Quarantine activities

After we got back from our cruise, school didn't start back up.  First it was just for a couple of weeks, then it was for longer and eventually it was for the rest of the school year.  Grades stopped counting.  AP tests were changed so that they did them at home and they were primarily essay based instead of questions and essays.  We were suddenly given a ton of restrictions- we couldn't be in groups more than 10, theaters and stores closed down.  Restaurants closed and then opened for takeout only.  Church was canceled.  If you did go out, you had to wear a mask.  It was crazy how quickly everything changed.  Reading the news did not help- it seemed no one had any idea what the symptoms of Covid-19 were, how to avoid getting it, how it was spread and how we should act.  Suddenly we all went from too busy to have time to do anything to nothing to do and all the time in the world.

Ellie and her friend Ava made a "coronacation" bucket list.  One of the things on the list was to make a wedding cake.  This is the cake they made.

Ellie and Lily had several baking competitions.  This one included Nate and Will and was for cakes.

Adam was able to go to work, so he ended up working a lot of hours.

Michael was planning to go to an engineering summer camp, so he was excited about that, but when that got canceled he had lots of time, so he applied and got a job at chic-fila as well.

We had a couple of crawfish boils.  One at the ranch, and one at home.  The one at the ranch included Daniel's family.  (Daniel is Joe's partner in the Rocking A dirt company).

We got a jet-ski and ran it on the pond at the ranch. Then it stopped working correctly and we got 2 jet skis and ran them at the lake.  Then we sold the first jet ski.

We spent a couple of days working at the ranch.  Joe decided he wanted to raise cows, but the fences were all in bad shape, so we learned how to fix fences and spent a couple of days doing it.  Adam and Michael were much better at fixing fences than the rest of us.

I did some art projects where I painted watercolors.  I could buy kits online and then watch videos for how to do them.  It was super fun and surprisingly not as hard as I thought it would be. 

We moved the garden 2 feet away from the fence and added a path behind it.  That made it so the back of the garden was now accessible, which it has never been since we first built it 12 years ago.  I planted zucchinis, green beans and tomatoes and they did really well.

Joe started working from home.  This is how some of his meetings looked.

Austin and Koni moved to a neighborhood really close to ours.  That meant we could hang out all the time.  Nate and Will and Ellie and Lily immediately started hanging out all of the time.

We also had a lobster boil.  Several of the people that we invited had never had lobster before.

Instead of fancy Easter clothes, the kids all got funny t-shirts (we were doing home church at that point anyway).  Ellie's says "If you can read this you're too close, social distancing."

We spent the weekend at Lake Conroe for Lily's birthday.  The Frost's rented a house for the weekend.  We were able to run our jet skis at the lake.  Staying on the lake for the weekend made me want to get a lake house.

I went to a friend's mother's estate sale and ended up buying some fabric and getting some free quilting books.  Then I made two quilts.  I am lucky enough to have a mom that can then go and machine quilt the whole thing for me, so I was able to end up with two complete quilts.

We also got rats in our attic.  We had to trap them and found 8.  One morning I was checking the traps for rats and I found this "mouse" in the trap.  (Thanks Adam).

We spent more time watching movies together, playing games together and I did get the kids to cook dinner themselves several times.  For a while we could all sit down to dinner together every day. It was amazing and frustrating all at the same time.  We often played games at night after dinner.  We had "mystery meat Mondays' where we would eat something out of the deep freezer that was not a normal meat.  We had antelope, nilgai, quail, several types of fish and who knows what else was in there.  We didn't get through all of the mystery meat, but we made a large dent in it. What a memorable time!