March 2020

Celebrating Enedina's birthday

Rend Collective concert with Julia

11 years old!

All the grand ideas when school closed, which were abandoned in about a week

Julia's work space 

Isaac's nest

Caleb's area

The littles work here and on the desktop computer

And it snowed in late March, just to make quarantine more obnoxious

Strawberry pizza that Julia made

Spending time at Camp David

Indeed

Watching our church service on Facebook live stream

Talmadge Woods- a new favorite spot

-March started so benignly...
-We celebrated Enedina's birthday with her and the kids. We let her nap while we bundled up the kids and walked trails at Wolter's Woods.
-Stephen finished seeing Miss Megan, a speech pathologist. He really enjoyed his time with her and she gave us tools/activities to use at home.
-Julia and Mom have bi-weekly sessions with Miss Timeco, which moved to video meetings during quarantine. She has been very helpful and gives us assignments and tools to use at home.
-Isaac had his baseball draft and Stephen was excited to play baseball this year too- until the season was cancelled.
-Caleb was gearing up for his first high school season of lacrosse, until that was cancelled.
-Julia was looking forward to participating in Holland Rec volleyball with her friend, until that was cancelled.
-We celebrated Julia turning 11 years old! Part of her gift was tickets for her and Mom to attend a Rend Collective concert and it was great! Julia requested ribs for her supper and a chocolate frosted cake with strawberries. Julia received some coloring books, clothes, and the High School musical CD (she loves all things High School Musical). Julia is smart and is having a great 5th grade year. She has some good friends and enjoys baking with them and talking on the phone. Julia takes piano lessons, even though it's not her favorite. Julia loves listening to music or audio books while coloring- she has a great eye for color schemes! And she LOVES to read. We are so thankful for Julia and we love her very much!
-On March 11 I woke up feeling like something important was associated with the date. I couldn't figure out what as there are no anniversaries, birthdays, etc on the date. As the day wore on and I listened to news about COVID, I had a heavy feeling that life was about to change. And it did. March 13 was the kids last day at school. The teachers scrambled over the weekend and we began remote learning on March 16.
-The older 3 kids work on school work from 9-12 pm. The younger 2 kids only have about an hour of school work. Caleb and Isaac are enjoying "homeschooling." They love that school is done by noon. Isaac asked, why do we stay at school til 3 pm everyday? Don't get any ideas kids, I'm not homeschooling you in the future. I really don't have to help the older 3 kids with school. Their teachers lay out the daily assignments and the kids independently work thru them. The younger 2 do need my attention and help with school work, but they do not have much to do. Stephen misses school very much and Lexi misses playing with friends. Her happy place is playing outside all day with neighbor kids. It is very sad and hard that the kids can't play with friends. We take turns with the neighbors, sending our kids outside at varying times. So bizarre.
-Zoom video chatting quickly took over our lives. The calendar went from kid activities to kid zoom calls. My trainings also moved to zoom, so there is a lot of zooming going on here. Some mornings our wi-fi is struggling. With Nate working from home and 5 kids using zoom and watching teacher videos, we all get frustrated at times.
-I got sick with a fever/body aches near the end of March. The doctor told me to isolate in my bedroom until I was fever free for 24 hours. I was in isolation for 4 days. The kids were fearful that Mom was sick with COVID. We are thankful the fever ended and no one else got sick.
-Isaac and Julia's piano lessons were moved to video lessons- they weren't super excited about the benefits of technology in this situation