You would think that being home for the past six weeks would've given me lots of free time to update my blog, but yet I still didn't! haha
Here it is, May 1st. We officially began our "Quarantine Life" on Wednesday, March 18th. The kids' last day of school was March 17th and, though we didn't know it at the time, that would be their last day of school for the 2019-2020 school year. Today is the first day that some businesses in Idaho are starting to re-open. It's looking like HOPEFULLY this whole thing may be coming to an end. Here is a picture that our neighbor took of our family. She went around to each house and took, "Front Porch Photos" to commemorate the time we spent as families on lockdown. We didn't kill each other, so that's something to celebrate!!
Over the last month, we have had to make several adjustments to our lives. First off, we tried to do at least a couple of hours of "homeschool" everyday (Monday-Friday). The kids' teachers all set up their own different ways of getting assignments to them. Most of Gabe's were online using Google Classroom. He has been very self-sufficient during all of this, usually getting up early and getting most of his school work done in the morning. Caleb's teachers were mostly emailing things and partly using google classroom. I always have to make sure Caleb is staying up-to-date on his assignments. He is pretty content to do whatever the bare minimum is. Avery's teacher compiled big packets on paper and came and drove around to each of her student's houses wearing rubber gloves! haha So Avery usually sits at the dining room table with either me or Josh and works through her math, grammar, spelling, and more. Here are some "homework" pics!
Josh's work schedule hasn't been too bad. The actual shift he worked changed to 12pm - 12am. So that shift is pretty crappy. But he would work 4 days in a row and then have 4 days off. Then, once a month, he also would get one week where he could "work from home" and just be on call. That just so happened to be this last week, so it's been really nice to have him home so much. This is day 9 of him being home in a row because he had his normal four days off, then four days of "work from home," and now he has his new four days off that he is just starting today. Today is Friday and so I think he finally goes back in to work on Tuesday. He HAS been on the phone a lot though, managing guys and fixing schedules and helping with things.
I have been trying to do as much as I can to prepare to be a teacher this fall - with NO classroom experience. :{ It's going to be crazy when I step into the classroom this August and say, "Hey guys!! Well, let's try and figure this out together because I have NO idea what I'm doing!" haha No, I won't say that. But, that's what I will be thinking!
I have been going through the curriculum and trying to read all the stories we will cover. Gabe is in the class right now that I will be taking over, so I'm trying to watch the assignments that the sub is sending him via e-mail. The sub he currently has is also going to be taking one of the full-time English teacher positions for eighth grade next fall. He's a really nice guy. Basically 3 out of the 4 eighth grade English teachers this year are leaving, so there will be me, him, and one other new teacher next year! Poor Mrs. Clark is the only one staying, so she will get to lead us all! She's really nice too though and has given me a lot of resources already.
So besides homeschooling, we have tried to keep ourselves busy with other things that we can do! This usually involves playing outside (the weather has been AMAZING lately), jumping on the trampoline, going on hikes near Rexburg, Josh and the kids going on jogs around the high school across the field from our house (not me), feeding the ducks at the nature park, doing crafts (Avery made this panda pillow), playing card games, watching movies, and sneaking out to get food through the drive-throughs now and then.
Even our church has been "home church." Usually the boys put on a white shirt (no tie) and church pants, but no socks or shoes. lol I put on a very comfy maxi skirt and a sweatshirt of some sort. Avery is just in her sleeper. There's no getting her to even remotely dress up if she doesn't have to.
On Easter Sunday, I think she actually did dress up, but that was the only time! We celebrated Easter this year by doing an egg hunt out on Uncle Ben's river property. Josh called him to see if we could come out there to hide eggs. It was great because we had the whole place to ourselves. I hid almost 100 eggs! The three kids took about an hour to find all of them. On Sunday, the Easter bunny came in the morning and they found their baskets in the house. Then we had our little, "Easter church at home" and ate our Easter dinner.
Avery also had a big day on March 31st when she got braces on her teeth! They had planned on doing in March 23rd, but then everything went crazy. Luckily, they still made her a priority and got her in March 31st. Her two front top teeth were so bad that they were hitting into her bottom teeth and damaging them. So I'm glad they were able to get the braces going ASAP.
Josh turned 40 on April 18th! Since we were in quarantine, I couldn't throw his a huge surprise party (which he was sooo sad about). I did compile some sweet stories from friends and family to give to Josh in a book. He loved that. Then for his party, he just had to go fishing instead! It was going to be just he and his cousin, Devin, and then all of a sudden the word spread that they were taking the boat out on her maiden voyage this year and Josh's brother, Bryan, and two other friends, Scott and Craig, said they were coming! Haha (That was probably against the social distancing rules, but they said it was okay because all the seats in the boat were at least five feet apart.) Here is Josh with a fish he caught!
The other BIG news is that we have been toying with the idea of selling our house. We have talked about always wanting to build a house someday and I've said for years, "Well, if we are going to do it, we need to do it when Gabe is about 14 or 15 so that he has a few years to enjoy it at least!" So here Gabe is now 14. How did that happen so fast?! Everyone is telling us that the market will start to change now because of COVID-19. Some people are saying they don't think Rexburg will see much of a change because BYUI is here and they always are hiring people and there's shortage of housing already. Other people are saying, "If you're even thinking about selling your house, you should put it on the market ASAP and try to get your money out of it before things drop!" So we went back and forth about it and decided to just take some pictures and list it on Zillow.com. It's completely free and there's not contract, so we figured, "Let's just see what happens." We listed it for sale on Tuesday night and then showed it three times on Wednesday. Yesterday (Thursday) we showed it another time. Today it is Friday morning and we haven't heard anything back, so we are just kind of sitting here waiting like, "Well... is anyone going to offer?"
Part of me will be sad if we get an offer because I really do love our house. We have been here almost nine years and there's so many memories here! This is where Avery's first home was! This is where Gabe helped teach Caleb how to ride a bike! This is where Gabe lived when he started his first day of kindergarten! It's just been such a great place to raise our kids. But, with the neighborhood just growing and growing, we are starting to feel more and more closed in. Our backyard has a fence, but on every side our neighbors have built elevated decks that can look right into our backyard! Then the neighbor just behind us started building a raised playhouse last week and their kids are constantly hanging over the fence and practically FALLING into our backyard! It's just gotten so bad. Josh is like, "It's time to move." So we've been looking at different land options and we just decided to try and list our house and see what we could get out of it. If we don't get an offer in the next couple of weeks, we may just take it off Zillow and stay.
The other reason that we decided to list it was because a friend of mine is moving out of her 3-bedroom townhouse down the street and it would be AMAZING to live there for the next year while we try and build. So! That's what we are hoping for. But we really would need to have an offer soon for that to be able to work!
No stress at all, right?!
The next time I post, hopefully I will have an update about where we will be living the rest of the year! It's crazy to think about. Here is a picture of our house two days ago, which is now the cover image of our listing on Zillow.com!
