Week 6-Quarantine

We had our first BBQ on Monday, which was fun! It was great to eat outside! Anything these days to switch things up is fun! These weeks are flying by! It seems like we get to 4 o'clock so fast every day.  I think it's the busyness of getting each kid to their Zoom calls, and making sure they do their work that causes it to go so fast! 

Drive thru preschool at Grandma Reen's!

After 6 weeks of  providing the kids with lunches, I went and got the school lunches for them for a change.  Big mistake! Though the kids were thrilled to have chocolate milk, a juice box, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, cheese pizza and Scooby snacks in their lunches, I was uncomfortable with how much sugar they consumed! And Grace was more hyper than she has been during the quarantine! They want to go once/week, but I'm not sure about that:).

More crafts from Annette!

Potty training:).  He went on the big toilet for the first time yesterday! Pretty exciting stuff:).

The new nightly activity has been two on two; Kate and Pat vs. Grace and Will.  It gets pretty intense, and someone often leaves in tears:), but other than that, it's been great!

 I have to preface our walks with, "No whining when I tell you what we're going to do:)." It actually helps, and once we're there everyone at least kind of likes it:).

Week 5- Quarantine

The kids started their official distance learning week and Monday was pretty rough! We had a hard time getting on a couple calls, we didn't know how to navigate Google classroom(and week two, we're still trying to figure it out:)), and it seemed like it was hard to fit everything in in the day! Tuesday was a little better, and by Thursday, I felt like it became our new normal, well, kind of:). 

Luckily, it was so beautiful out again, so we had some great outside time! I've been trying to take the older kids 1-2 times/week to play tennis, so that's been fun (most of the time:), and I'm grateful we can still do that at this point! 

The kids have been writing more cards lately, and I'm trying to take a picture of some of them!

Our neighbor, Annette, is amazing! She's a retired teacher, and we call her the Quarantine Queen because she is always dropping fun activities off for the kids! This project was making their own Foosball tables!   
I'm starting to become more cognizant of the fact they aren't getting the same amount of exercise that they usually do, so take them to the track down the street a couple times/week!

Or just out for bikerides!

Weekly family movie night has become a new staple:).  We have a free year of Disney +, so Onward was the movie for this night! And we've been getting pizza or takeout every couple weeks!

Week 4 Quarantine, Easter

We were fortunate to have another beautiful week! It helps so much when we are hanging out together all day.  The kids continued to have Zoom calls with their classes, but otherwise, I had them do their normal schedule of work in the morning, and freetime in the afternoon.
We had a great Easter. The kids had an Easter egg hunt when they woke up, they we went on a hike, upon my request.  At breakfast, I said that for Easter I wanted to go on a hike without anyone whining about it.  That spurred everyone to say something they would want for the day.  Will said he wanted to get through eating his pancakes with a ton of syrup without anyone asking him to have good manners:).  Annie wanted an egg hunt and something from the Easter bunny, which we could already check off the list, Kate wanted to go to Grandma Reen's for a hunt, Grace wanted everyone to be nice to her:), and I'm pretty sure she got her wish.  And Pat wanted to have his happy hour uninterrupted.  He gave up alcohol for Lent, so was pretty excited about it! After the hike, we streamed mass on our TV, then headed up to Maureen and Bill's.  It felt like such a busy day, since we usually don't have anything going on!


Outside learning; all great fun until Leo comes around and dumps all the markers in the pool:).

It started with Leo spraying everyone, then the kids duct taped the hose to the trampoline.  I called that our engineering time:).

Friday night Steidlmayer Zoom call:).


Nightly 7 pm, make noise for people on the front-lines! It's a fun way to wave and say high to

neighbors!

Getting ready for Easter!

Easter egg hunt! 

           

Grace wanted pancakes in the shape of eggs:). 

Easter egg hunt at Maureen and Bill's! I have a lot of pictures of Annie, Will and Kate, but none of Leo and Grace:).  I think they were too busy running around and looking for eggs! 

They got a slip and slide from the Easter bunny and wanted to try it out that night! ! 

Week 3-Quarantine

This was my toughest week so far, so it was especially fun to look back on the pictures and remember that there were some great moments throughout the week! I think it finally hit me that all plans will be canceled indefinitely, and trying to process that, paired with the flood of emails from teachers and new school expectations felt like a lot! And it was mostly cold and rainy during the day, so the kids couldn't play outside as often!
But the nights and sunsets were so pretty!  And probably the biggest highlight of week 3 was that the kids got pigs! They had been working on building a pig pen at Maureen and Bill's barn, and they finally got to get them at the end of the week! So grateful for a fun distraction, and something to give the kids a little responsibility, especially during this time!

Our neighbor, Annette, has given us a lot of activities/projects for the kids.  This art project is one of them that I thought I'd get to the first week, but it was perfect for a rainy week 3!

Real estate developer/pig farmer:).  I took the picture because he got the jacket from my parents for Christmas, and has been wearing it a lot lately! So I sent them a picture!

I feel guilty that I took this picture because the kids are so close to each other! We haven't been getting the cousins together, but they joined up to get things ready for the pigs.  Even then, we've been trying to keep them 6 feet apart! But it was so cute to see all of them looking over at their new pigs that I had couldn't resist!

Week 2 of Quarantine("Spring Break")

We went on a beautiful hike to a cool spot right outside of Scappoose to start off week 2, and our spring break.  It helped soften the blow of not being in Palm Springs to have a warm, sunny day to be outside! It prompted an impromptu photo shoot because it was so pretty! 

I really liked our spring break week because I took pressure to do anything academic off! I still had them do reading, writing, typing and piano in the morning, but the afternoons were free! It was great! I was also happy to get renters in our Rembrandt house.  I wanted to get them in as soon as possible since things are so crazy right now.  I painted a couple things and had the kids help clean.  It was a great project for the week!  

University of Portland twins:).

 Obstacle course. . . .

Kate made a boat for she and Leo. . .

Crepes for lunch, and the kids cracking up about something:). Probably something Leo said.

Playing drive-thru. .

Lots of games this week.

Social distance visiting:).

Back to the CZ trail for a walk! The kids aren't big fans of going there, but I love it!

Our neighbor walked around with his family in this costume! Pretty funny:).

Grace was having fun taking pictures, and then figured out how to do portrait mode, which was pretty cool!