Last December, I started hearing bits of news about a highly infectious virus wreaking havoc in China. I knew that many of my Chinese ESL students were out of school and that Uberthons was having trouble getting their medals and other race items from China. As time passed, I started hearing more and more about this coronavirus (Covid 19) on the news and from other alarmists, but still didn't take the threat seriously at all. After all in recent years, this same sort of news was published about the Swine flu, SARS, and West Nile virus, but none of them ever turned out to be very big problems for our country as a whole. They didn't affect me a single bit.
My nonchalant attitude suddenly changed during the second week of March however. Thousands of people were sick and dying across the country, particularly in New York City and Washington state. One by one, states began taking action. On Wednesday, March 11th, the governor of Oregon prohibited all gatherings of 250 people or more and the NBC canceled their entire season. The prohibitions in Oregon changed rapidly and new regulations were announced almost daily for a couple of weeks. Schools were temporarily closed after Friday, March 13th. (They were officially closed for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year at the beginning of April.) By the time we should have been on Spring Break at the end of March, we were no longer allowed to gather in groups of more than 10, but were really only supposed to interact with the people who lived with us. "Social distancing" (staying at least 6 feet away from others) quickly became a buzz word. All discretionary travel was to be avoided so no one around here went anywhere for Spring Break.
At first, I was only concerned about the actual disease, but when I heard a newscaster say that the economic impact of the virus would be greater than the health impact, I suddenly realized that this was going to seriously affect EVERYONE in the country whether they got sick or not. All non-essential businesses were ordered to close. This included all places of entertainment, beauty salons, gyms, dentists (except for emergencies), restaurants (unless they could provide take out or delivery), and many more. Millions of people lost their jobs and millions more began working from home. Out of fear of being put on total lock down in our homes, there was a mad rush on grocery stores. Shelves were bare and it was almost impossible to find toilet paper or disinfecting products for a few weeks. Thankfully, we had a decent stock of those things and most non-perishable food items.
Track season had just barely started for Alan's company when this all hit. Because they earn 75% of their yearly revenue from timing track meets, we were pretty sure he was going to lose his job for a couple of weeks. Alan applied for and was offered jobs at an Amazon warehouse and as a delivery driver for Safeway. Those jobs wouldn't come close to providing the income he had been making, but they would be better than nothing. Thankfully, Athletic Timing was able to secure one of the small business loans the government funded and was able to keep their employees, but at reduced salaries.
The country's new slogan became "Stay home. Save lives." and we have been strongly encouraged to just stay home as much as possible. I tried to grocery shop only once every other week, but usually had to make a quick trip for produce during my off week. I have been so grateful that I already make all of our bread and most other things from scratch. Those things, plus knowing how to cut my boys' hair, are very valuable skills right now!
As for school, Spencer had his last day of 6th grade on March 13th without evening knowing it was his last day. As someone who has always loved school, this has been hard for him. He is bored at home and misses his friends a lot. Our district took about 2.5 weeks to figure out how to utilize all of the technology they already had to provide any kind of distance learning.
Poor Mason has had an even harder time. He was sick on the last day he could have attended preschool so his last day was March 10th. He had really grown to love his teachers and little friends over the last few months and it's heartbreaking to think that he will probably never see any of them again, because none of them live in Sherwood.
There is probably a lot more news that I could write, but my head is swimming trying to remember everything. Now for what we've been doing while stuck at home. I've taken a lot of pictures to try to document how different our lives are.
Of course we would have our first snowstorm of the year on March 14th. It was just a tiny skiff, but still very exciting to Mason! We made slime for the first time later that afternoon. The boys had fun, but it made a big mess and glitter got tracked all over the floor. I much prefer play dough.
After the first couple of days, I decided that we would all be happiest if we had a schedule to follow all day. We needed structure and things to do!! We followed this schedule very loosely and it helped a ton. We modified it a lot as we went and figured out what kept us all happiest.
Spencer wasn't thrilled about it, but I made him help Mason build a leprechaun trap this year. Mason is the perfect age for holiday magic and LOVES this kind of thing! Our sneaky leprechaun tried to trap the boys in their rooms, left green footprints in the bathroom and down the stair rail, and moved some of Mason's clothes drawers around. He also left a not and some chocolate coins in the trap. Mason thought it was all hilarious! We also did a fizzy science experiment for "school" that day. It was fun and I was grateful for the chance to celebrate something fun in the midst of the stress and craziness.
Our school district took about 2.5 weeks to get "distance learning" up and running. One of those weeks was technically spring break, but I was still frustrated that it took so long. Oregon's frame of mind was that if they couldn't provide technology and internet to EVERY student, they shouldn't provide it to anyone. (It's the typical liberal frame of mind to put the minorities' needs above the majorities'.) It's not like I was worried about Spencer falling behind though. I just wanted something for him to do. In the meantime, I had Spencer pick a project to work on. He decided to make a slide show about Peru. The couch became his new "desk" and he worked on it for about an hour each day for a couple of weeks.
I decided to focus on reading skills with Mason's preschool and started teaching him to sound out words. I quickly realized that his preschool had only focused on uppercase letters though and had to take a step back to teach him lowercase letter names and sounds first. Mason's cutting skills also needed some work.
Unusually gorgeous spring weather was a huge tender mercy that first week at home. We took walks around our neighborhood, went on bike rides around town, and drove to a nature park in Wilsonville for a longer walk. We also got some yard work done. The boys were obviously thrilled to pick up rocks from the edge of the garden. Haha!
I've always valued my bread-making skills, but never more than that first week when people were having a hard time finding bread in stock at stores. I just made my own hamburger buns instead of even trying to buy them.
Spencer and Mason suddenly became each other's only playmates. They sometimes have a hard time figuring out what to do together and fight and argue a lot, but they have lots of good moments too.
Inspired by Kindness 101 with Steven Hartman, we made a thank you note and attached a treat to put in our mail box for the mailman.
Spencer has been able to continue his piano lessons via Facetime. It works great and I'm so grateful for technology during this time!
We had two different groups of cousins and friends doing Lego challenge calendars so these two built A LOT of Legos. Such great toys! Here are just a few of their creations. I got to be Mason's helper for many of them.
Rainy day silliness and painting:
I woke up one Saturday morning and decided that I just couldn't survive another day of the exact same routine, so we picked up Jimmy Johns sandwiches for lunch and drove out to Canby just to check out the community. We wound up driving for almost two hours and not everyone was happy about that, but it was still nice to have a change of scenery.
We did away with combing hair right at the beginning, but it was funny how many days these two accidentally wound up wearing matching clothes. Most of their clothes come from Old Navy so they have the same color schemes in their closets. Haha!
Classic spring grass heads:
We started some of our own garden seeds for the first time in seven or eight years. I had never been very successful with it, but I had the time and thought, why not?!
For Alan and I (but especially Alan), the economic uncertainty has been very stressful. I'm so blessed to have a husband to takes his job to provide for our family very seriously and supports me staying home with the boys. Even though there were no meets to time, Alan still went to work in his trailer in our driveway every day. Athletic Timing has been working hard to get virtual track meets going all across the country. It was a little chilly sometimes, but he could have peace and quiet out there. He applied for unemployment with millions of other people, but the system was so backlogged that we had no idea when or if that was going to come through. We are SO grateful that we have some savings and food storage and that we don't live paycheck to paycheck!
Our sad park. Every city park and school playground in town looked like this.
Darwin started hosting wood shop classes for his grand kids over google hangouts. He taught them some basic skills and cut pieces for a bird house for each family. Alan helped the boys put ours together.
Spencer's deacon's quorum also started having online activities. They weren't super productive ;), but it was still really good for them to connect with each other.
Memes on social media became the comic reliefs of the situation. These were a few of my favorites at the beginning. (During all of this, there was an earth quake near Salt Lake that caused the angel Moroni on top of the Salt Lake temple to drop his trumpet.)
