COVID craziness + a 20 Minute HIIT workout!

Hello my friends! Well life has been interesting ’round here the past couple weeks.

My oldest son tested positive for COVID-19 a few weeks ago. His cousin, who he spends a lot of time with, and one of his other friends also tested positive. I’m not sure where they got it, but they all got it!

We first found out that my nephew (my son’s cousin) had it and since we knew my son had been around him a lot, my son started a quarantine. My son didn’t feel sick yet, so we didn’t know he had it too.

Anyway, at this exact same time I got a call from the high school saying that my other son (17 year old) had to quarantine for 2 weeks because he sat near a student in one of his classes who had just tested positive for COVID as well.

Sooooooo, my two sons decided to quarantine together! Neither of them had symptoms, but they set up a man cave in my 17 year old’s room in the basement and isolated themselves from the rest of the family for the most part.

Well, a few days later, my older son started to have some symptoms. It wasn’t too bad, much like a bad cold: congestion, achy and very tired. I decided to get him tested. I also got myself tested since I had been feeling cold-like symptoms as well.

Well, that’s when we found out my son was positive! Eeeeeek. I tested negative, btw. I was concerned for my 17 year old son as well since they had been living in the same room together and sleeping in the same bed for several days! Eeeeeek.

About this same time, my 17 year old started feelings symptoms too. Just achy, congested and very tired. Seriously, my two boys pretty much slept all day and all night. Soooo, I decided to get my 17 year old tested and I also got my 12 year old tested since he had slight cold symptoms as well.

When I called the number to register them to get tested, I told “the guy” our story and he asked if I wanted to get tested again. He said I may have tested too early. Sooo, I decided to test myself again too!

Well, our results all came back negative. I was relieved by that, but also confused. My 17 year old and my oldest son (21 years old) had the EXACT same symptoms. They both lost most of their sense of smell and taste as well. Super weird. I’m not convinced my 17 year didn’t have it.

Also, I’ve had the strangest cold for about a month now. It’s not super bad, I can still do life for the most part, but it feels unlike any cold I’ve had. Scratchy, sore throat, achy, sensitive eyes, congestion and just NO energy. I’ve tried to do a couple workouts a week (one I teach online with my friends in the neighborhood and another one I do Live on my Happy Being Healthy Facebook page.) It’s felt good to do those workouts, but MAN, I’ve just had no stamina. My weights have felt so heavy and those workouts have wiped me out!

Sooooo, I could have had just a typical cold, but it’s just been weird.

One of my friends suggested we get the antibody test done. That’s just a blood test that can tell if you have COVID antibodies in your system. It essentially just tells you that you did in fact have COVID.

I really wanted my 17 year old to take it since I’m just so curious to know if he had it. I also wanted to know if I had it too since my sickness was so strange and I really hardly ever get sick! So I called my doctor and my 17 year old and I got the antibody test done last week. We haven’t gotten the results back from that, but we should get them any day now.

Oh, I should also mention that Kev had some weird sickness as well. Similar symptoms, but he also had really swollen glands. He is on an immunosuppressant drug, so we worry about him with all of this craziness. So, he went and got tested as well and he was negative!

Another weird thing is that none of my little boys got sick! My 12 year old had a very slight cough, but that was it. I just think that’s so strange since typically the little kids get sick and all of us “big people” don’t get sick. Strange.

Sooooo, that’s our story. Crazy weird stuff.

FYI, I really haven’t been super afraid about this pandemic. It’s been hard and I’m so dang tired of it (along with the rest of the world,) but I’ve just accepted from the beginning that it is what it is. We just need to do our best to be responsible and smart about it and……come what may!

At the end of the day, there’s really not a whole lot we can do about it anyway. So, I’m happy to say that we are all mostly recovered from whatever the heck we’ve had.

My oldest son is supposed to go back to work any day now. I still don’t feel 100%, but I think I’m going to go to one of my favorite classes at the gym tonight. Yay. I haven’t been to the gym in about a month since I’ve just felt so run-down and blah. The fact that I want to go tonight and I feel like going is a good sign!

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So, that’s the scoop ’round here. We also had fall break last week, but we weren’t able to do a whole lot. I did take my little boys out to do a few fun things here and there. It had been over 2 weeks since my oldest son first had symptoms, btw, so I felt like we were able to get out in public a little bit.

I took them to a pumpkin patch….

I also took them to a fun place called Gardner Village which is just a whole bunch of little shops that are in old historic buildings. It’s one of my very favorite places to visit. They had a cute witch scavenger hunt around the grounds, so my boys and I enjoyed finding all of the witches. I also snapped this cute pic of them….

I’m sure grateful for these sweet little boys and I’ve been so happy they’ve had each other during this crazy year!

Also, last night we carved pumpkins. My 12 year old was the one who really wanted to carve pumpkins this year, so he lead the charge! He was so excited to carve a pumpkin that was throwing up, lol.

Also, Kev is one of the biggest BYU fans out there, so we had fun doing some BYU pumpkins. We’ve all enjoyed watching the BYU games together since there isn’t a whole lotta stuff going on right now! We’ve looked forward to the football games every weekend and have been so happy with how well BYU is doing this year!

Soooo, we’ve been enjoying the fun fall, Halloween season amidst all of our craziness. The whole world is crazy right now though, right? I’ve kind of just gotten used to the crazy, the unexpected and going with the flow!

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Well, I also wanted to share a fun, short, but effective workout with y’all! I shared this on my Instagram and Facebook pages as well.

It’s a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout and it’s great! It works the whole body, works all the muscles, is only about 20 minutes long and is fun! It’s perfect on those days when you don’t have a ton of time or when you’re not really feeling like working out.

All you need are some medium weight dumbbells (I used 10#.) You may also want a mat, but it’s not necessary.

Start with a short warm up and then do the following moves, 45 seconds on, 15 seconds off. You can find an interval timer on YouTube or there are a bunch of apps out there as well!

You can either do each move twice in a row or go through each move once and then repeat the entire workout again. If you’d like an even longer workout, you could do everything three times!