Audrey and Wesley are Six!

My twinies are six!
They had a great birthday even though we're still staying home - a lot of their friends sent them video messages and that just made their day!
We got them new bikes and their Grandma Sherry got them a trampoline!

Here are their 6 year old pictures, they are so biiiig!!

Continuing Quarantine

We're on Day 35 of staying home. We're still doing great. Puzzles, devices, playing outside, e-Learning, tv, devices, Disney +, Netflix, Uno, Old Maid, devices, repeat!

E-Learning is still going strong. We're doing three days a week until May 21st. Somedays are harder than others but we're hanging in there. We added dance into the rotation for both girls which I love, they missed their dance!

 Still lots of online meetings, I think most are optional (?) but we try and make them all.

Easter was two weeks ago and we had a good time. It was actually nice to stay home and not worry about being at a bunch of places.

Audrey and Wesley's birthday was this past weekend but that needs it's own post!
For now I'll leave you with this for posterity, I had $1 off per gallon at Kroger and it was the cheapest gas ever! 79 cents! Gas is now $1.59 per gallon without a discount. Crazy.

Navilleton Academy

Two blog posts within the same six months!? I know, right! Like I said, these are crazy times!

This week we started E-Learning with all 4 kids. and the Governor of Indiana announced that this will be the way we finish out the rest of the school year. Approximately 8 weeks.
So we are adjusting. I'm working from home, each kid has 1-2 hours of E-Learning per day and we'll find out next week exactly how many days they have to complete to finish out the year.
I set up our kitchen as office/school central.

I am ok! I am totally ok!
For real though - this has been pretty great. I get to spend all day with the kids and still get my work done. The only problem is figuring out what to feed these kids 462 times a day. Thankfully the school is providing some breakfast and lunches for all the kids in the district. The lines get longer each time we go, either people are feeling the crunch from being laid off or maybe like me, finding it hard to find groceries in this time of food hoarding and also these kids eat a lot. We go every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, it's been so helpful. And I am very grateful. Hoping to pay it forward when all this is over.

We have a pretty good schedule so far and I'm trying to stick to it. I work until 5 so all this business fits in my work day.

After five we all wind down, Monday we took a little hike to get out of this house. Still observing social distancing so we avoid all other people on the trails but it wasn't very busy anyway.

Today 3 of the kids teachers arranged online meetings which were great. As you can imagine the kindergartners just all talked at once but it was super cute. I'm hoping they keep doing this for the rest of the year to keep these kids going with their school work.

So we're going to do just fine.
And if you're wondering where Todd is in all this...well he's out of town for work. He's working hard for us from afar and I'm nervous for his safety. But what can you do?
We'll get through it - for now I'm trying to look at all the good. This has forced us to slow waaaaay down and I get to enjoy each day with my precious babies.
Oh and you know who else is enjoying this? This guy.

Max turned one on Tuesday and he's loving having us home all day every day.
Hopefully, I'll be blogging a lot more now...now that I have time.

COVID - 19

These are crazy times.
A little over a month ago we started to hear about a virus in China, the Corona Virus. It has flu like symptoms, really contagious, about a 2-3% mortality rate (mostly older people and/or immunosuppressed).  Made it's way to Japan, then of course the United States. Eventually we started hearing words like "shelter in place", "Quarantine", "Self Isolation".
Our schools are closed until at least May 1st. I've been working from home for 13 days now and the kids and I haven't been anywhere except grocery pick up and the occasional hike. Our governors, mayors, President have said we all must socially distance ourselves from anyone but our immediate family. Thank goodness my work is letting me work from home since we wouldn't have anyone to watch the kiddos. My dad is over 60 so I don't want to put him at risk by having him watch the kids. The thing with this virus is you could have it and not have any symptoms but you could pass it on to someone else for like a month!
So we're doing our part. Staying home. Of course there are essential businesses that remain open, hospitals, grocery stores, pharmacies and of course the beverage industry. So Todd is still working. IN fact he's in Memphis this week trying to get the plant down there back on track.
We start eLearning on Wednesday and man I'm nervous! I'll have to continue to work and have these kiddos do schoolwork 4 days a week. Eeeek! We'll see how it goes. For now, we're sheltering, social distancing, quarantining and hoping people listen and we can go back to our regularly scheduled program in about a month!

Panama City Beach 2019

Fall Break has been questionable all year. We didn't know if we were going to be able to go until only a few weeks before we left. We didn't have a huge budget so I was on the hunt for a reasonable condo for months. I found the perfect one right in budget but it meant switching condo complexes from the one we've been going to for 10 years! It ended up being great though and nowI'm pretty sure we want to go back to Emerald Isle every year!
I was pleasantly surprised by the ride down this year. I got the three littles busy bags with puzzles, coloring books, etc. and I got Evan about 10 used DS games. And allllll the downloaded movies on devices from Netflix. Oh and the best part!? The kids didn't know we were going anywhere! We didn't tell them we were going to Florida, we woke them up at 4am, told them we were going for a little drive and they went back to sleep. We told them when they woke up and they were super excited!

As soon as we got there we checked out our room, it was amazing! And the balcony was HUGE! Then we went to the beach for a bit then watched the sunset. Magical. The next 7 days were about the same. Beach, pool, beach, pool, eat, beach, pool, eat, sunset, crash out while watching tv.
We did a few things outside the resort. The pirate cruise which was a big hit and we rented a pontoon for half a day to go to Shell Island. So fun! We tried fishing but it was a bust. It's hard to know where to fish in the ocean.

I took family photos on the beach and even with all the yelling and craziness they turned out great. We had an impromptu dolphin show while we were out there, it was awesome!
Nows the part I bombard you with pictures. It's so hard for me to narrow them down so sorry there's an overload.