Where we live the beaches, the playgrounds, the churches, the doctors and dentists and orthodontists and hair stylists and restaurants and the schools are all closed.
Where we live the streets- actually just the one street- that is impossible to cross is empty.
The store parking lots that are always filled don't have a single car in sight.
The shelves of toilet paper and bread and flour and rice are empty. But there are eggs, milk, and plenty of produce.
Where we live the schools are still set to reopen on April 13th.
No one is really expecting that to happen.
Where we live, the sidewalks past our house are busier than ever. This is surely a combination of warmer weather and the fact that everyone is home all the time now. There are lots of dogs for Laney to bark at and friends for us to wave at.
Where we live we are happy to be at home most of the time. It's our default setting, and it took me by surprise to realize that I have driven my car a total of one time in the last two and a half weeks, that I have't seen anyone since spring break started. We've been doing plenty of texting, talking, FaceTiming, and Zooming, but we haven't seen many people face to face.
Where we live we are happiest when we are together, just the six of us, plus the pup.
Whether it was right or wrong, we went on an adventure yesterday that lifted our spirits and reminded us of the beauty and joy of the Earth we live in. The sky and the lake were the same color of blue, and we enjoyed a perfect evening of skipping rocks, climbing sandy banks and crossing massive fallen trees that were unearthed by powerful rising water levels.
Where we live, we occasionally encounter reminders of the flood that took this lake to incredible heights just two years ago. It was a good reminder that life is unpredictable, that things change suddenly when you least expect it, and that those changes resolve again. Eventually. Somehow.
Someday we'll have so many stories to tell about the time that the coronavirus turned our lives upside down, unexpectedly, but in many ways, for the better.
The week of spring break was much harder for me than the first week of no school. Last week I was filled with uncertainty, incredulity, and a surprising amount of anger, especially toward the action- or inaction- that our school district has taken toward distance learning while school is cancelled for the next three weeks. I still have plenty of those feelings but prayed a LOT to see the benefit to not having a school-directed schedule while we are at home.
And the answer came quickly! We are happily thriving at home, cheerful little bunch of homebodies that we are. Our days are very loosely structured with around two hours of intentional learning time. In an attempt to avoid falling down the Groundhog Day hole, I've started writing up a daily highlights board with the date and some of the have-to-do's and get-to-do's of the day, as well as a checklist of learning each kid can work on each day.
One of my favorite parts of the day is lunchtime, when a "lunch lady" help me make a hot lunch for everyone, takes drink orders, and helps clean up. The kids are happy to inform me what school life is really like- exactly how to set up the "cafeteria" and whether or not they really have to take the baby carrots and dice pears.
I'm not interested in changing the trajectory of the kids education at this point, so I'm not looking into any kind of homeschooling curriculum to blindly dive into. Rather, my goal is to simply help them stay sharp on the things they've been working so hard to learn this year. Whether we go back to school on April 13th or not, we've found a comfortable balance between school and play while enjoying this unexpected break.
Every day each of the kids reads a book out loud. This always results in a couch full of giggles.
Jason helps Leah with her math work during lunch. Adam is self-guided with the online resources he uses at school, and I get to play math games with Noah and write math problems for Emma.
Mostly "home school" so far means a whole lot of fun. Miss Emma had a mental health day before spring break and we had the sweetest, saddest conversation about the challenges of public school and her desire to home school. Now we say, "be careful what you wish for!" because her wish came true. Of all of the kids she is missing her classmates and teachers and social interactions with others the most. And it was her turn to be the star of the week, too! It's been a lot of emotions for everyone around here this week. We are all praying that we'll be back to school at some point. I don't mind the break but it will be so sad for the kids if their entire school year is done so abruptly.
Our city, like many cities around the country, participated in a Bear Hunt this week. We put all of our teddy bears up in our windows and enjoyed walking around the neighborhood trying to spot bears.
And we found a really big one! Stella is Emma and Leah's second favorite dog on the street, but Laney wasn't so sure about meeting this gentle giant Newfoundland!
For my weekly grocery shopping trip, Adam and I biked over to the nearest grocery store and loaded up the bike trailer. Avoiding the major grocery stores has been good for my anxiety levels, which are already threatened by the daily news. I was espeically grateful for this handsome boy's company!
Jason is working from home as much as possible now, and boy are we thankful for his dedicated office. I've heard tales of converting kids rooms into work spaces and meeting is cars and shared time over screens. We're very thankful for this space for just Jason!
And we're all enjoying seeing more of him too!
He taught our science class one day- Genetics 101!
It was fun learning something new. Adam said, "My head is about to explode but in a good way!"
This week has been cold-ish, but we've still gone outside every day, rain or shine, to get out of the house. One day I told Jason we were going driving. I don't think he understood what I meant!
I think the faster driver maxed out in this church parking lot at 7 mph. Adam liked the gas pedal a little too much, and Leah tried to put the car in park while she was still moving, but all in all they did alright! I loved how newly appreciative all of the kids were about my "amazing" driving skills , and told them all that they always need to remember and maintain that sense of fear and respect for driving.
In work news, I am only teaching online piano lessons now, which about half of my students started this week. Its a different kind of work for sure, but I have loved seeing the sweet faces of my students again! Music has soothed the souls of everyone in our house this week.
More than anything I want to remember how much FUN our family knows how to have despite adversity, despite the unknown, despite disappointment. We work really hard to make our home a place of love and happiness and this week we have reaped the benefits of our efforts!
The champion of the family air hockey tournament!
The Great British Bake-off, Round One! The contestants worked hard to make pretzels with dipping sauce,
and the judges worked hard to eat it!
It only took three nights, but we finally all surrendered to Daddy in our first game of Risk.
We've watched movies, FaceTimed with family, stressed baked all kinds of goodies, slept in, stayed up late, and really, really just enjoyed being safe and healthy and happy together. We can definitely do this for another two weeks!
We took a trip over to the "hum-bachi-buba" place at Jester Park last week. It was the busiest we've ever seen it (meaning we saw 24 people there instead of the usual 11) but we found a socially distant place to spend a few hours building ourselves a refuge!
We spent a good long time dragging long sticks and hoisting short sticks and decorating with boughs of evergreens.
And in the end, we all fit!
Jason felt very in touch with his manly provider self.
We enjoyed checking out some of the neighboring shelters.
Clearly Iowans would be perfectly comfortable if we ever needed to live in the woods!
A few more trips around the "hum-bachi-buba" place, two ticks picked off of Laney, a few dozen rocks tossed into the water, and we were one happy outdoor family!
We've been going outside every day since school let out, doing our best to avoid other people and mostly enjoying the quiet but quickly approaching arrival of spring.
I generally like to blog about things after they have happened- after spring break, after a vacation, after a milestone or successful event.... But if I wait to blog about the coronavirus and the ways it has turned our lives upside down until it has passed... this blog might finally die. So I'll write about the spring break that wasn't and we'll go from there.
Even without the rumors of the coronavirus swirling around the globe our spring break plans were fairly slim- spend time with friends, spend a day in Kansas City at the temple and a children's art center, go out to dinner once. Spoiler alert- we didn't do any of those things.
Day by day every aspect of life started to change.
On Thursday, the last day of school we found out that all church meetings were suspended worldwide for the next three weeks.
This was the first night of our spring break-
Pictionary and popcorn! And a picture just in case we needed to document the beginning of an adventure (which, it turns out, was exactly right).
I had been grocery shopping intentionally but not frantically several time before spring break started. The toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and rice were definitely gone from store shelves, but other than that the stores had everything we needed to hunker down for several months. We have always had a family food store in the basement that we eat from, so this was nothing new. I've been stocked up on toilet paper and rice and more for years!
On Friday I made my last trip to the grocery store and made the decision to not shift from reasonable purchasing to panic-buying. We were well stocked and ready to stay home.
On Sunday evening the school district announced that school would be cancelled for an additional three weeks after spring break, until April 13th, with no mention of distance learning or supplemental learning resources. Just a total cancellation of school.
On Monday I woke up knowing that the library would be the next to fall, so we got up first thing and stocked up on as many books as we could carry. The library announced their closure that night.
This was also the day that I told the kids that we were going to keep "I Survived the Coronavirus" journals. They were all on board with it, and this pretty much sums Emma's personality up in one page-
It says, "I found out that school is cancelled for a month because of the coronavirus. If I die I will be happy in heaven!"
The next day reads, "I'm sssoooooo scared to get the coronovirus! Daddy might get it because he went to work." with a picture of a dead man on a bed that reads, "That could be Daddy!!"
On Monday night I was leery of going to sleep because we legitimately did not know what the world would look like when we woke up in the morning. Every day something was changing.
On Tuesday the temples around the world closed.
And in the days that followed, it was announced that all major attractions in the country were closed, from Disney World to Legoland to the entire city of Chicago to the Smithsonian, general conference would be majorly downsized, missionaries around the world would be sent home (adding hours of church work to Jason's schedule), grocery stores were limiting their hours, restaurants were closing or offering drive-thru only, our dentists and orthodontists and hair appointments were rescheduled for months from now, Jason would start working from home, and we needed to plan on social distancing as much as possible to flatten the curve and minimize the effect of the virus in our country.
I'd say we've done a pretty good job of keeping the scariest facts and fears out of our house during all of this, but there is still plenty to be afraid of! In the few days that we've been keeping the journals it has been amazing to see the sweep of this virus across our country. We've been tracking the count in the United States-
March 19th- 8,400 people in the U.S. have the virus
March 23rd- This made me smile in a sad way- the sobering facts and nothing more. "There are now more than 30,000 coronavirus cases in the US. There."
March 24th- 51,542 people in the U.S. have the virus at the time of this post. The number has been jumping by ten thousand at a time.
We don't have answers. We have fears, concerns, anger, questions, worries, interrupted plans, uncertainty, and the possibility of a new life that we aren't so sure about. No school is great, but for how long? Jason working from home is great, but for how long? Social distancing is not great- we haven't seen friends and we aren't close to family and it stinks!
But for the most part, our life just happily marches on. Our spring break looked like a good at-home adventure, complete with pedicures for everyone,
a highly anticipated St. Patrick's Day celebration,
which Laney did not understand at all,
plenty of FaceTiming with family and friends,
plenty of rest and snuggles for everyone,
a multiple-night round of Risk and another crack at this monster puzzle
We even pulled out the chimes one night to see if we could get Laney to howl again.
And above all, we have faith and gratitude. We have a big, beautiful home that we can hunker down and stretch out in. There is plenty of room for gathering in and spreading out as needed.
We love each other, and we like each other. We're happy to be together!
Jason's job is not tied to this mess. While the economic outlook isn't great, we should be largely unaffected by all that is going on. My work, on the other hand, is a bit more of a mess. I'm starting online piano lessons tomorrow, at least two of my podcasts are temporarily on hiatus, and obviously subbing in the school is not happening right now. But I'm grateful that these dollars are all extra ones, and we don't need much extra when we're not going anywhere or doing anything right now.
We have technology to keep us connected to so many of our loved ones.
We have been prepared! Our prophet started a call for "home centered, Church supported" Sunday worship 18 months ago, and it has blessed our lives ever since- and even more so since we have't been able to go to church. I'm grateful that we can feel the comfort of the Holy Ghost and the words of the scriptures and of our prophet in our home.
We have been guided to do things when they needed to be done. Things as small as getting to the library before it closed or picking certain things up at the grocery store or reaching out to a person who offered just the right words of encouragement have been tender mercies in all of this.
And above all, we are writing an amazing story! We're living a life we never could have imagined, and we're trying to make the best of it! We're making memories that will last our whole lives, and that is worth every fear and uncertainty that has crossed our minds. We may not know what the end of this chapter of our lives looks like, but it is definitely one that we will remember!
