There have been a ton of changes in our lives that seemed to come on a little more gradually where we are as opposed to the Bay Area, but nonetheless things changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first true intrusion into our lives came when Brett was driving Griffin to baseball, for a game in which Griffin had been informed he was the starting pitcher. They had been talking strategy when all of sudden the text came through from a few sources at once warning that all games and practices were called off for the next 3 weeks, minimum. Then we found out that the kids had gone to their last Grace Co-op classes of the school year a few months earlier than expected. Brett found himself assigned the first positive case of COVID-19 in our county to take care of in the hospital. This, along with a shortage of PPE (personal protective equipment) which seemed to be whittled away a little more each day, led to him shedding his clothes into a plastic bag until they could be washed and then immediately taking a thorough shower each night after he arrived home from work before having any contact with his family. Which leads us to our next craziness: two days after the shelter in home was announced state wide, our washing machine of 10 years and our dryer of 30+ years died within 6 hours of each other! Off to the hardware store, where Brett went looking for a not so sought after item (all the freezers were gone). We paid for replacements along with delivery and setup, but they wouldn't be able to deliver for a week because of the backup with all the freezers being ordered. When they came, the installers announced that they could not install the dryer (the more complicated of the two), because our cord feeds through the wall to the outlet in the garage. Bummer! Now Brett was tasked with performing this unfamiliar procedure, but it would be worth the couple of hours to finally begin to take a bite out of the huge accumulation of laundry we had.
Other impacts on us included Garrett's debate tournaments were cancelled, Garrett and Bryce's speech tournament went on-line to a massive Zoom call featuring kids from coast to coast, and Co-op went on-line as well, with Joy teaching a virtual lab to both her Earth Science and Biology classes. There seemed to be a never ending stream of updates from the CDC, the hospital, the state, and the county on what was the right thing to do in terms of taking care of COVID-19 patients. Some things came full circle, even. Fortunately, for us, we know how to home school and so things continued as usual in terms of the four days outside of Grace Co-op. With our gym closing, we had to whip our garage back into shape as a workout center so we could build some muscle and have an outlet during the stressful times we live in. Our church has been streaming services live on YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms and we have begun meeting as a small group via Zoom. Things have changed and some things may never be the same again.
 |
| Joy rose to the challenge of keeping communication lines open with the county physician group. |
 |
| Brett prepares to see his COVID-19 positive patient in the hospital. |
 |
| Our garage redesigned and cleaned up to house our COVID-10 Gymnasium. |
 |
| The unfortunate demise of our washing machine took place on day #2 of shelter in place. |
