Pretty much the only thing many of us are going to remember about 2020 is the COVID19 pandemic. The first case of the virus showed up in Oregon on February 28th... life from that point very quickly changed...
Little did I know at the time that this would be one of the last bus stop morning jaunts of the school year. The boys' school was canceled on March 13th for the remainder of March. At the time... that seemed huge! For them to have 2.5 weeks off of school until April. Little did we know....
Owen and popcorn... a love story. That kid is all about the popcorn!!!! We have to stop him from chomping on all the unpopped kernels too, and ruining his teeth.
I always feel like.... somebody's watching me..... and I have no privacy.... whoa-oa-oah....
Seriously. The dog. Is. Always. Staring. At. Me..... I don't know what he wants half the time. He flips between loving me and just wanting to stare at me lovingly, and him wanting me out of the picture so he can be with his true love Neal.
In early March my family came up to watch the boys play basketball. Little did we know that would end up being the very last game! All sports were shut down soon after this. Owen as usual, is a big fan of Gramma Darlene, and she is of him as well!
Owen got to officially end his basketball season.. his little team did great! It's the same group of kids Owen played Fall Soccer with, so it was nice to be with familiar faces. They all got medals and we had a pizza party for them! Poor Austin got his season cut short by 3 games because of the pandemic.
We didn't really know when we started calling him by the nickname BooBoo... how accurate it would be because of how much this kid gets hurt or injured. Neal took the boys to a little driving range near our home that has a putting green, and Owen grabbed one of the flags that are in the holes and yanked it up, trying to take it out of the hole. Well...the pole was permanently stuck in the hole, and made of older fiberglass... so he got a ton of fiberglass splinters in his hands.
We used a Biore strip, we soaked his hands, and then Neal started sticking duct tape on there and peeling it off. We got most of them, and by the next day he wasn't complaining of pain or irritation.
Our little showman!!!! Right before school was done because of the pandemic, Austin had his 2nd grade music program. He wanted to wear his top hat again, to look "fancy" and again.. I just love his confidence! He even wanted a photo shoot beforehand and did some posing in his fancy get-up! After the performance he got some snuggles from his little girlfriend Evelyn! They are so sweet to each other.
Austin's shoes got really muddy and he left them on the kitchen sink with a note to Neal. This cracked me up because Neal is always washing his shoes... he likes them clean and will be at the sink cleaning his shoes a lot... so the apple didn't fall far from the tree!! The note also made me laugh because he's so polite about it, and instead of just asking Neal to wash his shoes, he decided to leave a note. :-)
And because the world couldn't get weirder... the first weekend that we were advised to practice "social distancing".... it snowed. Mother Nature's way of telling us to stay home??? The flakes that came down were HUGE (some as big as an Oreo cookie!!!) and the boys had some fun outside before it melted.
The boys always get in "kicks".... they will build a fort and do nothing but play fort for weeks, then they will drag out all the Legos and do nothing but that for days... etc. For awhile they were back on a costume kick and wore different costumes everyday. On dinosaur day (same Saturday that it snowed) they decided to make Owen a fat dino. He was pretending to be distressed but he was cracking up the whole time they were stuffing towels in his costume.
Right before the State shut down Monqiue, Sarah and I went wine tasting to celebrate my birthday! It was cold but super sunny and so much fun to be out with two of my best ladies!
After school was canceled for the month of March, it took awhile for the official Stay At Home order to pass so everything was open and Neal and the boys had long days to fill. They played golf a few times, and Austin has claimed its his very favorite! We are thinking of getting him lessons and encouraging him to play golf as one of his sports. The discipline is good for someone like him, and we think he will excel in an independent sport as opposed to a team one. Fore!
Owen loves golf too, and is also pretty darn good for being a kid. He's more of the natural athlete, so we'll see about lessons for him... since I know he'll want to play basketball, soccer, tennis, baseball, and everything else he can. We might have to reel him in a bit.
By the last week of March, online learning had begun. There were no expectations, and no real curriculum. Our teachers just asked us to do some kind of educational activity/time with the kids. They both like working in workbooks, so after breakfast they'd spend some time doing those.
We also attempted a science project... there was a string dipped in each jar of heavily Epsom-salted water and it was supposed to drip and create stalactites and stalagmites... but it didn't really work and we're pretty sure it was because of user error. Oh well, we tried.
Let's be real... the days are long. So my kids are getting more screen time than normal, but whatever. You do what you gotta do to survive. We got Mario Kart for the Switch and I got roped into playing and failed miserably. I'll leave the video games to Neal and I'll stick with reading.
Our last family walk before the State shut down. Our very favorite walk/hike is the chip trail around the Stonecreek Golf Course... it is for some reason classified as a State Park, so it was shut down just a few days after we got this last walk in.
Social distancing weekends.... don't look too different than real weekends. We were really lucky to have a few glorious warm weekends to spend outside. I got to watch Daddy and the boys play lots of baseball!
Henry on a sunny day!!! He and I stayed in the "safety zone" away from the baseball game. I read, he stared at me... both of us were in our happy place!
My office was still open through March 23rd... so even though we had weekends of social distancing and not going anywhere, I was still going to work during the week. While I was there the boys stayed busy at home with Daddy! He's good about putting them to work. Owen told me later he wasn't good at mowing the lawn because he couldn't "push da mower" very well. :-)
And then it happened... the Governor of Oregon issued a true "Stay At Home" order effective March 24th and we all had to start working from home and all shops, stores, restaurants, parks, playgrounds, schools, gyms.... everything closed. I set up an "office" up in our bedroom and tried to get into a new groove.
Sleeping in is nice... not getting up at 5:30am to have coffee and hit the road at 7am for work has been nice. The multiple visits from the cute little people in my house has been awesome too... and Henry has officially become my most steady co-worker.
Next up... how we've been dealing with true quarantine!!
