I had SO much free time over Covid and always meant to blog my thoughts but... you know. Life. This week we're approaching the one YEAR anniversary of the lockdown so I'll try to post things I still remember!
First of all- Piper's party was Saturday and on Sunday we were all waiting for the news that they were cancelling school. At this point there were only about 10 cases of Covid in the entire state but the thought was that if we all quarantined for 2 weeks it would slow the spread and not overrun the hospitals. No one really knew how bad the virus was, so this seemed like the smartest move. As soon as they announced the school closure, which would just be a week more of spring break, we decided to move out Mexico vacation up a week so we left on March 17th.
We were able to take the kids to Xenses (which we wanted to do so bad with them!) and Xel-ha. We also spent a couple days relaxing at the amazing resort, Sandos Playacar.
After we were there for 2 days we found out that the U.S. was closing the borders and we needed to go home or be prepared to stay there! Aaron was down with staying there but I was NOT. We ended up staying 4 days total and then getting on one of the last flights back to the U.S. It was kinda crazy!! We're lucky we got to go at all.
When we got home everything was LOCKED DOWN. The streets were empty, no one was leaving home, everyone was pretty nervous! It was such a weird feeling. For a while it felt like a Christmas break at home playing lots of games, doing puzzles and watching movies. We did Just Dance for exercise and tried not to go crazy! The kids didn't play with their friends at all for the first several weeks.
Eventually the schools realized this wasn't just an extended spring break and had to put together a plan for at-home learning. They had the kids come pick up all their stuff from school. This is when things got tough! We picked up packets at school every week and the kids worked on school every day. They didn't have any zoom meetings, or instruction, just things to work on.
At the end we decided to go to the cabin. We invited the Garns and quarantined there for a while and the kids even did school.
The kids actually handled it really well! We spent a lot of time outdoors during the spring/summer! We did lots of hikes, Aaron did a lot of mountain biking (until he broke his collar bone) we went boating on the lake, camping, spent a lot of time in Island Park with family and friends and lots of days at the pool! Finally in August we decided to risk it and go to Lagoon with our friends the Bankheads who had come with us to the cabin.
As August approached we realized we weren't sure what was happening with school in the fall but it looked like it wasn't going to be in person full time. We ended up finding an outdoor based school that the girls chose to go to and Deacon chose to stay at Hillsdale because he ended up in the same class as his best friend, Hudson. Public school was online the first week, then went every other day for a couple months and then finally went full time. The girls spent the first 8 weeks at the Eagle Greenbelt and then the school moved to Linder Farms.
Now that we're a year in, things are finally starting to feel normal! Numbers are going down and things are starting to loosen now that the vaccine has been out for a while. A lot of fun things happened during the lockdown and I actually really liked how life seemed to slow down and and we didn't have to leave the house! Thankfully we all stayed healthy, wore our masks, socially distanced and haven't gotten Covid.
