Quarantine 2020

Matt and I recently celebrated our 14th anniversary and read through journals that I kept from when we were dating, engaged, and newly married. There were so many events I had written about that both of us had completely forgotten! I'm so glad that I documented it because most of the time I assume we will remember this or that event, but apparently after so many years those memories start to fade. With that in mind I felt like I should document this interesting time of life currently in our home and the world because I don't have any form of social media to document photos, which I thank my lucky stars I got off of that (yes, referring to social media like it's a drug because it was one for me) because I would have lost my mind. 

I had surgery scheduled on my thumb on March 17th right before the kids spring break. I had originally asked for just spring break off to be able to be home with the kids, but I had to wait until my stitches came out before I could return to work so I had an extra few days off in addition to spring break. 

The weekend right before my surgery I went snowboarding one last time up at Tamarack with my friends Lisa and Annie. The days leading up to it each of us were feeling like maybe we shouldn't go because as more and more cases of COVID were popping up the news was making it sound like the world was ending, and we all were feeling uneasy about leaving our families for the weekend. Ultimately we decided on Friday that we would go up to Lisa's cabin just for one night instead of two. We left Friday evening around 4, stayed up that night until midnight talking, laughing and also wondering if school would be closed come Monday. We then skied all day Saturday in fresh powder and had lunch with another friend who happened to be up there that same weekend, called it a day mid afternoon and got back home by dinner. Saturday night we found out school would be in session within our school district, but then so many of the others districts closed that later that night a second email from our district went out saying school would actually be closed. So the kids were out that week, the following week would be spring break and the plan at the time was that they would return to school after spring break. 

Sawyer was ecstatic to be out of school for two whole weeks!! He was going to miss out on having to present a project that he was already dreading having to present, so he was over the moon he didn't have to do it. 

Scout was bummed because she LOVES school, her friends, and her teacher. 

I was happy that the timing worked out that I would be able to be home while they were out of school due to having surgery on my hand. 

That following Monday after being at Tamarack, the ski resort closed so we were so glad we were able to go that one last time! We were even more grateful for that one last girls trip later on down the road with the stay at home order extensions. At the time we had no idea what lie ahead! 

Doing home schooling, or as my friend who legitimately home schools calls it,  "crisis schooling". Our district didn't have a plan in place for remote learning until another two weeks after spring break when we found out would likely not be returning to school at all this year. :(

During that time I was working three days a week, Matt was working (from home as per the last ten years we've lived here in Idaho) and somehow between our two work schedules we managed to have the kids do school work, that is for at least the first month of staying at home. I printed packets the night before and would lay out their assignments on the kitchen table for them the next morning. The schedule went really well for, like I said, the first month. They got up, had breakfast, got dressed and brushed their teeth and then did their schoolwork with some breaks in there for jumping on the trampoline, watching some educational videos I had selected the night before, and some crafts mixed in there. 

On some of my days off I would have a work meeting from home either calling in or using Zoom. My little buddy liked to join me quite often for those so she would play barbies while I listened to the call, keeping it on mute as long as I possibly could so my colleagues didn't hear my "little associate" in the background playing. 

Once our district came up with a plan we were to pick up packets from the school each Monday or print at home. It was all review because they couldn't roll out new material since not every family within the district had access to a computer or internet or even a vehicle to pick up the material. I wondered how other families were managing. With Matt and I each working, we struggled with finding the time to answer questions and teach them. If they followed the packet to a T each day (doing specials like PE, music, and art) they would be doing schoolwork until 2pm and neither of had the time to monitor that (unless I was home from work and in even in that case it was difficult to get them to want to participate for that long!!). Usually on my days off we instead went on a "field trip" to explore Idaho, at least until the orders got more and more strict and we had to stay at home. 

We went and explored Bruneau sand dunes with my parents and brought a sled to slide down the hill on. 

We did lot of crafts like painting rocks. 

Which wouldn't be complete without sparkles of course!

We picked out and planted some seeds and watched them grow. Tomatoes, strawberries, basil, dill, green onion, thyme. 

We had a sleepover upstairs (myself and the kids) for almost the entire quarantine time! 

We watched Stargirl on Netflix and fell in love with Grace Vaanderwaal so Scout wanted her hair cut to match hers.

Zooming with my besties. 

Started going back to work in April and found out that wearing a mask for 9-10 hours takes some getting used to! I was super dizzy the first day and had a migraine by the end of it. Right now though I just worked five days in a row and now am totally unaffected by the lack of fresh oxygen ;)

Our seeds actually turned into live plants!! This was very exciting for both my kids and myself as I am known to have the opposite of a green thumb and have succeeded at killing succulents in the past, which apparently are very hard to kill. 

We continued having the sleepover upstairs and the kids loved it. We also camped out in the backyard in April and it was really fun despite the temps being in the 20's one night!  I know my kids are going to have a difficult time when I put the kibosh on this slumber party business. I think they have found it really comforting to all be in the same room (besides Matt who is downstairs snoring with the dog who also snores), during such an unsettling time in their lives. We would usually be in bed by 8, Scout and I in the bed and Sawyer on a mattress on the floor and I would read a book to them. The first was Rules for a Knight by Ethan Hawke and it was SO good!! Then the next one was The Blue Book of Stories and it was so funny that Sawyer and I would be cracking up through almost every chapter. Now we are on book six of the ten thousand Junie B. books that Scout got for Christmas and those ones are equally hysterical. 

One day for a fun activity we took Sawyer's helmet camera that he got for Christmas and attached it to the front of his bike. We then went on a bike ride around the block, came home and watched the video on tv while we did a scavenger hunt to find things that would have been seen in the neighborhood to see if we could spot them on the video. 

We also made snow globe one day with our old toys.

We made homemade play dough and then went wild and put glitter in the play dough. We were really living it up around here. 

We taped messages for our teachers on the outside of their windows looking in so they could see them when they were in the classroom. 

We dyed eggs for Easter. 

More play dough pics and I am too lazy to move them up with the other playdough pics (likely from working 60 hours in the last five days, yuck). 

One of was also lost not one, not two, but THREE teeth during quarantine! This is of the first front tooth she lost. 

Begrudgingly doing more schoolwork. 

Discovering there was a magical case of toilet paper at Costco randomly one day and feeling like we won the lottery. 

Another reason why she wanted her hair cut. 

We played a lot of card games and did a lot of puzzles, and somedays got dressed. 

We went to the park just to get out of the house and eat outside, even if the playgrounds were closed it was still something to do. 

We did more crafts. 

Also shirtless again. She really does get dressed sometimes. 

And I had to document just how empty the last two weeks of March were. I've never had a month that looked like that before and to be honest, it was really nice. I wasn't working then, because of my hand surgery, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also thoroughly enjoyed being home with my kids, playing games, doing puzzles, reading books before bed, having slumber parties, eating dinner together and all meals for that matter, around the table. It was really a sweet time as a family. And then that sweet time ended by the end of April when I was back to work, the kids had WAY outgrown their desire to do schoolwork, their only desire in life was to tease each other and fight and drive their parents crazy, even our dog could feel the chaos and began peeing in random spots in the house, and then the real gut punch..... Matt was laid off from his job. That was the most unexpected part of the whole quarantine. More to come on that.