Back in February (less than a month ago, which feels like a year ago) when I made this joke about our vacation plans for the summer:
I had no idea that it was going to explode globally the way it did and that scenario would end up being reality rather than fiction. Oops.
UAE registered its first case at the end of January and things really kicked off here the last week of February, causing event cancellations, school closures and encouragement to restrict movement. So even though official “lockdown” starts tomorrow, we are entering our 4th week of low/no activity, remote schooling, social distancing, quarantine, or whatever we’re calling it.
I’m not complaining as I watched my friend go through it in China for about 6 weeks before it came here. They’ve been locked in their apartment for about 9 weeks now. At least we have a small patio that we can use to keep active and get outside for a bit. The worst in China has passed, but they still aren’t back to normal. I’m watching their progress to gauge how things might go here.
So what have we been doing? Kids are in their 3rd week of remote school and haven’t left the house at all except to walk the dog or go to the gym with us (as long as it stayed open). They are gaming their hearts out each night in the evenings with their CA cousin and Canadian friend who wake up and get online with them. I gave up trying to put limits on it or restrict it since there really is no point. There’s enough hours in the day for them to do school, walk the dog, do any housework that needs to be done, and still game until their eyeballs fall out.
We have been cooking and baking, watching Netflix, having Zoom meetings for church planning/small groups online, and catching up with friends via Marco Polo, Zoom, Instagram and FB. I have spent WAY too much time online looking for new things to read and information to consume. Josh is working from home as of two days ago and I’m not working as of two days ago. Last week there was only a skeleton crew at school and all I was doing was managing book distribution for kids who put in digital requests. As I imagined, it was a heavy load week 1, less week 2 and now week 3, nothing.
So here’s a snapshot of what our days look like here:
remote learning mornings 
gaming evenings 
church on Fridays 
small group gatherings 
busy baking
carpet buying 
podcast listening 
google meetings 
family workouts 
kitchen creativity