Monday

Well, this is getting more somber. My sister called and said that one of her husband's teammates at work passed away from coronavirus. We were sad for them, and also a little hit by the closeness of it. He wasn't old or frail, just like the high school teacher in our county who passed away. We feel more of a desire to do what we can to stop this spread.

The state government announced a stay-at-home order starting at 8pm tonight. It was a lovely day, and we wanted to go on a hike or do something before it was too late. We threw out (figuratively) our homework. Lige was planning a field trip for Thursday to go on a hike and cook dinner on the camp stove, and he wanted to do that. We looked around for something we could cook on a camp stove with no preparation and found some pulled pork in the freezer. We threw that and a loaf of bread in a bag. Toss in some side dishes and some plates. Jump in the car. Run back for water and the fuel canister for the camp stove. (Phew!!) We drove to Prince William National Forest to try some hiking there. Unfortunately, my GPS couldn't handle us taking the I-95 express lanes, so we had to pull over and fix the map....then the map took us to the RV campground, not the hiking entrance...and we got to the forest much later than we wanted to be eating. And we pulled up to the entrance to find about a million people parked on the road. We would have just gone home or something, except we were hungry and we had to cook lunch on the camp stove before we could eat! We drove around and looked for somewhere to picnic, but it was all crowded or closed. Finally, we found a park that said it was closed except for trail use. We uh, "hiked" to a pavilion and had lunch. If a ranger had challenged us, we would have told the whole sob story and begged to be able to eat, because we were all alone and we just needed a place to eat!

We planned to hike after lunch, but it took us so long to find a place, and Jane kept tripping and skinning her knee, and we just gave up and "hiked" back to the car. So much for our adventures in NoVa.

But on the way home, we were very clever and stopped at the grocery store in VA. Since MD had issued the stay at home order, we were sure the grocery stores would be a mad house. I was shocked that Aldi in Dumfries, VA was insane, too! I left the kids in the car while I went in. THe line was half an hour long after I got my stuff, so they chilled in the car a LONG time. I bought chocolate to reward. They earned it. They didn't fight at all. Aldi had limits on how much of all sorts of things you could buy, including a limit of 2 milk. I knew that if I got 4 gallons of milk, I could avoid the store for a whole week. So I went to the front and begged. And the checker reluctantly let it go. But when I got out to the parking lot, the kids were helping me load the groceries, and somehow, having 4 gallons of milk kept coming up loudly. "Shhhh, don't talk about the milk!" I'd whisper. Then the loud response, "Why can't we talk about having 4 gallons of milk, Mom?" Gah! I was afraid I was going to start a riot. But we didn't, and we got home with our contraband in safety :)

When we got home, we learned that Virginia had issued a stay-at-home order about an hour after Maryland had, so that's why the grocery store there was packed. It was a great idea we had, too bad the governor didn't cooperate :)

We had another interesting development this week. As you know, the last two weeks have been school at home, with the teachers still giving work. Our kids have been doing very well on their home school schedule. This week, I expected the teachers to pick up right where they left off, and school to continue much the same. I was wrong! The school is planning to use this week to get grades entered from the last few weeks, and deliver chromebooks to kids who need them. In other words, "get your ducks in a row" week. Next week is spring break. Why we want spring break, I don't know. But I guess the teachers still want a break. Then the week after that, we're starting school up again. So we have an unexpected 2-week lull now. We had to re-do the whole schedule! Here's what we came up with this morning, and we'll see how it goes:

9-11am: Stuff with the family. Service or chores or house projects, or whatever. (Cough...deep cleaning...) Today, we went and picked up litter at the school, because I wanted to get out of the house.
11-3pm: Do your individual stuff, whatever homework you still have or things you want to work on. You can watch some of the cool stuff being posted online. You can practice the piano or violin more (nudge, nudge). You can play. Whatever.
3pm: EXERCISE!
4pm: Free time! aka computer time :)

We'll see if we're still friends at the end of spring break :) Ha ha.

Oh, I forgot to tell about church this week! A family with young kids hosted it, and it was a different and fun flavor. We sang primary songs. We had stories from the Friend. And some wonderful talks for the grown-ups. But it was really fun for the little kids to have a less-boring church service :) The only annoying thing was that the broadcast was shut down again by YouTube. We're quite confident now that the music is what's triggering it. The family hosting it switched over to Facebook to finish up. But seriously, the Bots in charge of YouTube right now are trigger happy. We're planning a family concert this week, and we practiced last week with YouTube live. We were shut down when Lillian and Lige played a duet. I mean, I'm glad they sound so professional, but umm....

 In the evening, we had a testimony meeting. Since it was fast sunday, we thought it would be nice to give people a chance to share their feelings. Especially with so much going on. We invited Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Rosie and Uncle Curtis, and Aunt Nicole. It was so great! I wish we could do testimony meetings like that all the time!

Well, my time to write is up. Better get back to work!