Quarantine Life Recap Part 2: March 20th - 31st

Quarantine Life Recap Part 2: March 20th – 31st

First of all, yes I know that it’s 11 days and not a week haha but I wanted to get to a nice rounded month so here we are.

And let’s be real March felt like a YEAR all on it’s own. WHEW.

Thanks to AJ Jenkins Photography for our front porch project pics (more to come soon)

In case you missed it, you can catch up with the riveting first week of our quarantine life here 🙂

The most exciting thing happened at the very end of the month when we got to have a FAMILY OUTING.

For years I’ve taken the kids to a strawberry patch to pick some berries.

Zach has come with us maybe once or twice since we first started going and I’m pretty sure it was when Kye was a toddler!

It’s usually just something the kids and I do solo or with other friends and such. It’s always a quick outing that isn’t all that exciting for the kids when lumped in amongst all the other super fun things we’re usually doing.

But this year?

Getting to visit the strawberry patch was INCREDIBLE.

Just to be out of the house. Breathing air that isn’t just in our neighborhood. It was amazing. None of us wanted to leave and it was so nice having our little crew together picking the berries and enjoying the little bit of normalcy.

We are very blessed to have a local patch that was still open (and still is I believe) as they have naturally proper social distancing measures in place.

Everyone had a blast. Spear was adorable and Kye just kept wanting to RUN so we let them end the outing in an epic race 😉

The kids are well trained in how to pick berries and know we look for the “big daddy red ones” 😉

Last year I’d kept Spear in the stroller and it was so nice this year to be able to have all four kids truly participating in the fun!

Wish we could have gotten a family pic but ya know social distancing makes it impossible to ask a stranger to take a picture for you 😉

During this time at home you’d think it would feel like one big long weekend.

But it doesn’t. Zach being home is a constant reminder that things are far from normal. It’s a reminder that he’s unable to work.

Zach has been so awesome at understanding that all of this is so hard for me. He joked that this is basically my worse case scenario situation.

I’m a go-go-go type person. I’m a planner. I’m all about travel and the anticipation of it.

Literally most of my conversations with the kids are about things we’re looking forward to and plans we’re making!

The constant flow of canceled plans and having to let the kids down over and over is so, so hard on my mama heart.

I know this is all a good lesson in enjoying the NOW but the now is pretty dang scary!

Zach has been so patient with me as we navigate these waters.

He planned a SUPER romantic date night in Italy 😉 He decorated Tess’s work-in-progress new room and got Italian take out and even played Italian music.

He’s also been all about my getting out of the house and having socially distant meet ups with friends.

We did book club over Zoom and Zach planned a whole “resort day” for Tiffany and I in the backyard.

He had everything all set up and got us snacks and drinks and everything. It was SO sweet and we had THE best day laying out and talking for like 6 hours 😉 I don’t think either of us ever wanted it to end!

Katie and I also had a social distance picnic at her house where I picked us up breakfast and we sat on blankets and talked all morning in her beautiful yard.

Even though this time is crazy – I feel like I’m connecting more with friends in some ways too! It’s been nice to be disconnected from the normal busy rush of life to truly pour into each other and enjoy the times we have together.

I have really tried to spread out the fun stuff for the kids and have done a very casual daily routine with them that has worked out well (I mostly drew from our summer routine)

When I had a pretty strong hunch that school would be canceled I did a Dollar Store run and got some fun stuff to keep the kids entertained and I had the idea to do a “President for a Day” campaign where the kids ran for office and we all voted for who we wanted to be president.

All three big kids took it super seriously and spent an entire afternoon putting together their campaigns and got dressed for their speeches and everything.

Kye took it the most serious and had a full game plan and strategy and his own currency he was introducing 😉

He also put campaign posters up on our doors with quotes from his opponents stating why he’d make a great president. He made a great point that he had to help his opponents with their campaigns 😉

They were adorable! You can see their campaign speeches here 🙂

Tess won Zach over when she said “I will fight on concrete, I will fight on grass” haha.

I ended up letting each kid be president for the day – because why not right?

Tess got to go first since she won the election and we spread out the “president days” with normal routine days in-between to help keep the fun going for longer too!

For Tess’s day we did pj day and picked up donuts for breakfast. She wanted to play Barbies and Kye was so sweet to play along.

She also got to drink her OWN Gatorade at lunch and wanted to read in Kye’s bed during rest time.

We ended her day with watching Solo!

Prior to school being canceled Kye was a very active member of both Student Council and Jr Beta. He had signed up to participate in a Buddy Walk for Down Syndrome Awareness so they did a virtual walk instead.

We got to load up in the car to pick up his shirt which was a fun outing and then the kids and I did a mile walk (I let them ride scooters too) on the day of the virtual walk!

He was so cute and told me to get a picture of the back of his shirt to make sure the sponsors of the walk were given credit. Def a future politician!

Kye fell on his scooter about 1/3 of the way through the walk and was TORE UP. I was so proud of him for not giving up and wanting to finish!

We have been so thankful for gorgeous weather and our backyard! We go on lots of walks and it’s been great for the kids to spend so much time outside.

They’ve all learned how to ride their scooters and love looking for earthworms, bugs and other animals on our walks.

We also were able to open our pool to swimming the EARLIEST we’ve ever opened it! It’s still cold but the kids don’t mind 😉

Kye’s favorite thing has been the backyard campouts and he begged to keep the tent up to hang out in and it has been a great way for even normal activities feel extra fun because they are in a new location.

Our neighbors have enjoyed talking to us over the fence and the kids had a water gun / water hose war 😉

Zach made a corn hole set awhile ago and we played one night as our family game and I’m decent at it as long as I toss left handed 😉 Kye and I lost…shocker…Zach wins everything!

I have also been thankful we live in such an awesome neighborhood community! We did a neighborhood bear hunt which was SO FUN.

Spear has talked about it the most since we went hunting for the bears and he has asked “Bear hunt?” many times!

We put our bears out and drove around looking at everyone else’s. The girls loved it so much we went again that evening and ended up finding 63 bears!

I held off on busting out the chalk and it was a great activity too. I blocked the driveway with my van to help make it easier to contain Spear 😉

On Kye’s day as president he wanted to watch National Treasure (a GREAT family movie btw!!! Highly recommend!) and we did a treasure hunt that morning as a bit of a theme for movie night.

Our golf cart is one we bought from Zach’s dad years ago and it’s had problems with rats and issues and we’ve been in talks to trade it in for another one for awhile and I’m SO glad Zach got it handled the DAY before we ended up going to shelter in place!

Spear’s FAV thing is golf cart rides and having that has been HUGE in surviving this whole thing!

Having more time as a family has meant more time for family games too 🙂

We found a Harry Potter Escape room (I share the info in this post!) and Britt was BEYOND excited about it.

We also played more Disney Charades and have had lots of movie nights 🙂

Some people have used quarantine to work on fitness…we’ve used it to eat treats haha

I love baking with my kids. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed with them all and am excited that Spear is able to start being more hands on in the kitchen too.

We’ve been eating lots of “feast mode” meals and yolo treats.

On a Sam’s run I was excited to see Yoo-Hoos and had to buy them for the kids. Growing up Nana, my grandmother, always had Yoo-Hoos at her house for us and I loved passing that down to the kids 🙂

Prior to school being canceled for the year they were sending out review materials that were optional and I didn’t really put any sort of pressure on the kids to complete the assignments (our schools were canceled for remainder of year but their work continues to be optional, however, they do now do school work 4 days of the week).

My focus has been on reading and I downloaded educational apps for screen time for Britt and Tess.

I also really wanted to make sure Britt was going to have something to help soften the blow of missing gymnastics and she has LOVED doing Cosmic Yoga! She has also been teaching Tess gymnastics and making gymnastics videos too.

Spear’s teacher dropped off supplies for him to do school work at home. I really appreciate that buttttt I only enrolled Spear in school to help him with his speech and emailed the director of the school and let her know they could keep our tuition but that we wouldn’t be doing the work.

I’ve been so proud of how great the kids have done in navigating these difficult times.

Britt misses her classmates and teacher the most so it’s been great to have class meetups online and through making flipgrid videos!

She has impressed me so much with her reading, finishing the first Harry Potter book (illustrated version) and reading several other books. We were able to do accelerated reading tests and she’s WELL beyond her reading goal for the year.

We have missed our church family but have enjoyed worshiping as a family unit and Kye even lead our lesson on one Sunday 🙂

We are also praying a lot for Big Daddy, Little Mama and Mema and their health and safety and we sent them cards to cheer them up!

Spear, as always, is keeping us on our toes. Whew this boy!

With everyone in hardcore clean all the things mode it’s no surprise I had a spray cleaner sitting out on the counter to make it easy to spray things down.

Well. Spear grabbed it and sprayed it directly in his eyes.

I believe it was my first time calling poison control? We had to rinse his eyes for 15 minutes which was a BLAST.

Thankfully it cleared right up!

When we first started with quarantine life I noticed a rash Spear developed. Which isn’t abnormal for him, he’s a “rash kid.”

However this rash kept getting worse and was itchy and bothered him.

I called teledoc as I wanted to avoid taking him into the dr if possible and they said it was a virus rash and to use calamine lotion. It didn’t help at all and continued to get worse and his little body was covered in scratches.

I called our dr and decided to take him into the walk-in clinic.

It was handled SUPER well by our pediatrician. I signed him in outside and they called me when it was time to come in and then we went straight to a room.

Since he had the rash for awhile there wasn’t really a way to know exactly what caused it but she prescribed 5 things (2 creams and 3 oral meds) to help and they worked pretty quickly to help him feel better (sadly when the steroid ended it immediately started back up but I’ll talk about that in future post).

If all that isn’t enough…he also figured out how to take off his pjs. We had to invest in some zip up pjs and have him wear them backwards (Tessie had to do the same thing).

Spear is living it up with Daddy at home so much and loving helping with Tess’s new room.

I’ve discovered the best way for me to get things done in my room is to let him play a bit in the tub and he LOVES it!

It’s so neat to me that he is in this age where he literally has NO IDEA what is going on in the world right now and it doesn’t impact him.

I’m proud of how all the big kids are doing as well! They are enjoying the time together and really haven’t been bored and haven’t argued!

At this point in quarantine we were in an in-between stage of thinking it was a short-lived thing to realizing it’d be longer term.

The kids did SO well handling the news that school is canceled the rest of the year.

Kye was excited…not sad at all.

Tess was instantly worried about going to 1st grade and never wants to go back to school (reminding myself we got her adjusted to kindergarten…we’ll get her adjusted to first too!)

Britt was the only one who was really sad with the news and she has even still done really well.

We’re busy making memories over here 🙂

If you haven’t already I highly recommend these journals! They are under $1 each and a GREAT way for the kids to journal this time in history!

I’m trying to make sure I take pictures of things to remember this crazy time by as this blog is my “journal” on many levels 🙂

When Zach picked up our dinner at a local Italian restaurant they had it set up for pick up orders in a really organized way.

I had done a Sam’s run prior to anything even starting but once we got news that school was canceled and we were going to be sheltering in place for an extended time…it was time for us to get the FUN STUFF 😉

Kye’s Disney birthday trip officially canceled (which he, btw, has handled BEAUTIFULLY) as Disney closed indefinitely and auto cancelled all of the dining I had booked.

I’m trying really hard to meet the kids where they are at and pour into them the way I sense that they most need it right now.

Kye really thrives with family togetherness. ALL of us together. He loves being at home. He loves video games. He is basically living his best life in quarantine.

Britt, as I mentioned, needs interaction and physical activity. She has been doing awesome having the class chats and the yoga.

Tess needs snuggles. She needs individualized attention. She’s more of a wallflower when put in the group with the two older ones and making sure I take time for HER is important!

Zach and I have both been spending more time tucking her in and practicing reading with her and it’s really helped her through this!

She loves her mommy snuggles!

I had a chance to work with Fab Kids this month for a campaign.

They sent us some spring looks and I was blown away impressed! SO CUTE and the kids all liked everything they received.

(BTW…this is NOT sponsored. My deal with them was IG only!)

They have adorable looks that are easy to coordinate (which y’all know I love) and have a deal going on for 2 pairs of shoes from $9.95 + Free Shipping when you become a FabKids VIP (You can learn more here)

My little models rocked it 😉