Our Week - The One with Quarantine, Week 12 & Summer, Week 2 (First Hair Appointment, End of Year School Pickup, and Prepping for the Beach)

Happy Friday, everyone!!  I hope you’re all having a great week!  Here’s how we spent last week…

Monday, June 1 (Day 80 of Quarantine)

Monday morning, I took my first trip to Walmart in months to get some necessities that we’ve been struggling to find.  I hadn’t been in there since the week that quarantine started, and my, how things have changed!  They now have a queue at the front door, and they are only letting a certain amount of people in the store at once.  Fortunately, I had gotten there early enough so there weren’t many people at all.

All aisles are one-way, and there are signs all throughout the store reminding people to stay at least six feet apart from others.  There is also tape on the ground in the check-out lines so people don’t get too close to one another while waiting in line.  I did self-checkout and the second I was done, someone came over and wiped down the register, so they are also keeping things very clean.  All Walmart employees were wearing masks, too, so I felt pretty good about being in there the whole time. 

Monday afternoon, the kids and I had our regularly scheduled teeth cleanings at the dentist.  We had scheduled them back in December before all of this junk began, so we decided to go ahead and go through with our appointments.  There were no cavities for any of us and the kids successfully wore their masks while their teeth weren’t being cleaned.  Woo hoo!

That afternoon I got a text from Olivia’s BFF’s mom… she had sent a picture of Olivia’s friend, Becca, holding up the artwork Olivia had made and mailed to her a few days prior.  They moved to Florida just before Christmas and we were incredibly sad to see them go.  Olivia and Becca have been sending each other notes and artwork in the mail to keep in touch, though.  So so sweet.

The rest of the day was spent doing the typical summer weekday things – working, playing, watching movies, having dinner, and then going for a walk around the neighborhood.  It’s getting hotter now, so we probably won’t be walking for much longer.  Summers are brutal here between the heat and the humidity.

Tuesday, June 2 (Day 81 of Quarantine)

Tuesday morning, I ran to Hobby Lobby for the first time in months because I needed a special kind of spray paint that I can usually only find there.  Just like other stores, they had reminders throughout the store to stay six feet apart and they had tape on the floors to keep people six feet apart at the registers.  They also had a plastic partition between the cashiers and the customers.  Every single person I saw in there had on a mask with the exception of two people.  I went first thing when they opened so there was hardly anyone there anyway. 

Afterward, I had my first hair appointment in months!!  I was actually due for my highlights/cut right as everything started to shut down in mid-March, so I was months overdue at that point and my hair was looking ROUGH, y’all.  My dark roots were probably almost four inches long and I just couldn’t take it anymore. 

As I mentioned in my post on Monday, our hair stylist is part of our church and school family, so we trust them and felt comfortable going.  My stylist wore a mask the entire time and I ended up being the only customer in there almost the entire time.  It was empty.  As you can probably imagine, they are really struggling financially right now since most people aren’t going to get their hair done, so I was happy to be able to support them during this time.  And my hair looks and feels soooo much better now.

I picked up Chick-Fil-A for lunch on the way home and then the kids and I drove to the school to pick up all of their things that had been left behind on that crazy last day back in March.  We put our car line tag in the window, and they brought all of the kids’ stuff to us in the car.  The kids were excited to see their teachers face-to-face for the first time in months and their teachers seemed equally as excited to see them.  What a weird, anti-climactic way to end the school year, though.

The rest of the day was spent working, doing a few things around the house, making dinner, doing yoga, playing with the kids in the yard, and watching America’s Got Talent.  While we were in our back yard, we saw two buzzards sitting in a dead tree with their wings spread wide.  It was the weirdest thing!  B googled it, and we found out that they like to “sunbathe” for grooming purposes.  Y’all probably don’t even care, but #TheMoreYouKnow  Haha.

Wednesday, June 3 (Day 82 of Quarantine)

Wednesday morning, I did some laundry and took the time to get organized.  Since we were planning for our beach trip, I had lists and notes and things to do everywhere, and I was feeling super scattered, so I took about an hour to organize all of my to-dos and condense my lists, and I felt so much better!

Wednesday afternoon was spent catching up on emails and getting the blog ready to be gone for a week.  When we go on vacation, I pretty much do nothing for the blog while I’m gone, so I have to do lots of prep before we travel to ensure it continues rolling right along in my absence.

I also rejoined the world of social media Wednesday.  With all that has been going on in the world – coronavirus, racism, protests, riots, and politics – I had to take a break from it all because my anxiety was starting to rear its ugly head.  I was barely on Facebook or Instagram the entire week leading up to that and it was nice to detox.  I did, however, throw my two cents into the ring about everything going on and you can read that post here if you missed it. 

Wednesday evening after dinner, the kids and I played wiffle ball in the back yard while B got caught up on some work.  It started raining while we were out there, so we took the party inside, and just in time… it poured for a good hour after we came back in.

At 7:30, we watched our friars do the livestream bedtime story and we were in for a real treat because my momma, and all of the other ladies who work in the church office, sang a song for the kids.  They were so cute and so funny.  We watched a little bit of AGT after that and then the kiddos got in the bed a little after 9 which left just enough time for B and I to watch a show before going to bed.

Thursday, June 4 (Day 83 of Quarantine)

Thursday was the only day that we didn’t have anywhere to be, so I used the day to start packing for our vacation.  The forecast was looking very grim for our trip at that point – a tropical depression was supposed to be settling in for the whole entire week – so I was pretty bummed while I was packing.  As you’re reading this, we’re actually finishing up our trip, so you can check my IG stories to see how the weather ended up being for us.  I’m crossing my fingers as I’m writing this that we have some kind of miracle and the weather ends up being great, or at least okay, for us.  It is 2020, though, so I don’t really have high hopes.  Haha.

I’m hoping to use our tripod to take some family pictures while we’re there as we always do, but I guess we’ll need the weather to cooperate.  Just in case we do get a chance, I went ahead and picked out our outfits.  I haven’t decided which ones to go with just yet, though… feel free to chime in if you have an opinion!  Olivia is dead set on wearing that pink polka dot dress, so that's non-negotiable.  Haha.

I also took some time to hand wash all of our masks.  We are so lucky to have my wonderful mother-in-law who is so talented with a sewing machine!  She made four masks for each of us (including the kids) so we don’t have to wash them every single day anymore.  Also, nothing SCREAMS 2020 like handwashing face masks.  You can file that under things I never thought I’d have to do in my lifetime.

Thursday also marked the first day that recycling started picking up again!  We have curbside recycling service here in our city, and they come once a week to pick it up.  B and I have gotten to where we recycle every single thing you can possibly recycle, and therefore, we typically have more recycling than we do trash.

Well, with the recycling not picking up these last couple of months, we decided to just hang on to it instead of putting it in the trash, and our garage has been overflowing with cardboard boxes, pizza boxes, milk cartons, plastic bottles, cans, and other items that can be recycled.  We managed to get through the entire time without throwing anything away, though, so we had a MOUNTAIN in the garage.  B was only able to put about half of it out on the curb that morning (since there was so much), and the next week we’re in town we’ll be able to put the rest out.  It’s so nice to have our garage back, though!

We had breakfast for dinner followed by some more wiffle ball for the whole family and then the kids got showered and in jammies and we finished getting caught up on America’s Got Talent.  About halfway through, my brother called my whole family on Facetime to chat because it was my nephew’s fourth birthday!  He was too busy running around the house, so we barely saw him, but we did see my niece for a few minutes.  Look how long her hair is getting!

Friday, June 5 (Day 84 of Quarantine)

Friday morning, I was up bright and early to take Maui to the groomer.  FINALLY.  Oh my word, she needed it so badly.  She was already overdue when the pandemic hit, so her hair was out of control – long, tangled, matted – it was just awful.  As with everything else now, they had major safety precautions in place to ensure the safety of the animals. 

They fenced in the area just outside the door to the shop, so each patron gets out of their car, leaves their dog in the fenced area, closes the gate, and walks away and then someone opens the door of the shop and grabs the dog to take inside.  That allows for everyone to keep a six-foot distance from one another.  We paid over the phone so there was no exchange of money or credit cards, and then we used the same procedure to pick her up.  She looks like a totally different dog!

When I got home from dropping Maui off, I immediately went for a run.  I finally got some new running shoes, and I wanted to try them out in the early morning before it got too hot.  It ended up being super hot and humid anyway (such is the south this time of year) but I managed to get in two miles.  My knees seemed to do way better with these new shoes, but sadly, my SI joints were still screaming by the time I finished.  Unfortunately, I think my running days are limited to over.  I’ll just have to get my cardio from doing dance workouts and walking on an incline on the treadmill at the gym… when I ever finally decide to go back.  Probably not going to happen any time soon!

After my run, I got breakfast ready for the kids and then the rest of the morning was spent keeping an eye on the weather and planning different scenarios for our beach trip.  The forecasters originally predicted for the storm to hit as a tropical depression, but by Friday there was talk of it turning into a full-blown hurricane and hitting land as a category 1.  Sigh.  The last place I want to be in a cat 1 hurricane is on the beach, so we had to start considering different scenarios, like driving down a couple of days later after the hurricane had hit.  Our condo is literally on the ocean, and I don’t particularly want a front seat to Hurricane Cristobol.  As of Friday, they were still predicting for it to hit Louisiana, but one of the “spaghetti models” showed our beach taking a direct hit so it was just really hard to really know what to do.  Needless to say, I was pretty down some of the day because the forecast for our entire 8-day trip showed a complete washout.  As you already know, you’re reading this on the last full day of our trip, so hopefully I’m currently sitting on the beach in the warm sunshine reading a good book.  Fingers crossed!

Friday evening we grabbed takeout from one of our favorite pubs and then we watched Cheaper by the Dozen with the kids.  Once they went to bed, B and I stayed up watching Long Shot, the recent movie with Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen.  I wasn't super excited about it, but I ended up loving it so much!  It was funny and charming and just so cute (but also a little raunchy, so beware) and I highly recommend it.

Now I'm stopping there because Saturday and Sunday will be recapped in my beach posts sometime after our trip!  Happy weekend, y'all!

*Linking up with A Little Bit of Everything for Friday Favorites and Della Devoted for High Five for Friday.