March 22, 2020

When life gives you a quarantine...

I wrote more about this on our school blog (see right side of page for link), but due to the coronavirus pandemic, our state is in lock down and are all forced to quarantine.  Right now, we are only allowed to go to the grocery store, bank or pharmacy.  Actually, I think we can still get drive thru food as well.  Which a good thing because food is scarce at the grocery store.  Don't even think about trying to buy chicken right now.  Don't worry about us though.  We are blessed by several things.  

A.  Ben is able to do a lot of things with the big chunks of red meat that others aren't buying.  This week, we're smoking a pork butt and using another one for carnitas (there's a limit of 2 meat products, so Ben bought 2 giant pork butts that will last us at least 4 meals, if not more).  If it really comes down to it, he can also grind our own meat.
B. We know how to bake.  There's no bread in the stores, so we can just make our own.  We already had all the ingredients too!  Only problem is I threw out 2 of our bread pans in the move and didn't replace them.  Having only 1 bread pan makes it a little tricky, but nothing we can't handle.
C. The few things that we can do, are already part of our normal life, so life doesn't seem all that crazy.

I do want to use this time to document more...I know I've said that before, but my goal is to use this time to do things that I've put off doing because I've been "too busy".

Life gave us a quarantine, and we're going to make great memories with it!


So what does our life look like now? 
Lots of school.  We've been able to focus more diligently on school now that all of our distractions and busyness have been taken away.  My goal is to keep working hard so we can finish the year early and maybe get ahead for next school year.  Ben worked from home a couple of days this past week and we were still able to get all our work done.  That is historic because in all the times in the past that Ben is home, we haven't been able to work.  Daddy being home puts a vibe in the house that it's vacation or the weekend and can make it difficult to focus. 

We also have been going on long walks each day.  We can't play at the park, but there's nothing stopping us from taking Maya on walks.  The boys will usually ride their bikes and we tour the neighborhood.


The smell of fresh baked bread is a little slice of heaven.  While I was waiting for the second loaf to bake, Alison took Maya for her walk:


 Little boys in their jammies is still one of my favorite sights.  Colin was enjoying some of daddy's special snacks:


Social distancing.  It's all the talk right now.  The government is telling everyone to stay 6 feet apart from each other and not to be in groups of more than 10 people.  Good thing we were already runners, because we can still do that and not be around anyone else.  Although, the trail has certainly been busier than ever.  I love seeing families out together and rediscovering an active life.  
P.S. All gyms have closed down.  Again, Ben was a genius and saw this coming and was quick to add some things to our home gym so we could continue on our normal workout routines.  Home gym tour coming soon :)

Colin begged us to come on our long run.  We couldn't say no to our 7 year old asking to come with us, so we agreed he could ride his bike next to us.  I wanted to snap a picture before we left:


And Colin wanted to show how strong his legs are:


He did so great!  Not only did he make it the whole 7 miles, but was consistent in telling us how slow we were going.  Ben suggested I start taking him with me when I work on speed...he's a tough coach, but he will make you run fast.

We probably have it the easiest in the whole thing.  Ben's job is secure, we were already homeschooling and fortunately already had some essentials stocked (who knew the world would lose it's mind over toilet paper?!?!).  There's still an air of stress around.  My heart aches for those who are struggling right now; those who are sick, those who are lonely, those who's business had to close and those who were living pay check to pay check and their pay check just stopped.  There certainly is a lot to be praying for and guess what, we have a lot of time to do just that.


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