Last Hurrah

This week there were some changes regarding coronavirus policies in our state. We have been wearing masks or shields part of the time we've been at church, but yesterday evening Nadia had to keep her shield on the whole almost 4 hours she was at church. She's VERY thankful I bought shields as she greatly prefers the shield to a mask. She also had her temperature taken at church for the first time. The boys and I have already had ours taken at church far more than one time. The boys and I have already been wearing our masks during the entire second service so it's not a big change to keep them on during the first service. I generally follow the rules, but I have drawn the line when it comes to wearing masks in our own home. The new guidelines state that if other people are in your home, everyone must wear masks even if you are staying six feet apart from each other. We rarely have people in our home. The only time we plan to have others in our home for the rest of 2020 are Nadia's friend is coming over for a sleepover tomorrow and I invited two boys over a sleepover for Ian's birthday in December. I already feel like the government has REALLY overstepped its bounds this year, but telling me what I have to wear when I am in my own home - that's just too much for me to stomach. 

If someone wants to enter PA from another state (or a resident of PA wants to return to PA), starting tomorrow you have to have a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of entering the state. I texted this update to Yvonne as we had been discussing whether they might make a trip to PA in December or not. They quickly made arrangements to see Joe's relatives in Hershey and our family for a visit today before the new policies went into effect. I only had purchased Christmas gifts for two of their eight children so far. We have no idea when we might see them again. We fully realize it might be a few months from now so I wished them a Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Birthday (3 of them have birthdays next week), Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and hoped we'd see them before Easter. Hopefully things will improve once the vaccines begin to be administered, but who knows when the restrictions will be eased. We don't have any plans to leave the state for the foreseeable future. I'm grateful these travel restrictions weren't in place in August when the kids and I visited Long Island or the beginning of October when we had our family vacation. 

My Dad and Margie were going to meet us in Lancaster next month to see Esther at Sight and Sound. They cancelled those plans last week because of Margie's health issues, but now I realize they would have had to be tested for COVID again to be able to come see the show. Jenna wasn't able to come today because of she's working at Chick-Fil-A. When we saw six of their kids at Refreshing Mountain the end of September, Joe had brought the kids there and Yvonne had stayed home with Wesley and Jenna. Today Joe stayed home with Jenna; they met Yvonne and the rest of the family in Hershey this afternoon. This was the sixth time this year we've seen at least some of the Towfighis. Hopefully we'll be able to see them all sometime in 2021 before they move to Quito. Jenna plans to begin attending college in Pennsylvania next fall. They were only able to stay for two hours today, but two hours was far better than nothing! They ate lunch and played a little. Nadia played Jenga and Suspend with some of her cousins. I only took two pictures unfortunately. I noticed when looking at the picture below that Joel is taller than Ian even though Ian is 18 months older than Joel. Yvonne knows far more Spanish than I do, and she corrected my pronunciation on a word that I've been saying incorrectly many times a day for the past almost 3 months. I hope I'm not making tons of other pronunciation mistakes. :( I'm giving it my best shot. I've never professed to be an excellent Spanish teacher.