COVID-19 and the Social Distancing + Lots of Family Time

A nasty virus that started in China began to spread throughout the world. At first the info we got was that it was just kind of like a respiratory flu, but if you were older or had preexisting conditions, it had a high fatality rate. Then, it hit Italy pretty hard. The problem was that there were so many cases so quickly. People needed hospital beds, and the hospitals were completely overwhelmed. It had spread too quickly, and the resources were not available to deal with it. A lot of people died in Italy. So the rest of the world essentially shut down in response. The idea was to "flatten the curve" or rather to slow the spread of the virus in order to not overwhelm the healthcare systems and facilities. Everyone is going to eventually get it, but if the spread could be slowed, people to get the help that they needed when they needed it.

In order to "flatten the curve" the various governments issued stay at home orders for everyone. School ended up closing for the rest of the school year. Businesses were required to let employees work at home if possible. Lots of businesses are being forced to close because they are not allowed to have customers right now. Unfortunately, this means that the economy has been hit really hard. Some businesses like Amazon, Walmart, and Costco are doing better than ever, but most businesses are seriously hurting. Airlines are being hit hard, which doesn't help John's job at all. Honeywell has a lot of business in after market airline repairs, but if the planes are not flying then they don't need repairs. Unfortunately Honeywell isn't the only company ailing. Unemployment is higher than anytime since the Great Depression. The federal government passed a stimulus package that gave anyone who paid taxes a check in the mail. The amount depended on your income and people in your household. It is all not good though. Honestly the economy stuff makes me more worried than the actual virus, although I don't love that either.  Anywhere that you do go, you have to maintain social distancing practices. Essentially that means, a lot of hand washing, everyone needs to wear masks, and you have to stay at least 6 feet away from everyone else. We also call this situation a quarantine. We are really not supposed to go anywhere except if we absolutely have to. In addition, people started going a little crazy. Everyone was trying to stock up on everything (especially toilet paper) so it was pretty difficult to get cleaners and paper goods for a while. Okay, it is still difficult to get cleaners, but hopefully that changes soon. We got a little crazy when we couldn't get ice cream for a while. Not okay. :) 

My doctor had some pretty strong words for me about being extra careful. John is not high risk. The children are not high risk (thankfully children have a extremely low mortality rate for this virus), although apparently children are often the carriers to bring the virus to those of higher risk, which is why schools had to be closed. But because I am pregnant I am in a high risk category--not really because of the baby (they don't really know yet if there are complications of getting it in utero) but because my lung capacity is so compromised because of the limited space in my torso. John now does all of the grocery shopping and any other errands that has to be run. He even wears a mask while he is out and about. In addition to being extra careful at our house. We try to disinfect everything that comes into our house. We are very careful about washing hands after grocery shopping and sterilizing door knobs and steering wheels and anything else that got touched. The kids have heard a zillion times to wash for 20 seconds if they touch anything that has just come into our house. The kiddos haven't gone anywhere except on walks or bike rides around the neighborhood for 9 weeks so far. Thank heavens that they have been so sweet to each other. Most of the time they get along great. 

At first Honeywell didn't want to let employees work from home, but they eventually had to cave to government pressure. So John has been working at home since March too. Church meetings are even cancelled too. I talked about that in my previous post.  All of this means way, WAY more family time than we are used to.

This family time has been a wonderful byproduct of all of this mess. I feel a little bad about how much I have been enjoying it. We thoroughly enjoyed the cool weather of March by doing things like have dinner outside on the cement pad. We were also trying not to go to the grocery store, which gave us a good excuse to get some steak out of the freezer.

I like how Holland and Miriam both have cheeks stuffed with food. It was that good. 

For St. Patrick's Day we got out the 3D pen, which we haven't really used that much and made a grove of shamrocks. Notice that we are all wearing green. 

Of course, we used the holiday to make a little treat: graham crackers with cream cheese cinnamon frosting dyed green. 

We had one solid rainstorm which is still pretty exciting in these parts. This also serves as a before picture on some yard work wee did. John leaf blew and then we built up the berms around the trees and added fresh wood chips. I think it looks pretty great. Unfortunately we apparently didn't wait for all of the leaves to drop from the Tipu trees, which means it could really use another leaf blow.

With the schools being closed, it took the district a couple of weeks to figure out their distance learning programs. This meant that we just did our own thing for a while. We used these cute charts from Rad and Happy to track our daily tasks, and then everyone chose a "want to" to write in the box at the bottom. That meant we all got rewarded by doing something fun after our work.  Holland loved being able to watch the girls do all of their practice work on the computer. She loves screens. 

Eliza is here to tell you about the schedule.. The first week school was canceled, we had pretty much nothing to do. The next week, we had a schedule worked out. We had to do our piano lesson, dishes/get ready, scriptures/prayer, 30 minutes of IReady (a math program), 30 minutes of Typing Club, exercise, and workbook. The first week of this, Miriam got up early and finished her piano lesson then relaxed for an hour. I quickly caught on and the next week I got up early, did my piano lesson, and then got ready and did my workbook and scriptures. By the third week, we knew that Daddy was awake and working at 7:00, so it became a race to get your piano done first so you could ask Daddy to use the computer to do IReady or Typing Club. Then, you would let the other person have a turn, and watch them if they were doing IReady. The reason for this was the cupcake game. You deliver cupcakes to people in a certain amount of time and earn toppings like chocolate cakes, chocolate frosting, and cherries. Typing Club was less interesting but still fun to watch. A week or two into this, Mommy discovered that the cupcake game was not actually what we were supposed to do on IReady. We reluctantly did lessons for 25 minutes before playing. 

When distance learning started, we did pretty much the same thing except instead of IReady we did Google Classroom (Schoolwork), and we did 15 minutes of Typing Club. Also, I crocheted two rows on the baby blanket, and Miriam practiced saying r's. After I finished the blanket, I did the borders. By then it was the week before Mother's Day, so instead of crocheting, I worked on Mother's Day stuff with Miriam. My Google Classroom usually includes 2-3 pages of ELA, a fifteen-minute ELA video, 1-8 pages of math, and on Fridays, I only had two specials and a science page+video. It was an unwritten rule that you couldn't do computer work until you finished your piano. However, now we share piano lesson books, so we can't do our piano at the same time. Also, Miriam has been having several-hour Google Classroom work, so now she does her computer stuff first and when she takes a break to get dressed, I do all of my computer work. Somewhere along the way, I discovered that things go a lot faster if before I came downstairs I got dressed, made my bed, took my retainer out, took my Zyrtec pill, and brushed my hair. Now I usually get my work done at lunchtime.

Holland's daily tasks include getting dressed for the day and brushing her teeth.  She also has to unload the clean silverware from the dishwasher, do two pages of preschool work with me, practice reading, listen to a Friend story, and do a little exercising (like 20 jumping jacks). 

At first the exercising was a lot of fun. We did youtube videos as a family. It was pretty fun to find kid workout videos and have the support of doing them all together. Unfortunately then my third trimester hit. For the first time in my pregnancies, I started having to deal with nausea again after 18 weeks. At least I got about 10 weeks off. What this meant was that exercising made me super sick and sleeping in became a requirement. Also, snacking on crackers and the occasional soda were needed. One of my favorite snacks right now is crackers with almond butter. 

I guess I was the driving force behind family workouts because they ended as soon as I stopped doing them. The girls still do some exercises everyday, but it isn't the same as doing them as a family. 

One day, Miriam and I made pizza rolls as one of her goals in the new Children and Youth Program. 

Another day, we got the idea of making a fairy house as our want to for the day. It turned out pretty cute. 

There was a perfect little mossy patch by the a/c that arranged just so to make a little fairy garden behind the trampoline. 

Of course other accessories followed, like a bridge, table and chairs. They also hung a cute little leaf swing on the a/c.

In similar fashion, one night we had to break out the gingerbread house making kit that never got used at Christmas. It had expired April of the previous year, so we didn't want to save it until the holidays again. The frosting was a little hard to use, but it was still fun to put together. 

Someone told me recently that she and her husband thing Miriam is a little Emma Watson look a like. We looked up photos and can definitely see a resemblance. 

We have also been particularly good about doing at home dates recently. This has been fun to look forward to each week. This one date night with the oreo was part of a minute to win it game night.

Holland is missing her best friend Sophie. She writes occasional notes to her, and we send a photo. They are pretty sweet. 

Because of the downturn in the economy, Honeywell promptly announced two furlough weeks. They were split up by about month. The first one was at the end of March/first of April. We decided to take advantage of the good weather to restain our front door. It had gotten a couple of big dings in it when we were taking out our old appliances so we thought the best want to fix it would be to sand it down and restain it. We thought this would take us a couple of days, but it actually took the whole week plus. 

First, using stripper and sanding ended up being a huge headache. It turned all of the finish soft which then gunked up the sand paper, even after we had scraped off as much as possible by hand. John ended up just sanding the other side to death, which was okay, but the handwork inside the groves took some time. 

Once we finally had the finish off we didn't realize how much waiting time we would need between coats of stain and finish. It took a bit, but it was okay.

In the meantime, we locked our security door and put a couple of things across the opening for privacy and insulation. We had to put the piano in front of the bookcase because we didn't want to tip over on our children.

This furlough week became a week of house projects. One project that only took a day was to repaint the whites in the family room to match the brighter whites of the kitchen. We have had trouble matching the initial color of white paint that we painted everywhere in the house so we had several colors of white going on in that room.

This corner actually showcase four different colors of paint. Pretty classy. It makes me realize how much of a brighter white we picked for the kitchen.

We (John) also hung up curtains in the family room instead of the vertical blinds. We put insulation on a/c line into the house. We did a couple of small projects like labeling the breaker box and cleaned the shower head with vinegar to get the hard water off. 

We also spent way too much money that week, especially considering how John wasn't getting paid that week. But we had to take advantage of all of that time off work to get a ton of house projects done. Especially we wanted to prioritize finishing up the kitchen/family room project. This meant that we ordered blinds, a new desk, book case, and a ton of other odds and ends of project work. Fortunately we were planning on doing these updates anyway, so it didn't feel too extravagant (that's what I am telling myself). 

Perhaps my favorite project of the week was fixing the sliding glass door. John took it out, cleaned and oiled the rollers, and put it back. It rolls so much smoother now. Hallelujah!

We think one of the rollers might be a little broken, so we might end up replacing it sometime in the future, but for now it is so much better. 

Yay, we finished the door! We also changed the hardware to match a little better. 

We think it turned out pretty great, considering how much of a turkey it was to do. 

Another date night, this one was a digital date night from the Dating Divas. We love each other.

That weekend was General Conference, but it was unlike any conference we have had before. First, there was no live audience that the speakers were addressing. The only people in attendance stayed 6 feet away from each other and were there because they had to be. It was broadcast from a small auditorium in the conference center. 

It was also the 200th anniversary of the First Vision, so there were a lot of messages about that, including a new proclamation about the restoration, a hosanna shout, and a new emblem for the church. One thing that seemed unusual for me was that there were two youth speakers in the Saturday evening session. There were more temples announced, and it was a great two days.

Eliza worked hard on her baby blanket while she was listening. It's so soft. 

Making progress!

Of course we also have use this family time to play extra games. We think it is so fun that our kiddos can play a bunch of games with us now. Here we are playing Alhambra. we loved spying Holland in the background, reading the actual Book of Mormon. :)

Cutie pie. 

When we got the new bookshelf set up, we moved the old one up to Miriam's room. We find that we need to keep increasing our book storage even though we really don't buy very many books. Our poor kids have been without a library during the quarantine, which meant that we see a lot more of them. :) They still listen to audiobooks and read ebooks though. 

We also happened to check out the movie "The Sound of Music" from the library right before this all happened. It has been fun to see my Mary Poppins loving girls fall in love with another Julie Andrews character. Plus that music has been on tips of their tongues for weeks. 

After a week or two we also instituted our Summer Bucks system. This is a fun way for them to earn extra fun things or just money. Holland used her summer bucks to buy a special treat of Unicorn ice cream and waffle cones. She was a fan.

John and I used another Dating Diva's product to do another great date night. We visited Australia for this date, with looking up cool landmarks online, trying traditional recipes, taking a little quiz, and playing pictionary Australia style. It was more than enough for one date night so we split it into two. 

We had to share our fancy drink recipe with the girls. We're big fans.