We spent the night at the Urness home so that we open presents together Christmas morning. All the kids slept in the guest house, with Danielle and the baby in one guest room, Dallin and I in another, and the rest of the kids on mattresses or couches in the family room. We watched all of Grace's wild videos featuring her singing Christmas songs with an accent, banging her head or foot against the wall for the beat. In the morning, Maverick was the real focus, as can be seen by the smiles on everyone's faces while he excitedly opened his presents.  I was lucky enough to be gifted with not just one but TWO Instant Pots! 

 Ah, 2020 life.  When a pandemic shuts down everything including your school and your social life (which were one in the same thing before last March when everything originally went to crap), there isn't much to write about because, well, you don't leave your house. It's the ultimate pajama life. It's the life where you make sure your mic is on mute so you can step a few feet away from your Zoom class to shake your husband awake because it's 8:58 and he has his daily work meeting at 9 AM at his computer. Poor Dallin. With online work AND online school, he is usually on his computer from 9 AM until 2 AM -- sometimes as late as 4 AM! 

So, for anyone reading this in the future, what's new with the pandemic as of December 9, 2020?

• so I guess there's a vaccine now! It will go to healthcare workers before it goes to the public, but they say that even then none of the social distancing guidelines will change.
• the countries of my mission went under second lockdown. The German Christmas market in SLC got cancelled and I am VERY sad about it. I can't believe I once thought that we would be able to reschedule our cancelled May Europe trip for this month.
• we had a two week order in Utah not allowing people to gather outside of their households. Organizations could be fined up to $10,000 for not complying because even with previous mandates there were Halloween parties with thousands of people. Hospitals have been maximum capacity and Utah has been red zone for a while.
• mask mandates are everywhere. it's become WILDLY political and kind of an awkward social thing too {are you a mask wearer or are you not?}. I am 100% fine with wearing a mask especially if it has even a small chance of helping the at-risk population....but other people see it as an infringement on freedom. 
• California's rules are NUTS, on the other hand. From what I've heard/read (fact check me please), the governor has given permission for electricity and water companies to cut people off if they suspect that people aren't following social distancing guidelines. There are extremely strict rules for the holidays, such as not singing above normal voice level (to reduce to risk of saliva droplets spreading), placing 6 feet of space between people who aren't in the same household at the dinner table (only 3 households allowed), no more than 3 hours together, food has to be in disposable containers for individuals to take, and everything has to be outside. To put the three household thing in perspective, my family would not be allowed to meet up because it's my parent's household, me and Dallin, Rachel and Dick, Liv who lives in Hawaii, and Adam who will be living in a different house in Hawaii (5 households).
• my classes will still be online next semester, but I will have one in-person client and I will need to wear full PPE. My supervisor says we will have to figure that out because it's obviously difficult to do speech therapy with a mask on. This semester I have had the opportunity to do teletherapy for a child speech/language client, and it's been a BLAST making online materials to keep therapy fun!

 Dallin found out he had a whole week off a school, so with every ounce of spontaneity within us we took a trip to Arizona. Should we have looked at our calendars a little closer? Yeah.  Do I have a final in two days that I'm not ready for? Maybe. But it was fun to stay in the Urness guest house, go hot tubbing, shop around Pottery Barn and get stuck in Goodyear for a few hours with my mom and Soph. Dallin also got to run around the corral on horseback shooting license plates. His dad has gone to several rodeo events shooting from horseback and actually won first place! For the sake of the throwback, I watched a few episodes of H20 with junior-high-aged Gracie, and my parents and I laughed till we cried watching stupid YouTube videos. 

We had to drive the whole 9-10 hours back because apparently the cat would cost $400 to fly back.  What?! We also don't know any teenagers we can rally into cat sitting, so it was just easier to bring him with. Arlo has always been an only child, and with him being around multiple other cats for the first time we found out he is an alpha and a BULLY! He chased Swag out of his own house. And Arlo is a little guy! Napoleon Syndrome much? Or maybe just cocky teenager? He was also not a fan of the three huskies; the only animal he actually befriended was the little yorkiepoo.