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!