The pandemic and related consequences are, in so very many ways, bad.
This has been a sad season.
But there have been little highlights. Our family has been intentionally "planning" little events to look forward to in the middle of the season of life when all the normal routines aren't possible (i.e. going for walks, playing at the playground, swimming, etc) and when all the big travel plans we were looking forward to got canceled.
We had a "family movie night" where we pulled the whole mattress off our bed, put it in the living room, and cuddled on the mattress while watching a movie on Angel's laptop. We've made some kitchen experiments and had chocolate fondue for lunch one day, just because.
I have been so, so grateful that if we have to stay home, that it is with two energetic little boys. There has not been the slightest chance of boredom for me, while I have missed our little friends and our normal routines and opportunities to see others, we have stayed busy from morning till night with fun in the house. We have definitely tried out new things inside the home in the name of variety. ha!
As you might expect, Angel is working from home, teaching his classes via Zoom, and doing all his teacher work online. Thankfully their school had been preparing for this eventuality so they were pretty well prepared and I think it has gone fairly smoothly. Cyrus even joined in on one of the Zoom PE classes--ha!
I have been taking The Bible Project's Intro to the Hebrew Bible class online--if you need something to keep your mind active, I highly recommend this course. The Bible Project does such a good job of teaching the way the Bible should be read and understood, and their new courses and "classroom" project is something I am very excited about! It's a pretty hefty course, 29 sessions...I'm somewhere about 24 sessions in, so nearly done!
Be forewarned, most of the photos in this post are just pictures of Glenn.
Because this is the face I see right next to my face...in the morning, and also in the middle of the night His crib is right up against my bed like this, haha!
Someone kindly delivered some produce to our house...which included okra and eggplant, two veggies I had never cooked before. I made roasted eggplant soup and deep fried okra and both were delicious.
This probably counts as "quarantine crazy"...but this was a snack I gave Cyrus the other day. Angel has been doing the grocery shopping alone and sometime buys weird things like a can of whipped cream...I asked him what the whipped cream was for and he said "Pancakes." But, not having either the ingredients or inclination to make pancakes, I used some whipped cream for a silly sensory play/snack for Cyrus. Yep, quarantine crazy.
Some of our groceries arrived in a big cardboard box, so we made a fridge to add on to Cyrus's Ikea kitchen, which he's been playing with on a daily basis since Christmas.
This is an outtake from Glenn's 5 month photo session, Cyrus always has to get in on the photoshoots, too.
For the first time of any Easters that I can remember, we got Easter chocolates and mini "Easter baskets" (brown paper bags). Now you can tell we're going a bit crazy with quarantine. We've been having our own mini-family-church services, and Angel and I have been having fun choosing songs, mostly because we choose the 90s-era worship songs we grew up with that you hardly hear in real church services anymore.
With Angel being home, he plays crazy games with the boys (moms and dads play very differently, I think). "Baby chases Cyrus" has been a popular game lately, so we had to get it on video for the memories!
I do lots of fun activities with Cyrus, who loves storytime, coloring, play-doh, and duplos...but he doesn't end up in photos as much because...I don't know if you've ever seen a two year old...but they move really, really fast. Even indoors. He's actually handled not going anywhere much better than expected. But I know he misses old "normal" things like going grocery shopping with Angel and seeing his friends every day and everything we used to do. We shall see what happens next.
