Hi GridsDev, I really appreciate your support. I did your step 1 but typing in “ssh umbrel@umbrel.local” did not result in anything. However I isolated my umbrel’s IP address in my router config to be 192.168.0.57. I checked How to set a static IP for your Umbrel server and it does seem to be a static IP, so shouldn’t be that problem.
So I typed “ssh umbrel@192.168.0.57” as you instructed into my terminal, then a line appears: “ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.57 port 22: Connection refused”
I thought maybe that meant the port 22 on my router was not open, so I went into port forwarding settings in my router and configured a manual SSH TCP/UDP port forwarding on public & private ports 20-22 for local IP 192.168.0.57. I restarted my router for the changes to take effect and re-tried step 1 and still got the Connection refused message.
I am stuck again at this point 
Should I try editing my Mac’s hosts file?