if I could only miss three things...

We are in our third week of distance learning now, and we've been mostly-home for a full month.  I feel like life has come to a screeching halt.  But time hasn't - it keeps moving on without us.  Every day I wake up and it takes me a few seconds to remember that we are in the midst of perhaps the greatest global tragedy of our lifetime.  And every night I tuck my kids into bed, and Reggie asks the same question he always does - "What are we doing tomorrow?" - as if he expects a different answer.

A long time ago, I picked up a book off the library's discharge rack because the cover caught my attention.  I had good intentions of using it for a read-aloud, which we sometimes do at breakfast.  I finally pulled it off our shelf in the early days of our stay-at-home experience, and we have been enjoying it here and there.   The book is The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky by Holly Schindler.  In the book, a girl's school is closed and she has to attend a new school.  She decides she is only going to allow herself to miss three things about her old school.  The home school teacher in me decided this would make a good writing assignment, and my kids clearly miss their friends more than anything else.

Me?  Here's what I miss:

1. I miss watching my kids play sports.  I really, really miss this.

2.  I miss getting together with extended family.  Even though we live far away from family and don't see them in our regular daily lives, this still makes my list of three.  My parents go south for the winter, and they have now made it home safely.  But we haven't seen them since Thanksgiving.  We were planning to get together for Easter with Bryan's parents, but we had to cancel our gathering.

3. I miss "field trips".  I really like the days off and summer days when we spend the day at the park or the beach or the museum.  As of right now, we are not even allowed to use the park in our neighborhood.  I'm really struggling to think about how we might possibly do summer without outings!

To answer your question, Reggie, tomorrow, we are going to make the best of it. And by God's grace we will press on through this hardship together.

Reggie's old bike endured one too many collisions last fall.  So glad we found this gently-used one at a local bike shop.

happy coronavirus birthday

A few days before Bryan's birthday, the kids asked him what "kind" of birthday he wanted to have.  Bryan sarcastically said, "a coronavirus birthday".  So we got him a coronavirus DQ ice cream cake.  We also got take-out from a local Mexican restaurant.  

The kids made posters and gifts.  Reggie thought about what his dad likes and decided to build him a beer mug out of Lego.  Brett likes to give out "coupons" for various services.   Bryan turned in his coupon for one big kiss.

The coronavirus is stretching us to be creative and stripping us down to the essence of what matters.  It might just teach us a few things.

And the next day...

...was what will be remembered as the last day that life still resembled normal. Bryan went to work before we were up. We were on spring break, so we spent the day mostly at home doing laundry, etc. Bryan had meetings that evening, so all the kids came with me to what turned out to be Brett's last basketball practice.
All of Brett's basketball season has been canceled.  This year was exciting for him because he had made it to the "B" team, which plays full court.  The last two years, he had played on the half-court team that plays 3-on-3.  March 11th was the last day of the NBA season, and the sports world imploded from there.  Bryan came home that night and told me wrestling would be canceled.  I didn't believe him.  Thursday, I took the boys to the barber (for the last time in the foreseeable future) and Lydia had what turned out to be her last piano lesson (in the foreseeable future).  Reggie's wrestling season was essentially canceled.  There is still a ray of hope that NYWA may host an open state tournament at a later date.  The NCAA canceled March Madness, and the wrestling championship.  It was going to be held in Minneapolis this year, and I had bought tickets to surprise Bryan for his birthday.

Friday, Bryan's parents came to visit, and we made plans to gather for Easter.  That won't be happening.  I'm so glad they came when they did.  Church was canceled on Sunday morning, and that is when our governor would officially cancel school statewide for two weeks.  The two weeks was to be a time for schools to plan for "distance learning".  In a matter of four days, everything in our calendar other than medical appointments had been canceled.

By Wednesday the 18th, the therapy and medical appointments shifted to virtual appointments.  Reggie's wrestling school (that he does year-round) had also moved to an online format, and track, baseball and softball seasons have been postponed indefinitely. It was also the last day that Bryan went to the office.  He set up a temporary office in a corner of Brett's bedroom, which is located where he will not be as distracted during the day.

We've kept busy at home.  We made traditional St. Patrick's Day food and sugar cookies.

 We play games almost every day.  The kids have been playing with Lego a lot.

For the next week, we felt pretty free to move about while practicing "social distancing".  Bryan or I would do our shopping without much thought and we'd go to the various parks in our area. We did two things we have never done since we've had kids: got pizza delivered to our house and drove through Culver's for ice cream sundaes. The kids and I went to pick up our meat order from our farmer and detoured to a state park over an hour away. But I was starting to feel a bit anxious about things like letting the kids go into the gas station to use the bathroom (because the ones at the state park were locked).  

Things that seemed strange or foreign even a few weeks ago have started to feel common place -  conducting almost all of our business online, including appointments and attending church in our living room.  We've even attended a virtual birthday party, which turned out to be a bit of a bummer (no cake!).

Meanwhile, schools were crazy busy preparing for distance learning.  The middle school set up a drive-through delivery for kids who needed chrome books.   At the elementary level, bags with two week's worth of school work, books, and supplies were assembled and delivered via the bus routes.

On Friday, March 27th, the governor's order to "stay-at-home" went into effect.  Initially, it was for two weeks, but he is already saying it will likely be extended until May.  Since then, we have barely left the neighborhood.  The kids have seemed to settle into life at a slower pace and essentially only having each other to interact with.  I mean, 90% of it is fighting, but I still believe it would be harder for children without siblings.  Tag on spring break, and they have had a full four weeks of being each other's best/only in-person friends.  It warms my heart when, after being tucked in for the night, I can still hear them calling each other on their Alexa devices! They officially started their distance learning on Monday, and we'll just say it's had it's ups and downs.  I will write more about that later.

This post is not meant to minimize all the suffering and hardship that is happening worldwide.  I am very well aware that our lives have been relatively unscathed thus far, and for that I am grateful.  But this blog is a journal recording our family experiences, and nothing more.

If I were Mayor...

So, I told you in my last post that we had to get back home from our trip for a special event.  Have you been wondering what it was?

Lydia was being recognized as the winner of the "If I were Mayor..." contest!  It was an art and essay contest in our city.  The essay and art was to include ideas for how to make improvements in our city.

Here is Lydia's essay in her own words:

I Think That We Should Have Sports Opportunities for People with Disabilities in [our city]

   

    If I were mayor, I would have opportunities for people with disabilities to do sports. I think that just because people are different, they are people too. I think that we should have a sports program for people with special needs and also for normal people to play against or with them. We will compete against other teams in “Area” and “State”. Area is where you are divided into leagues for “State”. Also, if you go and compete in Area you automatically go to state. This program exists already, but not in [our city]. It is called the Special Olympics. You can look it up on the internet if you want to know more about it. Let me tell you some background of how I got this idea.

    My older brother has a learning disability, and we go to this program in [another city] for sports with other people with disabilities. The team’s name is the Lumberjacks. You can look up that too. Even if you put a program like this in [our city] we will probably still stay with that program, but other people may not want to go that far to do sports.

Some sports you could offer are:

In Winter:   Snowboarding, Skiing, Curling, Swimming, and Basketball.

In Spring/Summer:  Softball, Track and field, and Soccer.

And in Fall: Golf, Bowling, Cross Country, Flag Football, and Volleyball.

You could have this program at a school, or have it in different places depending on the sport. For example, in our program we have some sports at a school, but others, like golf, are at different spaces depending on the sport. Family or friends can sign up to be unified partners and play along- side them and help them. Also, retired people can come help out too. Of course, no one will be paid, but just seeing the smiles on their faces will be worth it. People would pay for jerseys and/or fundraisers. There would be someone in charge, most likely a parent or guardian of an athlete. Everyone will feel welcome and like they belong, and everyone will feel safe. This program could be an escape from the bullying and pain that some people have in the real world.

I made this sculpture to represent a retired woman and a boy born with autism and the woman is helping him bowl. He may not do it the same way as most people would, but you can see that he is having fun and THAT is the point of this program. Not, to teach them the right way to play, but to have fun. THAT is my point. Thank you.

The city put all the entries on display at our nature center and they had a ribbon cutting ceremony.  Lydia, along with the 2nd and 3rd place winners, got to present their essays, and then Lydia got to cut the ribbon to open the "gallery" with huge scissors!

After the ceremony, she was invited to the city council meeting, where she got to be "Mayor for a Day".  She called the meeting to order and adjourned the meeting with her prize - her very own gavel!   She learned a lot about Robert's Rules of Order, and when she got home, she immediately made a motion to extend bedtime - which was defeated by a vote of 2 nays to 3 yays (because our house is not a democracy!)
I'm so proud of Lydia, for not only her quality work, but for coming up with an idea that was both personally meaningful and selfless.  She did it completely on her own, and to be honest, I didn't even see her finished project until the gallery opening. She didn't even tell me she won. Her friend's mom congratulated her in front of me, and I acted like I knew what she was talking about!