More Quarantine Laughs

Posted by My Heart Song

5/12/2020 

Here are a few of my favorite memes from these crazy quarantine days.


Yes! Feels like forever!


This is me! I can't wait for Goodwill to reopen!


I feel like this!


And we're all sick of hearing about Corona all the time!

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Quarantine Week 8

Posted by My Heart Song

5/8/2020 

Week 8 of our quarantine is done. 


We did some yard work and gardening. Everyone helps.


We had another campfire.


And ate pizza outside. We've done this at least once a week since the weather has allowed. 

Although our stay-at-home orders were lifted on May 1st, our life has not changed much at all since then. We are staying home. My husband contiued to work at home this week. We had one friend come over to visit (for the first time in 8 weeks). And our nextdoor neighbors are now allowing their kids and ours to play together face-to-face. I also wore a face mask in public for the first time, during my weekly grocery store run. Otherwise, life has continued on as it has for 8 weeks.




My oldest son and his neighbor friend Chris are building a tree fort.



The little ones love being outside whenever possible.


My 4 year old wanted to sit on his sister's old bike with training wheels, just to see what it's like.


And sometimes your dad catches a tree frog and lets it crawl on his arm so you can get a good look at it!


And sometimes the flying squirrel that lives in your birdhouse will come out for you to get a good look at her too! It's a her because she has babies in the birdhouse!


We played a few games this week. Here's Battleship. 


Here's UpWords.


And the Game of Life.


My oldest daughter and husband whipped up a cake with strawberry drizzle. Mmmm. 


My little boys know the story of David and Goliath very well. They like to pull all of our kid Bibles off the shelf and find the pictures of Goliath - one of the handful of stories that simply must be illustrated in any children's Bible, right?


My husband continues to work on the cabinet he's building for our upstairs bathroom. He was able to take some drawer fronts outside to sand in the fresh air this week. 

Next week, my husband is to go back in to work, so that will be a significant change after all of these weeks of him being home during the day (though still working nearly full-time in an "office" we set up in our bedroom). 

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Quarantine Week 8 Scripture

Posted by My Heart Song

5/7/2020




This week during quarantine, the story of Zacchaeus has been on my mind. The story in Luke 19 was the basis for Sunday's sermon and therefore became the basis for some of our small group discussion later in the week. 

One of the questions asked was something like, "What is a sycamore tree in your life, where you can get above the crowd to get a better view of Jesus?" 

I thought of things like quiet time and Bible study. And then my mind thought of the few close friends I have who can speak biblical counsel to me when I need to hear it. Later a friend mentioned that gratitude is a sycamore tree in her life, that when she takes time to thank God for all the gifts He gives, she can see Him (and all of life) more clearly. 

I have been pondering that ever since she said it. 
Climb the tree of gratitude to see Jesus. 

Especially during a quarantine and such strange days as these, we can focus on the negative and all that we're missing. But to lift up our eyes and see all of the good gifts that we continue to receive and to turn gratitude into praise to God is a very beautiful thing. 

So, we are working on being thankful, climbing the tree of gratitude to catch a better glimpse of God Himself!

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Quarantine Week 7

Posted by My Heart Song

5/1/2020

Week 7 of this quarantine is over. Today marks the end of our state's official stay-at-home orders. The governor will be outlining a multi-phase plan to open up little by little from now until July 4th. But things could change, depending on if we see a major surge in coronavirus cases in the meantime. Or things could go well and we could be back on track to normal. We'll see. 


Once again, I am so thankful that this quarantine is happening during the spring. The weather is beautiful and the hope springs eternal this time of year. It does wonders for the spirit to spend time outside, not to mention just giving us all another option of how to spend our time. 


We had a picnic lunch one day and ate supper outside at least one day this week. The kids ask to do this regularly now.


And just because this boy can really eat, I grabbed a picture of him eating a loaded hot dog!



You know you're well into quarantine when the older kids start trimming dead branches off the trees. Okay?!


Speaking of trees, Sunday's sermon was on Zacchaeus climbing up a tree. Though we were livestreaming church at home, my oldest son drew a picture of what we were studying. 



The other children found the story of Zacchaeus in their children's Bibles.


And my 4 year old just loves to sing, play guitar and talk into a pretend microphone. So he was in his element pretending to be a worship pastor.


My husband worked this week on building a cabinet for our upstairs bathroom, specifically working on creating the drawers. It's looking good!


My 6 year old knows that people are wearing gloves a lot these days. So one day she created her own "Corona gloves." So observant and creative!



We played Bounce Off, Jenga and Candyland this week. 


My oldest daughter moved on from adult coloring pages to this beautiful design on a regular old paper towel! This girl also finished up a few school subjects this week. Just about 10 more days to go before Junior year is over and Senior year will begin!



The children enjoyed their indoor bouncy balls a lot this week. They pretend they are horses. They pretend to race. They pretend to be in a parade. They pretend to be kings/queens and guards. Lots of ball fun!



We purchased new twin mattresses for our two girls. They came in shrink-wrapped, air-tight, rolled up packages. Opening them was quite fun as they inflated to full size once we opened the bag. Fun to watch!

This week I wore a face mask for the first time at a public place. About half of the people I see in grocery stores / in public are wearing masks these days. 

We decided to pay for lawn service this summer. The lawn care man came this week, while provided a lot of entertainment for the children. And we are already seeing results of weeds dying, which makes mom and dad happy. 

Our homeschool co-op, though unable to meet in person since mid-March, still encouraged us to memorize a Scripture passage. This week, my oldest two kids recorded themselves reciting the verse (Psalm 103:11-22). On top of that, I worked with them this semester to memorize all of Psalm 103 and we recited that this week on video. That felt like a great accomplishment... and we will receive a $10 gift card to a local ice cream shop as a reward too! 


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Quarantine Week 6

Posted by My Heart Song

4/24/2020

Another week of lockdown is over. 
Six weeks. Sounds long. Feels long.
But there is hope that restrictions will be lifted soon and more of life can return to a new normal. 


My mother-in-law had a birthday this week. We were able to take her a daffodil bouquet and sing Happy Birthday from her front yard. 


We made homemade applesauce this week, as well as some cinnamon applesauce muffins. Yum. 

We had some friends deliver us some cheesy hashbrowns. Seems like every week are blessed by someone loving on us. We passed on the blessing to some other friends this week too. 


My 6 year old loves to help in the kitchen. She's been making her own breakfast sometimes. Here she's whipping up a breakfast star omelet. 


My oldest daughter did some touch up painting on our foyer walls. Our house continues to benefit from quarantine! 


My little people did some reading together. Always makes my heart sing to see them like this!



We had some more beautiful spring weather, which allowed us to be outside. The kids enjoyed popsicles. We went on a few family walks. My oldest son played with his drone quite a bit this week. 


And we had a campfire in the backyard.


Some places are now requiring face masks in order to enter. We don't have any masks and they are hard to find due to high demand. So we found a no-sew face mask tutorial online and finally have a few face masks (made out of an old t-shirt).  


I gave the littlest kids a new Lego set. Hours of fun. 


Speaking of hours of fun, we finally resorted to adult coloring pages to occupy some time! :-)  My 6 year old is loving these and doing an amazing job. We'll be mailing some of our artwork to grandparents this week. 



We played Line Up and Sorry this week. 

In the past week, our schedule filled up a little more. Church is getting more accustomed to Zoom conference calls. My daughter's youth group meets this way now on Wednesday nights. And my oldest son has now started meeting this way with a small group. And my husband and I lead a mixed small group virtually now too. So, my 6 year old girl was feeling left out and specifically asked if she could Zoom with her co-op friend Addie. They did this week and it did her emotions good to actually socialize!

My oldest daughter has her driver's permit but has not been very anxious to get her practice hours in... until now. This is a good time to practice, with fewer cars on the road and with both mom and dad available to accompany her. So she did some driving this week, after taking a 7 month hiatus.

We've taken this quarantine as a eat-from-the-pantry challenge, meaning that we are trying to use up what we have and not spend as much money on groceries. This has been going well for us, as a way to keep expenses low in uncertain economic times and to be good stewards of what we already have (and to just be aware of it all too). 

Hoping that there won't be many more weeks to this quarantine saga!  

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