Just three weeks ago everything was still normal here in Amarillo. We are a large, but relatively isolated city so it took awhile for the affects of the virus to catch up to us, but now we are living the quarantine life like the rest of the country. Fortunately the number of cases in our county is still low, but sadly it will probably keep rising over the next few weeks.
Right now Amarillo is operating at status level "Orange" which means there are confirmed cases in our area, we are to practice social distancing, gatherings of more than 10 people are to be cancelled, and we are to restrict travel as much as possible. I thought I would write a bit about what this means for our family right now. Hopefully when we look back in a month or two, things will have improved instead of escalated!!
Every afternoon the city puts out a "report card" to let us know how things are going
Dave's Work: WT has closed it's campus for the foreseeable future. Graduation has also been cancelled. Dave is still working though! He was already teaching one online course that will continue, but now his two "in person" courses will also move to online. He has been busy recording his lectures to share with students, and translating as many assignments, quizzes and exams to online format as well. It's a lot of work to have to reinvent courses that were already in place, but we are glad he is still employed and has a way to keep working through this crisis. His summer courses that are supposed to begin in May were already online, so hopefully those will still take place and not be cancelled.
Sophie's School: Sophie's last day of class was Friday, March 13th. I'm grateful she was able to stay in school as long as she did! Several of our friends in other cities went out the week before we did. I'm also glad we decided to celebrate her birthday at school early before everything shut down. Right now classes have been cancelled through the beginning of April, but I wouldn't be surprised if that gets extended for at least another month. That's the direction the rest of the country seems to be going.
Today our distance learning is going to begin and we will do our best to keep up with whatever the district sends home. Up until now I've made no attempts to home school other than working through a few math pages with Sophie. She really misses school and seeing her friends, but I'm not worried about her academically. She reads A LOT on her own and with the two (soon to be three) little boys I just don't have the time or energy to plan out content to keep her going. For now her learning will happen through puzzles, art, reading, and games.
The school had a teacher parade yesterday, where the staff drove through the neighborhood to wave at all the kids. We went to watch, but Sophie's teacher didn't participate so that was a little disappointing.
Shopping: There is a lot of panic buying going on right now and things are flying off the shelves, but I have always been good about keeping things two or three deep in our pantry and replacing items as soon as we use them, so we are in good shape. We already had a good supply of frozen meat, rice, pasta, canned goods, cereal, and other basic pantry items before things started to get scarce. Right now we are only having to shop for weekly perishables like milk, produce, and bread, and even if we weren't able to get those, I have enough frozen to last a couple weeks.
We also were already stocked up on baby items, like diapers and wipes, thanks to sales in January. I probably have a three month supply for both Charlie and the new baby. The only area where we could see trouble is if this baby for some reason needs formula. I've heard that's hard to get right now.
Cereal aisle has been wiped out
Fresh meat has been really hard to find, but we already had a freezer full
The frozen veggie aisle - we were out of corn, but after a few tries I was able to grab a few bags that had just been restocked
I still don't understand the toilet paper hoarding. It is flying off the shelves as soon as it arrives. We have two cases from Sam's as part of our normal storage, so hopefully things will be back to normal by the time we work our way through it.
Any cleaning/sanitizing products have understandably been hard to find. I was at Sam's the morning they happened to bring in a pallet of Clorox wipes and it felt like I had won the lottery!
Gas just keeps getting cheaper, although we hardly ever need to fill up since we aren't driving anywhere these days. I wonder how low it will go before finally bottoming out...
Public Services: all city sponsored programs have been suspended, which for us means no more library visits, zoo and the kids soccer and swimming lessons were both cancelled. Luckily our library is offering a drive up service, where you can still put items on hold and then they will bring them out to your car once they arrive. Our kids LOVE books so we maxed our both our cards before the libraries closed, and then we have been using the drive up service to replenish as we finish.
The kids are sad about soccer, especially because Dave was going to be coaching Sophie's team again this spring. Their first games were supposed to happen tomorrow. At this point we will see if they still attempt to hold a short season after things calm down, or if we will just try again in the fall.
Sophie reads a chapter book a day, so I have been building up a little library for her just in case the drive up service also gets suspended.
Church: We have been out of church for two weeks now. I was wondering how Dave was going to manage three kids at church with all his meetings once the new baby came, but now it looks like that won't be a problem. The announcement was made minutes before I was supposed to leave the house for a Relief Society activity. If it had come a day earlier I would have also missed the Young Women's activity for the week. Temples have now also closed and missionaries serving abroad have all been sent home. General Conference will also be broadcast only, with each session consisting of prerecorded music and only those speaking in attendance.
Davey's sweet primary teacher has been mailing him a handout lesson each week
Health Services: Babies will be born no matter what is happening in the world, so the OB clinics and hospitals are still open for prenatal and labor/delivery services. I am not one to have a home birth. They now screen all people coming in, however, and no longer allow children under 18 to enter. Luckily I only had a few weekly OB visits left and Dave was able to watch the boys for those appointments. I am a little sad that the kids will be able to come see their new baby brother in the hospital when he is born, but we will have a good reunion when I bring him home. At least Dave will still be able to be there for the birth, unlike in New York, where all visitors, even spouses have been banned.
Most other clinics are now been closed for routine services like physicals, dental cleanings, vision checks, chiropractic treatment, and elective procedures. We have several people in our ward and stake who work in these fields and it's a pretty uncertain time for them and their families.
Social Distancing: This has been a hard one for our family because we normally have a very full calendar, which is now completely empty. We have been doing our best to stay isolated as instructed though, and really have not left the house for anything other than groceries or tools in several days. The kids are missing their friends so bad and I am missing being able to leave the house to take them places. We have noticed that they are staying up about an hour later each night, probably because without school and other activities they are not burning off as much energy as normal.
All our museums, playgrounds, movie theaters, gyms, churches and more have closed. Luckily we have a good house with a backyard and playroom to have fun in, and the kids have each other for company. I think I would be going crazy if we still lived in our Utah apartment during all of this!!
There are a million COVID memes circulating around, which are always a bright spot and make me laugh, but this is one of my favorites since I've always loved Harry Potter.
At home the kids have been busy building forts (thanks Grandma Howe for the fun birthday gift!). It gets torn down and reconstructed almost daily.
We've been doing lots of puzzles - this is one that Sophie got from Mimi for her birthday. It's double-sided and if you flip it over there are cats on the reverse - so fun!
I really don't enjoy arts and crafts, mostly because of the clean up, but the kids LOVE them so I have been trying to get over my OCD tendencies to let them be creative (aka messy).
Each night we take a walk through the neighborhood to get out some wiggles. I am so glad the weather has been nicer lately so we can be outside more!
Hiking is not the best activity for me right now at 39 weeks pregnant, but I am trying! We took a much needed field trip to the canyon yesterday, and the kids had a wonderful time exploring and getting dirty.
There has also been lots of backyard play time. Charlie finally conquered his fear of the trampoline and now spends lots of time doing "bouncy, bouncy." Yesterday was even warm enough for the bigger kids to play in the sprinklers!
We made little "boredom buster" kits for our friends and delivered them one day. It made the kids happy to bring surprises to their friends, even though they weren't able to get out and play with them. Most of the goodies I already had in my closet from holiday clearance shopping and the rest we were able to get in my grocery pick up order.
