Lots of things about quarantine suck. But then there are the things that we’re really loving and as a result have fully embraced. For example, after the shelter in place order began and people started working from home I started driving less (a lot less) and started walking more. At 7:30am each morning I head out with our kids for our daily walk to Barb’s house, our in home daycare that’s a half mile from our home. Barb has remained open supporting both our kids and one other family and is, without question, our biggest super hero not only during this season but always. The walks to and from her house each day have provided me more space with the kids for chit-chat. It’s super chill and allows us the opportunity to work on things like which way is left and which is right. It’s made me appreciate even more the proximity of home to not only daycare but also to the kids school. I cannot wait to walk them each morning when school starts back up in the Fall.
Another part about quarantine that has surprised me is that I actually quite like working from home. While there’s a huge gapping hole where the social part of my job used to be I’ve been loving the efficiency of working from home. I especially love not having to commute - I’ve never been a huge fan of driving. I’m way less distracted and have actually found it easier than expected to draw the line between work hours and off hours. Until recently I had been working at our dining room table but changed it up by utilizing the desk in Natalie’s room while Jeff works out of the living room. We’ve found our groove.
I’ve also never been more active or outside more in my life. But while the increase in steps per day has been a plus it’s been off set by the increased amount of drinking and snacking which I assume is true for most households - or at least I hope I’m not in that boat alone. I’m certainly not planning on losing any weight during Covid and I’ll consider it a win if I come out of this the same size as when it began.
We really miss going out to restaurants but have enjoyed ordering take out from different places usually on Friday nights. Our two favorites so far have been Luna when we ordered a family style taco kit and the other was Gaslight Kitchen who makes stellar Chinese food. We highly recommend both and if you have any winners you’ve enjoyed we’d love the suggestions.
Online church has, unfortunately, been less than fulfilling. We really miss the community aspect of attending church in person and it’s not near as enjoyable to sing just the two of us in our living room. Natalie and Thomas haven’t been all that interested in kids church either and we recently decided that for ‘church’ on Sunday mornings we’d much rather have the kids outside in the sunshine while we drink coffee on the porch. That scene is much more Godly than sitting in our living room in front of a screen anyway.
Overall, us Kladders are doing pretty great. All is calm here with our moments of irritability. We’ve discussed how grateful we are that our kids are younger and their biggest annoyances happen to be that the playgrounds are closed and we had to postpone Natalie’s 5th birthday party with her friends to hopefully later this year. Even home schooling hasn’t been an issue for us because Natalie is still finishing up her last year of 4-preschool which entails one half hour per week of zoom calls with her teachers and a series of online videos which we can opt to utilize (or not) and Thomas isn’t even in preschool yet so there’s nothing to keep up on there. Natalie and Thomas are having a grand ole time and honestly, so am I. They are still at ages when they need me almost completely and I figure if they were older I’d be super bored with a lot less to keep me moving through our days at home.
We’ve been whittling down our house ‘to-do’ list including repainting all of our outside doors to a nice deep green color, cleaning up the flower beds, washing windows and setting up the garage bar which we have appropriately named ‘The Klubhouse’ steaming from our joint interest in golf, coupled with our neighborhoods history: Ottawa Hills was actually once a golf course. Replace the ‘C’ in clubhouse with a ‘K’ because we’re the Kladders and we’ve got ourselves a bar name. As for baking bread, growing seedlings and completing puzzles… all on the list of things not happening here.
Speaking of golf, both Jeff and I started league last week and we couldn’t be happier. We’re pretty jazzed that golf courses officially reopened a few weeks ago and plan to take full advantage in the months to come. It feels great to be back at something that’s part of our normal routine.
The kids and I added Pickerel Lake to our list of hikes during quarantine. It’s north towards Cannonsburg Ski area and provided us two slow hours of walking around the lake. There were plenty of hills for the kids to walk up and explore and even a few bridges that always seemed to bring excitement.
Mother’s Day last weekend was very simple and sweet. Jeff had the kids fill out a printed Mother’s Day worksheet and recorded videos for me to watch - both were adorable. I bought myself a summer hat and spring jacket for gifts- you read that correctly, I bought my own gifts and I love them. Had the weather been nicer I would have taken myself on a walk around Reeds Lake but instead opted for a bubble bath. The kids got wind I was taking a tubby and I couldn’t say no to them joining in. It was way less relaxing but way more fun. Natalie was super cute with her very first facial mud mask.
Starting this week Thursday our easy routine of working from home while the kids are at daycare is about to get a touch more complicated. Barb, our super hero daycare provider, is having surgery and taking three weeks of recovery which means we’re about to get a big dose of multitasking madness. We’ll be armed and ready with ABC Mouse, Disney+ and fingers crossed the weather is nice and we can ship them outside to play.
May peace and strength be with you my friends.