Small Squares: QUARANTINE EDITION!

August 11, 2020

by saradwells in Family, Life Post Comment

Hi friends. Remember when I would do monthly Small Squares? Kind of a wrap-up of the month at hand? Well…Covid-19 has caused our days and months and freakin’ minutes to all run together. At least twice a week someone in our family will turn to someone else and earnestly ask “What day is it? Not the date…the day of the week?”. Forget about actual dates. We are struggling with days of the week.

So. I thought instead I would do a five month quarantine wrap up post. These aren’t really in date order (because remember, we struggle with days and dates). I am doing this for you as much as for me; I want a journal to remember these crazy land days of the 2020 pandemic. During the past five months of quarantine we have celebrated three birthdays (Sadie, mine and Seb), Mothers and Fathers Day, the Black Lives Matter movement really taking off, Sophie getting her braces off, the death of Sam’s dad, Sam’s mom cancer diagnosis, the big decision to sell our current house and buy a new one in Auburn…and probably a million other things in between. It’s been a full, overwhelming, instructive, illuminating past five months. So here is a little bit of Small Squares Quarantine Edition!

We chalked some inspirational artwork in our court one day after home church and it really helped our moods.

The poppies were really beautiful this spring. Thank goodness; the world felt a little dark.

Really love this quote. It sums up so much of what is good and necessary about 2020.

Sam and I took MANY walks during quarantine. It was our opportunity to get away from the kids and be able to think and process everything going on.

I built a beautiful garden right before quarantine started. It helped my mood to be building and growing and feel prepared. I loved spending time in here.

Distance learning AKA Isolation School (as I termed it) sucked rocks.

We celebrated Sadie’s birthday quarantine style.

We did a puzzle that was way harder than I expected. Seb helped bring it home to a close.

After nearly three years Sophie got her braces off to much less fanfare than she had been expecting/hoping for. She wanted ribs from Texas Roadhouse as her celebratory dinner.

Beautiful Green Valley at the end of the day.

Ruth cut Sophie’s hair since the salons were closed. She did a perfect job.

We celebrated my birthday quarantine style which might be my new favorite

Mothers Day was a bit different this year but at least I had all of our kids home.

I painted/drew these signs and stuck them up on my office window. I was summoning up all of the good vibes I could.

Diego, Simon and Hunter raced themselves at the track.

In early April we began exploring Auburn…

At the end of July we closed on our beautiful new home!

We celebrated Sebs birthday quarantine style.

Seb had a Zoom school meeting in a fort in our backyard. It’s 2020. We totally supported it. This is what school is now.

We went on a drive and explored the valley.

I started a little side hustle making about one million masks. Orders piled up.

Seb got really into Beyblades which meant we all got into Beyblades.

I redid Sadie’s hair with blue and purple and it is my favorite look yet!

We rented a storage unit when we put our house on the market and began the process of moving up to Auburn. We made lots of trips back and forth to this little box 🙂

Simon was able to return to work (albeit shortened hours due to Covid) during quarantine at Napa Deli. We LOVE our Napa Deli family and are so grateful for the great experience Simon has had there for the last year.

Our favorite Beverley’s came into town briefly so we had a little socially distanced BBQ to celebrate them. We miss them living so close!

The local post office was a weird, plastic experience.

Our house has looked like a version of this for the past several months…

Unfortunately we had some looting in our town during one night of craziness (NOT the work of protestors for BLM but criminals who were just looking to stir the pot. They did NOT care about the movement or our town just about taking advantage of a tense time in history.) Due to this one night of stress and looting, Napa Deli made the decision (along with many other businesses) to board up the doors and windows in advance of another potential night of looting. Luckily the looting never happened but it felt good to know that the restaurant was safe.

That same afternoon there was a terrible helicopter accident that crashed into some local power lines and cut power to our town for about five hours. It was so hot that day. The restaurant was being boarded up and there was so much food that had been purchased so the owners made the decision to make as many sandwiches and wraps as possible and donate them to the local PD and fire department. We worked as quickly as possible and stole a minute for some photos! It was such a crazy day.

I made this sign with some decoupaged tissue for our BLM march in Fairfield.

We brought the kids to their first march/protest and it was an amazing experience for all of us. Amazing. It also coincided with the day our offer was accepted on our new house so it was a very memorable day.

I painted this cabinet for our new house! So so happy with how it turned out. I think I have found my new favorite thing to do.

Simon paced Sophie for her mile “race” mid-quarantine. It isn’t often I get to see these two running together anymore so I grabbed a photo!

The night that we did our final walk through for our new house, our agent gave Sam the floorplans. Our house was custom built back in 2003 and these plans were so interesting to read!

We had a little picnic on the grounds of the Green Valley Farmers Market one Sunday afternoon after our home church. I knew that we would not be living here much longer and this felt like a good time to mark how much we love this place.

Like I said at the beginning, it has been a busy, full, crazy five months. This is only a drop in the bucket of memories but I really wanted to use this post as a way to remember what we were doing between April and August.