Honestly, it's so hard to remember when this all started! Mid-March? It seriously felt like one day everything was normal and the next day the closings and lockdowns and cancellations just all started rolling in. The kids went totally virtual for school for the two weeks before spring break and we thought *surely* they would be back to school afterwards. Hah. Hah. Hah.
But we started out strong with all kinds of good intentions!
And "Zooms" very quickly became a part of our vocabulary and daily life--it was so dang hard keeping track of when everyone was supposed to be online for which class!
As you can see, we leaned into the playtime part of things HARD.
Neil and I started taking long bike rides together on Saturday mornings and Wednesday nights (haha, they seemed long then and it's something we can knock out easily in 60 minutes on the Peloton these days, because of course we bought a pandemic Peloton).
Bike rides and walks really came in clutch there.
Bike rides and walks really came in clutch there.
Me in April: "Aren't we lucky that we are all home together in spring? Imagine if we had to do this in winter!"
We added more chickens to our flock...
Because you know...pandemic eggs...
Planted our garden (the chickens had the best day!).
At one point, we were allowed to go pick up everyone's stuff from school, which was a pretty crazy day. It felt so weird to drop the kids off in their masks at our allotted time and wait for them to come back out with all their locker shelves and textbooks and half-finished projects.
Many many many walks.
Abigail got really into rollerblading but would get nervous on steep downhills and insist on holding my hand to slow her down, which I loved ("Oh my gosh Mom are you seriously taking a picture of this?").
We had a lot of family movies...
And we got used to using Just Dance and random YouTube videos to fulfill PE class requirements! (We also bought a pandemic giant TV later on because again why not, this is such a weird year.)
One day I decided to pressure wash our deck to see if I could strip off the blue paint from the previous owners and then after an hour I came in and told Neil we were going to replace the deck. Yay! So we ripped out the whole thing and rebuilt it all.
Lots of cute dropoffs from teachers!
And our new normal going to the store...which now seems so weird to go anywhere WITHOUT a mask (no longer wearing gloves and wiping down every single thing that enters our home, so that's an improvement).
One day we signed up for a slot to pick some socially-distanced strawberries...
More walks!! Many, many, many walks.
We baked SO much bread. Banana bread and sourdough like crazy and Juliet got really into making ciabatta.
After rescheduling it a few times we finally accepted that the pandemic was here to stay and went to the dentist...
Neil settled in to working from home...
We got increasingly creative with our strategies to keep elearning going. This was rough. I honestly have blurred it out just like childbirth. Like I really don't remember it much and if you tell me that we did it for 2.5 months I'll just sort of blink in disbelief.
This was in the "get dressed for work even if you aren't going to work" stage (now we have all embraced the joggers and yoga pants).
More walks and chickens getting bigger!
And the bike rides continuing as we edged into spring and summer...
And Zooms. Let us not forget Zooms.
For date nights!
And game nights!
And church! (As I write this in February we are still going strong with many many many Zooms.)
We got used to "home church," some of us more than others...
And kept going on walks,
and bike rides,
And trying to stay in contact with the people we missed and loved,
thought about how grateful we were to both keep our jobs and keep working from home,
and life went on.
Lots more time together and the opportunity to create stronger bonds through this weird crazy time.
And LOTS OF TIME TO READ. (Summer reading lists from last summer, woohoo!)
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