Jenni's Blog: March 2020

Monday, March 30, 2020

Covid 19 Quarantine Week 3

This was such a wonderful night because Addison's 5th grade teachers surprised their students with a drive by parade! The teachers were crying, Addison was crying, I was crying...it was just so good to see their smiling faces and they had signs and honking, it was a sweet memory. Addison's teachers texted me after the parade to say they will never forget Addison standing on top of her mailbox waving and smiling at them, they said they started crying after seeing her and had to call each other to get themselves together. So many emotions during these uncertain times, but one thing is certain. Our Ocean Springs teachers love their babies.

We did A LOT of drive by birthday celebrations during the quarantine. We would decorate my car and drive by the friend's house honking, singing, dancing and hanging out the sunroof and windows.

Pretty much any amount of silliness to make the birthday friend feel special.

We continued to attend online church and worshipped together as a family.

Ouchies from the constant N95 mask.

We were blessed with friends that wanted to help out Stephen by protecting him while he was at work. We had friend's drop off masks and gowns and gloves. The shortage of protective gear was a problem throughout the whole COVID 19 ordeal, doctors and nurses were having to re-wear masks. It was a scary time.

The kids and I made signs and pictures for the nursing home residents because they were not allowed any visitors. We had to drop them off at the front door of the nursing home and we just waved from behind the glass doors. We hope it brought them a smile.

We continued to enjoy the beach at this point, while they were still open.

Science experiments at home now :)

My mini me is now bigger than me.

Still the best way to social distance and feel like life will be ok.

The "rules" at this point are stay six feet away from other people and no more than groups of 10. We have pretty much just kept it to our family of 5.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Covid 19 Quarantine-week 2

The first week of stay at home orders due to Covid 19 the kids had school called off as the whole country was put into quarantine. At that point, we did not know if they would go back to finish the school year. We were instructed to have groups smaller than 10 and stay six feet apart from people. So it was kind of like a mini spring break except we couldn't go anywhere or see anyone, ha! Everything had closed from restaurants to movie theaters to stores to playgrounds, etc. Pretty much everything but grocery stores were closed. We were nervous about the virus; seeing how high they were projecting the number of deaths and we were nervous about Stephen working at the hospital.

To pass the time, the kids and I did a lot of golf cart rides and beach time.

When I say a lot of golf cart rides, I mean A LOT! We have toured every nook and cranny of coastal Ocean Springs! We get to wave to people we know, and even people we don't know, so that is fun and about as much social interaction that we get these days.

This was the first week we attending online church as well. This spot is our church for the next months as Covid closed down the church building, but not THE CHURCH! We are the church, God's people, and we continued to worship God throughout the quarantine. Our church thankfully continued to do a complete order of service, so it felt normal to us- from singing the songs, to the call of worship,sermon, to the benediction. At least on Sundays our routine still felt normal. Although, we were in our family room and in "play" clothes.

We played lots more games...

During the first week of quarantine, the governor announced school buildings would be closed until April 20th. Our Ocean Springs school district immediately came up with a plan to transition our students to online learning and we began that on March 23rd. It was really amazing how quickly our district began online school.

A perk of home school...doing your work with your pet guinea pig on your lap!

Each kid has found their spot to do their schooling.

Personally I think Luke has snagged the best spot...on our screened in porch.

Luke hard at work online 8th grade.

Amelia hunkers down in her room to fulfill all her requirements for her AP classes her junior year of high school.

Addison's special area teachers, music, art, etc continue to post ideas for the kids as well.

Art by Addison

Family Rule: everyone has to be active during the day and get exercise, bike riding, running, anything, as long as they are moving. This particular workout was one they did together and it was based on the alphabet. Each letter was a different workout, jumping jacks, wall sits, sit ups, etc.

They were all bummed our last name was SO long.

These are our secret weapon in fighting off Covid. Weeks before the virus got to the United States we started buying as many of these we could find, it was the only thing we hoarded. Little did we know the country was going to buy up ALL the toilet paper. So weird.

Anyway, these little vitamins have helped keep our immunity strong!

Saturday, March 14, 2020

Covid 19

I will be trying to keep the blog as a diary of sorts to remember this strange time during the spring of 2020. Strange for our family, strange for the country and strange for the whole world as the pandemic of Covid 19 swept across the world. Soon words like social distancing, quarantine, stay home to save lives, became part of our everyday vernacular.

On March 14th, our Mississippi Governor declared a state of emergency for Mississippi and closed schools for the week. Social distancing was advised, stay six feet away from others and do not gather in groups more than 20 people. The goal was to help slow the spread of the virus so as to not overwhelm the hospital systems. This meant all of our extracurricular activities like tennis, choir, bible studies, etc were all cancelled as well. So all of a sudden we had A LOT of free time on our hands. I tried to snap pictures of our day to day to help the kids remember what this time in our life was like.

The girls made us a restaurant dinner of spaghetti and meat sauce with garlic bread and green beans. Complete with a menu! And they cleaned up, yay!

Lots more time for board games.

This first week, the marina was still open and we were able to take boat rides. We took A LOT of boat rides because we had a feeling it would not be long until the marinas were closed (we were right).

Addison is always writing...even on boat rides. In the above picture she is working on her comic book series which is up to 80 pages now.

I'm always happy on the water with my babies.

Thankfully we had a lot of beaches where we could socially distance ourselves so we spent a lot of time on the beach that first week.

They resorted back to being little kids and made sand castle villages.

We even headed out to Horn Island and enjoyed a COMPLETELY solitary day on the island, not another soul or boat in sight. It was glorious.

We soaked up as much as we could of the island, knowing in our heart this would be off limits soon as well.

Throughout this first week, Stephen worked his normal shifts at the ER while also having a gazillion phone meetings and emails to try to determine how to best prepare our hospital systems for the worst case scenarios. Part of the very real situation for all hospital systems was lack of protective gear for the healthcare workers. We knew there would not be enough masks, gowns, goggles for the duration of the fight against Covid. This was very scary knowing how exposed Stephen would be to Covid patient, after Covid patient. We had a friend step up make him homemade masks to wear over his N95 mask which he would be re-wearing for multiple days because of limited supply. The above picture is fabric I cut up to use for masks from Stephen's old scrubs. The bottom is my friend's first attempt at a mask, she has now streamlined her product and they look awesome! This was before the whole wave of churches and citizens making homemade masks became the norm.