Birthday with an uninvited guest

Miss Lindi Lou had a birthday and turned SEVEN years old!

The uninvited party guest, cough corona virus, put a damper on
normal celebrations. 

Thankfully I did not have a big hoopla of a party lined out this year.

(We do every other year for parties).
With every store closing under the sun, it would have gotten canceled for sure!

Plus, I had no idea where parents stood as far as quarantining was concerned.

Some were extreme, some not so much.
Us, definitely not so much!

But we were planning to go do something fun for our big 7 year old.

How were we going to celebrate this girl?

She got a knock on the door early in the morning from Grandpa 
bearing a box of Bosa donuts!

Nothing says happy birthday more than donuts for breakfast!

It is always so hard staring at your presents all day, waiting for dad to get home 
from work so you can open them!

It was her lucky day, because aunt Stephanie invited her over for a
birthday TEA PARTY!!
Seriously, I could have cried.
She saved the day and made her feel SO SPECIAL!!

How cute are they?!

I asked how I could help.
Nope, I got it!
Stephanie even baked cupcakes for her.
I'm telling ya, Stephanie is Monica from Friends!

She came home feeling all fancy and fine from her tea party ready to open presents!

One more blow of  7 candles.

I hope she wished covid- 19 away!

 

Corona is the WORST!

With Spring break nearing to an end, and our future under some BIG uncertainty,

we went out to dinner early to celebrate Lindi's birthday!

She picked Organ Stop Pizza!
Normally we would cringe because her birthday is at the tail
of the snow bird season.

I don't know why that place is a magnet for crowds and old people?

But with talk of a deadly virus, the high riskers stayed in their mobil trailers, 
which made the restaurant half as busy as it normally is. Holla!

And a stop at DQ for dessert.
Bonus that is was bogo week!

Our freezer confirmed that:)

Then it happened.
School was officially cancelled. 

TEARS!!!

For 2 weeks. To stop the spread and help the curve.

Not just schools. Restaurants, gyms, hair salons, DENTIST
offices (most mind boggling one to me). Pretty much all non essential 

business. Either they were sent home to work, or shut down.
No sports for the kids.

Our filled to the brim days were suddenly canceled.
Zilch. Gone. Nada. 
Uh, now what do we do?

Arizona was put on a social distancing mandate.
Stay 6 ft away from others, and no more than 10 people in a group.

We were lucky, because other parts of the US were on worse lock downs.

It was like we were living in the twilight zone. 
Luckily Casey was able to keep working like normal. 

My brother in law, who is a dentist, had to shut down his office.

And was asked to DONATE all of his medical masks and gloves to the

"over run" hospitals. 

Umm, those cost a lot of money.

This is when it became more political to me.

I had a gut feeling this was going to be WAY longer than a 2 week hiatus. 

News around the world was that Italy and China had their citizens in

a literal lock down in their own homes.

Prisoners! 

Only one person could leave at a time to get essential items. 

I could not fathom that. 

As we were wrapping our brains around this pandemic that seemed to happen over

night, I think the only way to cope was by humor. 

Then the memes started pouring in.
Sadly, they are spot on!

While the schools scrambled to get together a plan for these poor kiddos,
I improvised as best as possible with printed off worksheets. 

Lets just say, home school is for the birds.

I think it got real for me when food was sparse on the grocery store shelves.
Every store looked ravished. 
Lines out the door to get into Costco, with literally NO toilet paper,
and other normal heavily stocked perishables.

It was as if we were living in the Hunger Games book. 

We went to Grammy's house to help her
with yard work.

Rusty and Dallin went to work with Casey.

Tinkering around out front.

Luckily we still had good weather in our favor.

The world was in the mode of shamming for being outside of your house,
or being around people.

Not us!
WE WERE NOT FEARFUL.
In fact, we were the complete opposite.
I could go on and on about this, but I wont.
For now:)

Stephanie, Leah and I were already losing our ever loving minds.
We would scour the internet looking for places that were still open.

In Come Follow Me, our lesson for the week was about the Allegory
of the Olive Tree.
I had always wanted to go out to Queen Creek
 olive mill to take a tour.
I called and sure enough, the were still open!!
They had to limit groups to only 10 because of the new rule.
We had 12, but since we were family they made an exception. 

I think it felt like going to Disneyland.
I will support any business fighting tooth and nail to stay open.
A normal activity felt so refreshing.

We ate lunch first.
I have never had such  delicious food!
Everything from the kids chicken fingers, to potato chips was 
made from scratch!
The atmosphere was so quaint and inviting as well.

Then we had our tour!
I think the kids normally would have been bored about olives,
but we had been talking quite a bit about them so it peeked their interest!

Plus, our guide was a hoot.
She was extra animated for the kids sake.

In fact, she reminded me of the girl on Mean Girls,

" I saw Cady Heron wearing army pants and flip flops, so I 
bought army pants and flip flops".

LOL! Bless her heart. 

We survived our first week of quarantine.

I think this is how the whole world was feeling about it.

 

The Spring Break that Kept on Giving

The talk of the world was a virus outbreak in China called Covid-19/Corona Virus.

Some guy ate a bat and got sick, which then wildly spread it to what seemed

like the whole country. Everyone was getting sick or dying.

 Glad I don't live in China!

Spring Break started out normal and great as could be!

Minus some splotchy weather scattered throughout the week.
We picked the sunniest day and bought resort passes to hang out by the pool.

Yep, we were all living our best lives that day!

No luck with all the rain and outdoor activities, so we went swimming again!
This time at the Great Wolf Lodge. 

It was a good time!
Towards the end of the day, I started checking my phone.
Facebook was blowing up about how other parts of the world, including NY,
were starting to put their cities on lock down because of this corona virus.

Then my phone starting blowing up with text threads saying nobody could find 
toilet paper. Anywhere. It was like panic and frenzy happened overnight.

I wasn't too concerned at the moment.
But was quickly visualizing my tp stock, lol!

The boys got to go straight from Great Wolf to snowboarding with Travis!
Lucky duckies. 

Swimming to snowboarding.
Only in AZ!

The following day got intensely worse as far as the panic driven people for toilet
paper and clorox wipes. 

I honestly was more concerned about having enough food.
If people are going crazy for tp, food would be next.
I did not want to go shopping with a bunch of crazy people.
Sadly, I had zero food storage (shame on me).
Off I went to spend our life saving on beans and rice!

I figured I would get some toilet paper while I was at it.
Yep, non to be found!
2 stores with striking out I needed to get smart.

Food City?
Gold mine!

The stares I got from pushing around carts full of food was interesting.
Nobody cared about food yet.
Glad I was smart enough to get one step ahead of most people.

With a small house I needed to get crafty on where to put it all.
I rearranged the girls closet into what I dubbed "the corona closet".
Bins full of food for an emergency.

I also bought a water purifier.

And stocked my medicine cabinet full of the essentials. 

 

Not going to lie, I was getting scared about this virus.
I was never afraid of getting it and being super sick.
More so what this would mean for our future and every day living.

Boy was I right.