Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, Please Shine Down On Me!!!

WE GOT TO GO OUTSIDE TODAY!!!!!

(This photo is out of order and from this evening when the kids got to video chat with their Papa and cousin, Owen, in Pekin!)

Here's our outside pictures!!!:

Some of us feel like it isn't as warm as the other kids think it is:

We played outside all morning, so school work was done in piecemeal as kids came in to take breaks. Thomas found this cat costume and there was no need for him to wear a jacket the rest of the day.

We ended up deciding to have a big lunch and made pancakes, eggs, and bacon. The boys were very confused about what meal it was because lunch tends to be choosing what you want with fruit and a veggie tray.


Amazon delivered this precious cargo today:

 I was so flippin' excited!!! This is always a monthly delivery for us, and has been for almost a year, but I was worried they'd either be out or delayed. They didn't send the monthly soap we usually get, and it looks like it's been delayed, so we'll see when more hand soap reaches us...

The kids practiced safe social distancing today and talked to their friends from a distance. They said tonight at dinner that it was nice to see their friends, but that it was hard to not actually be near them. 

Evan and I went on a date walk tonight before dinner. You guys, it was so nice to get out of the house, to be outside, and to not have the kids interrupt me. I feel like a date walk every night might be a great idea!

Sometimes I think I'm not going to blog at night. I'm not really saying anything new (NOTHING NEW HAPPENS IN QUARANTINE!), but I know that writing down our days, even though they look and feel the same, is important for me. Writing this all down is a way for me to process all of this. I'm not very good at always allowing myself to feel the hard emotions. I tend to ignore or make light of things and I just feel like this isn't a good time to be putting my head in the sand. Not that I should make myself crazy by trying to read everything either, but there's got to be a happy middle.

Today at dinner the kids were asking when this would be over and it really sucks to not have answers for them.  They're all being great about this, but teaching and learning to sacrifice in such a big way is hard for them and for us. It's a big picture kind of sacrificing. It's the kind of sacrificing that really makes you dig down deep to explain why you are choosing not to live selfishly at this time in our history.

David calls the pandemic "the sickness". He reminds us to wash our hands after getting the mail or packages so that we can wash off "the sickness". When Evan was still going into the office last week, David would ask if he got "the sickness" at work. Even at four years old, he is listening and absorbing what we're saying and doing and processing it the best he can for his age. When they all look back at this time, I want them to know why we made the choices we did and why we chose to be strict with the recommendations about quarantining and social distancing.

I know so many of you are also sacrificing and that it is so damn hard right now. I know my ramblings are by no means earth shattering, but hopefully you feel less alone in the boring mundane of being stuck in the house; less alone in feeling like hearing one more bit of news might make your body implode with anxiety and fear; less alone in feeling like there are parts of being home all the time that are kind of excellent and other parts that are kind of hellish; less alone in general.

Here's to another day in quarantine, friends! May your toilet paper be stocked, your electronics fully charged, and you minds at least somewhat peaceful for part of the day!

Day 10.

Today was another day of...the same. 

We are back on our homeschool schedule and the girls were hard to get going. They acted like they had never math-ed before or written real words or whatnot.

It warmed up a bit today, but there was snow on the ground all morning and just another day of bleh weather.

Today a friend texted me to tell me there EGGS and RICE at a store in Rockford! Then she left them on our doorstep for us and it was the nicest thing in the whole entire world. Who would have ever thought someone finding eggs and rice would be such a Godsend?! My kids genuinely cheered.

I can't really tell you what else went on today. I know I said yes to a movie, I know kids played and talked to friends either on the phone or video chatting. I know I did laundry and made meals and tried to read for a while.

It was just a day where I felt unmotivated. It all felt really heavy and I didn't want to deep clean or rearrange things or tackle my to-do list or create anything. The outside world feels really far away and heavy.

I've decided to quit looking for news. I have one news source that I have found to be non partisan and factual and if she doesn't post, then I will assume that I don't really need to know. It's how I am keeping myself from going crazy looking at the news and panicking.

I think I need to make a list of things that I would like to get done during this time. I know that every day is not going to be productive. I think it is unwise to pretend like this isn't scary or stressful, especially because we do have to take this all one day at a time. However, despite my Sanguine/Phlegmatic temperament combo, which tends to me more big ideas with no game plan or go-with-the-flow, I need some more structure for days when I feel "end of the world-y" heaviness or like we all could use a game plan.

We are on day 10, with no real definite end date in sight, and I don't want to make unrealistic goals that end up making everyone in my house feeling more stressed, but I know that, for me, having a few big goals that I can slowly hack away at are good for me.

So, I am putting them down here for accountability:

1. Create a new chore chart. The one we had before was mainly for the summer and hasn't transitioned into the school year well at all. Plus, recently Thomas discovered his name wasn't on it and he cried tears of sadness for being left out.

2. Tackle our basement. The basement is an area for the kids, but it has never been organized in a way that fits all of our needs and that doesn't lead to it just getting trashed. I would like to really gut it and start over.

3. Finishing the younger girls room. We've been tweaking the JV Squad's room since forever. Their needs seem to keep changing as they age, and we just haven't ever completely finished organizing their room in a way that works for them.

4. Put up our picture wall upstairs. Man, this is a project I have been wanting to do since we moved in and just keep not getting around to doing.

5. Moving things around to accommodate us all being home all the time. Reorganize the kid bookshelf. Move some drawers to the living room to hold all the newly gathered art supplies. Get the leaf out of the dining room table so we can move around in there better as people are looking for places to do work and projects. (Uh, this should be my number one...)

6. Read every day.

 I pray tomorrow we can get outside. We could all use a break from being cooped up.

Quarantine Day 9

I had to do the math today because nine days both sounded like a lot and not very long. 

I couldn't sleep again last night. I read in bed until after midnight, but when I went to lay down and sleep, I just couldn't get my brain to quiet down. I ended up staying up until 3am, but Thomas woke up at 3:30 am crying for me, so I ended up crashing with him until he woke up and then zombie walked to my own bed and slept until 10:30.

We spent the day inside again. It was freezing outside and gloomy. The boys played superheroes while Evan and I drank coffee and read/watched a Cubs game from 1988.

The girls have decided to start sending letters to their friends. They are alternating between handwriting them and typing them. It was sweet to watch Julia help Vivian type her letter. (If you receive letters from us, you know, just disinfect them and wash your hands and whatnot!)

There is a lot of baking going on in our house. This weekend it was Evan making sourdough bowls for our leftover soup and it was DELICIOUS! I am very thankful for our baking bread cookbook.

After lunch we watched Mass from our Parish's website.

I printed out coloring sheets that went with the readings from the Bible.

Not going to Mass today was really hard for me. They zoomed out to show the full church so we could see the priests leaving and it was so empty. It was sad and weird and it hurt to see pews that we normally have to kindly ask people to skooch over (because we are always running at least 5 minutes late and the church is always full, no matter the Mass time) completely empty. I ended up going up stairs to cry for a while. I miss going to church, I miss receiving Mass, I miss seeing our friends.


We have resurrected our old Wii and original X-box so the kids can play video games. The boys were THRILLED to find out Evan had a race car game.

The kids have started video chatting with friends! We don't have FaceTime, so it's been over FB messenger. They've also been old-school talking on the phone. Like, just talking. They love that, too.

Here's my menu plan for the week:

I went to the Walmart app on my phone to put a few more things in my cart and went to see how far out I could reserve a time. They had no openings and weren't offering anything into the future. They said to check daily for future time slots. I'm not going to worry about that today (or tomorrow), but I had planned on making another grocery run at the end of the month, which is only 9 days away. But, as we all know, a lot can happen in nine days, so maybe I'll be able to place an order by then.

Oh, and it snowed today.

We caught up on our art from McHarper Manor (air dry clay animals!) and are ready to create art with them next week. Discovering them has definitely been a huge blessing in all of this.

We nixed making pancakes for dinner and decided on popcorn, a veggie tray, and chocolate chip cookies that Julia made. We also ate in the living room while watching Lego Masters.

David declared it was the best meal of his life and it felt like we were having a party!
I'm really glad he's so happy. He's probably loved us all being home together the mostest. He's definitely a homebody and likes having all of his people together where he can keep tabs on them.

Tonight when I was laying with Thomas, waiting impatiently for him to shut up long enough to actually fall asleep, he kept asking me what tomorrow was, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day. It's a game he loves to play (because he likes hearing the days of the week in order), but it was making me feel a little anxious because just saying those days back to him, knowing we're still going to be in this house, quarantined, not knowing what the future holds or when definite answers are going to appear, made me feel trapped (well, that and the fact that Thomas insists on holding the face of the person who is putting him to bed, and that also feels claustrophobic-y).

But, you know what, there's nothing you can do with unknowns. You can only focus on what you do know; with what is right in front of you. So, here's what I know:

-Evan has set up an office in our room with his monitors and laptop from work. He has to get work done, but he can come eat lunch with us and take a break as needed, and the kids like seeing him home during the day. I can also move dinner time up a bit (therefore moving bedtime up a bit) because Evan is already home, so I'm not having to wait for him to pack up and head home from his office.
-We were already homeschooling. Our schedule doesn't change except we don't have our science classes or co-op (which is a huge thing we miss). I am just going to keep going with our planned curriculum and add in the resources being so generously offered by people trying to help all of these kids having to do be home instead of at school.
-We have a great back yard and a beautiful neighborhood with sidewalks. It's one of the reasons we house hunted in this area. Starting tomorrow, unless the weather is unbearable, we're going to carve time to be outside moving.
-I have menu planned and we're good with food right now. I don't need to think about stores or grocery shopping again for a while.
-We have friends and family to lean on; who pray for us as we are praying for them; who miss us like we miss them.
-We will take it one day at a time. There's nothing else we can do.

Our Second Weekend of Quarantine

Yesterday I woke and got ready to be at Aldi when it opened. I had a list (our fav Aldi snacks, fresh produce, milk, coffee, cheese, meat) and had planned on maybe grabbing more rice and one more thing of toilet paper (ha! yeah right, like it'd be there). When I got there, this was the line:

I sent this picture to Evan and then had to calm myself down because this was what I had been worried about. No one was rude, everyone was polite and kind, but we were all on a mission, and most of us had hand written lists in our hands. A few people had on masks, but I've been seeing people driving around with masks for a bit now. 

They were completely out of eggs, flour, toilet paper (told ya), rice, most of the Mexican food selection (including tortillas), almost all the bread was gone, there was no chicken left but the drumsticks. There was tons of fresh produce, a good supply of milk (and I could take more than 2!), a good selection of pork and beef, no sliced cheese at all, but blocks of cheese was still available. They did have paper towels, which was good because I saw them and remember we only had 3 rolls left, but no baby wipes. Oh, and their frozen selection did not have much left to choose. They had whole hams (I'm just now realizing those are probably for Easter...), but I don't have room for a whole ham to live in my freezer right now. They did have their Winking Owl wines discounted and that was MUCH APPRECIATED. The lines there were long and for as many people as there were when it first opened, there were that many people coming in as I was leaving, so it was a steady stream of people.

I think not seeing the flour, eggs, and rice were hardest for me. That actually made me feel really wound up and I had to kind of talk myself down. I definitely cried in the car. I ended up making another trip to Valli because they always have the best produce and a great selection of meat (they were low on chicken, too, but did have all the produce). No eggs, no toilet paper, no rice, and they were almost out of flour. The lines there were ridiculously long, the longest I have ever seen them. Again, people were kind, workers were patient, but it was surreal.

I think we're going to mainly use Walmart pick up from now on, not only to avoid being in public, but for my anxiety levels. 

All that to say, I did leave with groceries. We are going to be fine for the next few weeks with another produce trip needed in probably a week or so. But, I didn't have it in me to blog yesterday. I decided to hole up and really dive into my book instead (which is wonderful!!! The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes) and watch the younger kids pretend to be superheroes and villians and play with kinetic sand.

Today, we had nothing planned but art projects we didn't get to during the week. Evan tried out the sourdough recipe from the baking cookbook I'm working my way through. He made the starter at the beginning of the week and then made sourdough bread bowls for us to eat leftover soup tomorrow for lunch! My favorite!

I am endlessly grateful for all of the art classes and tutorials sprouting up all over the internet. Painting with Thomas is not relaxing (by any means of the word), but he loves it, and once he paints his masterpiece, he tends to wander off and the rest of us can then take our time finishing longer projects. 

We are doing some sort of art project almost daily right now, which is not our norm, so I am going to be doing some rearranging to accommodate all of the supplies we have gathered (both from the basement and Amazon) to avoid getting them off of my dining room table.

I also read a lot today and banned most screens after 11am to avoid the rage that screen time tends to bring to my children when I let them use them too long.

We also have reinstituted saying our Favorite and Least Favorite at dinner time. I had wanted to bring it back to practice being quiet when people talk and listening to what they say (because dinner had become one, giant scream-fest), but I think it's going to be a great way to talk about what's happening and to look for positives. Everyone's Least Favorite is that we're stuck in quarantine, but everyone has had Favorites.

I'm worried about people I know starting to get sick, but I'm thankful for all these ways of communicating with them to keep tabs on them. I hate the news, but am checking it daily because I need to and have to. I'm trying to just think about tomorrow and not what next week will bring. So, with all of that turmoil, our plans today, our mood today in our house, was a balm.

It was a good day.