Quarantine update March 31st:

I must say, I'm a little nervous about tomorrow.  Finn was SO devastated to learn that he had missed April Fools Day last year, and he has been in deep planning mode for a long time this year (he keeps checking with me and checking with me to make sure he hasn't missed it so far...), so I think I might be in for some doozies tomorrow! :) Wish me luck to survive the day still loving all my children, haha.

Life has been VERY much the same around here, but it's working for us.  We do school in the mornings, lunch and nap for Kellan, read-aloud with Mama while Kellan sleeps, and then outside at the church parking lot until dinner time.  That's the *general* schedule, but frankly school would have a much harder time of getting done if it were not for the outside walk break that Papa does with Kellan every day around 11:00 a.m. 

Kellan knows one thing he can almost always do if he asks is take a bath.  Today he took a bath while Finn read out loud to me...in the bathroom.  Hey, whatever gets the job done!  Kellan has been into laying down in the tub lately, so the water covers his ears, and then he makes all sorts of sounds to hear how different it is with his ears covered.  Science learning!

The blue skies and sunny, warm weather the past 2 days have made my heart SO glad.  

Finn has declared this new tree in the church parking lot to be his NEW "home away from home."

On this day Kellan kept rubbing his chest, amazed at wearing NO jacket outside, and saying "so WARM!"

Jonas giving you a tour of the parking lot on his roller blades...

Aunt Laura made and sent a cute photo book of our adventures in D.C. this past Christmas!  We all love remembering the fun times there.  💙

Fun with the light saber

4 kids pre-bedtime routine...

So, one of the delightful ways we've been spending time this quarantine is by watching Master chef Jr. together.  We've never watched any, so it's great to have MANY seasons we can blow through...haha.  This show has put the cooking bug into the kids big time (this, and the So Tasty cooking shows that are fast-forwarded on YouTube.  Layla loves to watch cake-baking as she folds laundry).  Layla is especially interested in baking and cake decorating.  Finn and Cora want to learn to cook.  Papa has graciously agreed to help them start learning, because that...does not sound like loads of fun to Mama.  Beginner cooks, man... *shudder* . But I'll gladly help Layla more with the baking...stay tuned for CAKES from us soon! 

Cora learning the art of perfect eggs on Saturday.

Finn learning about perfect coffee.

While he was at it, Jonas made some bread on Saturday.

And here is the beef stew dish the kids helped create.

Last but not least, a view of how Jonas spent some of this past rainy weekend:  computer games.  If anyone plays Starcraft, his Jonas up!  He's bored.  😂

On a pandemic note:  If I find out that anyone I know is ignoring social distancing rules and going out of the house, around other people, for no good reason...just because you are an extrovert, or you want to, or you forgot one thing at the grocery store??? Oh, man.  Don't even get me STARTED on my rant, man.   (The whole world thanks the Universe that Lisa is on no social media right now...) . Also don't hoard toilet paper...that's just weird.  

A NICE ending thought:

Rachel Gustafson sent this song to a few close friend on a message the other day, and I absolutely love the beautiful, timely message.  The Wailin' Jennys are a fave of mine (Dolly Parton is the original writer, I know, but she is less a fave of mine...haha), but I haven't heard this song in a long time.  Please take 4 minutes and enjoy this gold with me!

Shelter at Home

The Governor of MN instituted 2 weeks of Shelter at Home instructions for MN at 2:00 p.m. today.  Thankfully Shelter at Home still allows for outside exercise, or I don't know what would become of us.  I mean, we WOULD follow the rules (because, hello?  Have you met me?), so we would survive...but BARELY, haha.

It was raining and cold post-nap today, but did that stop us?  It did not!  But, this time I did send Jonas instead of taking the kids myself.  Thankful for tag-teams these days!

Instead of giving my kids an official week off for Spring Break we are going to take every Wednesday off for a while.  This breaks up the week a bit more, and also spreads out the joy in a bit of a long home stretch.  So, this was our 2nd Wednesday taking off, and we for sure enjoyed it.  The kids watched several Master Chef Jr episodes, and we also watched several of the Mo Willems Lunchtime Doodle episodes on YouTube.  Finn and Cora were especially into those, but Finn holds an extra special place in his heart for Mo.  Lots of drawing and art going on here this morning!  Photo evidence below:

Everyone in PJs, including Mama.

About to wake from a looooong rain-day nap: 

Cute Kellan videos

Kellan was LOSING HIS MIND this morning, while I was trying to do school, so Jonas took the younger 3 on a walk while I did reading with Layla.  I guess they went on a stump-hunting expedition, due to all the trees cut down around here recently for Emerald Ash Bore.  *sad sigh* Kellan enjoyed it immensely.

We headed back down to the church for bikes and rollerblades this afternoon, PER USUAL, as is our pandemic routine it seems.  It was an extra fun time today because Kellan discovered the little ramp that goes from the parking lot to the front door, and boy did he milk that for all the joy it was worth.  We spent almost 2 hours there today!

Pandemic living room looks like this many days:

Tuns out swings make me SICK as an adults. Wowza.  Who knew??

I feel sick to my stomach even looking at this, haha...

Yup.  Still staying in our PJs most days unless we leave the house.

Here Cora is wearing her fuzzy Koala PJs and costume robot boots.  

Pandemic Isolation week 2 update:

All in all, folks, things are going just fine in the Schaefer house!  School went on almost like normal this week, and Ms. Cora learned to ride a big girl bike! (Papa is knocking things off the old to-do list while he is home...)  The kids are in good spirits and barely realize anything has changed yet, although they miss friends a lot...CORA especially.  (Mercy, extroverts, how are you all staying sane mentally???)

It has been Lego Land around here like crazy.  Jonas and Finn went through all of Finn's legos on the dining room table, re-building and sorting, and now we're on to Cora's legos!  Layla, of course, would never need help like that as she keeps her Legos in pristine condition, carefully stored and sorted at all times, hahaha.  Ah, 1st born children...gotta love 'em!

Layla and Finn are both learning standard print and cursive italics using the Getty Dubay books.  Finn is mostly just doing print, although he may start cursive italics at the very end of this year.  Layla is heavy into learning cursive italics, and she does such a nice job of it!  I love to watch pretty writing taking place.  :)

Cora has begged and begged, so Jonas is going to start her on book 1 for piano.  She is excited for all things lessons and practice!

This was her first official lesson.  In her fuzzy PJs.  Because most days we don't change now!

Our saving grace lately has been the warm-ish or sunny weather.  We try to head to the park on on a walk most days, and can also spend some time in the back yard on the trampoline now.  With Cora learning to ride a bike, AND now that she can also roller skate, all the big kids can do their fun things together, and I just have to keep Kellan alive.  We're getting SO CLOSE to parent independence...haha!  Here are some photos and videos from the past week in our church parking lot, which is just 2 blocks away, and now almost totally empty all the time.  It's a great place for riding and skating now.

This first day, when Cora learned to ride bike, was SUPER cold, and windy, but a lovely blue sky and bright sun.  Poor Kellan got back into the house on this day and his little cheeks and hands were frozen.

At the church playground

If you are wondering what Kellan is saying at the start of this video, it is "go home now" or "home now"...haha.  He hates going home, so for him to say that, he had to have been FREEZING.  :)

We went again today (Sunday) and it was much warmer...maybe 45 degrees.  Just cloudy.  

In front of the rear entrance of our church.

Below you will find evidence of pandemic technology use...haha:

I feel like I should give more of an update in some ways, but we haven't been doing anything too interesting lately (walks and school don't really count in my mind), so I don't even have more pictures or videos to show.  Jonas and I are both doing fine and feeling healthy.  Jonas is keeping buys with about 2 hours of work and 6 hours of legos lately.  I'm cooking here and there, reading to the kids some, making sure I still get my 10,000 steps in daily.  The kids are all healthy, having fun outside despite the lack of friends.  Today they are working on creating their OWN holiday and have even made decorations for it.  I think it mostly centers around eating snacks and watching a movie together, but hey...making the decorations took them about 2 hours, so that was a big win for sure.   We'll catch ya all next week!