- COVID Diaries: Week 4 -

When typing the title of this post, my first attempt came out "- COVID Diaries:  Weed 4 -" ...so mebbe I'm losing my mother-loving mind or mebbe a little dose of said typo ^^ might actually do my bod some good... ;) :) 

Jayyyy to the kay.

We kicked last weekend [Saturday morning] off with a box of powdered donuts and a box of markers!  Harper loves to color [but always prefers someone to be coloring alongside her]; eating junk food breakfasts + sipping coffee + coloring together is turning into a Saturday morning tradition these days! The stack of "quarantine artwork" has been growing exponentially... 

...so I decided to start mailing some of it out to our friends and families who undoubtedly miss the girls.  We also fired up the Cricut to create some Easter joy that we could mail out along with the girls' artwork.  I hope everyone smiles when opening your happy mail this week; we sure enjoyed putting it together! :)

Saturday afternoon, we broke into a little goodie bag that my mom dropped off at the house late last week.  One of the bags included supplies to make Easter Bunny houses.  They were a little more fragile than I hoped they'd be [after hours of watching and waiting, the icing never really set up well and the roofs kept falling in -- then again, everything always looks much more do-able and glamorous on Pinterest so I suppose I just need to lower my standards!], but finally the kids were able to gently push the M&Ms on before setting the houses aside to permanently dry.

The houses were proudly displayed for 3 full days until Scarlett knocked her plate off the entry way table and demolished the entire thing.  Oops!  Luckily, she didn't seem to mind!

On Sunday morning, the kids finished an entireeee Easter MadLib sticker book that the next-door neighbor boy brought them.  As you can see, Scarlett aced her pages! :)

We also FaceTimed Papa Mark after breakfast and organized a surprise Zoom call for friends/family after dinner, because: HAPPY 60TH BIRTHDAY, Dad!!! Thanks to everyone who tapped in to the Zoom meeting to help us sing "Happy Birthday!" to our old man.  We agreed on a birthday re-do over the summer for all the March/April birthdays that have been celebrated so far via social media only, and I can't wait! [Winery day trip, anyone?! YAS YAS YAS.]

Monday at work was.......interesting.  2 hours before closing for the day, we got word from our office manager that our clinic space would be converted into the "COVID OB clinic" for all COVID-19 positive pregnant patients to come for their routine prenatal appointments.  As this was to happen immediately, we quickly packed up all of our belongings as we had no idea when things would be back to normal and we'd be allowed back in our space.  Weeks?  Months?  A full-blown year?  Hopefulllllly not, but no one knows... The three of us snapped a picture on the way out, deeming this "the end of the beginning."   Seeeee ya later, beautiful work life as we once knew it!  I am sooo hoping to be reunited with these soul sisters sooner than later!  Until then, love and peace and lots of hand washing be with you, girls! :-*

When pulling into the driveway after work, I realized there was more sod laying to be done on Monday night...

...and LOTS MORE [6,000 pounds worth, actually] on Tuesday.  Uncle Blake came back down to help on Tuesday morning/afternoon, and I nearly cheered out loud and did a cartwheel when I saw his Jeep pulling into the subdivision. Thank you soooo much for showing up; you 'da real hero and my biceps and back love you so hard right now.

After being at work all day Monday and helping lay sod all day Tuesday, Harper and I finally got a chance to sit down together and look at some of her home learning assignments on Wednesday!  The morning started off with cinnamon rolls and a Zoom call with her classmates...

...and then we quickly dove into the Easter week lessons.  Admittedly, this was the first year we've really talked about the events that occurred on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and of course, Easter Sunday.  Harper had LOTS of questions, and I did my very best to explain many things that are -- in fact -- quite unexplainable!  I'm so thankful for these little cue words with photos that her teachers sent out; we cut them out and told story of Jesus's death and resurrection that way.  We have a long way to go with grasping Catholicism and why we believe what we believe and do what we do, but at least today I put a scratch in the story's surface.  [A few days later, I was telling my friend at work about this and she introduced me to the Brother Francis videos which are sooooo wonderful! Thanks for the recommendation, Jeanette!  We will be using these frequently going forward, especially because videos of any sort are a fan favorite around here!]

Harper also colored the worksheet that explained the meaning of each color in an Easter egg, and Scarlett worked on tracing the alphabet with a dry erase marker [hehe]. 

Yellow represents God's perfect light. 

Red represents the blood Jesus shed for us. 

White represents the cleansings of our sins. 

Green represents the new life we have in Jesus. 

Blue represents the baptism that identifies us with Jesus. 

Purple represents the crown of life.

In perfect timing with these lessons, we opened these Easter treat bags from our friend Ashley! The kids adored the plastic tomb with a plush Jesus inside, and Scarlett has since taken her plush Jesus and crocheted bunny to bed every night.  Thank you, sweet friend! 

Also!  The Sprout House took off this week and our very hungry caterpillars are still eating nonstop and growing very rapidly.  Exciting times!  We have done a few experiments and, overall, home learning is going a lot better than anticipated [but not without much support and encouragement from the teachers -- so, I really do sound like a broken record, but thanks again for everything!]!

On Wednesday afternoon, Brian ordered the final 3 pallets of sod... WOOT WOOOOOOT, THE FRONT AND BACK YARD IS TOTALLY FINALLY ACTUALLY OFFICIALLY COVERED!  I took the watering job so I didn't have to lift any more sod squares [!!], and the kids splished and splashed around in the water table for the first time this spring!  Hopefully the warm weather sticks around, because we are absolutely loving it + the extra heavy dose of vitamin D is sooo good for the soul rightaboutnow.

On Thursday evening after I got home from work, we transformed our brown bananas into banana bread! Well, muffins, actually -- but what are details amongst friends?!

They are were SO DELISH!

[Good] Friday was another 12-hour shift at the hospital.  Information and recommendations are still changing daily -- even hourly sometimes.  The newest update is that currently, we are required to wear hospital-issued surgical masks from the moment we enter the hospital doors until the moment we exit to go home [no homemade cloth masks allowed until the hospital's stash has been depleted].  This doesn't sound too bad, but inhaling/exhaling x ~16 times per minute x ~750 minutes per shift behind a mask that doesn't breathe too well is quite unpleasant and actually kind of a challenge!  [If you're not a mathematician, that's about 12,000 miserable breaths over the course of the day.....]  To take a drink or eat our lunch which requires removing the mask, we have to leave the team and go into the patient food pantries which are currently closed off to patients/visitors OR go to the staff break room which has several tables set 3-4 feet apart with one chair at each table.  They are not allowing extra staff to stay home for a low patient census so that there is always extra staff to cover drinking/eating breaks and do lunch relief [dang, my hopes of staying home with PTO through some of this pandemic just got shot and buried]!  I have to say, it was VERY strange to take a "real lunch break" and I honestly think this was the first time I've gotten to have my lunch in the break room in nearly 9 years of being an RN!!!  What is this life?!

After stripping down and showering and starting the potentially-germy laundry on extra hot mode, I collapsed into the couch wondering how many more weeks we'll have to go about our days like this...

But anyway!  There's plenty more to come!  Scarlett has perfected "burst mode" whilst taking selfies, so I'm off to delete 200+ photos of her nostrils!  

Ciao for now!

To be continued...