Happy Days...Take 2: Quarantine Life

Well, I figured I might as well go ahead and do a current post instead of trying to continue to catch up with my blog, since this is such a huge event in our lives.

The memes have been ON. POINT.

We had Nolan's birthday party planned for March 14th, three days before his birthday, but the Sunday before that I started up with a stomach virus that lasted FOR TWO WEEKS. Jared and Teya caught it as well (but they didn't have it for nearly as long as I did), so we had to cancel Nolan's birthday party the morning of. That was also the day that they cancelled school for 2 weeks due to the coronovirus, so at first I thought, "Oh, well since we have two weeks with nothing to do, we can probably just have his party during those two weeks...." Yeah, I wasn't quite aware of how serious this quarantine was about to get. I'll do his birthday post in it's own post.

That same day, I also chatted with my old college roommates in FL about our upcoming roommate reunion, and since school was cancelled, we decided to postpone the reunion. I was going to be there from March 19-22, and was planning on driving down to my brother's house for a couple of days after the reunion and surprising my parents. We have tentatively rescheduled the reunion for June, hopefully it happens!!!
My roommate Cynthia got all of us roommates on an app called Marco Polo, which has turned out to be really fun and I have laughed SO hard at these hilarious girls' video messages. Great mood booster!

The kids started online school the following Wednesday. Teya's school was the only school really prepared for this since they had done this for a month at the beginning of the year, and they just easily slipped back into it. It took some figuring out with Dallin and Nolan, and I was able to check out Chrome books for each of them from the school. Dallin needs (or wants) constant help with his work and is VERY emotional and angry the entire time we do it. Nolan has a great attitude about it, but needs direction on what to do next, and struggles with being honest about what he has completed, so I always have to check through all of his work. He has also started wanting me to sit right beside him while he does everything...Thankfully Teya is completely independent and self-motivated!!

Jared went from having the stomach virus I had, to starting with a fever, cough, and headaches. The headaches and fever lasted for about a week, so we were concerned that he might have COVID-19 and quarantined him to our bedroom and he basically didn't come out and we didn't go in there for a week (I slept in a different room). We would deliver things to him outside the door, and I would bring food into the room for him, but that was about all of the interaction we had. He tried calling the hotline to get tested for the virus but they said he wasn't sick enough, and if he got to where he couldn't walk across the room without struggling to get a breath, then call them back. Well after having the headache and fever for over a week, he called a different hotline, this time through the U of U, and they had him go right over there to get tested. By then he was actually feeling much better, and the test came back negative. We were SO happy it was negative, mostly so that he could come out of the room and we didn't have to be worried about all of the people he and I may have exposed to it, especially his mom who he had been around the day before showing symptoms. Speaking of his mom, we are also staying away from her and if we need to give her something or she needs to give us something, we both put it on the stairs between her basement home and ours, and collect it when the other is gone.

The first couple of weeks of quarantine were ROUGH for me, but things are better now. The hardest part hands down is the kids fighting. We have gone out on a few hikes/walks in the hills behind our house, which has been awesome. The kids take the dogs on walks every day now, which we weren't super consistent with before and Tucker is LOVING it. I have to say too, that I kind of enjoy the kids not playing with friends all the time, especially Nolan. He was obsessed with his friends, all he cared about doing was finishing his chores so he could race to their house, and one of his friends drives the rest of our family CRAZY, so this has been a nice break from that. I have also appreciated all of the time we've been spending together as a family since they can't be with friends, and how many games, puzzles, walks, etc., we've done together. Another positive is that Teya has been a much happier, kinder person during the quarantine that she has ever been, since she was about 2 years old. She's had hard days like the rest of us, but overall she has been the happiest, easiest of the three kids!!! Never thought I'd say that!!!!

Nolan came to me on the last day that I worked before I was laid off. I was SO sad about this, but had another job offer with the same type of company, so I contacted them and took back my un-acceptance of the position and told them I could now take it. (They had wanted to hire me for the afternoon/evening shift, which I couldn't do, but now that the kids are going to be homeschooled, that would actually work for me now). I am SO SO sad about not working with Marlow anymore, I absolutely adore him! Even all of my kids asked, "You're not going to work with Marlow anymore?"

I've really been trying hard to not go to the store and order groceries online instead and go and pick them up by having them bring them out to my car and put them directly in my trunk, but they don't always have everything I need and I've had to go in a couple of times. Like last Friday, Teya and I had to go to Macey's in Lehi right after it opened to try and get toilet paper. We each got a small/medium sized pack AND I found bleach and flour, which I haven't been able to find at Smith's or Walmart since all of this happened. I can't believe I'm living in a time when I'd text people to tell them I found toilet paper and flour at a certain store and they'd be excited for me! What a crazy time!!! And then that weekend, my friend Megan picked up some things for me at Costco, and this time they had the HUGE packages of toilet paper, so she got me one!!! What a friend!! So we are set on TP for a while instead of having to try and find some at the store weekly.

The weather has been cold a lot, which has made the quarantine harder since we don't want to be out in it much, and on the really cold days I didn't have Nolan go out for his daily outside time at all, because of his asthma. Instead I had him jump rope and jump on our mini trampoline in the house for exercise. Otherwise, every day the kids have a list of things they have to get done before they can have any screen time, which includes: schoolwork, chores, play outside for an hour, walk a dog, read for half an hour, and practice piano. I keep meaning to limit their electronic time to an hour, but it's just so much easier to let them do it for longer....

I'm not going to lie, I could keep going with this church from home thing...

A neighbor had two kids with birthdays in a week, so they asked everyone to stand outside of their houses with a birthday sign or something so she could drive by with her kids for a "birthday party". We took it a step farther and dressed up. It was actually really fun and gave us something fun to plan and work on that day!

Nolan wanted to learn to write in cursive: