would have to restart quarantine if I was positive, except Jorja. Also, all of my bleaching would be pointless if I actually had the disease. So, about thirty minutes later we got word that I was negative also. My second test they made me do to nose swabs, so I had three in total today. Not horrible, but didn't like it.

I'm also annoyed. I know covid has been horrible for many, many people. Our experience with it has been different. Jorja was sick. Sick enough I would have kept her home from school for at least one day, probably two; but not sick enough to take her to the doctor. Also no one in my family got this super contagious disease that shut down the world for an entire year. This is after being at the cabin, Stockton sleeping head to head with her for three days, Michael driving us to Utah, bringing her food....all the things. No one at the cabin got it, and no one here got it. I know Jorja isolated herself once she started feeling sick, but still. I can't believe Jorja lost her high school experience to this disease. So frustrating. Jorja is excited that she has the 90 day immunity. She won't get quarantined again for the rest of school. She thinks the immunity is longer for other things, but our school district says 90 days. 

Jorja had a periodontist appointment today. Maysen and Stockton both had gum grafts when they were in fourth grade. Jorja has avoided it. Until this year. She will need to get one. We have it scheduled for April, after spring break. We have to go to the office in Sugarhouse because the first appointment available at this one would be the week of her high school graduation. It might have even been the same day. Don't want to do that.

Jorja got to go to the last day of the musical tonight. It was The Little Mermaid. She has two really good friends in it. Sami was a mermaid and Giselle was Jetsom the eel. This was performed in the new fine arts center and Jorja said it was super cool. Ursula was hanging from the ceiling with her tentacles dangling. Boats were able to float around. I think the robotics team designed those. I'm glad she was able to get out just in time to be there for this. I'm glad she had fun. I'm glad quarantine is done!!!!!

Sami & Jorja

Giselle & Jorja

Adults Blowing the Game for the Kids. Classic.

Bear dog loves the snow. He also loves his ball. And Mike. And food. Those are his favorite things. The order probably goes Mike, ball, food, snow. Three of Bears favorites collided today and he was so happy. I don't know how Mike can stand being out there so long not bundled up. Half the time he goes out there without shoes. Thankfully not today. Bear was one happy dog.

Mike & Bear

Bear

Snow duck ~ they have loved their private pond

When it is snowy outside our house gets covered in snow puddles. From the dog. This is how it happens.

The result

The rest of our family went for our corona tests today. If anyone of us was positive they would be banished with Jorja. The pros would be Jorja wouldn't be lonely. The cons would be our quarantine would start over. This lady came to our car and gave each of us these long q-tip looking things. We had to put it up each nostril and go around about five times each. They then took it back and called us in 20 minutes. They told us not to go home in case any of the tests were inconclusive. We drove around to different drive thrus and got different stuff. It was kind of fun. They called and we are all negative! Woohoo! Jorja finishes quarantine on Monday the 22nd. We finish on the 25th. We can get out Monday too if we come back and have negative tests that day. That is our plan. Mike has us scheduled for it.

Stockton and testing lady

Jorja has been feeling sick. She has lost some of her taste, but not all of it. She spent the entire day working on her story. Drawing and coloring pictures. She won't show it to me yet though. I'm glad she felt good enough to work on it. Jorja has also wanted to hear Bear howl. We have been telling her how funny it is when he thinks everyone is gone. While we were at the corona test she texted us that Bear dog was howling. He sounded so sad. Then she said he came down and found her. He came and sat on her. He loves Mike. The rest of us are poor substitutes.

We got the funniest text thread from Bubs this morning. He was reffing a game last night and the game had quite the ending. This is the story in his words. Gotta love it.

Quarantine Day 1

Today I bleached all the things. I spent forever cleaning. Deep cleaning. Not my talent, but I did it. Especially the upstairs bathroom. I bleached everything. I washed the bathmats and the shower curtains. The upstairs bathroom should be corona free. I deep cleaned the downstairs bathroom too. Jorja has hated the downstairs bathroom. Well, taking showers in it. When we first lived here Mike took out the 70s green flooring. It took longer than we expected to replace it. So, it was concrete for awhile. Jorja hated it. She said spiders were there. We got everything redone years ago. Maybe seven, I'm not sure. Jorja still refused to take a shower down there. Actually no one used it, even though I thought it was a nicer shower than the one upstairs. Jorja will have to get over her fear this week.

I got annoyed at Jorja today. We had to call the school to tell them she was positive. She wanted to be the one to call them. She is 18, so I guess that would be okay. I brought her down the phone and stood back from her. She asked me to leave. I told her I wanted to be there when she called. She told me she didn't want me there. I was furious. I left. A few minutes later she texted me and told me the school said I had to be the one to call. Too bad she didn't let me stay. Jorja said she didn't want me to get sick. I told her that if I was going to get sick I have already been infected by taking care of her, riding in the car with her, cleaning all the things. I wanted to be there to hear what the school said so I would know the rules. Now I felt like an idiot calling the school. So anyway, we had our moments today. I felt bad because I know Jorja felt awful, but at the same time I want her to stop pushing me out of her life.

Jorja slept most of the day. Her throat is sore. She aches. She has a cough. Pretty much every symptom but loss of smell and taste. She is breathing fine, so that is nice. The thing that is bothering her the most is she has a canker. That is not a corona thing, but it is driving her crazy. Jorja was able to get ahold of the Utah State people and let them know she can't come up on Wednesday. They told her she could do a virtual interview on Thursday. She is disappointed and relieved at the same time. Disappointed that she misses out on yet another thing. Relieved that she can still go forward with trying to get this scholarship. She has to give a two minute presentation on something she is passionate about. Like baseball or shoelaces. It could be anything. I told her to do it on service. She was so passionate about the Make-a-Wish thing. Jorja said that wouldn't stand out with the people she was interviewing with. She said there is nothing unique about her. (Not true) She has been messaging Kengo. She met him outside a Pizza Limone when he was playing the ukulele. He was a Utah State ambassador in college. He told her to do something to stand out during the presentation. Like he brought in his ukulele and sang his presentation. He then gave her the idea to do a story book. Jorja would do these bednight stories for awhile. Just read books on Instagram live. Like Green Eggs and Ham. Things like that. They were so funny. Kengo said she should do her presentation like that. Jorja loved that idea. She was too sick to really work on it today, but said she got all the words to the book down and she will work on the book tomorrow. Well, she will have the time to do it, so that's good I guess.

The rest of us are quarantined until Thursday February 25th. If one of us gets corona our quarantine starts over. We are getting tested tomorrow to see if anyone else has it so we don't start an infinite quarantine loop. This will be fun. The only picture I have today is Preston in a dog cage. No idea why he is there, except I think he missed his dog.

Preston & Bear

Negative and Positive

Today was the first day of the 3rd quarter. This should be an easy semester for Jorja. No math. No English.  No AP classes. She aides for Packer and Shay. She has two concurrent classes, Chinese and Finance. She will have finance with Ella. She is also taking sophomore health with her friends JJ and Kate. She also has student government and PLT. I think it should be fun for her.

Alta started a test to stay program today. Everyone in the entire school had to be tested for covid. If they were positive they had to go home. If they refused to test they had to go home. I think they are doing it when the covid levels get high, but this way making it so they don't have to quarantine the entire school. Anyway, Jorja tested negative today. Yay. Riley's mom works at an elementary school that was doing the same thing. She tested positive. Boooo! Jorja was around Riley's mom on Sunday. Which means she was exposed and it might not have shown up on a test yet, so Jorja has to quarantine. We thought she could retake the test on Thursday, but the school says she can't get retested until Monday. We have to bring a negative result before she can go back or wait until next Wednesday. Jorja is not excited.

Jorja was a bit sad and wanted to get iced chocolate milk. She loves getting that at Dutch Bros. We stopped by Joannes and I picked up some floral tape and more wire. She wants to figure out how to make boutonnieres. At least it will give her something to do during quarantine! We stopped at Smiths and I got a small flower arrangement for Riley's mom and some baby's breath for Jorja to practice with. That's about it for today!

Bear's First Day of School

We weren't able to get Jorja in for testing today. We have an appointment for tomorrow. Not the way she wanted to spend this Saturday. Especially since we gave her the choice of which weekend she would go to the cabin with us. She chose to go next weekend. All the things she wanted to do this weekend have been cancelled. This has been a hard year. These next two pictures show a little about how Jorja was passing the time during quarantine. Bear is a good sport.

Bear

Speaking of Bear. Maysen took him to dog training classes today. She was pretty excited and had a great time. Mike went with her, but got out of there quickly when he saw the horses. He came home and took a shower, but his eyes itched like crazy the rest of the day. The classes were held in the red barn. Maysen enjoyed the classes and is looking forward to going back.

Jorja had a date planned with Riley that had to be cancelled. She was disappointed. She wanted to celebrate their one month anniversary. She said that she knows it's not that big of deal, but she wanted to do something anyway. Riley ended up stopping by and bringing Jorja lunch. I had pity on her and let her eat on the porch as long as they were six feet away. The world is so weird right now.

Riley

Jorja's friends brought her Dutch Bros chocolate milk. Jorja loves getting the iced chocolate dutch canyon, or something like that. Jorja was quarantined because of her student government class. Ella and Giselle are in that class, but escaped quarantine. Ella was sick and out during the time people were exposed. Giselle had covid a few weeks ago. She got it from her mom. Hopefully Jorja's test will come back negative so she can get back to her life.

Liv, Giselle, Ella

With Jorja

Happier Porge

Quarantined Again

I brought lunch to Bubs today. Zaos. It was nice to see him. I should do that more often. The kids don't have school on Fridays anymore, but Jorja went to help Packer. She was helping at the school for several hours. She then spent several more hours with Jake. He is her partner to go to businesses for the fundraiser. They are trying to get help from the community for the fundraiser. Jorja then went to dinner with Jake's family. Mike and I were at Harmon's this evening. As we were driving away we got a phone call that Jorja is quarantined until next Thursday. Autumn has corona, which makes her the third person in student government to have it, again. All three are in the start of the alphabet, so Jorja hasn't been around them for a week already. Jorja is not happy about this turn of events. We called her as soon as we got the call. She was just silent, then we could hear her sniffling and she whispered, "Okay, I'll come home right now." This is such a weird time. I wish I could take this away and allow her to have a normal senior year. She has been a good sport, but it has been really hard.

Officially Quarantined

Welp. It's official. Jorja's quarantined. We didn't know whether to send Jorja to school or not. We decided to send her because the school hadn't contacted us and we didn't know for sure if she would be asked to be quarantined. We were hopeful that she would be fine. Her first period is statistics, which is a concurrent class. Jorja was able to go to that. Advisory for student government is next. While they were there the principal came in and talked to them. Three people in this class have had corona within the two week window. The principal told them the entire class was quarantined. They were silent. Then Ryan said, "Do we just leave?" The principal told them yep and then walked them out of school. They were all kind of stunned and hung out by their cars for a bit. Packer drove by and yelled at them. Jorja said she has never seen him so mad. It made her sad. Jorja asked if she could go to breakfast with everyone, one last time. I told her no. We had just gotten the quarantine letter from the school. She is quarantined until September 25th. Homecoming week is next week and the entire student government class is quarantined. Well, Bode gets to come back on Monday. Maybe Bode can pull off homecoming by himself. Jorja is so sad. I took Jorja to get tested, but we arrived five minutes after the testing site closed. Didn't expect them to close so early!

Jorja

The one bright spot for Jorja was that even though she was quarantined and would miss homecoming week and Ella's cabin, at least she would be okay to go to the lantern festival. At least she would have that. Or so we thought. The school sent out another quarantine letter that said the return date was wrong and they would let us know when she is free. We never got the letter, so we have no idea how long she is quarantined for. Jorja is stressing. I bought her hash browns at McDonalds to cheer her up. Haha. On the bright side, we found a brand new Mario ball on eBay and it came today! We had this toy years ago in Georgia and the kids loved it! Bear better not get ahold of it!