Category: March

This is going to get weird. It already is weird but when I stop and focus on it, it feels even more weird. It is like I am in one of those movies where someone is stranded or lost at sea and they start counting the days. It has been 12 days since they asked people to so a 14 day self quarantine. They announced yesterday that starting this Tuesday at noon there will be an even more strict 30 quarantine going into effect. Basically all businesses that are not essential are to be closed and other than emergencies, no one should leave their house unless it is to go to the bank, grocery store, hardware store, or doctor office. I have also heard that they will start fining people that are not following the quarantine and multiple offenders can even get up to 6 months of jail time. I have not verified that so I don’t know if it is true or not. This is when things could start getting ugly.

Matthew and Allison seem to be doing ok so far. I can tell Emilee is stressed, the past day or so I can tell she is getting some pent up energy and she keeps asking a lot of the same questions over and over. Maybe I will start a rating system for how we are all doing mentally.

We had church today. This is the first time in my life that I have ever had to have the sacrament done in my own home. I thought is was a really good meeting. I could feel the Spirit. It is a huge blessing and comfort that we have the Lords gospel and it is organized and clear how to do things. Even when new situations that haven’t ever really happened before come up there is a clear process and way to do things. We kept it pretty simple and did an opening song,prayer,business, sacrament song, Ryan blessed the sacrament and Matthew passed it, then we read scriptures and had a closing song and prayer. Our Primary pianist and chorister made a video for the kids to watch for singing time so we did that afterwards. We assigned out some parts for next weeks church.

We had a planning meeting today also for this upcoming week. We talked about making sure all our bodies needs are met-physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. We discussed things that each of us need to do each day like;

1. Switch off between exercising and stretching for 45 minutes each day
2. Personal prayer and scriptures
3. Family prayer and scriptures
4. Read for fun for a minimum of 30 minutes a day
5. Go outside everyday
6. Daily chores
7. Laundry helper (kids will rotate each week)
8. Cooking helper
9. Practice piano minimum of 20 minutes each day
10. Teaching life skills with mom ~2 times a week
11. Hygiene habits with mom ~2 times a week

There is other things that vary a little bit but those are the things that will be standard each week. School stuff will get added in there too when the school stuff is out online from the district more. Life skills and hygiene habits are short little sessions with mom that review some aspect of hygiene (like using a q-tip) or life skills (how to sweep a floor) that they already know or should know but need a review. For example today we covered how to shower. They thought it was hilarious and were mortified that I had a stick figure drawing to help illustrate but all of them discovered 2-3 things that they were forgetting or not doing right.

Allison is going to get a little garden started this week with her dad. She is hoping to be able to do a salad garden with lettuce, peppers, and carrots. She wants to take over the whole back yard but I told her she has to start small and if it goes well she can expand.

Ryan is going to build the shelves in the basement bedroom closet. Emilee and I are going to finish condensing the toy room and her room while I finish getting the basement bedroom converted from a toy room to a bedroom. Matthew is planning on focusing a lot on his hitting and throwing for baseball.

It is all just odd. The world we lived and worked and socialized in less than two weeks ago has completely changed. Basically it has been canceled. There is nothing to prepare or get ready for, nothing to go to. It is a weird feeling. No reason to go to bed, no reason to get up in the morning. No plans. At. All. I can see how isolation can get to people. I wouldn’t say it is getting to me yet. I am pretty good at being alone but I have always had the option to change that when I decide I am not good with it anymore. I have my family too, so technically I am not alone. People that are single or live alone are in for a long couple months. Ryan is lucky to still have a job to work at home from too. So many people have been let go or had to close their business and that starts a whole other train of people that become affected as well. The economy was strong-growing and thriving in fact but this is a huge set back to recover from. I wish they would just implement a ‘pause’ in all of the financial stuff until this is over so people don’t have to declare bankruptcy or lose their job. It is going to be a job to get everthing ‘back to normal’.

I am sick of social media. The memes are funny but the rest of it just drives me crazy. Lots of rumors, misinformed or uniformed people ‘explaining’ things, people criticizing others. There is lots of good stuff going on as well. Many businesses and people are donating supplies or food or services during this time. I have taken a break from pretty much all of the news for the next little while. Ryan will let me know if I need to know something.

The icing on the cake today it that we found another gift from our crappy builder this morning. It has been raining a lot and one of our living room windows has water dripping inside from somewhere. We are thinking it is probably flashing or something but…getting it fixed is going to be a pickle. It might just be a ‘caulk the crap out of it’ until all this is over fix.

“Navigating these unprecedented events” Ugg, that is the buzz phrase you hear within ten seconds of listening or reading any type of news right now. The Coronavirus or COVID 19 for short that hit China in December 2019 and has had them in quarantine for almost 2 months has now spread to the rest of the world and been declared a global pandemic and things have been starting to get a little crazy.

Reports about things going on with the virus were in the news and it was a common topic but it wasn’t until about mid week last week that things started to escalate quite a bit. They announced that international travel was shutting down and started to cancel events for the next upcoming week or two. Our Spring Break was supposed to start this week. Ryan and Matthew were headed to Arizona for Spring Training with the Royals. It included a stop in Oklahoma for a NBA game and New Mexico to visit the Albuquerque temple. They were going to leave on Friday but by that time college and professional basketball had been canceled, temples were closed and baseball was postponed indefinitely. They ended up not going. The girls and I were going to go to Oklahoma for a few days to explore Tulsa a little bit but decided to hold off as well. Things were changing almost by the hour so we didn’t want to get somewhere and then get stuck without any supplies or have to move in with someone else and use their supplies.

Over the weekend they said that they would let us know if school would resume or not after spring break. They ended up announcing they were going to extend school closing through April 5th-an extra two weeks, but the next day the Governor of Kansas said all Kansas schools were closed for the rest of the school year. Our district is hoping to have some online school stuff available for the kids to do starting in April. Tons of people on social media are freaking out about doing home school and posting about what they are doing. I don’t feel the need to jump right into that boat since this is our original Spring Break anyway. I have plenty of life skills that I can teach and review with them in the absence of school. We are currently focusing on close quarter social skills, maintaining a clean environment, expanding our ‘things I can do without a screen’ knowledge, color sorting and linear folds with laundry, cooking basics and above. We have daily review courses in personnal hygiene, germ transferring, and washing your hands. Our trampoline has been used more in the past week then the last year and we are planning on going through all of our games and puzzles too. I have offered piano lessons but no one has taken me up on that. I have been getting lots of practice in though. I have also been doing lots of reading.

Local and federal governments have requested everyone to self quarantine themselves with their families for two weeks. EVERYTHING is closed. Everything that is entertainment I guess. Movie theaters, any indoor play areas, restaurants are drive thru only if they are still open. The stores have been cleared out of any staples including milk, eggs, bread, rice, beans, toilet paper, and anything that kills germs like clorox wipes or hand sanitizer. All sports or extra curricular activities are canceled or put off until summer. Everyone that can is supposed to work from home. Most businesses are closing so those people are out of work until further notice. Church has been canceled. Dental offices have been asked to cancel all non emergency appointments. If you are out for some reason everyone is requested to use ‘social distancing’ another buzz phrase that will be forever etched in everyone’s brain. It means to not touch anyone and keep a minimum of 6 feet away from people at all times. All of this is to “flatten the curve” which means to lessen the exposure and keep the numbers of people needing treatment down so that hospitals and doctor offices are not overwhelmed and unable to treat people.

If I remember right there are five different phases that a pandemic will go through before it is considered over. It is estimated that we are still in the first phase, which means we have not reached the peak of individuals that will be infected and numbers are still expected to increase exponentially.

How is this for a knowledge tree. Ryan’s bosses, girlfriends, son is an aide or secretary on Air Force Two, which transports a lot of secretary of state or defense government officials. He said that they are very close to shutting everything down and allowing no travel or people to leave their homes at all. A few states have shut down all non-essential stores and businesses and I am sure more will follow. The only way I can see them not allowing people to leave their homes at all is if they declare martial law-which is INSANE.

On top of that there was a 5.7 earthquake in Salt Lake Utah yesterday. DeAnna and her family are ok. Hopefully there aren’t anymore of them.

Changes like this, especially so quickly naturally bring panic and worry with them. It is wonderful to have a living prophet to help us be prepared and ready for things so we can be calm and not stress as much as we would if we weren’t prepared. The prophet has been telling us for years to get prepared by having a month up to a year supply of food, water, and money in case something were to happen. This has definitely been a reminder for how fast things can change. One a Wednesday evening we were at a Girl Scout meeting, doing home work and gymnastics, business as usual. The next day stores are out of everything and people are going a little crazy getting ready to quarantine themselves for two weeks. The Prophet also implemented a new home based church supported curriculum a little over a year ago in our church so we can even continue right on with our spiritual study without much of a hitch even though church has been canceled. It is very comforting to know that there is a sure place to look for guidance when life starts getting crazy.