March Madness

March is the traditional month to have March Madness the basketball tournament in it, but this year it was madness with how the world came to a complete and utter stop! And then wading through the news, social media, and feelings on all that was going on proved to be difficult, stressful, a bit scary, and a lot confusing. You would think with all the "extra" time we (I) had on my hands I wouldn't be so far behind on my blog, but you know I guess time isn't the problem...lol! I did get some blogging done just not as much as I had hoped.  Well I am getting ahead of myself. So let's start with the beginning of the month and then I will get back to my 'rona writing!

The month started off pretty normal. Claire's birthday was on the 9th and we had to take our traditional last night of being 11 picture. Such a cutie!

The pink full moon happened! Not sure how pink it looks, and of course it looked better in person.

Raelyn started a second set of swim lessons the beginning of March. She was doing so good so I signed her up for another session. She threw a bit of a fit having a boy teacher, but once I bribed her with some gum to try the lessons with the boy teacher she found out he was really nice and was happy to do them. See her and Holden on the wall having a chat? Cuties! Unfortunately, swim classes were cancelled shortly after this.

We had hoped to do a birthday party sleepover for Claire with her best buddy Kelsey, but that didn't work out with the COVID-19 hitting shortly after her birthday. We celebrated her special day (on the 10th because her birthday fell on a crazy Monday) with cinnamon rolls for breakfast, crepes for dinner and lava cake for dessert. Yummy! Our big 12 year old!! (Her birthday celebration with Kelsey happened in June so check that post for her birthday "party".)

On March 11th the girls and I attended our first ever protest at the State Capital. A bill had recently passed the house and senate and was on the desk of Jay Inslee our governor. Even though we homeschool we still care about what is being asked of public schoolers and is going on in our state. This bill requires that all public schools provide comprehensive sex education starting in Kindergarten. The curriculum pushes an agenda that we don't feel is right as Christians and that parents should be allowed to teach their children at home age-appropriate information. So we decided to head to Olympia for a protest against this bill. It was a really great day! We went with fabulous friends, there was a big turn out, great speakers and the girls learned about peaceful protesting, reasons to protest, and a bit about bills and laws. Here are some pictures from the day...

This bill did end up being signed by the governor so then the second phase began of collecting at least 130,000 signatures to get the bill on the ballot in November so that the people can vote. A grass roots effort was made and amazingly during a lockdown and not able to do the normal signature collecting that usually can be done there were 266,000 signatures collected! A record breaking amount! Praise the Lord!

The rest of this week progressed mostly as normal...

More celebrating Claire! I did get her some gifts...

The 13th schools decided to shut down for 6 weeks, and from then on things were cancelled one by one. Swimming, Homebase, Sound learning, dance, AWANA. Everything was cancelled and then even the gym closed down.

We had to celebrate Pi day (March 14th) and since I didn't plan ahead I searched pinterest and decided to make this chocolate crack pie...it was a great choice! Super yummy!!

We were working on our AWANA grand prix cars. This is Claire's the weight looks kind of funny we decided as it got off center, but we made it to go fast which unfortunately we did not get to test. As AWANA was canceleed due to COVID the week of our grand prix race. It was so sad!! Hopefully we will get to race them some day!

Claire's car

 

All 3 ready to race!

Aubrey's car

Raelyn's car

 

As the world was shutting down and our heads were spinning with thoughts about how terrible this virus could be or not be, flattening the curve, fear, worry, unknown, all of it was quite consuming, felt absolutely crazy, but not. I waffled back and forth between feeling really afraid and feeling like why is such a big deal being made out of a virus, is this really necessary or it is just an overreaction.  It was strange being home all the time with nowhere to go. Dinners got fancier or really just more complicated and we got more schooling done.

Fortunately, we had some great weather. This was the first day out getting some fresh air, sunshine and exercise riding scooters.

 This is when Claire fell of her scooter...

Then it was St. Patrick's day. Seriously one of my favorite holidays! Lol! Mostly because I love to tease the girls that I am an Irish (which I found out via my ancestry test is true!) and I love the food! I was originally kind of bummed because we were suppose to host a support group at our church for military families and I wasn't going to be able to make my special dinner on St. Patrick's day, but then you guessed it...it was cancelled due to COVID so we were able to have our special corned beef, cabbage, and potato dinner with the special Irish whiskey cream sauce.

Claire made these beautiful painting and chose the verse. I wrote it on there. WE had a yummy "green" lunch of cucumber sandwiches, kiwi and celery. And of course I had to take pictures of them in their green shirts for next years calendar. Can you tell who is the most non-compliant and difficult when it comes to pictures??

Here is Stella with her "rona" hair cut! I didn't get her into the groomer before everything shut down so we had to try and clip her ourselves. She is terrible! Lol! She looked better, but you can see that she only let us clip one of her legs so one was short hair and the other long! Haha!

Spring felt nice and the break from all the busyness was nice!

I found these on facebook and thought they were pretty funny! I did feel a lot of calm amidst the crazy because we were already homeschooling and it was not a question of what do we do now, but instead "just keep plugging on".  We did start staying up way too late and watching lots of movies! And as life tried to stay somewhat normal by doing things on zoom...it was still just a weird and crazy time.

Not sure why I was taking these pictures, but they are cute!

And then it was my birthday!  A special birthday of a special year, but I decided that since everything else was being cancelled I would just cancel my birthday this year as well and stay the same age.  Age is just a number, but it is still hard to see these years coming and going and it seems like so much faster each year. I still feel like I am in my 20's, but my body doesn't feel the same.  It was maybe not the special fanfare I had hoped for, but we were still able to get dinner (and bring it home) and celebrate with those I love most! My sweet girls and my loving husband. It was a good day!

Sisters reading and learning together!

Birthday flowers!

This cutie! At least someone thinks I am awesome! Lol!  We have had this shirt since Olivia was little given to her by my good friend Jodie!

We bought a cup of caterpillars to raise into butterflies. We have done it many times before, but it is always fun! They start so little and grow so fast!

Chalk art! Spending time in the sun drawing...what is better than that! I think they used Raelyn as their model! Lol!

And that was March! Not sure why with all the extra time, I am still so far behind on this blog! Maybe one day I will get caught up. I sure do like having these posts (and the subsequent books I make of this blog) to look back upon! Maybe I can really be diligent these next couple of weeks and get caught up.

It does seem that after hitting that special age...I am more tired at night and less motivated to work on stuff. Ugh! Getting old is tough!