A continually evolving situation

Well another week has come and gone and I have found that the way the virus affects our lives changes day by day. Since each day is practically the same as far as a calendar goes, yet things were changing in our society each day, I started making notes as the week went on with any signifcant announcements or impacts on my life, along with fun and different things we did to help pass the time.

Saturday 3/21- My favorite thing about that day was that we needed a break from the house, but it had been raining all day so our usual walk or bike ride wasn't an option. So instead we made the usually 30 minute drive to Culver's, which was only 20 minutes this time since there was NO traffic. We went through the drive-thru for dinner, ate it in the parking lot and then went through the drive-thru again for some of their amazing custard. The flavor of the day was double marshmallow oreo, my absolute favorite flavor combination! If I didn't mention it in my last blog post, we had to do this whole drive-thru dance because you are no longer allowed to dine-in in any restaurant. Only drive-thru or curbside orders, and this is pretty consistent across the whole country.

Sunday 3/22- We have continued to hold our own church meetings in our home, and this week we included Uncle Kevin and Grandma Kathy on Zoom! The kids played the hymns on the piano, Alex gave us a lesson from a few chapters of the Book of Mormon, and our Zoom guests gave the opening and closing prayers. Looking forward to do the same this Sunday! I also had a meeting via Zoom with other leadership positions in our ward and Alex and Cade both had Zoom meetings with their classes from the Young Men's organization. Should've bought stock in Zoom before this whole thing happened!

Monday 3/23- This was one of those kind of days that I had a roller coaster of emotions. Started out great with some exercise and going along with our family routine. The kids started their 'distance learning' and most of their assignments seem pretty straightforward and easy for them to accomplish within a week. *phew* I know their teachers are putting in a lot of work to make this possible, they will be getting a gift card or something from me when this is all over. I was having one of those moments like, "Hey! I think we've go this!"  Then I went grocery shopping. I did an online order 8 days prior. I got most of what I wanted/needed and was feeling optimistic. What a great way to keep up with social distancing and avoid the lines and of course walking through the store and picking up items. I wanted to place another online order, but the first available pick up was April 3rd! A full week and a half later. I really struggled figuring out what I might need that far ahead of time, but after a long time putting together a list and shopping cart it was ready. It also meant there'd be a few days in between that I'd need to hit up a grocery store. I was mentally exhausted after all that.

But then came the news that I'd been expecting. San Antonio was going on lockdown. All non-essential businesses will close and you should only be out an about to grocery shop, go to the doctor, or personal exercise/hiking/etc.  It was announced Monday evening and went into effect at 11:59pm on the following day. The more I thought about, I realized our family was pretty much already following the guidelines, so not much will change for us.

I taught Alex solitaire and within the first few games he actually won! Now he has another non-screen activity he can do on his own.

 Progress on the puzzle!

Tuesday 3/24- The rain finally cleared up and the hubby and I took advantage and went out for a few hours on the motorcycle. Didn't realize it was going to be 94 degrees though! Again the lack of traffic on the roads made it quick to get out in the hill country. Our goal was to stop at Lake Medina and just look around for a bit. To our dismay it was closed. Instead we got a picture next to this apocalypse style sign on the fence!

Unfortunately the never-ending effect of the virus didn't wait for us to be done with our ride to impact us yet again. Because of the shelter in place the school districts decided to extend the school closure. I got several phone calls, texts, and emails all while out for the ride. I couldn't answer them of course, but when I checked my phone at Lake Medina we were told that school would be out until April 24th. Another whole month of this!?!?  The boys were a bit dismayed when we got back home. They've struggled not seeing their friends and watching all of their activities get cancelled. It sucks, it just does.

That night for dinner I made some drumsticks on the Traeger and we spent some time out in our back yard (since I finally did the yard work). It was a nice evening.

He tried to hop out of the hammock when he saw I was taking a picture. Glad I caught a smile

Wednesday 3/25- We finished the puzzle! Took less than a week.... I have two more puzzles to do. I may need to stretch it out a bit

We also decided to finally get the family a set of disc golf discs so we could practice a social distancing activity outdoors that we've been wanting to try for years. Finally a family activity that we all seem to love! It took us 3 hours to get through our first 18 hole course, hopefully we'll get a little better, haha.

Alex managed to get his disc stuck in this tree! Cade tried to get it out and couldn't, but Dan to the rescue!

Even though we had a good day, a few things loomed in my mind. That day the US passed 1,000 deaths in the country. The church made the decision to temporarily close all the temples. Lots of missionaries assigned to overseas missions returned home awaiting further instruction or an early release. Then as the evening progressed we realized that we were really hot. The fan for our A/C was blowing, but no cold air coming out. Uh oh, the A/C doesn't work anymore!! It's been in the 90s here! Not good timing when there's nowhere to escape to :(

Thursday 3/26- Didn't sleep well. Did some sprints outside and then pretty much spent the rest of the day being wholly unproductive. Trying to balance windows open when it was cool in the morning and shutting it in for the hot parts of the day. A worker came out and worked on our A/C and found out that the compressor is shot. They have to order the part. It got so warm in our house and the allergy levels are super high. The oak levels were at a 5 year high! I had a bad migraine and was so hot, it was hard to get through the day. Alex and I watched the 2nd Harry Potter movie and put together the border on the next puzzle.

The temperature inside our house before we went to bed.

Friday 3/27- We slept in a little bit and didn't exercise since we were all kinda grumpy and worn out from being hot all the time. I took off to Wal-mart (it was nice to be in the air conditioning for a bit!) to get those in between groceries I talked about. I may just go to Wal-mart from here on out. It was empty, mostly stocked and no lines to check out! After that we went and played some more disc golf before it got too hot. Just needed to get out of the house. Check out the park specific signs related to the virus!

Quite a few popsicles were consumed during the day to stay cool.

Finally at about 5:45 we got word from our property manager that the owner approved the purchase of a portable A/C unit to get us by until the the compressor comes in. This really was a big deal because our owner has a tendency to take the least expensive option when it comes to repairs, but I'm hoping that the COVID 19 part of this all softened her heart. We couldn't go to a friend's house, pool, store, church or movie theater to help get away from the heat- it was just us at home our outside. It's not a perfect solution, because we can only put it in one room at a time, but it helps.

When it was bed time we put it our room and let the kids join us for a hopefully better night's sleep for us all. I mean, we've been spending all our time together all the time for the past two weeks, why not spend the whole night all in one room together?? 

But I'd be re-missed if I didn't mention Alex's creation to go along with our usual pizza night. Grandpa Bob sent us a magazine clipping of a Butterbeer recipe and we finally got around to making it. It was REALLY good!!!! He also made a really delicious coffee cake earlier in the week.

So as you can tell, our lives are continually impacted by this virus. I even got an email from our ward leaders that we shouldn't minister physically to each other any more or have the sacrament brought to us from outside priesthood leaders. You can really sense the difference in the community with the shelter in place that things have just slowed down a ton. I'm hopeful that the A/C part will come soon. It's supposed to be April 1st, but maybe it'll surprise us and show up earlier. Until then we'll all be hanging out in the room where the portable A/C and practicing absolutely no social distancing in our home, which is the one place it's okay. :)

The last thing I want to share is just how much things have changed in the week since I last blogged. Here's a quote from my blog last week about the stats of the virus.

"The current stat is 16,315 cases in the US with 220 deaths. The numbers are skyrocketing!"

Well skyrocketing it did. We now have more cases than any country in the world, including China which held the most cases the entire life of the virus. Here's where we stand this very minute. Worldwide there are 622,395 cases and 28,804 deaths. 137,000 of those have recovered from the virus.  In the  US we currently have 105,778 cases with a total of 1,731 deaths and 2,538 recovered. Remember when I was shocked that we had 16,315 cases in the US? Yesterday we had 18,691 new cases alone.  None of us really now how long this will all take to peak and then slow down. I hope that my ramblings to come off as too much complaining (but yes I was complaining about the A/C!), it's really just to help me process everything and document how much our normal lives have changed. Tomorrow is fast sunday and several religions are joining together to have an inter-faith day of fasting and prayer. We are still blessed to not have any immediate things threatening our family and our trials are passing time together. We will get through this!

Adjusting to a new normal

It's been about a week since I last posted and so much has changed since then. Frankly it's all a bit overwhelming and it's easy to get lost in all the news reports and information being thrown at us. My thoughts here may not be very cohesive or strung together perfectly, but that definitely sums up my how my brain feels these days.

Okay, not an exact figure, but about two weeks ago there were only 20-30 cases of the virus in the US. Last night when we went to bed there had been 4,500 new cases, just yesterday! Every day there have been new announcements from federal and state levels of what is allowed. The current stat is 16,315 cases in the US with 220 deaths. The numbers are skyrocketing!

School: Was cancelled for one week, but is now cancelled until April 3rd (at the earliest, some cities have already cancelled for the rest of the school year). Distance learning is the new term when it comes to schooling. All teachers came back to the school and were given about a day and a half to re-format their classes so things can be done online. Google classroom and Zoom are their new friends. The kids will start their new learning on Monday and have the week to complete the assignments and get them turned in by the following Monday. Anyone who doesn't have internet access can pick up a paper packet from the school on Mondays and when they turn it in the next Monday they go home with the new packet. I'm curious to see what this will actually be like and how much time will be taken up with various video conferences with teachers, playing tests for band, and google classroom assignments.

The kids were particularly excited that the state standardized testing was canceled

Work: For me that obviously means I cannot substitute teach or accompany. For Dan his travel has been banned for the next two months. He is not allowed to take leave or travel anywhere in the US or internationally. This makes it nearly impossible to do his recruiting job, and it was a busy time of the year for applicants. But as colleges are meeting online as well, the level interest will likely wane for a bit anyways. Dan was going in to work on base for a few days, but now his brigade is tele-working, AKA working from home. As I'm sure you can imagine, a lot of people are now working from home and their kids are home and life is just super different. It's hard to stay focused and get things done when there are lots of distractions.

Life: Everything has been cancelled. Literally everything. The government has gone from not allowing gatherings of 500+ people, to 100, to 50 and now 10. So at first that meant no broadway shows, concerts, conferences, etc. But now it really is only grocery stores and hospitals that are functioning at full capacity. All restaurants and bars are closed, with only to-go or curbside meal options left. All gyms are closed. Any places of business that might have more than 10 people have limited their hours or closed. Movie theaters are closed! It really is quite remarkable to see how much everything has changed little by little. Things that really should be quite shocking are now just part of the new normal. There something new every day as we try to limit contact. Social Distancing is what they're calling it. Nobody is having anyone over at their house. Everyone is staying home and attempting to slow the spread of the virus so we don't overwhelm our hospitals. The newest big restriction is that the ENTIRE state of California is on lockdown. Yikes. It seems like once one state or city does something that eventually it will happen to us.

Church: We already knew that church was no longer having gatherings at the buildings and we were to do our own family service. There have been a few more changes even since that huge announcement. They've changed temple worship to only living ordinances, and even then there are restrictions on where you can schedule those. They really don't want people traveling for weddings and such. General conference was already going to not be attended by the general public, but they've scaled it down even farther to heed to the limit of 10 people by only having the speakers and people who pray be present for the live broadcast. Even the choir pieces have been pre-recorded. It will be different for sure, but a lot of people are looking forward to a spiritual boost during these uncertain times.  We held our first sunday family service and it was really nice. Each boy played a hymn, i gave a lesson and we worked together to come up with a family schedule.

Our new normal (until we need another new normal): We decided that our family need some structure to all this home time we were about to have. If you know me at all you know that this is not my typical jam. I hate planning every minute and feeling like I'm being held to some arbitrary schedule just because society says I need to. I'm terrible at doing things consistently and often feel a sense of relief when I break with routine. However, with all of us being home all the time, I knew if we just 'went with the flow', that a whole lot of Netflix and nothing would get done. I knew I'd find myself resentful of the laziness and angry. So in order to head that off we came up with a loose schedule that has served us very well this week.

We will need to adjust it starting on Monday now that they'll have more school work, but it has really helped everyone feel some purpose and accomplishment throughout the day. We even exercised every morning as a family, which i think is super awesome. We need to stay active, and now that all of our usual means of physical activity are no longer available we gotta do something. We even got our bikes all fixed up, because guess what? The outdoors aren't off limits... yet! (hopefully never. I have a friend in Italy and they aren't allowed outdoors :(

Dan leads our morning exercise routines!

Grocery shopping has been interesting too. Some cities and states are dealing with a lot of people hoarding supplies, and we are among them. It definitely adds another level of complexity to the issue when you can't consistently find the essentials. Especially if we're all going to be home all the time, there's a lot of cooking that's going to be happening. (And can I add, i've had to run my dishwasher like 3x more than usual this week?) I took a few pictures of my one venture out to the grocery store this week. It was a madhouse. Guess what? There is absolutely no need for this. There's no break in the supply chain (yet) and all of the grocery store warehouses are fully stocked. But people are hoarding and that creates a ripple effect of others hoarding once they finally can get their hands on an item. Ugh. So unnecessary. I put in a curbside order last Sunday that I can pick up on Monday, and I'm curious if that will work to help avoid long lines and crowds and get the items I need for the week. Fingers crossed!

No eggs

Where's all the produce?!

My long line- about 45 minutes

Police support for crowd control 

This is hard you guys. Sometimes I have really good moments where I'm glad to have my family around, I see them doing things they would not have done otherwise because of how busy life gets. Then other times I'm overwhelmed by the statistics of the virus and it seems so awful. It's scary. It's out of our control. I get frustrated by being home all the time and not always knowing how to fill the time. I get impatient with the kids and my brain feels fuzzy a lot, so I'm working on finding more things for me to do other than help everyone else find things to do. We can really only take it one day at a time, and those days are feeling like eternities.  There's talk of this virus taking 6 months, and I've even heard 18 months for us to recover. This is one for the history books for sure. Yes there are lots of positives and I feel particularly blessed that the struggles our family is having are very minor compared to a lot of people. We aren't hurting for money, we have food, shelter, health, and are safe. I really worry for those that are in abusive homes and now they are home all the time. I worry for those who have to continue working and come in contact with those who may have the virus. I worry for those military families who are stuck in between duty stations without their stuff for who knows how long. I worry for older members of our family that are more susceptible to catching the virus (but the stats aren't looking so good for other age groups in the USA either!). Our family has very little to worry about and for that I feel thankful. And if I'm gonna be stuck with people for months on end, they're the ones I'd choose to be with.

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Alex had a Zoom meeting with the Deacon's quorum on Sunday

And a FaceTime piano lesson on Thursday

Taking a walk outside with Alex- the bluebonnets are wonderful to see right now

Lots of Guitar Hero and puppy snuggles. I'm sure Carson loves having us home all the time

My mom sent me some puzzles they were done with. Sweet! New project!

Stay safe, informed, positive and home, y'all!

Spring Break and COVID-19

We have thoroughly enjoyed our Spring Break. Despite Dan having to go out of town, we took advantage of our friend's campsite reservation and camped at Lost Maples State Park with them! Honestly the best part was having no cell service and just being out in nature. We had a little rain at the beginning, but the rest of the time the weather was fair and pleasant.

I warned the boys that since Dad wasn't coming I would need them to really step up and be good helpers so I didn't do all the work, and we all know that camping = work. Here they are setting up the tents!

Carson joined us! I think he had an OK time. He's not a fan of fires or being tied to stationary objects, or tents, or.. well... anything. But he did enjoy our hike on day 2!

Exploring the campground

Wet puppy paws! These ones are from our friend's dog Cooper, a less than year old golden doodle. He likes to jump and say hi!

Camping also = good cookin'! First night was fajitas!

There was a large field behind our campsite so lots of room for frisbee and tossing around of other objects.

Carson, cuddled up by the picnic table.

The store was out of the normal large marshmallows, so the next best thing was these jumbo marshmallows! Mmmm.....

The first night we all slept pretty good. I'm not the best sleeper anyways, so new noises and places made for a restless night. It was a tad chilly too, but we were ready for Day 2 of our camping adventure. That morning we made breakfast tacos and got ready for a hike!

We took the west loop from our campsite which made for almost 6 miles roundtrip. It was pretty, and pretty rocky so my feet and calves were toast by the end. Still love me a good hike though!

Mountain Laurel is blooming in some places!

Cade and Chloe led the pack.

Alex found us some awesome hiking sticks which came in handy crossing the creek/river back and forth.

Done!

We got back to the campsite around 2 and just enjoyed some relax time. Some took naps, the rest of us just sat and chatted for awhile. Cooper loved hanging with Cade!

Carson even took a nap in my lap while we were chatting, it was a nice afternoon.

Cade loves climbing stuff, and after awhile I wondered where he had gone and look where I found him.

It was time to start getting our dinner on. I offered to make a dutch oven dinner, and the plan was Jambalaya! I decided that even though we didn't need a fire (I could've used a charcoal chimney), I wanted the challenge of doing it with a fire. My fire turned out awesome and so did our dinner!!

Feast on this!

Carson kept digging near the picnic table and I finally realized he was doing it because he was trying to make a little cozy spot for himself. Cute and sad all at the same time.

After a delicious dinner and a few more giant s'mores we played some Phase 10 until we were too tired to continue.

Day 3 we woke up, had bacon and pancakes and then got packed up and ready to go home! Even though camping is a lot of work, I really do enjoy it.

I told the boys they could each pick an activity to help fill out the rest of spring break. Alex picked the Science Mill up in Johnson City, which is about an hour north of San Antonio. If you haven't been there, it's definitely worth the trip. They also offer a 50% military discount. I didn't take many pictures because we had been there once before. However they had a new Virtual Reality exhibit that the boys got to try, and lots of robots to play and battle with.

Here's Cade on the VR machine, swimming like a turtle through the ocean.

Here's Alex's turn.

More robots!

While we were at the museum we got word that Dan was coming home early from his work TDY, which meant we could do some spring break stuff together! Too bad he missed the camping, though. Friday Cade picked an outdoor obstacle course that is put on by the Ninja company the boys have classes at, Power Park Ninja. The boys and I did this course awhile ago but this was Dan's first time. 

Before we started

A few during shots...

And after! Loved being outdoors and getting a workout together as a family!

Well that brings me to something that I feel needs to be documented and discussed.  A virus started spreading in Wuhan, China and most of us weren't really aware of it until January. It's one of those things that you watch on the news and maybe you would never think about it again, except it kept spreading. More and more people in China were getting sick at an alarming rate. They called it Coronavirus and that term started becoming a frequent news and conversation topic. I kept telling the boys not to worry about it because there were no cases in the US, and anyone who had the coronavirus had been in contact with someone from Wuhan, China, so no concern for us. Unfortunately the virus has now become a worldwide health crisis and things are starting to unfold that are unprecedented.

The virus itself isn't immediately deathly, but it can cause pretty severe respiratory distress for those with already low immune systems or elderly patients. Also because it is extremely contagious and the amount of time it takes to show symptoms (2 weeks!) is so long, it is spreading like crazy. Two countries in particular had major outbreaks with high mortality rates because there was just no way the medical personnel could keep up. As the cases in the US finally came and started their inevitable spread we have witnessed life as we know it come to a complete halt. Cities and organizations have made these changes in an effort to slow the spread of the virus, which should hopefully keep us from becoming another Italy or Iran. I want to document a brief timeline of how our personal life has been affected and I may continue to log a few things as they unfold in the future just to refer back to.

Before our camping trip:

• Coronavirus, or COVID-19 as it is officially called now that has killed a certain number of people, was very much on our minds, but we were just on spring break and not anticipating anything like what was to come
• Seattle had the most cases in the US, and only a few states had confirmed cases
• San Antonio had no confirmed cases except for the hundreds of cruise passengers staying at Lackland AFB to quarantine off the ship for the recommended two weeks to make sure they didn't show any symptoms before rejoining society
• The Church had begun to send senior missionaries from certain countries home, and of course quarantine for 2 weeks before rejoining society. Some temples had closed based on local outbreaks.
• Friends stationed in South Korea had their schools cancelled and work slowed. No big panics or running out of supplies, but staying home and cancelling events to keep from spreading the virus more. South Korea had a lot of cases but it didn't seem to spiral out of control.
• In the beginning of March the Church also encouraged people not to travel out of the country for General Conference, and they cancelled the leadership meetings that usually lead up to General Conference. I remember thinking that I needed to start keeping an eye on this and maybe buying a few more canned foods and such each time I went to the grocery store.

After our camping trip:

• Once my phone came back in service on March 11th Cade immediately started checking the stats of the virus. Of course it had spread, but the first big change was that General Conference was only going to be broadcast, members are not encouraged to attend. This impacted my sister's family as her husband and their 14 year old daughter were planning to fly to SLC and attend a session of General Conference. That's a pretty big deal for our church! In the same announcement the closed the Missionary Training Center and Stake Conferences past March 16th were canceled as well.
• Colleges in San Antonio extended their spring break by one week to help combat the virus. This impacted me because our Brass Band rehearses at a university and we aren't allowed on campus.
• That evening President Trump suspended travel between the US and Europe for the next 30 days.
• A few NBA players tested positive for the virus so the NBA canceled the rest of the season!
• Tom Hanks and his wife tested positive for the virus as well. I thought that was a joke because he's been in so many survivor type movies, but I guess he's just human like us! 
• March 12th- I took the boys to the science museum despite troubling news.
• Found out that the conference Dan was going to attend in Oklahoma was canceled so he got a flight home! Yay for a bonus from all this craziness! I know it's not good for his work, but we like having him home.
• The Church came out with a statement basically telling us that there will be no more large gatherings until we hear otherwise. No church meetings on sundays, no weekly youth activities, no nothing! This means we can't have Cade's eagle court of honor on March 28th. It is postponed until who knows when, and that means my mom and brother can't come visit.
• Disneyland and Disneyworld closed!!! What?! That also meant that my sister's family couldn't go on their spring break vacation. How awful!
• Went grocery shopping and it was a nuthouse. People are legit freaking out and buying everything. You can't find toilet paper anywhere for some strange reason.
• March 13th- Took the family to the Power Park Fitness, but on the way there I found out my Brass Band competition has been cancelled. I'm super sad about this because we have put SO much work into that music, especially our percussion section. Oh my, I'm heartbroken that we can't go compete on these pieces. Also I was going to fly into Chicago and drive with my dad to the competition so he could hear me play and we could spend some time together. Our plans have been thwarted again!
• I also found out that my brother's company is requesting that they work from home from now until the near future. 
• The president declared a national state of emergency.
• San Antonio got its first confirmed case of the virus that's not a cruise passenger.
• San Antonio moved its largest festival, Fiesta, to November! That's huge for San Antonio.
• NEISD, our school disctrict, extended our spring break as well. 

It just feels like the beginning of a lot of things to come. No concerts, no big festivals, no sports, no school, no travel, no nothing! I know it's all to help slow the spread of the virus, but it is just so strange to be a part of something like this. It has affected everyone I know in one way or another, and they haven't even gotten sick! Now we just get to wait, watch and see what comes next. Pray, wash hands, get some canned food and talk to you soon!