The Cross Family: First of Quarantine

After the birthday party and being home from skiing I made a quick trip to Costco. Oh my. Everyone was starting to freak out. This was definitely a weird day. There was a line all the way to the back of the store and then some. Meat, toilet paper, etc was all going so fast. It was a bit crazy!!! Little did I know this would last for months and months!!

We got some haircuts because they needed them so bad!!! They were spraying everything down and acted a bit crazy while we were there. Things were changing very quickly!

One of our first projects for quarantine was adding more nesting boxes for the chickens. It was getting a little cramped in there with the new chickens so we added more. Lucy thought they needed their own boxes so she wrote on them so they would know where to go....ha!

Penny came and played in her playhouse.....this girl and her chickens!

Next project on the list was bunkbeds for the lake house. When we all stay out there during the summer a few have to sleep on the floor. So we decided to make 2 sets of bunk beds for one of the bedrooms so all the kids could have a bed. The boys helped Logan and then I got to sand and stain them :). It was a lot of work but they look great!

We had a week of limbo after spring break when no one really knew what we were doing. Then the first news was that we were going back in April. So we started online school.....it was definitely a learning process for all. I had them write in the journals every morning. This was one of the first mornings.....

Tyson....

Weston

Lucy

Caleb

Weston got a hoverboard from Mimi and Pawpaw for his birthday.....so lots of practicing on that. And with the practicing came LOTS of scuffs on my baseboards and walls. Ugh. But he loves it and caught on very quickly!!

Even Lucy was giving it a try.

We were improvising quite a bit the first week because the teachers weren't giving any work yet. So I let each one of them pick a Science experiment to do with everyone. Weston was first...

We had to go pick up their stuff from school and it was rather depressing.....

I gave them as much Math as I could....measuring perimeter and finding area of all kinds of things around the house :).

One really fun things about quarantine was getting to see the Bradleys more! They were building a house and had to be out of their old house they moved into the lake house for several weeks. It was really fun and we got lots of time with them. They got to be part of our huge volcano experiment....ha ha.

The cold didn't seem to bother them so they swam often!!!

And the bread making continued through quarantine.....had to improvise on the flour because of course the shelves were empty. I ended up finding some company that did a drop ship every month and I started ordering from them. It didn't make a fluffy loaf but still bread!

And our sweet little peaches were starting to bud!

Next experiment was a bottle rocket......this was SO fun and so many laughs. most of these are videos so I don't really have them on here but it was a blast. We all got soaked and laughed a ton.

These poses followed the experiment....he had made his own light saber :)

The pool was so fun during quarantine and definitely glad we had it! Even though it was chilly most managed to swim at least for a few minutes!

Shannon (the doll) got to come out to the pool too :)

And oh Charlie.....just wants to be right with you.

With all the time we had we got the garden all ready to go! We planted WAY more than the year before.....straight lines and even a watering system!

Tristen's horses behind us are always so fun to see! Tristen came over a lot and played with the kids.

We did a lot of weird things during quarantine.....our PTM pastor had us trying to win a contest with all these random things in the picture. We got more points based on things we were doing. So somehow we all did headstands in the car with our dog in the picture and toilet paper.....who even knows. We didn't win is all I know but we did laugh a lot!

The kids did another one for Mr. Brian where they collected all kinds of different things from the house.....Lucy did win this one!

Art projects for school from the yard....

We made lego cars and raced them down the ramps in the garage.....you come up with lots of ideas when you have time! They had a blast doing it.

We had a zoom birthday party for Mimi....it was a little chaotic but still fun to see everyone. Weston played Happy Birthday for everyone with his saxophone :)

Next experiment was making crystals...

One day Logan dug all his old Legos out of the attic. Oh the kids had a blast putting them all together and playing with them. They also found his HUGE digital camera....weston loved messing with it.

More school.....once we started getting assignments from teachers it was a lot of screen time which this mama isn't really a fan of.....I know it's kinda the only way for them to send stuff but it got old quick. We tried to do it around 8:30ish and be done for sure by 11:00.

Caleb learned all the phases of the moon!

Shannon and Chic-a-linda (horse) were always nearby for school :)

We had some PE time too.....Lucy doing some burpees..

This was a major part of quaratine....I've never really read long books to the kids and this was the time we did it! After lunch just about every day we would sit down outside mostly and read books. I read Little Pilgrims Progress to them which we LOVED....then we did the entire series of the Prince Warrior series....they were awesome. All talked about spiritual warfare so we got to talk about that a lot together.

One day they decided to make their own skee ball game.....it was pretty cool! We started watching a show called Shop Class and that inspired them.

Lucy's kinder teacher that we LOVE turned 40 during quarantine. We wanted her to still get celebrated and feel loved so did a drive by parade. It was so fun to see her. Lucy said she felt tears when she saw her. We are sad her time with this precious lady was cut short!!!

They wanted to stop and pick flowers for me on the way home.....well yes of course!

Building with our cereal?!?!?!

Fort building.....part of art class I think?

Scavenger hunt....

School with Charlie....

More bread making....babka chocolate bread...

Sometimes on Friday night when we needed to just get out of the house for a little bit we'd go buy and get take out and go to Logan's office and watch a movie in the conference room.....just a change of scenery but was needed at times! He's cleaning up after us :)