In the past week we have still seen a lot of change, but for some reason it's just not as shocking anymore. What? School will be closed another week you say? Alright. What? Now the disc golf courses will be closed? If you say so. State parks are closed now too? Sheesh. I'm not sure that there's really much left to do except walk and run around our neighborhoods! Current stats are 1,430,941 cases worldwide with 82,026 deaths worldwide. US has 400,335 cases and 12,841 deaths.
Today, however, isn't just like any other day. It's Cade's 14th birthday! Before all of this stuff happened Cade was excited for his birthday because for the first time in a few years both parents would be home, AND it was his year to have a party. He was excited to do a BBQ and an outdoor hangout with his friends. However Covid-19 had other plans and we will have to save that outdoor celebration for another time. Instead we are letting him take a break from our routine and cater our meals and activities for the day to things of his choosing. We've had the traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast, presents, guitar hero, riding bikes, and making his favorite dinner- kielbasa and noodles.
I always make them a birthday shirt, but this year needed a special statement, lol.
He loves using the website MuseScore to find arrangements of pieces, so as a gift he got a year subscription to their Pro services!
Smelling his mints...
I caught a smile!
Using his new wireless earbuds
His favoritest dinner ever...
And for a last minute surprise I ordered this awesome cookie cake from our local Great American Cookie company. Cade totally wasn't expecting it, he had requested a pazookie. I thought we needed something to commemorate this unique birthday, and support local businesses!
It turned out awesome, don't you think??
Here's a few pictures from our week since I last blogged. Dan decided to practice some social distancing by going out on a motorcycle ride. I got a call a few hours later that he had a flat tire! He was 90 minutes away and the tow company wouldn't tow that far without an extra charge, AND they wouldn't tow him back along with his bike. So reluctantly (because i've never trailed anything before) I got a motorcycle trailer from UHAUL and trailed it out to the middle of nowhere to rescue my hubby. Still working on getting his tire fixed!
We also finally finished the month of March which felt like an eternity. I got our April calendar all ready.....
Little did we know this would be our last time playing disc golf until they open the courses back up. We brought the puppy with us this time!
With a new month brought April Fool's Day! The kids had way too much fun planning pranks on us. Thankfully I've scared them enough that they didn't attempt anything that wouldn't leave us more upset than laughing. First were some cascarrones (confetti filled eggs) that Alex crushed on us.
Painters tape on Dan's wallet, our light switches, and even in our lamp shades to create bug silhouettes! They even put food coloring in our toilet.
We did a few pranks to the boys as well, including tying their doors together so they couldn't get out of their rooms. (Don't worry, we did this about 5 minutes before they were supposed to get up).
And this is what I found when I got in my car and hit the Reverse and my rear camera popped up. Good prank alex!
I finished another puzzle, with Alex's help, and started another!
Now here's how we have to do disc golf!
A cute Carson moment caught on camera. We sure do love our puppy!
We also spent Saturday and Sunday listening to General Conference. There were a lot of nice moments that were a source of strength during these unprecedented times in our history. And even though we had just done a worldwide fast as a church on March 29th, the prophet called for a second fast on Good Friday, April 10 for further healing and help for our world. We certainly need it! Feel free to join in, no matter your faith!
Well Happy 14th Birthday Cade! I loved that instead of sending you away to school and rushing through activities, that I got to spend the whole day with you. I know that's not necessarily what you wanted for your birthday, but we'll get you that party as soon as possible!
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!
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!
