March, Post-COVID

Like everyone on the planet, the last thing I expected to interrupt our lives was a global pandemic. At first I was highly skeptical since it was basically just a fairly mild flu that didn't seem to affect children. But then as more data came in and the idea of "flattening the curve" was promoted, I saw the necessity. 

Honestly, it was almost a relief in a lot of ways. We went from having a packed schedule (swimming/sewing/piano lessons/co-op/church activities) to...nothing. I was surprised by how much I DIDN'T miss any of it. Except the library. And grocery pickup functioning like normal. And the Knoxes. 

When the restrictions were first put in place, we decided we would "socially distance" from everyone except the Knoxes. We figured our kids were basically cousins and we shared all our germs anyway, so why not? We had a great time hiking together with our masses of children running feral through the woods. Gabe even offered to carry Elijah for part of the hike (he lasted longer than I expected considering Elijah is a full quarter of his weight):

But as things got more serious, we realized we actually did need to try to isolate even from our best friends. That has been hard, especially on Seth & Elise. Seth & Gabe will play Minecraft together or go on the occasional "socially distant bike ride", but it's not enough to fill their social needs. The rest of us (the introverts) are adjusting really well! I love having Jon working from home every day. We go on walks during lunch as a family. I love not having a million places to be every week. I love that he's actually around on Sundays instead of in meetings all day (except when he's in Skype meetings all day instead). Basically, I'm seeing a lot of positives and not too many negatives for our family. If only that were true for every family. 

A week or so into the restrictions, someone promoted the idea of using sidewalk chalk to write happy messages on our driveways and sidewalks. My kids are all about the chalk, so we joined in. Some of us opted to take the idea of spreading sidewalk chalk joy a bit more...internally:

Aaron drew a giant blue whale that is really hard to see:

Seth went with the prisms theme (we'd been studying light that week):

Elise just rode her bike:

Catherine has been perfecting her cursive:

Not sure how much joy it brought anyone besides us, but I guess that's not the point in the end.