The Corona Virus - A Global Pandemic - Our Family's Journal - Week 2 of Quarantine

Week 2 of Our New World: March 21-27, including including Days 8-14 of Family Quarantine and starting NESID Distance Learning

I did feel this new stressor towards the end of last week when all 3 kids schools and individual teachers, totaling 19 different teachers & principles starting emailing out their distance learning plans, what apps to download and register for, what live on-line meetings will be scheduled, what the schedules and platforms and due dates will be for all of them. I am sure it will be for good, but I have absolutely loved our own week of homeschooling, so adding all this other "real homeschool" stuff seems a little annoying. ;)

Over the weekend, we reflected that it had taken Corona for our family to sit down 10 nights in a row to dinner together and take time to pray. This is just one of the dozens of examples of moments, we stopped and gave thanks for. Daily, we are writing in our gratitude journals, even keeping them out in the living room to make sure we talk about it. Daily, we are looking up bible versus that remind us to stay strong and positive. It's so awesome. Over the weekend, we started playing Monopoly  each night for 30 minutes. We started pulling out each and every board game in the game closet and playing them at least once, deciding what we want to keep or donate. Once it was pouring down rain on a Saturday afternoon, all 3 kids wanted to get dressed in rain gear and go outside and play. It made my heart so happy. Blake and I got out this Sunday and ran 7 miles and it felt so good. We started cooking a ton and greatly encouraging the kids to start cooking. We quickly found that eating 3 meals and snacks a day, it felt like we were eating and cleaning up non-stop. We took time to do random things like putting tattoos on. Blake would get out a couple of times a week and go to HEB, CostCo and least a couple of stops at Home Depot.

Eggs and toilet paper are hard to find at times, so when NEXTDOOR said Sprouts got a shipment of eggs, we ran there.

We have the Get-a-long shirt out and ready, just in case!

Monday of this week started the new distance learning for all 3 through NEISD. Over the weekend, I decided to continue our schedule since it has provided such good framework, over the past week. I feel like my work may have some more administrative requirements this week, so figuring out how to make sure that one of us is fully available for Delaney, made me feel much better. But Monday with Delaney's assignments caused much of the day to go downhill. There were so many on one day and I'll never forget the "lecture" assignment where after she had to research a jelly fish, in Spanish, and I was supposed to teach her what "Informational Text" is, in Spanish. That, in combination with 6 other assignments due that day, was a breaking point and called for communication with the principal. It did lead to review and change, however, then the last part of the week ended up being a joke. It became abundantly clear, that they really aren't going to learn during this time, especially this first week. This suddenly bothered me because mid week, the school district announced that schools would be closed 7 full weeks. Carter and Addison are completely independent and being so focused with their work. Carter finished everything by Thursday afternoon and Addison only had an hour of work on Friday morning. We start each and every day with the kids picking out a bible verse, writing it down, repeating it and everyone passing it around and signing their name.

On the first day, we were reminded that are also the school nurse during P.E.

This week was fulled with ups and downs. One day would be really good and the next would be the opposite. Each night, I would reflect and figure out what worked what didn't. My biggest learning for my emotional well-being was that workouts had to be before 9AM and the kid's started anything. I also learned that being out side for 4-8 PM is a must, especially after a hard day. Spring has sprung this week and being outside, with a glass of wine is a wonderful thing. This week, we started major weed pulling! As a family, we did leave to go on a hike at Commanche Outlook before the rain started and spent sometime geocaching. 

We planted the garden this week! 2 tomato plants, carrots, 1 cucumber and basil, of course!

We had some fun too, this week, hanging out with the Gonzales one evening at the bottom of the driveway. They had just moved in this past week!