Pandemic Palooza: Day 43

Yes. Day 43.

Can you believe we've been at this for so long?

Yesterday I realized it feels normal now. I know the phrase "new normal" has been thrown around a lot, but it hasn't really meant anything to me. How could anything about this be "normal?" But then, yesterday, it was. I've been doing this long enough that it's "normal" now. And it's been long enough that "Pandemic Palooza" (which was my phrase for what was supposed to be two-ish weeks) is just "life" now. 

Yikes!

Here are some of the things we've been doing lately:

Since we're all together all the time, we end up doing things as a family that we didn't do before. Like when we all sat around the picnic table in the rain and fried bacon. 

Last week we watched the Disney Sing-Along on ABC. 

You all know I adore Donny Osmond, right? But in the Donny Osmond drinking game I would include: 

1. Taking a shot every time he name drops (two shots for Michael Jackson)

2. Taking a shot every time he mentions that he was the singing voice of Shang in Mulan

I'm so happy Donny was able to make an appearance on the show, though. And the grandkid thing was really cute, and classically cheesy in all the Donny Osmond ways!

Last week was also very "social" as my book club had our second monthly Zoom meeting wherein we decided that if things got awkwardly silent (which happens a lot since we all worry that we'll start talking at the same time as someone else), we could just hold really still, and pretend the screen had frozen due to connectivity issues. 

The next night, I "got together" on Zoom with two of my best friends, and we spent a significant amount of time demonstrating double chin exercises and pulling faces together. 

We did our obligatory sidewalk chalk mosaics:

(Just had to let Cyndi know, since she already fulfilled this quarantine duty, and I hadn't yet). 

Last week was also Eva's birthday! 

My baby is FIVE!

To celebrate, we had big, tacky lettering put in our yard by Sign Gypsies, reading "Happy 5th Birthday, Eva!" (She loved it)! And then we invited friends and family to drive by between 5:00-6:00 pm. 

The drive-by was so much fun! 

Scotty's mom (who lives just up the street from us) drove past in all of her different vehicles and threw a different "prize" to Eva each time. It was hysterical. My mom also drove around the block repeatedly for the entire hour and gave Eva a present each time. 

Here she is with her half-gallon of milk (she's a milk junkie):

After a long period of rest, the earth started shaking again, and we had two 4.2 aftershocks. The first one was at night, and Zoe and Eva had just fallen asleep and (luckily) slept through it (otherwise they would have insisted on sleeping in our room). The second one was in the morning, and we were in the thick of school when it hit. Zoe retreated under the table immediately and didn't come out for a few hours. 

One day last week it rained pretty heavily in the morning. When I went out for my morning walk, there were worms everywhere. When the kids started getting restless and needed a break from school, we went out worm hunting. 

Zoe was our score keeper (tallying the worms). Nicky was our picker-upper. We got 65 worms before we had to go home because it was too cold. Nicky fed the worms to the chickens, and they were really excited!

We opened our 4th (or was it our 5th?) box of sidewalk chalk. 

Eva and I shampooed the couch. It's always fantastic to pour dirty couch water down the drain and think about my filthy family. 

Eva has already spilled milk and smashed cookies on the couch since then. 

We play outside constantly. I bought some 14' playground jump ropes on Amazon, and we have been jump roping a lot. Nicky and Daisy can do double dutch. Zoe has mastered jumping with a single rope. Now she's working on entering and exiting while it's turning. 

On Saturday Scotty took the training wheels off Eva's bike, and after 15 minutes, she mastered the two-wheeler!

(My kids have been horrible potty trainers, but they've made up for by being natural bike riders). 

One day the kids made a tin foil river.  

They've also made a lot of blanket forts in the front yard. Multiple times this week, they've hung out in their forts for most of the day. Our garage now hosts a big pile of blankets because the kids play with them outside daily. Yesterday Nicky made Eva and Zoe hammocks to hang on the fence. 

We had another weenie roast.

My mom brought the kids white t-shirts and puffy paint so they could paint t-shirts. 

Note that Zoe does her own hair most of the time, and she's actually pretty decent at it for her age. 

Scotty's rope obsession is as strong as ever. The other day he had all the kids attempting to climb a tree with his rope. 

Scotty has a newfound obsession with metal detecting after he and Nicky found a bunch of junk with Nicky's metal detector last weekend. In addition to the pile of blankets in my garage, I now have several bags of rusty, useless metal. The best thing they've found: 15 cents. 

For my birthday, my sister-in-law gave me a 2,000 piece Pixar puzzle. We busted it out the other night and got started. My usual puzzle comfort zone is 500-700 pieces. This is definitely the biggest puzzle I've ever done! 

It's still underway. 

Yesterday we celebrated Earth Day - which we don't usually do. I mean, I love the Earth and all, but I don't throw an annual party for it. This year it offered us a break from the repetition of the days, so I printed out some Earth Day BINGO cards and let the kids make Earth cookies. 

The days are still long, but the weeks are still fast. Time is passing, and we're doing okay.