Just to be honest, March was a very weird month. The month started out normally until Friday, March 13 when everything started shutting down because of the Coronavirus Pandemic, but more on that later.
We started the month off great. Carter started his golf lessons which he loves! He ended up getting to have 3 lessons before golf lessons were included in part of the shut down. Carter has always enjoyed golf, but now that he has started his lessons he seems to be REALLY enjoying it, and has even been practicing on his own in the yard.
We visited the library to get new books and the kids worked together and quickly assembled this puzzle.
Dawson also got to start his much anticipated archery course. Unfortunately we only got to attend 2 of the 6 courses before Corona shut it down, but we are looking forward to this starting back again. Dawson has always loved shooting his bow and arrow, so when I found this course I knew it would be something he would enjoy! He was excited to learn that he was one of the rare few that could shoot with either arm because he could use either eye as his dominate eye.
I think Nora Kate's twin day picture at school made it into the February post somehow, but the boys twinned with each other for Twin Day at school and loved it!
As I mentioned, on Friday, March 13th, the Alabama Governor started businesses and organizations down to try to stop or curb the spread of the Corona Virus in our state. There was also a "stay at home" order put into place. All businesses deemed "non-essential" were forced to close, schools were forced to close for the rest of the school year going to an entirely online format (for us this wasn't too big of a deal since we primarily homeschool anyway-but the kids have SO missed going to the building with their friends for school two mornings a week and all of their clubs at school). Churches were also forced to close. Everyone was told not to take their children in to stores to grocery shop-recommended one member per family go into the store for groceries. Everyone was also encouraged to wear a mask when in public. It was crazy how quickly things changed, and now I'm wondering how and when they will go back to normal...because we are ready!
So needless to say the remainder of the month held lots of "at home" style fun for us. We kept plugging along with our school lessons because all we had was time, and we have actually gotten significantly ahead in our lesson plans. We ended up working right through spring break since we couldn't go anywhere anyway, and so we are hoping to be done with school by early May! I have loved homeschooling/hybrid schooling the kids this year and cannot wait to do it again next year.
In addition to continuing to go through our homeschool lessons, we have added in as much fun at home as possible...
One of the first things we did was to build a bigger garden. Last year I threw out a tiny garden because we were still getting settled and I figured, hey, at least we had a tiny garden, but the kids and I wanted a bigger garden this year. This was the perfect time to do it when all we had was time. Back in February we had bought the wood. I painted it with exterior paint that actually matches the trim on our house and our front door.
In the picture below you can see the tiny rectangle was the size of our old garden last year, and the larger box is going to be the garden this year.
The kids ended up picking all kinds of fruit to plan rather than veggies. We planted 2 raspberry bushes (top of pic), a strawberry plant (center of pic) and then our neighbor gave us 4 off shoots of one of her strawberry plants so we planted them around our big one giving us a total of 5 strawberry plants though different sizes, then we planted two blueberry bushes (bottom of picture).
This was a fully day's project but it was so much fun to be outside working with the kids. They were great help and enjoyed the project. Dawson LOVES a garden.
We did a new hike at the Nature Preserve of Hwy 53. It was VERY muddy so we selected the trails that were not muddy. It was pretty and fun despite trying to avoid the mud!
a portion of the hike was gravel and then in the woods it was not.
During our quarantine/stay at home order time we have done a zillion art projects. Dawson painted a gnome for our recently completed fruit garden. (He has always loved gnomes!)
I cannot begin to list all the creations the kids have made out of LEGOs. I think it has turned into "this quarantine sponsored in part by LEGOS" But I love their creativity. They want me to take pictures of just about every creation before they tear it apart.
Carter got crafty and painted this turtle stone for the garden!
Lots and lots of outside playtime. Darth Vader frequently drives the princess carriage down our street. Clayton loves wearing costumes!
We have been sticklers for obeying the stay at home order, and I have only gone out to go to the store every week. I usually use online grocery pickup, but I can't get a pickup time lately because now EVERYONE wants to avoid going into the store. I snapped a few pictures at our Walmart Grocery when I was there attempting to get groceries so that when (hopefully soon) this is all over we can remember this crazy time.
Look at these bare produce shelves!
Canned goods area
We have been thankful to have ample time to fish in our neighborhood. As you can tell from our pictures it's been a mixture of hot and cold this month. This night we were fishing in particular turned off very cold and windy, but we have had a lot of success catching fish when it has been warm and cold!
The kids with mine and Lolly's help separated ALL of our Legos by color!!!! All 4 of our kids play LEGO all the time...it is SO nice to have them organized. We have turned the train table into a big lego building area and it seems so much more manageable now. We had a lot of LEGO so it took hours on end to separate them all by color.
We celebrated St. Patrick's Day at home (obviously). We did have this Irish Shepherds Pie with a Shamrock, and we all wore green.
When it has been nice weather we have socially distanced ourselves from others and done a lot of hikes and nature walks. One weekday morning we took Lolly to walk the Swan Creek Trail.
Dawson found this cool chair tree on the Swan Creek Trail.
Nora Kate loves finding flowers to stick in her hair.
Such a sweet and little girl thing to do, I love it.
Lots of laser tag...even laser tag on hover boards. I have to say, the kids have not complained at all about not being able to go anywhere. They have been amazing. They have invented new games like hover laser tag...necessity is the mother of invention.
We've taken countless Ranger rides!
(Dawson was all about the silly face here for some reason!)
More Laser Tag
Sometimes Spiderman drives the princess carriage.
We have done a million bike rides and runs. Here NK and I are after a run around our neighborhood that ended at our neighborhood lake.
We have utilized this extra down time to bake together.
AND remember how I said the kids ended up picking all kinds of fruits for the garden. Well, I was a little disappointed to not get to grow our usual squash and zucchini and summer veggies, so we built a second garden for veggies another weekend. Here the kids are standing beside the fruit garden, but you can see the veggie garden in the background. We planted yellow squash, zucchini, and cucumber seeds, and planted 4 (although one is struggling thanks to being hit with a drone) jalapeno pepper plants. I'm very excited to have two good sized gardens one for fruit and one for veggies this year.
Another Sunday we were all antsy to get out of the house, so we took a hike at the Joe Wheeler Nature Preserve and packed our lunch.
We told the kids we were "eating out" HAH They didn't think the joke was as funny as we did when eating out turned out to be eating peanut butter sandwiches outside on the water here at the end of the hike. While most restaurants are still permitted to be open for carry out, we have been avoiding eating anything not cooked at home in an attempt to stay healthy.
We didn't see any alligators but we appreciated this warning on the hike.
Flint Creek Trail
Carter the climber
We have also had ample time to work in the landscape which has been nice. The candy tuft that I was thrilled to have found back in February has bloomed beautifully and I LOVE IT! We remulched the entire front not just what was pictured here.
Carter found a 4 leaf clover!
And so did Dawson!!
As I mentioned, we have continued right on with school despite everything else changing. Here Dawson is on a zoom meeting with his class. The teachers have set up a few Zoom conferences for lessons and so the kids can see their classmates.
More LEGO creations. This was a zoo.
We have enjoyed a couple fires in the backyard. I took the picture so that's Lolly on the left the kids in the middle and John on the right (I couldn't get this picture to lighten up any).
I have also been organizing (a favorite thing of mine to do).
We have gotten our inflatable out to play in 2 times. This has been a hit every time!
The kids found this snail and built him a habitat, named him Skittles (because they brought him home in a skittles wrapper), and feed him spinach.
We decorated our entire sidewalk with beautiful pictures and encouraging messages, or at least that was what we were supposed to do...Carter's encouraging message said, "STOP BUYING ALL THE TOILET PAPER!" Haha, during this time there is absolutely no tp to be found in the store...it's odd but people are buying up all the toilet paper, so that was Carter's encouraging message HAHA!
Nora Kate created this lounge chair for sunbathing.
Another Sunday we started at the northern end went down the Swan Creek Trail...just for about two miles. So pretty!
John got to work from home for three days during this time.
It was nice having him home.
Fishing
More landscape projects
You know we are going through our list of things to do when we start making slime.
We LOVE kinetic sand!
We also celebrated our sweet Mr. Baby's 4th birthday this month, but, of course, I will give Clayton his own post for his birthday!
Lolly is still living with us as the new home isn't ready to purchase yet so the kids have enjoyed having her here with us this month too. I also forgot to mention that in addition to archery and golf lessons being postponed until sometime in the future, Clayton baseball season has been postponed also, and my Knoxville Half Marathon has been canceled. I plan to find another race to run as soon as things open back up. We are still hopeful that baseball will be able to be made up this summer! As I said, March was a really odd month because everything got canceled and closed, but we enjoyed the extra time together and we are starting to adapt to the slower pace and actually find lots of things to enjoy in it.
