March 2020

Oh how we will never forget March 2020.  Prior to all the craziness, Mila had a skate night at school and ran into her teacher, Mrs. Berkers:

We had dinner with David Stewart and Nellie drew a portrait of all of us as dinner!

And then...

March started off like any other month, busy around here with gymnastics for Nellie, cheernastics for Mila and workout classes for Mom. Robert was up on a federal wire and planned to work every Saturday and we just put the finishing touches on our bathroom remodel planning, which was set to start mid-month.  There was some sort of fast spreading illness going on in China, but we didn't pay too much attention to us because it didn't really affect us...until it did.  After China, many people in Italy and Spain started getting sick with a few Americans as well, in San Francisco and Washington first.  After a few days/weeks Italy and Spain took drastic steps and shut down entire cities and eventually the whole country.

In America, everything moved quickly and we were told to be on high alert, washing our hands a lot and staying home if we were sick around the second week. Everything changed on Friday, March 13th (ahh!) when they closed the schools in California.  This created quite the problem for parents but Robert and I, short on help, planned to alternate care...but then that changed 3-4 times with everything that was going on in the city/state/country and new restrictions that were put in place.  Robert was sent home from work and told to shelter in place while the city figured out what to do with the detectives; I was put on a part time work schedule and the girls started what would eventually be a 2.5 break from school while the teachers figured out their next moves.  March Madness and then the NBA games were cancelled, baseball's spring training was postponed and we ended up having to cancel so many of our trips (Kansas for Spring Break, camping for Easter, Robert's INIA work trip to Kentucky and my work award trip to Miami).  Around March 20th all of California was put on mandatory lockdown, nearly all business (except essential businesses like grocery stores, police/fire departments, hospitals, etc) were closed and all workers sent home, most without pay.

Robert and I are very lucky that we are both considered essential workings and, therefore, we are both working and/or getting our full salary.  The girls entertained each other and found things to keep them busy.  We found out at the end of March the school campuses wouldn't reopen for the remainder of the school year and that on April 1st Mila would start distance learning via computer and YouTube.  Because Nellie isn't in school yet we sadly ended up pulling her out of Grace and plan to work with her on PreK and Kinder worksheets.

Through all of the craziness we have been able to find some fun moments...we went and got "to go" ice cream in celebration of Mila's half birthday...

...and Mila read William a bedtime story via FaceTime with daddy.

Not knowing how crazy it was about to get, we stated our bathroom remodel on March 17th with the girls bathroom up first. We ran into a couple of hiccups (the tile store closed before we picked up our order! Luckily it reopened for pickups a couple days later) but it was done by the end of the month and we are SO happy with it!  The before/after pictures are great but the video really does it justice!

What we're looking forward to next month: a couple of Zoom meetings? There's literally nothing else on our calendar!