I woke up early. Optimistic. Made a coffee. I looked outside to see my new lettuce is started growing.
What a good start for the day…

One child had distance learning.
Had a full-on day of Dr. Appointments on the phone / Skype which was busy and weird. Then had parent-teacher interviews that brought me a bit of Nachas and happy feeling came to visit in this stressful day.

In between, I tried to occupy my daughter with Sims, that started to get into progress (now, we have a family, and we bought a land and started building the house)
Getting better at it.

I went out for a walk and saw this an amazing rose in the front garden.

That made me feel there’s hope somewhere.

While doing that my beautiful daughter felt stress & ordered dinner for all of us, so I won’t cook. For me, it was a wonderful surprise.

Such a relief.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day.

After having fun in the tent during the day, the boys decided to sleep in it. Thinking they probably won’t follow through… to my surprise
Sunday morning, I went to look for them, they were actually sleeping outdoor in the tent.

Here is the evidence for it. Well, at least somebody used the tent 🙂

Then we decided to have a dance party, we hanged some fairy lights in the darkest room and played music, danced a little. It was fun, but last only an hour.

Then I heard the rain, I looked outside & I realized the tent was still outside so I ran to get whatever was in the tent, all the blankets, games, books pillows, etc. And tried to bring everything undercover.

In 2 seconds I was totally wet.

Big changes are coming quickly

In the meantime, we were looking for new games on the Xbox.
We found Sims and started to figure it out… not an easy task…

Just like our new life in lockdown, that we definitely need to get used to… Good luck to us!

Friday was total exhaustion. I Had a Migraine.
Had to rest most of the day.

It looks amazing, besides the fact that we are missing one piece.
We moved everything in order to find it… but no success.

Shabbat (Saturday) was so much fun, first thing in the morning we tried to finish the puzzle. We did. Finally. At noon.

Well, I actually expected to lose more than one piece , since the puzzle was sitting on the living room table for more than 7 months and moved more than a few times for entertaining people for lunch.

Today all four of us tried their best efforts to put pieces in and fill in the empty spaces.
We were very proud to finish for the first time ever a 6000 pieces puzzle.

A few months ago, one of the neighbors had a garage sale, and we bought a tent for $10.
(we are not camping people, so I knew we probably won’t be using it, but for that amount I didn’t mind to having it.)

Today was such a beautiful day and we were looking to do things together around the house. All of a sudden I remembered it…

After having lunch, we built the tent in our back yard. We brought some pillows, blankets, games, books and snacks. We sat in the shade & had a fantastic afternoon.

Then came back again to look and appreciate the puzzle and our long lasting efforts.

I think that what we should take with us is: look at this time of self isolation and appreciate it as a memorable experience.

Thursday

Everyone found it really hard to wake up. Like every week, but the sun came out to give us a bit of motivation…

Remote learning for both kids was on again.

Today we’ve experienced 2 new things :

1. First remote test
2. Parent-teacher interviews via phone.

That was very awkward. But we can live with that.

Today, I tried to avoid cooking for Shabbat… so I managed to progress with the puzzle. AGAIN.

Then, I had enough so I had no choice and started cooking.

After school time was over, we baked some challahs. The smell was fantastic.

And then decided to have some more fun by making Pretzels – for the first time, soooo yummy.

To finish the day with a bit of optimism in the air we watched Frozen 2.

Haven’t watched a movie for a while…
I noticed that besides the beautiful story, the Disney animation work was incredible.

My conclusion from the movie is that we are going “into the unknown… into the unknown….”

Hopefully like in all Disney movies, these times will have a good and happy ending.

Remote learning for both kids…

(Actually it’s not exactly 3 days of isolation because I didn’t add Saturday and Sunday to this … but who’s counting)

It means that I get time by myself. Finally.

So I closed the living room door. Listening to the quiet. I opened the radio app and listened to the sound of music. I was folding 4 loads of laundry.
When I finished, I danced my way to put the folded ones in the cupboards.
Then I decided to clean a bit (still listening to my music)

Cooked some lunch.
And then came my highlight of the day… going out.
Yayyyy. After days that I didn’t get dressed properly or got do any shopping, I am out to pick up my ordered meat.
So much fun, that I decided to pick up some fruit and vegetables on the way and come back to the nest.

After the kids finished their school day, we sat down to eat dinner.
Then I realised how hard it is to be locked.

My teenagers started fighting and teasing each other, all I could do was
tell them to stop & pray that they will learn to respect each other.

We all need to learn that…

Respect means a positive feeling or action shown towards someone.

SO if you are sick don’t go outside to play or exercise. Respect the community that wants to stay healthy.
Don’t do things on purpose towards others.

Always imagine what would have happened if it was the other way.

Another relaxing day around the house…

Started off with one child having distance learning, while I kept the other occupied by trying to reconnect with the land by watering our veggie patch & harvesting our orange tree that produces so many oranges.

Then we tried the oranges and realised they are so sweet and delicious.
Let alone that made our day much better.

People say that hugging trees is the best medicine against anxiety, or that it increases levels of the oxytocin hormone. This hormone is responsible for feeling calm and emotional bonding. When hugging a tree, the serotonin and dopamine hormones make you feel happier.

So we tried it a bit… it’s definitely brought us a big laugh.

Our 6000pcs puzzle is heading to completion.
Normally we work on it over the weekends.
We now have the opportunity to finish it until the upcoming weekend (very high expectations) so we try really hard.

Then we needed to get out a little, so we did some street art with tape and chalk:

It was fun.
My teenagers admitted it.

I can now go to sleep with a big smile on my face.

DAY #1

In the past few weeks, we couldn’t avoid talking about what’s going on around the world with this virus that drives everyone NUTS.

Literally, you can see everybody’s shopping like it’s the end of the worlds’ coming.

Well, in some ways it is… Last time our plant survived such a thing was with the Spanish flu, which occurred nearly a hundred years ago. Although not one of us is familiar with the situation… We better manage it a bit better than excessive shopping.

For us, Time stopped!

Today is the first day of LOCKDOWN, indeed it sounds scary, but we always need to look at the bright side (China got over this virus by lockdown only)

We can do a lot of things we wanted to do and didn’t have time… like playing with our kids, doing some puzzles ( we need to finish 6000 pcs puzzle we started before Rosh Hashana) We’ll get there soon…

We can teach our kids practical life skills that school isn’t teaching them, like Doing the washing, some dishes, cooking, taking part of very other chores you think will be good for them to learn, you can do some art, different kind of art you never did before, waste-art, you can do some Sodoku, etc.

You can watch some movies with the kids that they always wanted to watch with you, and you never had the time.

Don’t forget to exercise with the kids, some competitions between the kids will do the job.

Cherish this time with your kids it’s something they will remember forever.