Extended Spring Break/Beginning of Quarantine

On the teacher work day before spring break, the county announced that they would be extending spring break by an extra week because of COVID-19. So we went into spring break knowing that we had a full two weeks with no school work. The boys were excited, but I was nervous knowing that we couldn't go anywhere or do anything with everything shut down! I ended up having to go into work all week the second week to help make paper packets for distance learning once the governor announced that school was closing for 4 more weeks. Thankfully my mom and brother were staying with us so they could stay home with the boys while I was gone.

At first I tried to do a bunch of projects. This was one of them: putting all of our board games into zipper pouches. It was awesome to get so much space back on our game shelves!

I took the boys to the park so I could go running while they played and rode their bikes. This was before the playgrounds were closed, they were loving not having to be in school!

Working on our schoolwork at home:

My pace car/bike while running:

Rett decided to hide some things for James and leave him a map to find them. He was very excited for James to discover the map.

While we had so much time isolated at home, I remembered the previous owners of our house telling us that the property across the street had a large pond on it that they would go fishing on. The property was purchased by a big developer last year with the plans to build a neighborhood on it (yuck!) but so far the project has stalled. Since no one really goes there anymore, we decided to do a little exploring. Imagine our surprise when we discovered the "pond" is really a huge lake! It was so fun to walk around and find this hidden gem right across the street from us.

Doing some geocaching with the boys:

The nature trail the geocache was on must have had a wild fire recently, you could see the burn marks everywhere!

The boys had fun scaring up tiny toads. They started a competition of who could find more of them, because why not?

On another geocaching adventure, we explored a nature park that used to be a working cattle ranch. Some of the old buildings are still preserved there and the walking trails are through current cattle pastures. You definitely have to watch your step for cow patties!

A caterpillar landed on Anthony:

Love these cute boys! Since quarantine started they have been obsessed with wearing matching shirts.

Sand hill cranes:

Saying hi to a gopher tortoise:

Found the geocache!

While we were searching for our second geocache under these trees, a line of cows walked right by us to get a drink of water in another pasture. It was so cool to see! One of the cows stared at us the entire time while the rest of them walked by, almost like he was making sure we didn't get too close.

Feeding our turkeys some apple slices from the back porch:

While the teachers were all at school prepping for distance learning, one of them brought her new puppy with her. I got to take her for a walk, she is sooooo precious!!

Watching a rocket launch from our backyard:

The school district has been giving out free breakfasts and lunches for all kids for the rest of the school year. You just have to go to a pick up location and they hand it to you. This was on a weekend, so they gave us three days worth for each boy! It was so much food!! The boys think it is really exciting to open it and see what they got, like a little surprise every day.

Doing some science by looking through the internal organs of this model I bought from amazon:

Oobleck experiments:

I decided to try sewing some masks for Anthony and really liked how they turned out! I was so happy with how easy they were to make, I offered to make them (for free) for anyone at the school who needed one. I ended up making and mailing/dropping off over 100 masks! It definitely took a lot of time but I felt good contributing in some way.

More geocaching!! This time it was on a bike trail and there was a geocache every .2 miles. It made it really fun for the boys to have so many chances to find them.