2020-MARCH MADNESS

 It feels crazy, as I'm looking through these photos in January of 2021, that at the beginning of this month, March of 2020, we had NO idea that our lives were about to change forever.  It actually started out pretty normal... even wonderful!  

For Spring Break the Stranderson's loaded up the travel trailers and hit the road to Freeport, Texas.  We stayed at what is now one of our most favorite camping spots, Blue Water Resort.  We fished, played, drank, ate, chatted, went to the beach & relaxed with our friends & camping buddies, the Strottner's.

On our way home from camping we stopped at a restaurant for a late lunch.  The TV playing above our heads started talking about a virus, Covid-19.  Tom Hanks & his wife had it. They stopped all sporting events.  It was THE only thing being talked about on any station.  It was like a bad movie was coming to life.

Once we got home we were soon informed that the kids would be taking an extra week off for Spring Break.  Everyone was ecstatic at the thought of a longer vacation because we still could not wrap our brains around what was actually happening in our world.

After our prolonged Spring Break Rich had to return to work.  We always get the post-vacation blues when he's gone. So, extra long Facetime calls are always on the evening agenda.

When it was finally determined that our children would not be returning to school at all, for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year, we all got a little more concerned.  It was at that point that our journey with Distance Learning began.  The kids would log-in on line & attend classes via Zoom, SeeSaw ans any other platform that they could come up with to ensure that our kids would continue learning.  Some of this was VERY taxing and tedious but there are other parts of this time period that I truly appreciated and loved. They logged-in for school in their pajamas, from the patio swing, from the couch, while eating snacks... They learned Math with dominioes & dice. Wrote letters to loved ones and did reports on our great state of Texas.  I couldn't be more proud of Jett & Delilah with just how resilient, determined, hard working & honest they were through the remainder of their school year!

Having the kids home from school wasn't bad at all. We totally took full advantage of this extra time with them and taught them all kinds of new stuff... vacuuming the floors, cleaning baseboards, pulling weeds & cooking us dinner.

Staying home & quarantined wasn't JUST about school work or house work.  We did a lot as a family.  We GREW a lot as a family.  We swam in our pool, took golf cart rides, went for walks, chalk-colored neighbors drive ways, decorated for Easter, played games, watched movies, had virtual play-dates, did arts & crafts, iced Easter cookies, and truly just took every opportunity to turn these lemons into lemonade.

Despite Corona we didn't wanna miss our yearly Bluebonnet photos. 

Some extra pictures from the month of March, 2020, that turned into one of the most unexpected & unsettling months of our lives.