How to Put It Into Words

How are you feeling?

It’s been a minute since we’ve written an actual blog post (though we’ve been active on YouTube and Instagram), so we wanted to check in here and see how you’re doing. We’ve been home for the last 4 weeks (it feels much longer!) and, overall, we’re doing just fine. We are in our home, with enough food for now to feed our current family of 5 (plus 5 animals), and we FaceTime with our families at least once a day.

We are not on the front lines, risking our lives to save others with the virus. We are not working late hours and devoting days and weeks to help stop the spread. We are not working in the food industry or service industry or anywhere else that has to stay open so people can still buy food or have it delivered to their homes. We are at home.

We’re at home taking care of our 3 foster kiddos who consume so much of our time and energy (thankfully and rightfully so), as they have been for the past 9 months. They have no idea what’s going on outside our 100 year old house, other than short looks of disappointment and confusion when we tell them we can’t go to the park again today because people are getting sick and we can’t be around others right now. Other than that, it’s business as usual.

But it’s not, really, is it? It’s not really business as usual for anyone who isn’t under the age of 5. Though we’re not directly affected by COVID 19 health-wise (and hopefully we never will be), it’s still a very different reality for us than it was a month ago. Normally very close to our moms, we haven’t been able to hug them (or any of our relatives) in 4 weeks. The kids are out of school and most likely won’t return for the rest of the year, so we’re watching YouTube videos of their teachers reading to them and other learning videos we’ve found helpful. They’re not able to play at the park, so we’ve been spending a lot more time in our backyard on the trampoline and on the slide PJ installed for them on our steps off our back deck. Our food supply is starting to show signs of not being restocked every week like it used to, though we should be okay for a little while, and are endlessly grateful for what we do have. When we take walks during the day, we are careful to move out of the way and keep our distance when we see others out walking towards us.

What can we do to help during this time? We searched our basement for masks to donate, but we used them all up when we were renovating our house a few years back. We can post about awareness and staying home and social distancing on social media, which we have and will continue to do. We are not in the medical field, but we know there are still ways to help. We can donate money and give to those who need it.

We’re in the process of fixing up a rental house we purchased a year ago for PJ’s mom to move into. We mentioned in a recent vlog that she lost her job a few weeks back, so we’ll be doing what we can to help her out during the next few months. It’s such a scary and uncertain time for so many around the globe. We never thought we would live in a world where everyone on earth is going through the same crisis at the same time. Of course, everyone is dealing with it differently and everyone is having to adjust accordingly. There are so many who are in extremely hard, unimaginable situations because of the virus: those without a job, without clean water, without food, shelter, etc. Those who were already in hard situations, like refugees and forcibly displaced persons, now face an even tougher battle. It’s overwhelming and difficult to think about, but we feel everyone needs to be thought of during this time and it’s our right and duty to do what we can to help.

We’ve been at home the past few weeks, only going out one or two times to get medicine for us and the kiddos, and one last grocery stop. We’ve been taking trips out to the land and PJ’s dad’s farm to let the kids run wild and get out all the pent up energy they’ve had lately. The toughest days are the rainy ones where the kiddos are forced to stay inside. That’s when they really get restless. Can you blame them, though? Again, they have no real concept of what’s going on with the virus, and don’t really ask either. The most important thing on their minds is keeping their brother from taking their toy or making sure their sister doesn’t mess up their lego house they just made. They’re blissfully unaware, and we feel that’s the best thing for them right now :).

Over on YouTube, we’ve been posting about our life during social distancing almost daily. It’s been a nice distraction from everything to focus on another social channel so heavily, and we’re really getting into editing the videos and adding new music and just having fun with them. Are you subscribed to us on YouTube?

We’ve also been trying our best to stay away from the news as much as we can lately. When everyone started taking this seriously and we were all being urged to stay in our homes, we had the little TV in our kitchen on every minute of the day consuming as much info about COVID 19 as we could. Day after day we would switch between the different news channels (and compare which ones were taking it more serious than the others…) and our minds would go wild. The constant bad news about how fast the virus was spreading and how many people were dying, mixed with a week and a half of rain every day AND two out of three kids being sick (and us not feeling that great either), really took a toll on our mental health for a short while. It felt like the entire world (or ours, at least) was crashing down and there was nothing we could do to stop it. The first few nights of social distancing were the hardest for us. One night, the worst night, we held each other in bed and just cried. Literally cried ourselves to sleep. It was a mixture of fear and uncertainty. We realized that night that life as we’ve known it the last few years would change in the coming days, weeks, months, and it just hit us. It was a hard blow. Ever since then we’ve taken it one day at a time, and some days are good and some days aren’t so good, but overall we’re all healthy and doing what we can to stop the spread of the virus by staying home and staying put.

We hope y’all are staying safe out there and doing what you can during these incredibly hard, scary, and uncertain times. We’re sending you so much love, friends. Take care! xx