Quarantine at the Ball's

 Empty grocery shelves pretty much sums up what a pandemic looks like.  Sadly, this aisle full of canned goods has more than the completely empty shelves where the toilet paper and cleaning supplies are stocked.  Last week I went to three different grocery stores before I found any that had flour.  I never thought that could happen and it's weird that it's the new normal.
It's so hard to keep track of what day it is since every day feels exactly like the one before it and will be just like the day to follow.  Mornings are rough as I try to navigate my new job title of teacher.  The older boys are on their own to get their info from each of their teacher's websites but the younger boys need me to teach them and basically be the mean taskmaster that threatens to take away their precious screen time whenever they start goofing off.  It's hard.  I yell too much.  And then they yell back.  And then I'm yelling because they're yelling and the cycle continues until one of us goes to timeout.  I really like being in timeout, just sayin.
Some days are better than others. I've learned that getting up before my boys get up so I have some exercise time and quiet time without anyone needing me, makes all the difference in the world.  I get dressed in real clothes, although my real clothes are barely a step up from pajamas, and I put on a little makeup.  I just feel less like a sloth that way.  And I make everyone put on Sunday clothes for our family church session.  I'd like to think it helps the boys be more reverent but I think it really just helps us keep track of what day it is.

The boys make Sunday dinners now.  I assign each of them part of the meal and they are supposed to make it without my help.  Ethan made Chicken and Wild Rice Soup (with my help) and Marcus made Cinnamon Roll Cake without my help.  It's the best!  Not having to prepare a meal feels amazing and now I know how Randy feels every day of the year except Mother's Day! :)

 Home schooling and practicing.  It's the worst.

Marcus eating his Costco hot dog all by himself.  Costco has made drastic changes to make their crowded stores more pandemic-friendly.  They removed all the tables in the food court and you can only buy hot dogs and full pizzas.  Sad that Marcus's actually wants to come with me to Costco so he has a reason to leave the house.  Last year at this time, he wouldn't have had time for a shopping trip and wouldn't have wanted to come anyway.  Now he jumps at the chance.

Our meals have changed slightly.  This is my wheat grinder so I can add whole wheat from my food storage to recipes.  I even made tuna casserole the other night.  Most of the boys loved it and I know my mom was beaming with pride.  She would have thrived being quarantined without going to the grocery store for weeks.  I wish I could say the same.

 When Marcus gets bored, he tortures his brothers.

 Henry doesn't seem to mind though

 More boredom and this was only week 1

 This time Ethan was the one torturing Marcus

Henry has tons of fun playing with my knife set.  Good thing they are so dull he can't cut himself even if he tried, but it's still disturbing.

 Landon has bi-weekly Zoom sessions with his best friends from school.  They talk and play for about an hour and love it.

Here's a picture of my Relief Society via Zoom on Sunday.  I was so happy to see my friend's faces!

Barb came over to teach my boys how to properly iron their Sunday shirts.  I learned a few new tips and now I can confidently iron Randy's work shirts quickly.  Good thing since the dry cleaner is closed (and we don't have extra money to pay for dry cleaning).

 We went on a hike on a Saturday (before the shelter-in-place mandate) with our neighbors and their new puppy.  We have NEVER been able to do something like this on a Saturday in spring.  Normally I'd be at four lacrosse games.  Not that sad about it!

Ethan and the waterfall

We rode our bikes to our neighborhood farm and they let us walk the ponies.  This has been on my bucket list (seriously!) and now I can check it off.  They're like large dogs and so cute!

 cute brothers having fun on a Sunday afternoon

 Marcus got a fancy massage gun for his birthday and quickly taught the boys how to treat him like a king.

Landon and Randy made pretzels one night.  They were so delicious we made more the next day.

 This is a new pandemic tradition: They finish reading a book, I take them out to lunch where we pick up a Double Big Mac at the McDonald's drive-thru and discuss the book in the car.  Yes, I bribe them to read and since they read, I'm calling it a parenting win!

We go on lots of mandatory walks.  When we saw this Lamborghini we had to stop and take pictures and look in the windows.  

The pandemic is hard on every one but I feel extra bad for all the boy moms out there.  Boys don't do well cooped up inside.  I'm lucky to have a big yard but it's still rough.  Every once in awhile someone starts yelling and inflicting bodily harm on someone else for no apparent reason.  My boys don't enjoy doing art and craft type activities.  At all.  It's hard to come up with new things for them to do.  But it's not all bad.  I'm glad they have each other.  It's one of those rare times when a big family is definitely better than a small one.   I had a good, hard cry when the governor shut down all dental offices for two months but luckily Randy is still doing 1-2 root canals each day.  It won't pay our bills but it will keep our practice afloat for awhile.  We are thankful we had just replenished our savings from opening the practice and hadn't invested any money so we've got enough to carry us through.  We hope.  We were all more than happy to fast and pray with members of our church throughout the world last Sunday.  I believe in a God of miracles and I am praying for one.

Losing My Mind {and My Camera}

You're not seeing double.  Those are two identical cameras and sadly, I am the proud owner of both of them and that's not a good thing because those cameras are not cheap!  Here's how it all went down...
We bought a new Nikon a couple months before we left Rhode Island to replace our original broken one that I've had since Oki.  We did a lot of purging of junk in those last months of life in RI and I remember Randy and I discussing that we needed to throw away broken Nikon camera #1.  What I can't remember is what was done about it at the end of the discussion.
Fast forward a few months and I'm trying to clean the piles of clutter around the new house so we could finally get all moved in and settled.  I came across what I thought was the broken Nikon camera which I distinctly remember throwing in the trash and thinking a good mom would let her kids play around with the camera, take it apart and discover its inner workings, put it back together and from that moment a budding photographer would be born.  I shrugged my shoulders and walked away from the garbage can thinking I'm not that mother.
Well, a couple months passed.  I was heading out on an adventure with my boys and figured I'd finally take the new camera along and try to get some good shots.  The new camera was nowhere to be found.  I spent days looking for it, looking in completely random places and tearing the house apart.  The boys helped me search.  Randy helped me search.  It was gone. 
Then it hit me.  I must have mistaken the new camera for the old broken one and thrown it away in the garbage when I was cleaning!  That was the only solution.  I couldn't tell Randy the truth so I lied {yes, I am that bad} and said the camera must have gotten left somewhere.  I felt horrible!  Especially because if the roles were reversed and Randy had thrown out  a perfectly good camera I never would've let him live it down.  I told my good friend Cheryl about my plight and she found the same camera on sale at Costco.  So I bought it for myself as an early Christmas present and didn't take it out of the box until Christmas Eve in hopes that the missing camera would miraculously appear, but of course it didn't happen.
Well, last week I was searching for something in the kitchen cupboards and in a bin that appeared to be full of markers was........the missing camera!  Hooray!  I never threw away a perfectly good camera after all!  But I'm crazy enough to believe I did so there's not a lot of comfort in that.  And because I'm a lazy slob, I still have all the packaging for the replacement camera so I should be able to return it to Costco without a problem {even though part of me wants to keep it because it came with a new case and an extra lens}.
The moral to this story is I am only a few years away from the early onset of Alzheimer's disease and my husband is a very forgiving man.  Bless him!