What is Saving Your Life Right Now?

I heard the question asked on a podcast the other day and I keep thinking about what my answer would be. Here goes:

1. Headphones: I've found we all need music while stuck at home. We all need music, but we don't always need music at the same time. This means that at any given time of day one or multiple of us can be found with headphones on. This also saves me from having to hear two different school lessons going on at the same time throughout the day. The boys can each do their own work next to each other and they can listen to music without driving me crazy as well. Win, win!

2. Schitt's Creek: I found this TV show when I was stupid sick back in February. In hindsight I might have had COVID in February. I haven't been that sick, for that long in a long long time. But while I was home sick I found this show on Netflix and thought it was good. Now that the world is falling apart it is saving my life. I cannot face watching anything serious, depressing, or stressful. The real world is too stressful already and I can't concentrate so I can't on too complicated of a plot line. The series ended a last week and I'm so sad I came this late to the party. However, I've watched it all the way through and I am seriously considering starting it over. I need something funny in my life and currently this is it. I would highly recommend it.

3. Sweatpants: This goes without saying really. I am pretty sure my jeans think I died. I am confident they won't fit when and if we ever go back to a life where real pants are required. I have reverted back to my college days of home sweat pants and going out sweat pants. Now I also have workout pants to through into the elastic waste band rotation. Life is really weird currently. My son doesn't have any shorts that don't have holes in them, but does that really matter since he is literally never in public.

4. YouTube: When I'm in doubt of what to do or how to teach some subject, YouTube video it is. We've watched everything from a frog dissection to a virtual tour of the white house and all the how to draw videos in between.

5. Sunshine: I am constantly amazed at how much better of a day we will have if we are able to spend time outside in the sunshine. The more time the better. The fresh air, the vitamin D, and just a change in scenery from this house makes an absolute world of difference. The days when it is cold outside, rainy, or just all around gloomy have be the worst, especially when there are multiple of these days in a row. Praise God it this isn't happening in the dead of winter.

6. Music: This is my ace in the hole that I frequently forget about. The mood instantly is better if we turn some music on. It doesn't matter what it is, but something I can sing and dance to usually works best. We put a Spotify playlist on the TV and just let it play in the background, immediately lifting everyone's spirits. It's hard to be sad or upset when you're singing and dancing. We've listened to everything from country music from my childhood to early 2000s R&B, Beatles, Disney music, and everything in between.

This time has definitely given me a chance to really take inventory of the small things that I am surrounded by that make a huge difference. A hot shower at the end of the day, a door that locks on my bedroom, our huge, gorgeous backyard, the wall of windows in my home. All the little things that were always there are now the big things. It's the little things that are saving me day in and day out. The little moments when my children find a way to love each and be kind to each other. All the precious moments that get so spend as a family. The quite evenings in the backyard, the lazy weekend mornings together, with no where to go. It's really the tiniest of things that are saving us all right now. 

Social Distancing: 40 Days and 40 Nights

Yesterday was day forty of our at home quarantine, isolation, social distancing situation. I still am not sure what we're calling it, but it's solidly our life now. Forty days late and the dust has settled and we have begun to settle into some sort of routine. This routine was hard fought to get to, but we waded through all the feelings and fights and over the past weeks and I feel like we've found a rhythm that works. The things that are really serving me well began to rise to the top of my thoughts each day and those things began to get priority. I've found that this isolation has really required me to take a hard look at everyday and every decision I make in that day to see what works, what helps, what hurts, what things can I maybe release a little control of to make life more manageable for the whole family.

Here's where we have landed. I personally am not a fan of screen time first thing in the morning. I have been known to require thirty minutes of reading before any screens. Over time I have learned that this always ends in a battle and generally means our days start poorly, with fights and complaining. It also would frequently mean I was dragged out of bed to deal with these fits and fighting. The same can be said for having the boys clean their rooms in the morning, never ends well, actually always ends in a fight. This all became even more evident when we were stuck at home for days on end. These are examples of where I loosened by control and switched things up for the betterment of the family.

Reading time now falls at other points during the day. The kids get up and mindlessly watch a screen, with the solid end time of 8am, when they must be dressed, have eaten breakfast, and are ready for workout time. The hard and fast stop time is also a must. Rowan has started to read to me on my bed during reading time, which is a nice change of scenery and away from Zane's reading. Zach graciously has accepted the responsibility of overseeing room cleaning/pick up time because I just cannot handle it. My OCD does not go well with a room shared with two boys. Zach has found a system, that is implemented later in the day, and it seems to be working. 

After weeks of railing against a hard and fast schedule for schooling I have found a schedule that we stick too most days, all be it somewhat loosely. It is a good tool to come back to to get us back on track when things frequently go off the rails. It vaguely is language arts in the morning, which must include writing with an actual pen/pencil not just assignments on apps. There is app time in the morning as well to complete their essential assignments. The schedule includes set snack times, an hour for creative time which some days we are creative in and some days we are just outside. Reading takes place when T goes to sleep. Then in the afternoon math, science/social studies/speech, and then a free choice of some app or online learning resource of their choosing. The kids have had better attitudes towards school so far this week, so maybe they are getting use to it. They are missing their friends and teachers a lot but the crying has decreased as the initial shock/trauma wears off.

All together we might spend and hour to max and hour and a half doing actual learning. They generally breeze right through their essential work in two minutes, so we find something else somewhat educational to do involving the same ideas. I'm not sure that they are learning anything, but we've found some creative ways to learn things. Mom has sent kiwi crates, atlas crates, and raddish kits that have proven wonderful during this time. So far I feel like they have learned or are currently working on learning their cardinal directions. This is important to me as my dad only ever gave me directions in North, South, East, West so I really want them to have a good grasp on this. Zane talked to his parents/grandparents about where his ancestors were from and researched the different countries. We also talked about inherited vs acquired traits which fits nicely into the biological family vs adoptive family conversation with Zach. Zane has video chatted with people while doing his speech assignments this week which he also seems to enjoy.

I've also found exercise time Monday-Friday is a must. This is a great way to start our day. Get's the blood going and you immediately feel like you've accomplished something. The kids fight it every single day, but it's part of the routine that they end up enjoying. I'm seeing improvements in their ability to run/ride bikes for longer times. They are getting stronger and faster and it's a big lesson in staying healthy. If they can gain this habit and nothing else from this whole experience it will be worth it.

The decision to allow myself some time alone each day has been ground breaking and wonderful. It's never a lot of time, but it is some amount of time to myself. The act of actively giving myself permission for this time has been wonderful. I assessed what I needed, what would help me, and prioritized that over what my children might want/need in that exact moment. I am not trying to be a martyr here. I'm trying to survive and it's good that my children see me put myself first sometimes. Even if it only thirty minutes of the day. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've found it's important to have an event or an activity to look forward to. This seems impossible to plan out because if I come up with an idea it immediately becomes the worst idea ever. So I have to lay in wait for an idea to arise naturally from the kids then run with it. This has worked well and they generally are very close to great ideas and with just a nudge in the right directions they find it. This has shown up in cooking challenges, game nights, concerts/plays, and most recently last night's Beatles Kitchen dinner. Zane had just finished a Who Where the Beatles book. Rowan was learning about money and had an assignment to make a menu with prices and then have a pretend restaurant. Well quarantine times means that pretend restaurant becomes a full dining experience in the backward for the whole family. The boys made menus, came up with Beatles themed names for all the food, and made the dinner with minor help from Zach and I. 

These are the moments that I know would never happen if our lives where back to normal. We'd be at a ball field and Zach wouldn't be home to pop in for an early dinner. The kids would be exhausted from school and never would have come up with this idea. We would've gone to the store to buy supplies instead of just using what we had on hand, making homemade buns, and using frozen strawberries for dessert. There is a lot to be learned from this experience and now that things are beginning to settle down I'm hoping to take these lessons to heart.

 My waiter was less than pleasant. I requested crushed ice and ordered pickles off the menu, he was none to happy.

 Ants on a drumstick

 Burger Lane Burger and Come Together Veggies

 Strawberry Fields Forever for dessert

Yesterday's other precious quarantine moment was brought to you by our newest routine of going to get school lunches everyday at lunch time. Usually we pick up our three bagged lunches and just come home to eat them. We've been doing this for a week or so now. It's the same thing everyday so it is starting to lose it's appeal. However, yesterday was just too gorgeous to be inside so we had a spur of the moment picnic at one of the other lakes in the neighborhood. The front lake is where the baby geese live so we went to eat lunch with them. This is a moment that obviously I wouldn't have gotten to share with all my boys if we weren't social distancing. They'd all be at school. T and I would have never been pulled together enough for a picnic because we would have been out and about all morning. As an added bonus Zach dropped by to say hi during his lunch break as well. We had a lovely morning exploring nature and eating the exact same lunch we have been eating for a week and a half. Less can be so much more, a pandemic lesson for sure.

Sometimes I feel bad for this little one because he isn't getting as much one on one attention that he would be getting if he and I were spending our days together. But then I step back and see that he's having the absolute time of his life. His big brothers are here all day and adventures abound. I don't know if he will remember this time, but I will. These precious memories, of all the boys together for months on end will, in hindsight be seen as such special memories.

Then there are just the everyday things that have changed that now are normal. I haven't been to a store in over forty days. I have only driven my car, farther than to the school and back, one time in this forty days. I haven't filled my car up with gas in over a month. We have a whole intricate system for groceries being delivered, disinfected, washed, and then put away now that involves a miniature shopping cart. My three year old may not remember getting groceries any other way. I'm not sure I will ever go back to going to stores for my groceries. I'm feeling paradigms shifting and feel myself wondering if I'll ever go back to what once was normal. Will it ever feel safe or needed again. We have daily family meetings that everyone request now. The questions of when can we leave, when will this be over, and what is happening have subsided as the boys settle into this being their normal, for better or for worse that's where we are. We have lots of conversations about other families they see making different choices and they now repeat my constant refrain of "they are making different choice for their family." 

I haven't been to work in forty days and honestly kind of forget about my job most days. I have no idea what I will be walking into when I do eventually return, and that's daunting, since I have no idea when that will be. I get daily emails about just how bleak the situation at the hospital is, with no supplies, no protection, with crazy visitation policies, and at my hospital very few patients. It seems like an unreal situation that I am not sad to be missing, but that breaks my heart daily. Here in Oklahoma I have little to no faith in our elected leaders to make good decision, as evidence by the reopening pretty much everything this Friday. I am bracing for another wave and the fear for my own personal health and well being has begun to ramp back up. 

The overall take away from forty days at home is that we can survive a lot. We have so much. We're exceedingly blessed and our biggest issues aren't really that big of issues in the long run. I've learned that as much as these people I'm social distancing with drive me completely crazy, I couldn't ask for a better crew. Specifically I've learned that I married so well and we just get along smashingly no matter what insanity we face. We, as a couple, take very few things seriously. We laugh daily, we communicate well, we work well together, we understand how crazy hard all the things are and it's a huge give and take between as to keep us both sane. I cannot imagine going through this with a partner that you do all these things well with. Zach's for sure saving all our lives right now.

Life Together Apart: Embracing Absurdity

At the first of the year I read Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Learned to Love  by Kate Bowler. I downloaded it on a whim while I waiting for my next book to arrive in the mail and devoured it in a day. Everything in it rang so true to me. She is Catholic, or was Catholic maybe, but has a very similar faith background to me. She also has the exact same current world view as I do. Usually that isn't the case for me. If it's a Catholic writer I generally have a lot of issues with some of their views and then end up feeling conflicted and sad about how hard it is to love a faith that I grew up in so deeply, while still having so many major issues with the church as a whole. It's a conflict that has weighed on my soul for pushing twenty years at this point. It's conflict which I don't have a resolution to. However, this book was a breath of fresh hair to me, coming from someone with a similar combination of faith background and outlook on the world.

I started following Kate on social media and at the beginning of Lent she started posting daily videos talking about Lent. Shortly there after the world came crumbling down around us and the videos about Lent started to talk about how Lent related to these uncertain times. She posted short prayers to say each day during a time when I just couldn't even find words. All her posts gave me such great things to think about and pray about. Her guidance and content really helped me feel as more a part of lent as I have in years. It helped give me words to speak to my children about lent outside of the horribly depressing, we are all the worst people ever, sermons that are usually delivered in the Catholic church at Lent. This lent I was also unable to attend church so these videos and messages became a form of worship each morning. And it was lovely, a true blessing.

After Easter Kate started a website Life Together Apart where she will posts journal prompts, prayers, and videos for each day of the fifty days of Easter, trying to foster a sense of community, being together while living apart. The first day she talked about how we as a people need horizons. She is a survivor of cancer so she would live her life scan to scan while she was in treatment. She could try to live fully until that next scan. I fully understand this feeling as for years that's how I dealt with Zane's heart condition. I would be pretend to be blissfully unaware of his diagnosis until his next echo started to creep up on us, then it was a full fear spiral.

Now we all find ourselves in this place where there are no end dates for this terrible situation we are in. We need to form our own horizons, something to work towards. We need to make our own light along the way in this tunnel that seems to have no end. The fifty days of Easter is her way of forming  a horizon. Fifty more days. Who even knows where we'll be in fifty days. Maybe we'll be right here, in our houses, having spent months away from our loved ones and jobs. Maybe it will all be over and we can look back in amazement at all we went through. No one knows, but a horizon seemed like a great idea to me. So I joined this workshop/website/community and have been doing her daily prompts.

Which leads me to yesterday's prompt, embracing absurdity. I fully relate to this. I am the type of person who full bore will lean in to humor, ridiculousness, and absurdity during difficult times. I think of all the laughs in the waiting rooms during Zane's surgeries. Or singing rap songs with Able on the way to the funeral home to plan our father's funeral. You have to do whatever you can to find joy, even when it seems crazy. During this uncertain time, when all we have is time, endless time, why not use some of it for joy. This goes along with my quarantine motto of "why not" perfectly. I took this prompt yesterday and spent my day planning a Minute to Win it family competition for the end of the day.

While the boys did school work I made signs for each challenge, researched YouTube video instructions, and gathered supplies. This was our horizon for the day. This was something fun to look forward to, to work towards. Overall the whole activity took maybe thirty minutes. We picked teams and found matching t shirts. We took pictures and cheered. We had fun and forgot about all the craziness around us for a just a hot second. The competition ended in a tie so Zach and I did the keep the balloon in the air competition as a tie breaker.  I did this in socks on our new hardwood floors and nearly blew out my knee slip sliding around. A great time was had by all.

 Task number one:  Nose Dive - transfer as many cotton balls from one bowl to another using nothing but your nose with Vaseline on it. Zane won this one by a lot.

Task number two: Walk Hershey kisses on a spoon across the room and put them a cup. Rowan and I won this one by one. 

Task number three: Cheerio Noodle- Get as many cheerioes on a spaghetti noodle as possible in sixty seconds. Rowan won this one by a hair after he and Zane both had cheerios falling off in the last second.

 The Fourth Task: Johnny Apple Stacker - We had sixty seconds to stack five apples. Zach and I both failed this challenge.

 Task number five: Rise Up - Set up as many army men as you can in sixty seconds using only a clothes pin. This was a fun one that took a little practice. Zane won the first round with getting exactly one guy up. They both practiced a little and enjoyed trying to set them all up.

 Task Number Six: Defying gravity - Who can keep two balloons in the air the longest. Zane won this one with twenty seconds.

 Task number seven: Marshmallow Blow - Who can successfully blow a marshmallow across the table using a straw the fastest. Rowan won this one easily.

 Rowan and I in our matching Audra's Army shirts. There is a little girl at Zane's school named Audra who has been battling cancer the past few years. These are the shirts the kids wore on the days she had chemo treatments.

As much as we need horizons in the distance I have found that we also need very close horizons, shores if you were, that we can reach quickly. That we can get to by the end of the day and sometimes the end of an hour. This week I have started to make a short horizon in the middle of the day. I spend some amount of time in my room, in silence in the middle of the day. Sometimes it's twenty minutes. Sometimes, if everyone needs to nap, it's a hour. Sometimes it's five minutes in my closet in the dark. But my middle of the day horizon is silence. I have realized that the silence of nap time was grounding and helped me reset. I'm recreating it for myself, if even if it can only be in a small way.

In this same vein I have found the kids do better when we have an end of the day goal, or horizon to look forward to. This can very small like bathing in the big tub, or big like an elaborately planned Minute to Win it game. My brain personally can't plan things to far in advance right now. I can't focus at all. So I am not planning out events or goals days or weeks in advance. I am keeping this thought in the back of my mind and look for opportunities in the day to find something that could be a goal for the end of the day. Today Thatcher started playing with all the Cars cars this afternoon. Everyone enjoyed remembering those movies. So this evening we are going to watch Cars together. The end of the day goal is frequently a movie night, because as Glennon Doyle reminded us last week there is no TV time during quarantine All time is TV time, we are just trying to survive.

There are lots of ways to embrace absurdity in your life and I embrace every last one. Have dance parties, eat ice cream everyday if you have it, always pop the popcorn, drink Sonic drinks at 9 a.m., camp in the backyard, do whatever makes you happy, even if that happiness only last five or ten minutes. I am constantly trying to find a way to enjoy the slower pass, while still definitely missing all the fun things the crazy pace made possible in our lives. I'm trying not to think of all the money I flushed directly down the toilet planning and paying for fun things that we now cannot do and instead think of all the money I'm saving never driving my car, going to stores, or eating out. It is a constant struggle in my mind. I just keep going toward whatever the next goal or the next right thing is. I just keep going toward the horizons.

Easter 2020: Pandemic Easter

Growing up we went to Easter Mass super early on Sunday morning. I remember waking up before the sun came up, getting all our animals in their little cages, then driving to church in the dark. When we arrived at church the back was filled with chirping chicken, and tiny quacking ducks. There were frogs, and kittens, and we always got a bunny for Easter. The first thing that happened in Mass was the creation story. All the kids went to the back of the church, David played Cannon in D, my mom read the creation story, and all the children brought up water, dirt, plants, and animals as they were created. The adults were puddles of tears and the children were fully oblivious to the world around them.  I think my older two boys got to be a part of that maybe twice, but it's one of my absolute favorite childhood memories.

The past few years we've stayed in the city for Easter. We've gone to church at St. John's and Easter morning mass there is just a normal mass, since the sun has already come. Something about the vigil needing to take place in the dark. It's fine, but it's never the same. This year we haven't been to church in weeks but I've been following various people on social media who were doing morning Lenten readings or videos talking about the Lenten journey during pandemic times. It's the most connected I've felt to Lent in a long time. A pandemic really is a great way to get connected with Lent, that's all I'm trying to say here.

During holy week we ended our nightly family meetings with a gospel reading. So on Thursday we talked about Holy Thursday mass, where people go up and wash each other's feet, then read the gospel passage about that. No master is above their servant and all that. I told stories about how dad always was the one washing feet at our church, because of course he was. I remember dreading Holy Week as a child because it meant three nights in a row of full masses. Shout out to my parents for braving that with the three of us. Anyway each night we read the gospel and had a family discussion about it. Talk about a blessing that would have never in a million years happened at this time of year without a pandemic forcing us to slow down, be together, be present, and give us the time to deep dive into scripture with our children.

One night during family meeting I said that I was sad about Easter coming up because we couldn't do anything with our family and Easter is usually a big family day, either at the farm or at someone's house down here. Easter is hunting eggs with all the cousins, a big family meal, matching outfits, and gorgeous spring afternoons outside with everyone together. We couldn't do any of that this year. I asked the kids what we could do to try to keep some of those traditions alive. What parts of Easter did they want to make sure happened or try to make happen in some way. The things they came up with were precious. They wanted to have a scavenger hunt for Easter basket, which our Easter Bunny always does. The wanted deviled eggs, they wanted to dye eggs, and of course they wanted Easter egg hunts with candy. Zane came up with the idea that we could do the creation story with all our stuffed animals. I loved it and that snow balled into doing the creation story on a zoom call with my siblings with Mom reading and the Grandkids bringing things up to their "alters" (a.k.a fire places.)

So the Saturday morning before Easter, at 10 a.m., I once again found myself at creation story practice. Just like when I was a child. The only thing missing were the Hladik girls and the live animals. We all figured out zoom and then had a did a few run-throughs of the story. It became clear that having same version that was read at Bison was important. For instance, He created a great dome in the sky, not a firmament. No on ever uses the word firmament. We left with our assignments to make moon, sun, and stars and to gather some dirt in a jar. 

 Saturday also brought the Hurts Donut truck to our neighborhood which we were able to share with Aunt Abbey's crew after practice. We left them on their mailbox as they stood ten feet away from us waving. It's a weird world we live in and it's hard.

 The boys Pack Leaders drove around saying hi to all the Scouts, so we busted out all our Scout signs and made a few new ones to wave and say hello to them. I miss other people. It was so nice of them to drive by everyone's house just to wave hi.

 Saturday afternoon we dyed Easter eggs. I quickly learned that I had been buying dyeing kits for no reason for years. We googled it and did it the old fashion way with boiling water, vinegar, and food coloring. It worked wonderfully. It's crazy how grown up my kids are now days. They dyed these eggs with minimal supervision as I was baking ranch burgers during egg dying time. Thatcher needed a little help, but the bigs did it all on their own. I so remember googling how to get egg dye off of little boys hands the first time we dyed eggs with Zane. He refused to not put his entire hand in every cup.

I baked another round of home made bread Saturday, half of it I used to make ranch burgers, a la my childhood, and half of it was a made into a loaf for Easter dinner. This is something that use to seem fully unattainable, but this is my third solo batch and I'm starting to get the hang of it. 

 Saturday evening ended terribly with Zane literally slapping Rowan across the face once they went into their rooms. I hate when our evenings end terribly, especially after having a family meeting which the soul purpose of is to try to have a peaceful transition into sleep time. We got it worked out after lots of tears and fighting. Then it was time for Easter bunny fun.

As mentioned last week Zane learned the truth about the Easter Bunny last week. So I let him pick where the Easter baskets would be hidden on the scavenger hunt this year. Zach and I wrote the clues, but he got to pick where they ended up. I went back and forth about Easter baskets. I wasn't sure I should spend the money on it. I didn't know how to get the stuff. But I landed on having a toned down, mostly candy version of their baskets, with everything being purchased online. 

 In one of my proudest moments of a parent Zach and I Came up with this gem of a clue for our Easter egg hunt. Yes, we are that awesome!

 The boys woke up painfully early for the Easter basket scavenger hunt this year, which is more annoying than usual since we literally have no where to go.

Thatcher ate most of his chocolate bunny before 7am. There are no rules anymore.

 The Easter Bunny also brought money for the first time which was a big hit.

 Then we come to my favorite part of Easter, matching outfits for my boys and family pictures. Surprisingly enough I had not gotten matching outfits for the boys this year prior to the pandemic setting in, but I did still want family photos on Easter morning. These are the dress shirts that the boys could find that somewhat fit. Zane's pants have a huge ink stain on the pocket and no one wore shoes, but this is the most pulled together we have been in a solid month. Thatcher found the little bow tie in a drawer in his room, from Easters past, and he loved it.

 Before yesterday I had not worn real pants, brushed my hair, or worn make up in over thirty days. I honestly couldn't remember the last time I'd done any of these things. With that being said, Jesus doesn't rise from the dead everyday people. It's worth getting a little dressed up for. I didn't put on a dress or anything, I put on a pair of jeans I had bought the week prior to the shut down and had yet to get to wear. I wore them for exactly one hour, then back to sweat pants we went. But look at this cute family photo. Here we all are, dressed up with no where to go, but dressed up none the less.

Then it was time for celebratory biscuits and gravy.

 Then it was time to create the heavens, earth, and all living creatures. Thatcher was sad that someone had taken his plant, which is a classic creation story fight. This plant is fake, full disclosure, but it made it's way into the creation story.

 All the Shurtz cousins joined us on our zoom call to watch the creation story fun. Sadly it wasn't recorded, so I didn't really get to see any of it because I was wrangling children, but my kids were super cute.

 Homemade stars with bells, for Grandma B.

 They did so great and it was so darling. 

 Before naps we had an outdoor Easter egg hunt with plans for another after naps, but a cold front came through so the second one had to take place indoors. Watching three year old hunt Easter eggs is the cutest thing in the world. They get so excited fro every single thing. Thatcher was so proud of all his finds and his brothers left him the easy ones.

 While Thatcher slept I went out for a run with the boys riding bikes. As soon as we got to the lake the wind changed direction and a cold front came blowing in, dropping the temperature, and bringing the rain. We ran home in the cold rain, feeling Dad's Easter hug surrounding us and of course there were tears on Rowan and I's part.

Zane and I made yet another Easter cake yesterday. This one didn't turn out exactly as we had envisioned, but we rolled with it and I think turned out pretty cute. We had planned on peeps around the outside but the yellow frosting didn't turn out the right color. The middle layer was purple which was super cute. I have also learned that there was no reason to be buying cake mixes or frosting. These are things we can make, we just never do because buying a box and a things of frosting is so easy.

As is the case with most days in this isolation the wheels begin to fall at our house by two or three o'clock. Everyone gets punchy, starts doing things they know they shouldn't do, begin to forget how to listen, start being incredibly loud, start to fight, and my patience runs thin. Yesterday was no different. In the afternoon I came into the living room to find my couch covered in candy wrappers. I punted a stuffed penguin and pulled a hammie. I think couldn't walk well or bend over. Around this time Zach realized he hadn't eaten any real food that day besides biscuits and gravy and his blood sugar was most likely through the roof, since he was dizzy and felt sick. He ate some protein and drank some water, while I went and sat in a hot bath. Every day at some point there is this moment, where I desperately just want to run to my bedroom, close the door, and sit in silence for a few hours or minutes. 

We ended the day with a family dinner at which Rowan cried, "I just want this day to be over." Yes, me too. Rowan was sad all day, crying about everything and nothing, refusing to find anything positive for most of the day. It's hard to deal with all the emotions over nothing on top of the emotions over actual things. There were lots of hugs and we ended the night with video calls to Aunt Abbey and Grandma.

This was an Easter I could have never dreamed of. I could never have imagined an Easter where all the churches were closed. No one gathered together, anywhere. It wasn't just that our kids were sick so we couldn't go somewhere, which frequently happens, but no one went anywhere. I heard the church bells ringing in the morning while we hunted eggs, and it was an eerie sound, knowing that the churches sat empty. Yet, somehow I did feel very connected yesterday, not just to my immediate family but to my family around the country. We sent videos to each other all day as we all tried to navigate this strange holiday at home with none of the normal celebrations. Everyone trying to mine out the most important things. Recreate the best parts of all the traditions all while never leaving our home. I missed my family terribly though, looking at all their cute pictures from the day was bitter sweet. We all made the exact same deviled eggs without discussing it. All my nieces and nephews were precious and I just wanted to give them all huge hugs. It's hard not having any idea when we will see each other again, but I'm glad we all managed to make the most of a strange, sad, scary, weird time. We read the Easter gospel at family meeting last night and went to sleep without any fighting so we ended our day with an Easter miracle.