Well we are social distancing here in Virginia and the governor shut down schools for the rest of the year and all non-essential businesses. None of that disrupts our life very much because Chris has a government job and apparently I hardly ever leave the house anyway. The kids have been missing their activities and friends and David especially has missed a lot of boy scouting events and trips but they are hanging in there. After all, no one in our house is exactly short on finding someone to play with.
Overlarge families are made for times such as these.
Of course having an overlarge family also means you get a lot of accusing looks when you are just doing a regular Costco run for two weeks of supplies. I told Chris he needs to make a sandwich board sign that reads "I'm not hoarding, I just have six children and a pregnant wife." I mean, I legitimately need two packs of chicken breasts to feed all these boys and five double boxes of Cheerios does not actually last that long round these parts. We did buy toilet paper as well while it was back in stock which was probably a good decision since it was all gone again two days later since everyone here is apparently still panic buying.
Pretty much the only thing I actually miss going to are our nature study outings with friends. We've been keeping up with our insect studies on our own though and the kids had a lot of fun watching the butterflies we raised and then releasing them. They've also been catching a lot of minnows in our marsh which necessitated dragging the fish tank out of the garage and setting up a habitat for our new pets. I think I prefer releasing our nature finds back into the wild, but I'm constantly overruled in this area and our new Virginian menagerie seems to be off to an auspicious beginning. I suppose I should just be happy that it's not mice again. I've had to institute a "one in, one out" rule for the minnows though. I remember what an overcrowded minnow tank results in, even if the children conveniently do not.
The children were not been pleased to find out that school cancellations do not apply to our home school, but we only have five weeks of lessons left so hopefully they can power through. Especially since they really don't have anything better to do as everything has been cancelled. I'm very grateful that all this has coincided with spring's arrival--and that we decided to buy a house with a good bit of land. This would all be much worse if we were stuck inside the house all day. It's so much easier feel hopeful and calm when everything is warming up and blooming and you can sit outside and breath in the fresh air while you yell at the children to not bring any more stray fish into the house.
I hope you all are hanging in there, especially those of you who are not homebodies by nature :)
