Quarantine Day 80: Sunday Funday

We started the day off with our weekly family Zoom call. It's always a bit chaotic, but fun to see everyone and catch up for a little bit.

We had another fun time with the Wilkens for Sunday Funday. This week, Matt smoked some pork and we had delicious pulled pork for dinner! The kids FaceTime'd with grandma and grandpa, who said if Grayson ate some of the pulled pork, he would get $200. Ha! So, at dinner, he put some in his mouth, chewed it up and we were all cheering that he was going to get $200... but then, he spit it out. Later, we found out that grandpa had said that ERIN would give Grayson $200 if he ate it, not that grandpa would give him the money. Ha!

I wish this was scratch-n-sniff... it smelled SO good!

Beckett grossed out all his cousins by combining everything in his dessert bowl!

Quarantine Day 79: Flowers

On Saturday, Matt went to Wannamakers and picked out a bunch fo flowers to plant. I'm not sure if the girls actually planted anything, but they sure liked playing in the potting soil.

This girls got some new kicks... her old ones were so worn out and small. But, she loves these Nikes, so we had to get another pair similar to her old ones... mainly so she would stop wearing too small of shoes!

Quarantine Day 78

No pictures today, but it was a big day for restaurants around here. They can now serve food at their restaurant if they have outdoor seating. I drove by some restaurants on Ogden and they have blocked off part of their parking lots and set up tables so they can start serving people. A step in getting things back open! I'm not sure I will be running out to eat at a restaurant soon, but I'm happy it's an option for people if they want to. We will stick to take-out and delivery for a little bit longer.

Quarantine Day 77: Last official day of remote learning

Today is a day to celebrate... we are done with remote learning! No more lesson plans and assignments to turn in! We are almost done with school! We are off tomorrow and have 3 days of fun activities next week and then.... summer break! :)

The girls had an awards ceremony over Zoom with the entire first grade. Every 1st grader got an award. The girls were really excited to see what they got as well as what all of their friends got. Poor Avery was the last one called in her class, so she worried the whole time that she wasn't going to get an award. Avery got "Outstanding Performer" for her acting/performance skills. Morgan got "Most Inquisitive" for her many questions. :)

The girls have an End Of Year packet they have been working on. Here are a few pages they did today.

Here is Avery's... and no, this is not wrong... there are only 9 boys in her class of 26 kids. Talk about girl power! And yes, I know that 18 + 9 does not = 26. Avery added one more girl to her number of girls because she wanted to include the teacher.

And here is Morgan's... her class is a little more evenly split boys vs girls. Although, I think she's off on the total number of students. And the only thing she loves about her classroom is her friends. Definitely the thing she misses the most!

Quarantine Day 76: Hump Day

Makes me think of walking to school on Wednesdays when Al the crossing guard would always say to us "What day is it?" and the kids would all yell "Hump Day!"

Sometimes I sit back and think how different things are right now. It's crazy how much all of our lives have changed. At least we can get outside and get fresh air. Up until recently, Ruth's retirement community wasn't letting anyone leave their apartments. They were delivering their meals and mail to them. They were taking deliveries from us to them. We were not allowed to enter the building. I can't even imagine how I would feel in that situation. I'm glad they are keeping her safe, but it's not easy. Now, she gets time to walk outside. She is part of the last phase of re-opening, so we won't be able to visit her person for a while.

Today, I switched out the girls winter clothes for their summer clothes. Looking at some of their summer clothes from last year, I can't believe how much they've grown! It's like they are entirely different people!

Quarantine Day 75: Almost done

We are getting so close to being done with school. This week, we only have school work to do on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Then, next week the last few days of "school" are fun like a virtual field day.

It's finally feeling like summer outside now... hot and humid! Unfortunately, pools and outdoor "toys" are all sold out! I've been searching for a little pool for the backyard with no luck so far. People are putting in above ground pools since the public pools are all closed this summer. What will we do all summer?!?

We did secure Lily to babysit for the girls in the mornings over the summer while Matt and I work. Lily lives down the street and has babysat for the girls quite a bit, so they are really excited. :)

Quarantine Days 72-74: Memorial Day Weekend Fun

We're getting out of Dodge for the weekend. Erin rented a house in the middle of nowhere (Morton, Illinois) and we're meeting up with my parents, Brett's family and Erin's family for a long weekend. The house has an indoor pool, so weather is not a factor in our fun! :)

We dropped off our laundry at the cleaners before we left. The girls came with me, so they got to wear their masks. They were really excited about this.

We weren't there 30 minutes and the kids were all swimming in the pool.

We rested in the theater room afterwards for a bit. Unfortunately, the TV screen in that room had a huge crack in it, so we couldn't actually watch anything in there. But, the girls laid in the chairs and watched their iPads.

There was a trampoline that we used mostly for a place to lay out in the sun. There weren't any safety features on the trampoline (no pads, no nets), so we didn't let the kids jump on it.

We celebrated Calvin's 3rd birthday while we were there.

Here he is playing some of her new toys.

There were tons of bugs and even a toad. So, Morgan was loving it! She put together a bug house and collected a bunch of them.

Pigtails!

Sunbathing with cousin Grayson on the trampoline!

Finally got to try out the kites we got two years ago. There wasn't a ton of wind to start, but it picked up later.

Papa got the kite flying high up in the air!

All the kiddos took a turn.

Lots of swimming all weekend...



Avery really made a lot of progress. She was swimming under water and jumped in off the side and went down the slide multiple times. Her confidence is really increasing in the pool!



So much fun to have a pool... been way too long since these kids got to swim!


The only grill the place had was a charcoal grill in the pool house. Matt made hot dogs and hamburgers for everyone. The ventilation was not the best and the whole pool house filled with smoke! We finally made the kids get out of the pool because we thought it wasn't the best for them to be breathing that in while swimming. :)

It's hard to tell in this picture the level of smoke in this place. But it was a lot!

We had a water balloon fight and the kids loved it... except for Hunter. He's not a fan of having wet clothes.

We also made gigantic bubbles for the kids to pop!

More relaxation time on the trampoline.

We played 20 questions (guess my animal) about 1,000 times on the trampoline. These two were on a team and came up with some pretty interesting animals. It was more about the hybrid animals for them. Here they are commiserating on their next animal, which turned out to be a liger.

And a few people got an afternoon nap in!

All the kids had fun hanging out together. They all love playing the same games on their iPads!

No one wanted to go home... the weekend went by really fast for these kiddos!

It was so fun to get away and forgot about everything for a weekend! The kids had such a blast and there were lots of giggles and smiles all around!

Quarantine Day 71: Boring day at home

Not much going on today. Just unpacking and repacking. Erin rented a house in the middle of nowhere Illinois for us to go for the long Memorial Day weekend. Just to have somewhere to get away to and have some fun and forget about the pandemic for a few days. We are all looking forward to it!

The girls' school assignments have been getting quicker the past few days. I think this is because we are getting so close to the end of school. Of course, it's also due to the fact that I'm doing the bare minimum that they need to do to submit to their teachers. When it says do these 4 packet pages and submit a picture of one page... we do one page and submit that. If we get to the other pages, great. If not, I'm not worried. The girls have worked really hard so far!

Some things are starting to open back up... in phases. Gov Pritzker has 5 stages to re-opening Illinois. The state is broken into regions and each region goes through the stages independently. We are entering in phase 3, so non-essential retail businesses can open for pick-up and delivery now. Golf courses can reopen with restrictions (no carts, doubles only, scattered tee times). Matt even went golfing on Thursday with his old boss. Some services are allowed to open May 29th (hair salons are included in this - yay!). Non-essential gatherings of 10 or less people are allowed. I have heard that restaurants can open with outdoor seating only. I've also heard that zoos may reopen, but you'll have to make appointments so the number of people are limited. We'll see if that happens.

Phase 4 would allow restaurants and bars, child care and schools to reopen with safety rules. And gatherings of up to 50 people would be allowed. Phase 5 is fully reopening the economy, which probably won't happen until a vaccine is found. I truly hope some smart research doctor figures out the magic vaccine, so we can get back to our normal lives soon.

Such a strange time to be in, especially with little kids. They don't fully understand how crazy this is. They are really just along for the ride, whatever we tell them, they have to do. We've tried to tell them that this has never happened in our lifetime, but that just goes over their head. They will know how crazy this time was once they get older and people talk about the time of the coronavirus and how people were quarantined. They are old enough to remember this.

Quarantine Day 70: Back home

The girls rode bikes and drew with chalk in the morning with the neighbor girls. Then, we packed up to head back home.

The girls were really sad to leave Mama and Papa's house, but were really excited to see Daddy!

They wasted no time in getting all of their Barbies and playing outside. Does anyone notice that all the Barbies get beds, but Ken has to sleep on the toilet??? Avery said that's because there weren't enough beds for Ken. Ha! We know who rules in their world!

Quarantine Day 69: More fun at Mama and Papa's house

Morgan got to play with worms...

And Avery made some pretty chalk drawings!

Then, they got to ride around with Papa on the golf cart.