March 2020.... What a month. The entire spring of 2020 was a doozy. Now if you were of the opinion that strict quarantining was the only way to go at the beginning of COVID you might not appreciate my activities during this season. I took my kids to the park still, we had quarantine friends, we still saw my family all the time, we went to the beach and strawberry picking. We needed activity in our life to stay sane. I tried to pick things that didn't involve me being close to anyone who might have been trying to quarantine more strictly. I never went to the grocery store. I did curbside pick up all the time. I didn't do any recreational shopping at all and got everything I needed from Amazon. As far as I am aware during that time we never were infected or infected anyone else. I respect everyone's decision, whether it was to strictly quarantine or to take calculated risks for the sake of your sanity. I hope you can respect my decisions during the crazy Covid times as well. I am a huge supporter of choosing what's best for your own family and that happens to look vastly different for everyone. We don't have to do the same things or think exactly alike to get along! The world would be pretty boring if we did. With that disclaimer out of the way please enjoy the highlights and challenges of our journey though spring 2020.
March to April at the park is my absolute favorite. The weather is beautiful and we usually have great attendance. Lots of fun is had! During that time we have about 2 weeks where all the huge, hot pink Azaleas bushes that surround the park are in full bloom! You can see some of the bushes in the background of the seesaw picture. The girls love to wear them. I always try to get a picture of the kids in front of them. A good patch of Bluebonnets are always to hard to find for me so this is my alternative. ;) This also happened to be a day when all our favorite park friends were able to attend and we had a really great park day. I love my park day family!!
Speaking of my park day family. One day I was talking about needing a bunk bed for Jane and Atlas so I could move Xan into the big kid room and Flynn could have his own room. That way I could start moving him out of the rock and play in my room. Well one of my fellow park day moms said, "We have a bunk bed you can have! We're going to move and the boys will have their own rooms. As long as you don't mind race car bright blue." I said both the kids agreed on liking blue so it was perfect!! I ordered a mattress for Atlas and Sam put the bunk beds together. It fits perfectly. The kids adore their new bed!! Thank you so much Debbie!
Oh my goodness, Look!! Kitties! :D In the winter, my dad who hates cats, started feeding a stray cat to the surprise of all of us! She is a sweet cat. We decided to call her Callie the Calico. My dad found out she was a girl, as nearly all calico cats are, and then we tried to figure out if she needed to be spayed. Well I read that stray cats have a notch in their ear if they've been spayed and Callie had a notch in her ear! So we figured she was good. We were wrong... A month or two later, my dad thought noticed her getting bigger, then sure enough we saw her belly moving around. My dad told us she disappeared for a few days and brought back her 5 kitties with her! All different colors. There was a black one, a calico, a grey tabby, an orange tabby and a grey and white one. We enjoyed lots of kitty cuddles at Marmee and Pappaw's house for a couple months while they got old enough to give away. The kids were in love! Xan loved them a little too much and couldn't control how hard she wanted to squeeze them. Jane immediately gravitated to the orange tabby. Jane had been asking for a cat for a long time. So I was considering taking one but didn't know if I could handle adding to my plate at that point. Spoiler alert, yes we took one. ;) My cousin took two and my sister in law's brother and sister took the other two. They all found loving homes! I love happy endings!
Through the haze of having 4 kids in 5 1/2 years some of my relationships have taken a hit. My brother and I have always been best buds and would talk on the phone often. But once I had kids it became a rare occurrence. Finally after having my last baby I realized needed to put a little more effort into making phone chats happen because we couldn't just call each other out of the blue to talk anytime once there were busy kiddos around. I can't remember if it was me or Scott that thought of it but we said we should have monthly game nights on the Switch together since we both have a system! It's been super fun! We've been playing our favorite classic Super Nintendo games and chatting. It's pretty awesome that Online gaming lets us still play video games together when we live 3+ hours apart. Yay technology!
We had been missing our good friends the McNairs. We hadn't been able to get together because we both had busy schedules to keep up with. Finally we were able to get together on spring break at Park Day. Since Jane and Nathan hadn't seen each other in a while they were both a little nervous about seeing one another. Marie told me that Nathan was fixing his hair for Jane before they left. :D So cute! When they arrived and Jane ran up to say hi Nathan hid behind a tree and Jane started kind of chasing him around the tree. It was adorable. They spent the rest of their time talking and roaming around the park together. It's always good to see our friends!
Some complications came from my grandfather having an operation to help with the pain his cancer was causing him. He had to be hospitalized. On March 11th we were informed my grandfather was being sent home from the hospital on Hospice care. At that same time Atlas had a fever so I couldn't go and visit him. The doctor said he had a month or two left more than likely. Papa said he felt like he had a week or two left. I asked my parents if they thought Sam and I could come in on the weekend to see him if Atlas was good by then. They said they were pretty sure that would be fine. It was just 3 days away. I wanted to go right then but I didn't want to risk getting him sick and unnecessarily shortening the time he had left. I don't have any pictures of this time but here's some of Jane holding Flynn for the first time standing up.
Right before Atlas came down with that fever my childhood friend Rachel and I got together for a playdate! It had been awhile since we had found time to get together, so it was the first time our youngest kids had met. They're only a few weeks apart in age. They had a great time on the trampoline together. The girls had fun too but I think they had a few disagreements like older kids do sometimes. It was a good time and our last playdate before Covid lockdowns started.
Jane had a gymnastics meet coming up at the end of March and it would be Jane's first meet competing in the silver skill level. I decided to schedule her a couple of private classes with her favorite coach to get her ready for the meet. She needed to work on her hip circle skill on the bar and her handstand dismount off the beam. They were great private sessions and she learned a lot! But she had a fall off the beam while doing her handstand dismount that scared her quite a bit even though she didn't get hurt. Basically she started having to do skills that made her not want to go to gymnastics anymore. This fall and the results of the previous meet were the beginning of our move away from competition gymanstics for Jane. I was not going to be the parent that made her keep going even when she lost the passion for it. Plus if she was already scared of skills at the 5 year old level I knew it would just keep getting more frightening for her. Even so we were planning to keep going a least for a little while to see if her fear of the beam dismount would fade after getting more comfortable with it.
CORONAVIRUS CRAZINESS!! This was my exact note from when Covid became a thing to fear here in the USA. It was insane! Toilet paper was no where to be found... Which I still don't understand. Also bottled water. Why would an airborne virus effect the water supply? I don't understand people. It was so frustrating because my family needed distilled water for my grandfather's oxygen machine while he was on hospice and they couldn't find it anywhere! People were buying whatever they could. Thankfully they found a few bottles after going a few different places. But people please. Keep the distilled water for those who truly need it. I can confidently say I did not contribute to the shortages. I did NOT stock up on anything. I kept going with my regular weekly HEB curbside orders with regular amounts of food and household items. The very first thing that Covid changed in my life was the unavailability of the HEB curbside App. It crashed. And then even when it was back up the spots were so hard to come by! I had to order groceries days ahead of time as soon as I saw a spot open. Somehow I was able to find an opening when I needed one by checking it all throughout the day and catching it as soon as they opened up more time slots.
It was Friday the 13th of March. I had a dream the night before that I got to hug my Papa one last time. I had a feeling that was the only hug I was going to get but I tried to shrug it off. I was going to see him that weekend! Unfortunately my intuition proved right. My dad called me midday on that Friday, he almost never calls me out of the blue and I knew what it had to be about. I answered and I heard my dad say, "He's gone." I remember the moment like it was yesterday. I was sitting in the middle of my kitchen organizing one of my cabinets and when the news hit me I immediately started sobbing. Just writing about it now over a year later sends me straight into tears. My dad just stayed on the line and listen to me cry until I could find a moment between the tears to say I would be fine and he could hang up. In that moment on the kitchen floor, not only was I mourning losing the amazing man that my grandfather was, I was also mourning the loss of getting the chance to see him one last time. He had told my mom he wanted to see me and Sam and talk to us. I was really holding on to that chance to see him. I sobbed for what felt like too long on the floor. I just felt like I couldn't get up. Moving on from that moment meant it was real and I had to learn to live in the world without him. My kids kept coming up to me and asking if I was ok. Especially Jane. She will still talk about how sad I was then. My dad had just come back to Kingwood to pack up a few things he needed and head back to Sugar Land when he got the news from my cousin that Papa had passed away. I think my dad knew when he heard me on the phone that I needed someone to lean on. He showed up at my door a little later and hugged me and we just cried together. I really needed that. Thank you Daddy. My eyes were swollen from crying most of that day. I decided to hang the chimes Papa had given us that year for Christmas in honor of him that afternoon. It was a special moment with me and the kids. Therapeutic really. I still think of him every time I look at or hear the chimes. It surprised all of us that Papa left this world just two days after being on hospice care. It was so fast. I know that he had been fighting so hard for us. I believe when he heard that his fight was over his spirit relinquished the fight and his body had nothing left to give. It felt like the world stopped that day. Honestly though! Everything that felt normal went away that day. Covid restrictions went into the full swing and everything started getting cancelled. It was surreal. It made the grieving process quite unusual especially since we had to put off the funeral for a full year. Another thing to add to it all was my grandfather's brother, My great Uncle Wayne, had been battling health issues of his own and passed away just 6 days later. It was hard to believe. But what I know is those two brothers will receive eternal glory with Christ Jesus as they both knew him as their lord and savior. And I will see them both again some day. God is still on the Throne, Jesus defeated death for us! With this knowledge, I know Papa would not want me to mourn him at all. But It was unavoidable. I still cry just because I miss him, but I am so overwhelmed with gratefulness and joy to have had him for so long in my life that I can never cry for long anymore. God was so good to give me such a wonderful grandfather. Thank you Lord for his life!
The next few days were kind of a blur. I remember going for a walk at East End park with the kids. We made it to the water! We all really enjoyed it. The kids did great and didn't complain about being tired at all. Papa was known for going for walks and while we were walking I walked past an older fit man probably only 10 years younger than my grandfather walking with purpose and dressed just like my grandfather would have dressed. It brought me to tears yet again. When I got home I went for another walk with just me and my dog around the neighborhood. Walking felt good that day so I wanted to keep doing it. It was helping me process the loss I think. I saw a baseball on the side of the road and remembered how he used to pick up lost baseballs for my brother on his walks when we were in high school. Everything was reminding me of him and his love for us. My papa's most important walk of all was his walk with the Lord, and man, he was pretty darn good at it. I'm so grateful he showed me how to walk with God and love others well. After that day I definitely still felt sad from time to time but it wasn't quite as frequent. For long after that grief was very spread out because all of the events he would usually attend were cancelled. I didn't even see my grandmother again for months and months and didn't go back to their house until Thanksgiving that year. Some things were harder and others were easier than I was thinking. God and my family was with me through it all. Jane came up to me right before bed around that time and gave me a huge hug! Then she said, "That was a Papa hug!" And it really was!! It gives me so much joy that she will remember him and his love. <3
This poor boy became super congested near the middle of March! You can't tell here but I can still remember hearing his poor little cough just looking at this picture. No one else was sick, because of that and it being in the middle of Spring I really think he had allergies. I called the doctor because his breathing seemed just a little off to me but they were being so careful about Covid then. They said they didn't need to see him and I should just continue to monitor him. If it was any other time I think they would have decided to have me come in just in case. I remember it really stressing me out, he was only 3 months old! After a couple days he wasn't nearly as congested and I was able to relax. It ended up taking a couple weeks but he finally recovered completely!
Excuse my ridiculousness. When the local news station had a typo in their instructions about the mask mandate I had to have some fun! ;) I also considered going to the store with this horse mask on to maybe make some people laugh in this difficult time, but then I figured it might make them mad instead so I didn't. I'll be honest. At the beginning of it all. I was against wearing a mask. Sure if everyone wore the correct mask in the correct way it could help the spread but we were not going to get the whole country on the same page. There weren't even enough of the correct masks to supply everyone either. As I understand science a cloth mask is not going to help with how small the virus is. I'm not trying to pick a fight here or get super scientific. There is scientific data to support almost any side if you look hard enough. Bottom line I didn't like being made to do it. I still did! But I didn't like it. Sam and I had many conversations about it and eventually came to the conclusion that I shouldn't be complaining about wearing a mask but instead do it out of love for others in a way to represent Christ better. Once I made that change of heart it got a lot easier. Before the mask mandate came down it was the lockdown! Only leave your house if you absolutely have to! Well, I did what I could but like I said I still did a few things that I felt still kept risks to a minimum.
The morning the lockdown was announced it was park day. The lockdown was starting at Midnight the next day. So what did we do? We went to the park with our friends for the last time before all the parks were shut down. Sorry, I'm a little bit of a rebel. But not so much of a rebel that I'll blatantly disobey the rules. So this was my way of sticking it to the man. ;) I'm glad we did. We missed the park soooo much. They took away my perfect park days. All of April was particularly lovely that year. Other parts of the lockdown that we bent the rules on were still going to my parents house, having 1 other family be our quarantine friends and going for walks at East End.
Scott and Anna had already planned a visit to Kingwood before the lockdown was announced. They still ended up coming. All of us were completely healthy and all we did was hang out together and swim in the backyard. So don't worry we weren't spreading disease. It was a very nice distraction from all the crazy that was going on in the world at that time. It's so great to finally get back in the pool after the winter! I never realize just how much we miss it until we can enjoy it again.
Lockdown also meant that Gymnastics class was suspended for at least a month. Well I decided it was the perfect time to buy some home gym equipment to keep the kiddos busy while we were stuck at home all the time. The floor beam was an ok purchase they use it but not a whole ton. But the bar was most definitely worth the money! We have gotten soooo much use out of it! Jane really perfected her skills on the bar once she could practice anytime she wanted. It's too bad she never got to put them to use at a meet. But it's ok, it's more than enough to see her accomplish her goals and be proud of herself without needing a medal.
After a lot of hard work and tears Jane can read!! Ok not a ton of tears but it was a struggle. She knew all her letter sounds really well but was having trouble putting the sounds together to read words. It was so hard with the library being closed! We couldn't get any new books that were on her level and interesting to her. My mother in law sent us some bob books after she heard I was looking for them. They were perfect for Jane to gain her confidence! Then we had a ready to read set called the Adventures of Otto in our home book library because Atlas loved them so much I decided to buy them a couple years back. She was so proud when she read one all on her own for the first time! It felt like her first real book. I love that smile so much! I can't wait for her to truly discover the joy of reading someday.
We went strawberry picking during the April lockdown as well. We had to get out and do something! Our mental health is important too. It was the perfect outdoor socially distanced activity! I think there were only two other families picking at the same time as us. It was my kids first time picking strawberries. They loved it! I mean how cute are they in their picking outfits?? <3
Say hello to MILO! Jane named him after the cat in Milo and Otis. Yes I decided to take a kitty! It's all Jane's fault. ;) We were going to keep him inside until he grew a little and then make him an outside cat. But within a day Sam said he should be an indoor cat. We didn't want the kids to be disappointed if he disappeared. I came around to the idea but my only issue was the litter box. I did not want it inside!! Sam said his cats growing up had their litter box in the garage and scratched the door when they needed out. He said it was super simple to train. He was right! Waaaay easier than a dog. It works perfectly. All of the kids adore Milo. We really enjoyed having a quarankitty to get us through the stay at home orders. He's a fine addition to our family. He's a really great cat. I feel like I sort of have a love-hate relationship with him. He's super sweet and cuddly, but I hate his cat like behavior sometimes. I'm still totally a dog person. I may never get another cat. But we really do love him I promise! ;)
I'd like to finish part 1 of this blog post with what I posted on Facebook when Papa passed away and my favorite picture of me and him.
"Papa”
John Paul Daugherty
I hadn’t shared with many that my grandfather had been battling pancreatic cancer for the last 5 months or so. He lost that battle today, March 13th 2020. He was 84 years old.
I know many people don’t even get to know their grandparents at all. So I know it seems ungrateful of me to think that years with him were stolen from me by cancer, but he was in perfect health at this time last year... it’s hard not to think that we had years left. I think the whole family was expecting to have 5-10 more years with him. He could walk a faster mile than all of us! He was full of wisdom and kindness. He was one of the greatest men I’ve ever known and one of my very favorite people. I was hoping all of my kids would get old enough to remember him. I will have to make due with honoring his memory and telling them all about the wonderful stories I have with him and the great example he was of how to love God and others.
I still can’t believe I won’t see him again in this world and feel his strong arms around me in one of his perfectly tight Papa hugs. I can only hope I can be the kind of grandparent he was to me to my own grandkids one day. He had many wonderful attributes, but his best was that he loved so well. I always felt deeply loved by him and then I got to see how he loved my kids and that made me feel more loved than ever. I could go on and on about the great man that he was.
If I had one regret it’s that I didn’t get one last hug when I knew it would be the last. But for some reason I think I wasn’t supposed to. The day that we found out Papa was being put on hospice care Atlas came down with a fever. I couldn’t go see him and risk making him sick. The doctors told us he had weeks to months left. He was gone two days later. The instant the news that he was gone hit Atlas’s fever subsided.
I had a dream the night before he left us. In my dream, since he could no longer walk, I was lying next to him in his bed holding on to him and he was holding on to me. I was saying goodbye and he was telling me it was all going to be ok. I got my last hug in my dreams! God is good. The last memory I have with him in person is of us sharing our testimonies with each other and that feels so right. It’s my assurance that I will see him again. I love you more than I can express Papa. I’m excited to share that first hug in heaven with you one day.
1 Corinthians 13
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
