Pandemic Palooza: Day 63

Sixty-three days. Wow. 

Here's a little update on how things are going at this point. 

We're still doing school, but barely. Nicky and Daisy are doing great keeping up on everything. I've had to help Daisy with some projects - a rocks and minerals report, a county report, and an ancestor report. I've also had to help her a lot with math. Nicky hasn't really needed any help at all. He got a great review from his English teacher on his final project, so I'm proud of him for that! I've been requiring very little from Zoe. Most of her work feels like busy work to me, so I only have her to do the assignments that I feel really help assess where she is in her learning. She loves math, though, and will spend hours on math apps. I need to work with her more on reading and writing, but there's a lot of head butting that goes on with that. Friday is the last day of instruction. Hallelujah! Home stretch! I am so excited to take the Chrome books back to the schools. I want them out of my house!

The baby starlings hatched in our birdhouse on May 2. Here's a little comparison between how they looked right after birth and how they looked on day 11. It's been fun to watch them grow. They leave the nest after about three weeks, so that will be interesting to observe. 

We watched the second Disney sing-a-long over the weekend. Everything the Houghs do is genius, even in quarantine. And then there's Katy Parry...

Frankly, I'm worried about her. 

On Mother's Day we took gifts to all our moms. We also stopped by the assisted living center and called Scotty's grandma from the sidewalk to tell her to come to her window so we could wave. She stood there and bawled. It was really sad. She's been holed up in her tiny room for two months. I can't even imagine how disheartening and lonely that would be. 

After 15 years of planning to refinish our picnic table but never getting around to it, we finally did it!

I made all of the kids take a turn sanding, and everyone helped apply the stain. 

Last week we had our traditional "Familyversary" dinner. This is a fun thing we do for our anniversary each year to celebrate becoming a family. Everyone gets to pick something for the meal.

Scotty wanted frozen burritos. Nicky wanted queso and chips. Daisy wanted Funyuns. Zoe wanted Jell-O. Eva wanted chocolate cake. I picked pina coladas. It's always a crap-food fest. 

Last Thursday I stepped foot in a store for the first time since April 1st. I was curious how long it had been since I'd been inside a store, so I looked through my debit card transactions and discovered that the last time I went to the store was on the day of our April Fool's dinner. 

My store of choice was Sam's Club. While I've been gone (I hadn't been to Sam's Club since March 9th) the milk got weird!

I took Nicky and Daisy to a store for the first time the other day. They were a little weirded out by being in public. They haven't been exposed to the outside world, COVID-style, so the masks and the barriers in front of the cashiers and the signs everywhere were new to them. We just went to a cookie store to get a gift card for my friend for her birthday, and then I took Nicky with me to Lowe's later that day. 

This week, dance classes started back up. I was totally taken aback at the announcement that they were resuming classes, and I wasn't sure if I would send my girls. After taking some time to think it through, I felt okay about it. They are having class on a tennis court behind the dance studio, and they are keeping the girls 6' apart. Everyone is wearing masks. My girls have all been happy to go. They have rejoiced in being able to see their friends. 

Having to suddenly take three different girls to dance classes made me realize that I'm not exactly ready to reenter society just yet. I don't remember how to live like that - the driving from here to there, the scheduled events throughout the week. I fear being busy. I have absolutely fallen in love with the simplicity that has resulted from having this quarantine lifestyle forced on me. Having to live a simple life and choosing to live a simple life are two very different things. If I want to live in simplicity moving forward, I have to choose it. I have to make it happen. And that's so hard to do when the messages of society are in direct contrast to simplicity. It's amazing how fast the "be busy" mentality is creeping back in. The power of FOMO is real. 

We've continued having neighborhood scavenger hunts weekly, arranged by my neighbor, Jennifer. Last week the theme was "sports," so we did golf. The week before was "things that go," so we kind of cheated and left our golf cart up for two weeks. 

Last week was the fine super moon of 2020. I'm not really a "things of the sky" enthusiast, but I happened to be outside early in the morning on Tuesday and Wednesday, and both days, the moon was bright and huge! 

My crappy cell phone picture is pretty worthless in comparison to what the moon looked like in person. 

Last week was also our school's teacher parade. Since we don't live in the boundary of our school, we went and found a place along the parade route so we could watch. We were the only ones in the area, so it felt like the parade was just for us! It was so fun to see the teachers and staff of our school. 

Zoe's teacher, Miss V, is leaving the school, and I am so sad! She has been wonderful and was the perfect teacher for Zoe. She helped us get Zoe back into speech therapy, and she worked hard to keep Zoe on track after having to miss so much school for her tonsillectomy. I feel like she was truly an advocate for my child! 

We've been eating a lot of eggs during the pandemic, so even though we have chickens, I've been buying eggs still. We have an egg farm near our house, and they sell double yolkers. I've always wanted to buy some but never have until last week. We've been making double yolker toads for breakfast, and it's been a fun, little novelty. We only get about one double yolker a year from our chickens, so it was cool to have a whole dozen in our fridge!

Daisy informed me yesterday that she's sick of toads. I guess we'll take a little break. We've been having them 2-3 times a week. I think I might be starting to get sick of them, too. 

We've had the itch to go camping, but with the coronavirus and cold mountain nights, we haven't ventured out yet. So we went fake camping last weekend at Scotty's mom's house. 

We had a campfire and roasted marshmallows. Then we made breakfast outside in the morning. It was fun to "get away"... half a mile up the road. 

Our niece, Kaedyn, graduated from the University of Utah. Since she didn't get to walk at commencement (or convocation - I always get the two mixed up... whatever), my sister-in-law sent her on a scavenger hunt in her cap and gown, one destination being our house. 

While she was there, the fighter jets did a flyover to honor healthcare workers, first responders, and other essential workers. 

Surprisingly, we have only completed ONE puzzle during quarantine. My sister-in-law gave me this one for my birthday back in January. It's 2,000 pieces - the most I've ever done. I was so happy when we finished it and didn't have any missing pieces. I thought for sure we'd lose at least one.

We've been doing a ton of yard work. Scotty got a hand-me-down ride-on lawnmower from his grandpa who passed away a couple of years ago. He spent some time fixing it up to get it running, and now it's his pride and joy! He even waxed it to make it shiny.

We planted the last of our garden on Monday. Two summer ago we started renovating our garden. Then we inherited a free shed and had to re-think the garden plan to fit the shed. We put fresh weed barrier under all our planter boxes and sifted the soil really well before we put it back in. Now we're working on moving all the gravel out of our garden. We had some curbing put in last summer, and we are moving the rocks to the curbed areas. Scotty had to dig a huge trench along the foundation of our house to repair some cement work to prevent leaking. He finished that over the weekend. We still have a lot to do in the yard, but we've gotten some stuff done that we've been procrastinating for years.

As usual, we are doing fine. We have everything we need. The kids have really been amazing. I'm feeling a little discouraged about the way people are treating each other right now, though. When I started going to stores last week, it felt like people have gotten meaner. The last time I went to the store, people were still smiling at one another and speaking politely for the most part. It wasn't like that last week. No one looked at each other, and there was this unspoken divide between the mask wearers and the non-mask wearers. The employees at Lowe's (which I had to go to three times last week) were ornery. They're probably worn out. I get that! We're all sick of this to varying degrees, but good grief, can't we be kind? And don't even get me started on the comments I've seen on news articles and on social media. People are nasty. And you know what? I am, too. I've found myself feeling pretty negative toward other people lately. I hope this isn't what we go back to. I'm really worried about our ability to socialize and treat each other well in the future.

On that note... Happy Day 63!