By mid April we were fully shut down and getting into our quarantine groove. Business were closed. you couldn't go out to eat or shopping if you wanted to. It was almost eerie how little traffic was on the main roads. We would go walk around the track at River Valley and Eagle Road was nearly empty. The busiest intersection in all of Idaho had less traffic on it than it had in probably 40 years. The parks were even closed. So you could go to the park, but not play on the playground equipment.
The kids were doing online school. But not really online. We picked up a weekly packet that the kids worked on throughout the week. And then we never turned it in. And then we picked up a new packet the next week. It didn't take them long to figure out that they were never going to be held accountable for anything the rest of the school year. John worked from home at a make shift office we set up in our bedroom. I "worked from home" for a few hours a day on a district device. But really there wasn't much I could do. Luckily the district paid everyone the wage they would have made if they had been working so I still got a pay check.
At first I tried to keep everyone on a schedule, but as I realized we were going to be home all day every day for a long time, I found that it wasn't worth waking up early because that just made the days longer. We had good days and bad days. There were actually a lot of things about quarantine that I loved. We had never had so much time at home with our kids with nothing else to do. No friends, no sports, no school, no nothing! I can't imagine that we'll ever have that much time home as a family again. We organized most of the house. (Sadly if you were to look at my house today you would never know that it had been deeply cleaned and organized less than a year ago.) We spent time exercising. We did family 5k at Kleiner Park on Saturdays, which the kids hated. I made a workout circuit with different exercises at different stations throughout the house, which the kids were slightly more tolerant of. We had a popsicle house building competition with my family. Each family ordered 1000 popsicle sticks on amazon and we all had a week to make a house. Ainsley made most of ours, and of course knocked it out of the park. We did a lot of baking, a lot of watching movies, and a lot of reading the news. We took the kids on an outing to Bruneau Sand Dunes. We had a Dinger family talent show with all of the Dinger cousins over zoom. And we even had an earthquake! One that we felt! I was upstairs in my bedroom and thought the kids were shaking the house. John and Emmie noticed the lights shaking. I think John was the first one to realize what was going on. He is clearly the calm head that you want around in an emergency. I just stood still while trying to recall my earthquake training. Which never came to me.
Luckily the weather during April was gorgeous. My parents heated their pool and we swam earlier than we have in years. We spent more time in the yard during April and May than we have the entire time we've lived in this house. John made me some grow boxes and we got around to some landscaping projects that we hadn't been able to find the time to do for years. We moved loads and loads of pavers, planted trees, built a retaining wall, put down 5 yards of bark, and put down a boarder of pavers between our rocks and grass. It looked so nice when it was all done! The kids and John also made some awesome cornhole boards. I think they turned out amazing. They were a great project and as a bonus they got a lot of good use this spring and summer.
We went out on a limb and purchased tickets to Mexico. We were sure life would be back to normal by November when we were scheduled to travel. Boy were we wrong! We currently have a large credit with American Airlines. Hopefully the trip to Cabo with my parents will happen November 2021.
We celebrated Easter. We actually got up and got dressed. Which we hadn't done in weeks. We were becoming accustomed to home church by now and I was starting to prefer it to regular church. John would bless the sacrament and Owen would pass it. We would read our scriptures and do our come follow me lesson. Some weeks were definitely better than others, but I could say the same for regular church.
And now for April in photos:
Planter Boxes
Raised flower bed.
Dying Easter Eggs
All Dressed up for Easter.
(Documentation of the beginning of John's beard)
(Documentation of the beginning of John's beard)
Cornhole boards in progress,
Cute kids Easter pictures.
Popsicle house competition.
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