The number of Coronavirus cases across the United States continues to increase daily.
This week more businesses continued closing. The movie theater, salons, bank lobbies, and all sit-down restaurants closed.
The grocery store was quiet and had many empty shelves. People wore medical face masks and gloves into the grocery store. The toilet paper, hand sanitizer, bread, meat, and canned food shelves are some of the ones that are always empty. Trying to piece together meals to feed our large family became a little more challenging. Thankfully, we have venison in the freezer from the deer Blake shot. That has supplied us with many meals while meat is hard to find at the store.
Stores began reducing their hours in order to stock the shelves and clean the store.
Costco began only allowing 50 people into the store at a time, creating a long line of people waiting to get in.
This was our first full week of Online Learning. The kids made a video of our school's morning announcements to post online to help encourage and motivate our fellow Hartman Eagles as we embarked on this new journey.
With the sudden closure of school, brought the sudden loss of income for me. Additionally, we lost income from four of Robert's "extra jobs" (security jobs) due to their closings.
Our neighbor called and asked if I would be willing to "homeschool" and keep her kids while she continued to work. The Lord continues to provide for us in ways we would never expect.
Our days began to look a lot different, but we slowly started finding our new normal.
We start in the dining room each morning with our online school assignments. The kids work very hard to get the day's assignments completed. We take our snack break after a couple of hours, followed by a brain break. We then watch National Geographic on Disney+ or Who Was on Netflix and write a reflection on what we have learned. We have an independent reading time everyday right before lunch.
Some of the assignments the kids go to the kitchen table to complete, while some stay in the dining room. Depending on what subject, supplies, and space are needed, they rotate between the two rooms. They do their Zoom lessons (live online video conference) at the desk in my bedroom where it is the quietest.
We are so thankful that our school distract supplied us with 3 additional laptops. Our neighbors bring their own laptops, we have 3 district Chromebooks, and our family laptop. All six of the kids are able to complete their assignments online at the same time.
We are always happy when it's time to clean up our "schoolroom" and head outside for PE.
We do different activities everyday for PE.
After our neighbors go home at 3pm, we continue with our family time as usual. Robert gets home from work, we eat dinner, and spend time outside.
Bird watching
The weather warmed up this week, so Brynn and Kaleb played in the water hose on the trampoline.
We wake up each day and start all over again.
Friday was a much lighter school load because the kids had gotten so much of their work done earlier in the week.
We ended the week with smiles on our faces.
During this week, our county had it's first official Coronavirus case. A shelter-in-place order went into effect for our county this week. The people of our county were ordered to stay home, only leaving for essential business. We could still walk, play, and bike outdoors. We just had to make sure we stayed at least 6 ft away from anyone else that we might see while we were outside. Robert going to work and our weekly grocery store visits were our only outings. Since it's spring, mowing season has started. The boys have started mowing yards again since they don't come into contact with anyone while they are working.
We continue to pray for our country, our leaders, and the rest of the world as we battle this virus.
