Easter 2020

This year's Easter looked a lot different than any of the ones before.  We had hoped that the Stay at Home Order issued by the governor in the middle of this coronavirus pandemic would be lifted in time for families to celebrate at church and with their loved ones.  Instead, it continued and that meant that the traditional Easter Egg Hunts, church services and Sunday dinners were all canceled.

The kids were disappointed about this, but we made the best of it.  We colored eggs and planned our own small Easter dinner (I had to go to 'Plan B' upon discovering, at the last minute, that my online personal shopper that I used to secure groceries during a time when it was not feasible to go to a grocery store bought expired chicken breasts for me).  The Easter Bunny was immune to the virus (thank goodness!) so there was a special Easter Egg Hunt outside and candy and filled Easter baskets  ... and memories to last forever.

'Twas the night before Easter and the baskets were filled -- before the Bunny whisked them away to be hidden:

The Easter Bunny wrote a special note with instructions on where their baskets had gone.

Samantha read the note out loud explaining that each of the kids were assigned an egg color and they were to start with the eggs on the plate (next to the partially-chewed carrot and celery).  Inside that egg was a clue that would lead them to the next egg ... and so on until they finally found their Easter Basket with the very last clue.

Sophia's assigned egg color was pink, of course!

Jack took time to carefully read each of his clues and decipher where he was to look next.

Steve helped Jimmy by reading his clues and eventually, Jimmy found his basket hidden under our bed:

And size of that chocolate bunny?!  I laughed about it for a long time.  You see, during a pandemic when most stores are closed, the Easter Bunny did a lot of ordering online.  And The Easter Bunny grossly underestimated the size of that chocolate bunny compared to the others!

Sophia found her basket hidden in her closet and is still questioning how/when the Bunny made it into her room while she was sleeping.

The cutest (more realistically-sized) chocolate bunny:

Jack found his under the sink in the boys' bathroom downstairs.

Samantha struggled with her clues the most.  The Bunny did make hers a little more challenging, but she was really not on top of her game that morning!  It took her the longest of any of the kids to find her basket, which was hidden in my craft closet in the basement.

After the appropriate amount of 'oooohing and aaahhhhing' over everything in their baskets (the Easter Bunny prides himself on picking out the perfect little things for everyone!), the kids dressed warmly with boots to head outside into the early morning Spring weather.

The Easter Bunny has never done an Easter Egg Hunt OUTSIDE for the kids, but decided to do one this year because the kids were so bummed about not being able to head down to the park the day before, like we have always done in the past.

The eggs were scattered in both the back yard and the front yard -- 20 for each kid -- and each of them were assigned a particular color.  This avoids most arguing and more importantly, they know when they are done looking.

Whew, there were some tricky ones out there and the kids made a couple of loops around the house to make sure that they found all of theirs!

Sam's were some of the hardest ones to find before her assigned color was green and it matched a lot of the green grass and plants that were starting to grow.

Blue eggs for my blue-eyed boy!

Jimmy is a certified egg-hunting expert now.  He understood the rules entirely and managed to find all 20 of his blue eggs all on his own.

Counting their eggs on the sidewalk:

These girls really are the best of friends when they want to be:

Looking at this picture reminds he that Jack was in dire need of a haircut.  During the pandemic, the hair salons have been shut down and Steve is waiting for a new set of clippers to arrive that he ordered for cutting the boys' hair.  (Shipping has slowed down significantly if the orders are for what are considered to be nonessential items).

Almost done ... and ready to open them up and collect all of the candy inside!

Easter Egg Coloring

With the kids home from school on a regular basis now, we had a lot of extra free time to schedule some egg coloring this year.  Eggs were limited in the stores (like a lot of things) so I bought just 2 dozen -- enough for each kid to color/decorate 6 eggs each.  I also knew that we, sadly, did not have any family coming over to celebrate with us due to the Stay at Home Order, so it wasn't necessary to boil too many extra for deviled eggs.

Oh, how I love pulling these glass punch cups each year!  They belonged to my grandma and they make the perfect little vessel to color eggs in.  Sam did the honors of adding the colored tablets into each cup ...

And then poured the vinegar/water mixture in:

I set up a table in the family room and gave everyone a plastic tray (which I purchased years ago and we use for a lot of things!):

Jimmy was so excited to color eggs.  It's kind of anti-climatic at his age to simply drop an egg into colored water and wait for it to color, but his excitement was contagious.

Sam opted to wear gloves for a good portion of the event, but learned that they were a bit too big for her (they were Steve's) and that they actually hindered her ability to turn the eggs and grip them properly.

Jack tried a more subtle approach of holding his egg suspended in color (thus, only covering half of the egg) and then turning it over to dip it in a different color.

We gave Jimmy a few extra privileges ... which is why we always do our coloring on a tray with a disposable table cloth underneath!

The girls were very serious about their coloring!

Not one egg was broken during the whole process!

So happy with his finished products:

Of course, pink was her first color of choice!  If we had purple, that would have been her second choice.

Sam made some special patterns and I love how they turned out.

Jack was in desperate need of a hair cut -- we were just waiting for our new hair trimmers to arrive.  The old ones were dull and we soon learned that orders from Amazon that were normally here in 2 days were now taking MUCH longer during the pandemic (especially if the order was deemed "nonessential").

My creative little egg dyers, all ready for the (quiet) holiday:

COVID-19 Quarantine

The last month has been nothing like what we imagined that it would be like when we started the year 2020.  With talk of COVID-19 entering conversations in a casual way and watching how it was spreading in China, we were still oblivious to the idea that it would mean a complete SHUTDOWN of life as we knew it by the middle of March.

People began working from home, schools and universities shut down, daily essential items were hard to find and overpriced, grocery stores shortened their hours and facial masks were required in all enclosed areas.  Restaurants and bars were forced to close, many of them permanently when they could not manage to make ends meet by simply offering take-out.

I began teaching my college chemistry courses online from my dining room -- recording lectures and modifying labs -- while homeschooling my four little ones.  Steve set up his "mobile office" in the garage (it worked out surprisingly well) and we all learned to adapt to the idea that we could not have any contact with people outside of our household.

We worked more puzzles than we have in the whole last year and even Jack is really into it now:

The kids did much better than I thought.  Sure, they missed their friends.  And they missed dance and they especially missed spending the Easter holiday (no Easter Egg Hunt at the park!) with family ... but we made the best of it.

We did a lot of Movie Nights and a lot of homemade desserts/meals where Sophia was my sous chef.

Homemade Carrot Cake to drop off for the grandparents before Easter:

It was also a great opportunity to practice more math (how many 1/2 cup measuring cups do you need for 1 1/2 cups of carrots?).

They boys dressed up in full Nerf Gun Gear and used each other as targets any chance that they got:

And we did lots of extra craft projects including painting:

Sam continued to practice her trumpet playing from home and learned to value structured school learning.  Her online learning experience was boring to her and she often completed her entire week of schoolwork within a 2-hr time block on Monday mornings.  We made several birthday posters while in quarantine so that we could do "drive-by" parades past her friends' houses.

Jack had the most "busy work," comprised of lots of math papers, spelling words, vocabulary papers and reading passages.  I tried to mix it up for him so that we did learning in the morning sometimes; and other times, we did it in the afternoon.  Often, we would work on his homework in the dining room, but I would also encourage outside learning too.

Sophia excels in all school subjects, especially in math.  Next year, we plan to have her do math lessons with the 5th graders rather than with her 4th grade peers.  For that reason, her teacher was generous to schedule an extra Zoom meeting weekly with her and one other student to give them extra math problems to work on.

Working on spelling words using my large teaching dry erase board in the dining room:

Outside learning in the fresh air and sunshine with sunglasses makes everything better.

Using my laptop to type her Compare and Contrast essay on penguins and flamingos:

Steve continued to cut the boys' hair, as he has done quite frequently the last couple of years.  Occasionally, I will take the boys to a barber shop (if Steve is traveling, busy, or it just plain works out in my schedule).  But, all salons and barbershops were shut down so we upped our game with a barbershop cape and Steve gave the boys a much needed haircut on the back patio.

As things continue to change daily here in Michigan, and the positive COVID cases continue to soar, it looks like the kids will be finishing out their school year at home.  They will miss end-of-the-year celebrations with their teachers and friends and graduations/sports/dance recitals will all be canceled.  It's sad and it's disappointing, but we all agree that we are lucky to be healthy and safe.