COVID-19

On March 11 stuff really hit the fan.  The threat of Corona Virus (COVID-19) became real in the United States and Utah.  For a few weeks or months now we have been hearing about this virus on the news and watching it spread throughout China and other countries.  The virus finally made its way to the US via travelers.  The majority were from people catching it while on cruises with people from China.  These people then brought it home to spread unknowingly to others.  Because the incubation period is about two weeks, many people didn't even know they had it until it spread.  This virus attacks the respiratory system making it very hard for the person to breath.  The patient needs oxygen and ventilation apparatuses from the hospital when the symptoms get very bad.  The hospitals were not able to keep up with the demand and the virus is very contagious putting hospital employees at risk.  Because of the quick ability of spread and the deadliness of this virus, COVID-19 has become a pandemic situation.  In a pandemic situation, social distancing is required to slow the spread of the disease.  As a result, on March 11, the governor issued a statement saying that all schools and other large gatherings will be closed for two weeks starting immediately.  Then, on Friday, March 13, President Nelson issued a statement saying that all church meetings and gatherings would cease for the time being in order to slow the spread.  This included church on Sundays, youth activities, and even all temples would be closed.  This was a big shock to everyone.  There was a major run on the grocery stores and many things were scarce.  You could not find toilet paper, sanitizing wipes, or hand sanitizer anywhere.  The grocery store shelves were empty.  Your purchasing was limited to one or two on the things you could find.  This is an uncertain and chaotic time for people, stores, and whole communities.  Basically everything closed down.  

One tender mercy for us was that a few weeks ago, around the end of February, I had a strong impression that I needed to stock our freezer with freezer meals.  I kind of didn't think anything of it and thought I would wait until March with the new food budget.  The nagging feeling would not go away so I put together a menu of about 25 meals and went shopping for all of the food.  I finished preparing all of the meals during the last week of February and our freezer was stocked.  I also took advantage of the case lot sales that were happening at the grocery stores before heading down to St. George for my race.  Our freezer and pantry was stocked with food when the pandemic closures started the next week.  At the time I had know idea why I felt the need to cook and prepare a bunch of meals but now I am so glad I did because we cannot go to the store for at least a month possibly more.  This was definitely a prompting from the Holy Ghost wanting me to get my family prepared.  

Rather than just forget about church during this time, we were encouraged to have church at home.  For the past year or so, the Church has been transitioning to a Home-Centered, Church Supported church.  Through the Come, Follow Me Program, we have been studying more at home.  Because of this, the transition to a home church, was not that difficult.  It is obvious that President Nelson and the leaders of the Church were inspired to get this program in play long before we were required to actually have church at home.  Home church has been really good for us.  The kids really enjoyed watching Russell bless and pass the Sacrament in our home.  It was pretty cool.  

The same thing has happened for school.  Rather than just forgetting about school, the teachers have put all of their assignments online and we are doing school at home as well!  I never thought we would do homeschooling but here we are doing it!  There really has been a learning curve with this homeschooling thing.  We were all really confused and stressed out fighting over the computer and Chromebook from the school at the beginning.  Finally I made a schedule and to do list for all of the kids so that they didn't fight and that has seemed to work so far.

This has been our home for the last couple of weeks:

We have been doing a lot of work on the computer, reading, and science experiments.  Here Colby is experimenting with bridge building, and gravity and friction on an incline.  Everyday the kids have to read, do Reflex (a math game), Math assignments, writing, and anything else their teacher assigns.  At first I tried to be the task master and nag them to get their work done.  That was not working and there were tears and stress and it was not good.  Finally, after making the list for them, I told them they had to do these things each day and let them go as fast or slow as they wanted.  Some days were really long but other days they got done really fast.

Here are some of the books we have been reading:

The teachers also put together Spirit Week activities for each day.  We had fun days like Crazy Sock day, Pajama Day, School Spirit Day, and Scavenger Hunt day.  Someone in our neighborhood painted all of these rocks and hid them throughout the neighborhood.  The kids had a good time searching for them.

On March 16 we put together a Leprechaun Trap for St. Patrick's Day.  Everyone worked together and gave great ideas for the trap.

The next day we found this note from our leprechaun, Lucky.  He must be getting pretty lazy because the note said that he didn't even try to get into the trap this year.  He said that he was too afraid he would get caught because of how good the trap was.  Instead he left us some chocolate gold coins for our efforts.

During this quarantine, we have been doing a lot of fun activities as a family.  Because everything has been cancelled, we have more time to spend together.  We have also not been able to see friends or other people.  One afternoon, we spent a few hours decorating our driveway and sidewalk with chalk.

Along with our pictures, we wrote a bunch of inspirational messages.  That way, if anyone walked passed our house, they could read our messages and feel better about this crazy time.  The kids had a great time decorating the cement and thinking of fun things to write for others.  

I have been doing a lot of running at this time.  It is really my only time out of the house.

I don't have any races coming up because everything has been cancelled but I keep running. I think I have ran more these weeks than I have driven! 

We have also been doing a lot of social distancing.  It is recommended that we stay at least six feet away from other people.  We took that to heart and got away from everyone and took the four-wheelers out in the mountains.

It was a perfect day to take the four-wheeleers out.  This was the first time we have ridden the four-wheelers this year.  We decided to go up to Millville Canyon and explore that area.  We have never been up there before so it was cool to see everything.  We drove up the canyon as far as we could until the snow on the road became too deep for the green four-wheeler.  Since it doesn't have four wheel drive, it cannot go as many places as the red one.  We found this open area and decided to stop and look around.  We had lunch and explored the cliffs and streams.

The kids had a great time getting out of the house finally.  They were able to just run and have fun as they looked around.  While they were looking for cool rock, Colby found this fossil of a shell.  Emily faced her fear and balanced across this log to cross the stream.  Logan and Charlotte threw snowballs into the water to see how long and far they would float until they melted.  This was such a fun day.

When we turned back to head to the truck, we could see this awesome view of the Valley.  I think we will be doing a lot more four-wheeling during this quarantine time.

Because of the social distance requirements, the kids piano lessons have also changed.  Now, instead of going to their teacher's house for lessons, they do lessons at home via Zoom.  Zoom is video chat program.  So they are playing our piano while their teacher is watching them through video on the phone.  They can hear, see, and talk to each other remotely.  They are also having chats with their school teachers and classmates this way through another program called Google Meet.

Every year at this time, the kids have a special piano recital to show off their AIM Performance songs.  Because of the restrictions, their piano recital was also held remotely on Facebook.  They played their songs at home and we recorded them.  Then we posted the video to our piano teacher's Facebook page so that the other students could watch and listen to their performance and we could listen to theirs.

This was definitely an interesting way to have a piano recital but we did it.  One nice thing about it was that we were able to also share their performance with other family member so that they could enjoy it as well.  Grandparents really liked that because they usually miss their recitals.

Another funny thing that has been going on is the appearance of turkeys.

There has been one turkey that we have named as our friendly, neighborhood turkey. This turkey has been seen all over our neighborhood.  We even had a fun game going on with our neighbors that they would post a picture of the turkey every time they saw it.  We called the game "Where is Mr. Turkey Today?"  One time, the turkey was on top of Russell's truck.  Russell was definitely not pleased with this because he knew the turkey was going to scratch the paint.  The kids loved chasing it off.  They even tried to catch it but it was too fast.

When you do homeschooling, you can kind of do whatever you want.  We took one day and taught the kids about planting seeds.  We really want spring to get here fast so that we can plant our garden.  Since winter lasts forever here, spring is still about a month or more away.  Because of this, we tried planting our seeds in a mini garden.  Using an old egg carton, we used the individual holes as spots for our seeds.  Hopefully they grow!

Then we got out our wheat grinder and showed the kids how the pioneers used to grind wheat for flour to make their bread.  The boys absolutely loved grinding the wheat and did not want to stop.  Even Charlotte took a turn at the crank.

  We ground enough wheat for about 10 cups of flour.  Over the next couple of days, we made wheat pancakes and 8 loaves of wheat bread.  It was so good but we were very gassy... I guess we need to get used to wheat if we need to eat our food storage.

Our family has been doing some fun activities over the past couple weeks but the majority of the time is spent in blanket forts:

The kids have been getting out every blanket they could find and building forts.  They have also loved sleeping on the fold out couch downstairs.  They love having "sleepovers" in each others' rooms as well as downstairs.  I guess it is good to be a little lenient during crazy times as these!

We have been blessed during this time and have enjoyed spending more time as a family.  Thankfully Russell is still able to work because his job is considered "essential."  I know many people have not been as fortunate as us.  Hopefully these two weeks away from everyone helps slow the spread of this disease.