A garden full of flowers: Covid life

When the world first shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, life felt so overwhelming. Never before had so many businesses closed at once. One by one, states across the nation started closing down schools. Eventually, Utah followed suit and that news turned my life upside down. I now look back and realize how unprepared I was to experience any change of that magnitude. Honestly, I am still trying to heal from this past year. I tried as hard as I could to maintain a sense of normalcy for my kids. The day after school closures were announced Chase and I drove to IFA (a local farm shop) to buy some rabbit food. As we entered the store, the sweet sound of baby chicks filled our ears. Chase looked at me with his big piercing eyes and I immediately knew what he wanted. That day we didn't just leave with rabbit food; three new chicks joined our family as well. I thought raising chicks would be the perfect way to pass the time off of school. I assumed we would raise them for a few weeks and then donate them to a local farm. However, we all fell in love and the rest is now history. I blame covid for that rash decision, but it honestly has been such a fun adventure.

Once the world essentially shut down, people understandably panicked. Many store shelves became empty as families started hoarding products. The news showed pictures of elderly people struggling to just find the essentials. Jason took these pictures of store shelves in March and it made me feel like I was living through a zombie apocalypse. Humans now had two main concerns: how to not die from coronavirus, and where to find toilet paper. Nothing made sense anymore.

Once we came to terms with the fact that the school closures were going to last much longer than the initial prediction of two weeks, a sense of mourning set in. I was really sad that my youngest was going to miss his last few months of kindergarten, including his graduation. All end of year parties were canceled. No yearbooks signings. No fun run. No fifth grade promotion ceremony for Wesley. No field days. No saying good bye to friends or teachers. I felt guilty mourning this news while many other people were experiencing much more devastating losses. Seniors were missing their high school graduation. College dorms closed down and students all over the world had to reevaluate their life and future plans. Many people lost their jobs. Thousands of small businesses had to permanently shut their doors. People living in poverty struggled finding food when the schools closed. Domestic violence and child abuse cases were on the rise. The most tragic loss was the fact that every day thousands of people were losing family and friends due to drug overdose, suicide, and of course covid. People all over the world were facing anything from mild annoyances to catastrophic changes and humans were not handling this new reality well.

Channing Hall quickly transitioned over to e-learning. I am beyond grateful my boys had this small sense of normalcy, but I won't sugar coat it - virtual learning was hard. Schools didn't have much time to transition over to this new way of education and many teachers really struggled. The younger, more tech savy teachers seemed to do well, while many of the older, more seasoned teachers had a hard time keeping up with the digital demands. Blake's teacher did great and continued sending videos and lessons for him to work on. He continued to grow and learn, and while the situation was not ideal, I am thankful Blake did not fall behind. Chase didn't have enough work, and Wesley had an absolutely overwhelming amount. He was often spending 8-10 hours a day trying to finish everything. I quickly became burned out trying to keep up with the endless amounts of assignments that were due each day. Life was already hard, and virtual learning almost put me over the edge. Not knowing what the next school year would look like, but predicting that it would probably include more e-learning, I decided to take charge of my children's education and we decided to homeschool for the next school year. More on that later.

In Blake's Kindergarten class, each student gives two presentations to their class over the course of the year. He gave his first one (all about worm farms) at the beginning of the year, but the second one was scheduled to occur after the closures. Luckily (even though it wasn't the same), Blake got to give his presentation (about Paleontology) through google classroom. He did such a good job and looked so cute in his outfit!