Social Distancing

A little virus has brought the world to its knees. We had heard some things while we were on vacation, like March Madness was cancelled, and spring break was going to be extended another week, but it was truly amazing how quickly everything changed. We got back from Florida late at night, so the next day we needed some food essentials from the store. We were shocked to see the apocalyptic state of the grocery shelves! I had to go to three stores to get some tomatoes, and the guy next to me at the third store was buying multiple produce bags full of them! What in the world?

Since we'd been gone, we were sort of excited to have another spring break around our house for a week. We started off our mornings slowly with puzzles. The kids are pretty good puzzlers; we did two 500-pieces, each over 2 mornings, and one 300-piecer that we knocked out in one morning. 

We played games and watched movies.

We even went swimming at the neighbors' pool before social distancing became the norm.

But after another school delay announcement of two more weeks, it soon became apparent that we might need to attempt some home schooling before the kids became fully feral. They do love to read, but I found some other activities online (museum tours, celebrity read-alouds, and mini-projects) to round out the other subjects, like math, social studies, and science, where we figured out that mayonnaise and ketchup do the best job of cleaning off pennies and that Borax makes cool crystals on pipe cleaners overnight.

For art, we doodled with Mo Willems every day, which has been super fun!

We dabbled in kitchen science, one of Hadley's favorite subjects, even if she doesn't always like the result. However, this time we were making cookies. Yum!

It's also loquat season. We have a pretty good sized tree in the backyard, so we've been learning about those fruits and what we can do with them. We were helped along by the utility crew that hacked most of the upper tree limbs down for power line clearance. They laid the branches out by the curb, and we were able to grab so many that we couldn't have possibly reached before. We made a crumble and a few jars of jam, since they were pretty tart on their own.

At least spring weather has made PE and recess easy. It's also a great way to get some fresh air, whether by bike or backyard.

Our neighbors even let us swim in their pool when they were out. And another neighbor gave us a tee for baseball practice.

Of course, there is lots of free time when we don't have piano lessons, soccer practice, or school schedules to contend with. Social media is good for finding out about time wasters like when we had some unexpected house guests.

As Week 2 of no school came to a close, the school district posted some "official" activities online for the kids to complete for each grade for the following two weeks. Luckily, we were able to check out a school Chromebook for Owen, and Hadley can get by with an iPad. It makes it much easier when they can each stay contained on a device and not have to log in, log out, clear browsers, etc. like when they were sharing. I've really enjoyed seeing how much they can do online for their classes on their own. Hadley misses school desperately and loves checking off items from her to do list, taking pictures/videos of her assignments, and submitting them to her teacher through an app online. All by herself, at age 7. There is hope for the future; we will survive!

Manifest Destin-y, Part 2

After the boat, there was a little rest time, but it was such a nice day that we headed to the beach again. These two would go to the beach every day if they could, and I don't blame them. It was nice to just be on the beach with no agenda!

A little later, Jenn and Addie joined us while Will took a nap. I think she enjoyed her time in the sand, and it reminded me of our last beach trip together. They both took to collecting shells like beachcombers.

We saw someone with a kite, and I remembered the micro-kites we have always tucked into our sand toy basket, so Hadley gave it a whirl. There wasn't a ton of wind, but it was fun to watch her run and try to get it in the air! You can just see the red streamers off our micro-parrot kite.

Then Owen requested to be buried where he sat. It looked so fun that Hadley joined him!

Addie saw her chance to get them with the water guns while they couldn't strike back!

We had a delicious breakfast for dinner and a quiet evening in. Who knew that an extra comforter could be so much fun? We had a 12-legged blanket dragon (3 kids a la Chinese parade dragon) wandering around and then a blanket sled powered by Uncky Dan (wish it wasn't so blurry, but they must have been going fast!)

The next morning, the blanket turned into a fort where the three older kids worked on drawings and writings together, including Hadley's rendition of Harry Potter.

After lunch, we split up. Some went to check out Destin's boardwalk, J and O went to the beach, and Oma and Addie stayed at the house. The boardwalk was pretty quiet on a Wednesday afternoon. Hadley was the only kid at the fudge demonstration, so she got a free chunk for "being cute."

There really wasn't much to see in the off-season,

But these kids made a cute two-some.

After a hot walk up and down the boardwalk, we were looking for some sno-cones, but we had to settle for some hushpuppies at Dewey's. (Apparently, the sno-cones are only available at their other location.)

In the meantime, J and O were having a blast at the beach getting reburied and building Loaftown, so named for the loaf pans critical to their construction.

Feeling our beach time nearing an end, I needed one more walk on the beach! By the way, do some of these toe prints look a little more cartoonish than others? Ha!

It wouldn't be an outing in Destin without a jet or helicopter fly-over! The air force base nearby provided us with a bit of an airshow every day. This picture (and the one above) also shows you our beautiful dredge pipe that we had to walk over/around/ignore.

Our final dinner was at The Back Porch, whose strongest feature was its actual back yard, the beach! Owen did try his first raw oyster though, and lived to tell the tale.

But back to the beach... Beautiful silky sand, not crowded, soothing sound of waves, and just in time for another stunning sunset!

Then it was back to the house and the reality of packing up for the long drive home. It was a great visit that I wish we could have extended, but we had to get started early on our journey, because we were planning to stop at the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola for our resident air-heads. Unfortunately, the air base where it is located has been closed to the public since December! Their website did not allude to this very important information, so we had an hour detour with nothing to show for it, except for a scenic drive through Pensacola. As a consolation prize, we were going to drive right by the USS Alabama in Mobile, so we thought it would be worth a stop. Spoiler: it was!

Owen was over the moon, checking out all of the guns and weaponry on the deck. Hadley was less enthused, but sort of enjoyed pretending to shoot them.

The Alabama spent about 3 years in the Pacific during WWII, but didn't suffer any fatalities from enemy fire.

They actually had 3 self-led tours, which were like scavenger hunts (you had to find the next number), and it was much more Hadley's cup of tea.

We did one of the tours, which was mostly on deck, inside the big guns, and climbing to the upper levels. We saw the bridge, captain's chambers, and navigation rooms. Here's the view from as far up as we could go.

After that, the boys were ready to go check out the planes and tanks on the grounds. 

Hadley, however, wanted to go below deck and complete the other two tours, so we split up. We saw the sleeping quarters, galley, brig, doctor's offices, ammunition handling areas, machine shops, laundry services, stores, and just about every other room necessary to make a ship function at sea.

Lastly, we did a quick spin through the USS Drum, a WWII submarine, before meeting back up with the boys to continue our trek. It was a little odd to return to reality during our dinner stop in Baton Rouge, where the TV was on ESPN, but they were talking about the lack of sports to cover as things were shutting down because of the COVID-19 outbreak. We also got word that school would be out another week. If only we'd found out a little sooner, we could have extended our beach vacation a little more after all!