Quarantine Week 2

Well we just finished our second full week of being stuck in our house.  It's starting to get a little more difficult keeping everyone happy.  The kids are getting bored with our normal stuff so I've had to start getting a little more inventive.

Our school district has pickup locations for kids ages 1-18 to pickup lunches so we tried that for the first time this week!  It was fun to get out of the house for those 20 minutes and to have different types of food to try.

In a couple weeks Asher's teacher will start sending out homework on April 6th, so I think that will help him stay a little more motivated to do school things.  The first few days of our quarantine he was really good about doing the school tasks I gave him, but that died out pretty fast.  But having something from his teacher will help him be more motivated to do it!

My mom started doing something fun with all the grand-kids.  She started giving out challenges based on people in our family (both alive and deceased) to help us learn a little more about our ancestors!  The first one was about my mom!  Her challenge was that since she loves art and she loves animals, we all had to make an animal using some kind of art!  We did sidewalk chalk and it was pretty fun!  The second one was about my great-grandpa Ernie.  I didn't know pretty much anything about him so it was fun for me to learn too!  He used to work on trains as well as in an iron factory.  He also didn't have a car and had to walk everywhere.  So we had to make some kind of train (Asher did one out of lego's and the girls put together some tracks we have), use iron in some way (Asher lifted up our cast iron pan over his head to feel how heavy it was and then we made pancakes in it), and then we had to go on a walk (which it started snowing right after we started so it was a short walk).  Asher thinks doing these challenges are great!  He gets really into them and has fun seeing how many points we get for finishing them.  The third challenge was about Asher!  He asked my mom if he could come up with some challenges for everyone to do and I think he came up with good ones.  He said he wanted people to be like him and have one challenge where they had to do something brave and a challenge where they had to be kind.  I actually think those fit Asher pretty good.  A lot of things that other kids seem to have no problem with are a little difficult for Asher.  But he has come such a long way!  For the challenge, Asher wanted to ride his bike really fast (a strider bike - riding any kind of bike was terrifying for him but he really got the hang of riding the strider bike and does very well with it! We'll probably tackle riding a regular bike this summer.)  And on this bike ride we dropped off some cookie mix to his friend that lives in our neighborhood for the second challenge.  He has had a really hard time not being able to play with his friends or cousins.  I think he even misses school, although he says he doesn't.  He loves having lots of friends to play with and be around and he would tell me every day after school about all the fun he had with his new friends.  Having a challenge be about him really made his day and he loved seeing what his cousins did for the challenges!  The next one is about my grandma (their great-grandma).  Having all these is a great distraction and adds a little variety to our home stay.  And we get to learn a little genealogy!

We built a garden box!  It's been on the list of things to do since we moved into the house, but haven't had the time to do it.  Eventually we'll build a send one.  Now we just have to find somewhere we can get dirt to fill it.  David said he was going to build one this year, but I really didn't think it would happen before I would need to plant.  He was going to have school until the end of May and then go to Disneyland with the orchestra the first part of June, but now all that's cancelled so we had time to do it!

I'm not real sure about what else we did this week.  The days all seem to run together.  It's nice to be able to get projects done, but I will be very glad when we can go to a playground or spend time with extended family or when Asher can see his friends.  Here are some pictures of our week!

"Mom stop being annoying" Asher put this on my to-do list.  He told me that night I had done very well with it.  Hopefully we survive however much longer we have to be in quarantine. ;)

Mia sometimes falls asleep right by the door.  I'm glad we have hard floor so I can push her with the door to get in and put her to bed!

Our garden box!

Asher reading a book to Ava one day.

Building a train to be like Grandpa Ernie!

Trains

Trains

Putting the train together.

Mia's hair was so pretty and long, but got tangled so easily!  And she has such a sensitive head and would cry almost every time I tried to brush her hair.

I meant to take her in to get it cut, but then the world shut down and I didn't want to risk her getting sick.  I cut Asher's and David's hair, but I was a little unsure about cutting girls hair.  So I looked up some YouTube videos and....

Cut lots on length off!  It actually looks way better than I thought it was going to (I was expecting a disaster) and she is much happier now that her hair doesn't get as tangled. 

It's very cute and now it always flips out at the bottom!  Ava actually needs a haircut too, but her hair is way curlier and more uneven and I'm not sure I'm brave enough to handle that.  She may just have to wait until the world opens again. 

Eating pancakes we made in our cast iron pan!

So strong!

Drawing animals to be like Grandma Mitchell

Asher's t-rex

My elephant.  Asher helped me sign my name.

 

Asher's fish

Here are a bunch of videos from the past few months:

This is an accurate representation of our life.  Messy house, running in circles, and lots of giggles!

Ava singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"

Reading books

They love to dance to the princess songs!

This video is super crappy quality, but I thought it was so cute that they were singing and acting along with the show!  Also, they LOVE Frozen!  I have seen those movies so many times.  When I put a pigtail in Mia's hair she always calls it "Elsa hair" because Elsa usually has her hair pulled back.