So, the week of March 16, everything shut down around here. It started with church, prom, and choir the week before, but by the following week, there was nothing left for us to do, unless we used our at home resources to make it happen! That was supposed to be the week of our Spring break, and we actually had a full week planned for once! So we were sad to miss out on our plans, but we were obedient to the stay at home order. At the beginning, we were told, we needed to take a few weeks at home to "flatten the curve" so the disease wouldn't overrun the health care system. That made sense, since we did not know exactly what we were facing in COVID 19. I had a funny feeling it would last longer, and I certainly did not like the government deciding which businesses were essential and which should just deal with it and close down. I remember thinking isn't everybody's job "essential" to their family? I know Ladd's job sure is essential to us! If he was out of work during this whole quarantine, we would be out of a house and a lot of other basic needs. Thankfully for this family, lawyering was deemed essential by the almighty government, and since we already homeschooled, our world was not flipped upside down. The kids have really missed playing with friends and cousins, I have missed Yoga and the temple, and Ladd has actually missed going to court-he is not the biggest fan of all things Zoom! We've all missed seeing family, including our church family, on a regular basis!
There has certainly been some positives though! I love at home church. I teach the girls primary first thing in the morning, while boys are still sleeping. Then when everyone is up and ready, the boys bless the sacrament and we watch a general conference talk and/or a video pertaining to what we learned in Come Follow Me the previous week. The boys usually have some sort of zoom meeting with the youth (young mens, combined devotional, mission prep class, stake fireside, etc) The boys have had the opportunity to provide the sacrament to another family each week which I am hoping will instill a greater appreciation and desire to remain true to their priesthood so that they can always provide those saving ordinances to their future families.
I also appreciate not running around like a crazy person every afternoon/evening. I know my kids need their after school activities but it has been nice knowing we have all afternoon free to finish school, work on dinner, garden, etc. I will miss the extra family time when things start opening up.
We've hiked, A LOT!
Luckily school hasn't changed too much for us, aside from no field trips!
And we've gotten to know our neighborhood well by going on lots of walks...
ALL the toys in our house are getting lots of use...
We did chalk drawings for all the other walkers to see...
We snuck up to Big Bear one weekend so we could have different walls to look at!
Daily UNO games between these 2...
Getting Creative...
All the kids have spent more time practicing their piano...
The kids seem to need to eat much more frequently while home all the time...
We bought a pot pie and had a picnic at Riley's Farm...
This slip and slide has been a life saver on hot days...
I think we've flattened the curve by now!!
