During the last two weeks of April, we found ourselves in a new phase of Quarantine: Getting Creative. This was week 4, 5, & 6 of the shutdowns. (We were such newbies then, thinking that this would all be over soon!)
I’m a bit surprised to look back and see that we got so many creative juices flowing during this time, because we were also really struggling. I guess during the struggle, we used creativity as a survival tool! The project I’m most proud of during this time is the virtual video tour that I made for the Museum at the Hormel Historic Home, featured at the end of this post.
The beaches completely closed down. But we still went to see the water from the street. The boys got creative with climbing on the rocks. It felt great to smell the sea air. These rocks were the boys only playground for a long time.
This big sign said something like “keep social distance,” which seemed stupid to have since no one was at the beach.
The kinetic sand became our good friend, and we would do something slightly different with the sand each time I brought it out. This time, we might be making sand tracks for the marbles.
The boys started meeting with their teachers more regularly. They had 2-3 zoom meetings each week and they lasted 30-45 minutes. Sometimes the boys liked it and often they did not like it. Tanner especially missed school. Here’s some of their work tht we had to take pictures of and post online.
Dallin tried to make zoom more fun with forts.
Exploring more parts of the canyon.
Tanner made signs to help protect their fort from dog pee. 😂
We did exercise drills to keep the boys from beating each other up, and Jeremy tried out a new location for his home office.
For some reason, I got the itch to make pumpkin pie. So we did!
A couple of very thoughtful friends from church brought us cookies and food several times. We even got a couple of puzzles from friends, which Jeremy and Tanner got motivated to work on.
The completed puzzle!
Dallin was excited to serve us up some ice cream. Real ice cream is a rare occasion in our home.
The boys decided to organize their stuffed animals and make nametags for all of them.
I started to get the hang of teaching music online with my private students.
We tried to change things up one day by taking the boys and their bikes to Liberty Station Park. Turned out to be a good taste of something new.
Then we drove over to Point Loma for the first time, and discovered that the beautiful Naval Cemetery was open to the public because it is federal property, which didn’t follow the same closure rules as county and city properties.
Seeing all the tomb stones was unusually exciting for us. That’s when we realized that we were really hurting to be with groups of other people. We walked around and read the names out loud and it almost felt like we were at a very special gathering, meeting new people. We joked at how well everyone was keeping social distance. 😉
The view of the ocean and San Diego bay were stunning.
Some people forget that Covid made sudden changes for simple things like meal time. During a normal given week before Covid, the kids ate most of their meals at school (bfast and lunch). As a family, we ate about 6-8 meals a week together at the family kitchen table. About 1-4 meals a week we enjoyed at restaurants together.
Then we suddenly found ourselves eating 35 meals a week at our kitchen table. It was great to be with the family more, but… it was 35 meals a week! We were feeling major cabin fever at meal times. To survive the monotony, I started serving food outside on our back porch and front lawn. It turned out to be a semi-success! The boys made games of climbing on the patio walls and doing balancing acts more than they actually ate food, but we didn’t care. We were so relieved that they stopped arguing for a few minutes. The neighbors also started eating outside, so we got to chat at a safe distance with them from day to day.
I took a selfie to remember that there was a bit of melancholy feeling with eating outside. Nice to find something working during the hardship, upsetting that we were in such a position to begin with.
Another Monday at the beach after our school meal pick up. Found lots of solace in these visits, even though we still couldn’t do more than just climb on the rocks.
I sat down on a rock for about one minute while the boys climbed and explored. I needed to rest my hips and back. In that amount of time, a lifegaurd truck pulled up to us and yelled at me through their loud speaker, “NO LOITERING ALLOWED!! YOU NEED TO KEEP MOVING, MA’AM”
Holy crap, I’m 20 feet away from you! Can’t you just roll down your window and speak to me like a normal human being?
My blood boiled because of their insensitivity. And all the stupid rules. I hated it all from the beginning, and it all became more and more frustrating as time went on.
I found myself talking in whispers with our neighbors about how ridiculous these shutdowns were. We whispered for fear that other neighbors would get mad or somehow rat us out. I also found myself sneaking around town trying to find a way to let our kids play in open spaces. The streets and parking lots were empty for months and made great playing areas, but we were constantly afraid that the cops or security gaurds would ask us to leave from any location.
Sadly, these are all the same things that I’ve witnessed in communist countries that I’ve been to.
And based on my previous sentence, most would think I’m a Republican.
It pissed me off that discussions about the pandemic quickly became political because I’m not a Republican. Basically, Trump was a jerk and refused to wear a mask, so everything with Covid blew up as a political debate. I don’t agree with anything about his administration, but I do agree with Republicans when they argue that the shutdowns was an act of communism.
Going on more walks helped us calm down (sort of). Jeremy got creative with learning about the plants in our canyon. He took photos, identified them with a google app and made a powerpoint presentation for the boys.
I could tell the boys needed some one-on-one time with me. So I took them each on a little outing. Tanner and I went to Matteo’s and got the yummiest lemon cookies. We ate them on the berm next to his school and talked about how different life was.
Dallin and I went to the Snow-way hut and got some snow cone things. We ate them in the car and made silly pictures.
This is one of Tanner’s worried faces, which we saw a LOT of during this time.
We had a very orange dinner one night. Orange chicken, oranges, and carrots.
I made a water sensory station for the boys one day. We had a little sprinkle fight and Jeremy caught us at the tail end of it. It was a beautiful, warm day!
Later the boys laid in the sun and chatted with each other.
I printed off some packets that were floating around on the internet. They were called Covid 19 Time Capsules. We worked on a new page every few days, thinking that soon it would be over and all the shutdowns would be a funny fluke of a thing that happened for 1 or 2 months in our life.
Jeremy and I had our own Covid19 packets, too. And dang, Jeremy’s hair and beard were getting long! So golden and handsome.
Dallin got a little too creative during zoom one day. He figured out how to make comments in the group chat while the teacher was talking. He wrote “hi” and “yo”. Then he wrote, “I’m bored.” It of course hurt the teacher’s feelings, which we felt so bad about. This was just everyone’s 8th or 9th time doing zoom classes, a whole new world for everyone, and we know she was putting in so much time and effort. At the same time, it was really hard for our kids to do zoom and not be in school. Jeremy was working on his own computer when it happened. He suddenly heard the teacher from Dallin’s device saying, “Dallin that is not appropriate.”
He spent the afternoon working to fix what happened. We were glad this was the worst thing he did all of first grade.
Jeremy went on a bike ride with Dallin in the canyon. The spring flowers were everywhere!!
The boys began playing Legos outside with each other, both on our lawn and at the neighbor’s lawn. It was such a great way for them to pass the time, get creative and escape all the weirdness of life.
I was getting sick of not being able to see Matt and Johanna. So I put together a virtual date for us. Without telling our husbands, Johanna and I grabbed cups, bowls, golf balls, and cardboard around our houses. We also made pudding at each of our houses. Then when it was date time, we got on zoom and surprised Jeremy and Matt with a virtual date where we build our own put-put golf courses!
How it worked: We each took a turn creating a course. The players in the other home had to recreate the course in their house. Then we all tried each put-put “hole”, which consisted of using our coffee tables, couches and the cardboard pieces. We got really creative and had a lot of silly fun. There were some tie scores at the end. Then we all ate pudding together and chatted about our epic game.
So this is not something I’m proud of, but I want to document it to remember that a lot of this time was really hard for our family, with high emotions. This is a hole and scrapes that I made in the wall from throwing Jeremy’s bike bag down the stairs. I was having a big meltdown because everyone was taking over my bedroom. I meant to give Jeremy’s bag a good shove to land straight on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, but in my hot mess, I miss-aimed and didn’t realize there was a strong metal frame in the bag. Oops.
Jeremy was missing his regular bike rides to work and the luxury of having a gym next to his office. Unable to handle it any longer, he got clever with the gym rings that I bought him for xmas a few years ago.
We all got curious one day and followed him out to his secret tree in the canyon.
The boys found a cool place in the river bed to play in by Jeremy’s secret spot.
Then, we went swimming in our neighborhood pool! At some point, the pool closed for 4 weeks. I can’t remember if this is before or after that.
One of the best things that happened in April was the RED TIDE. This year, it was filled with bioluminescent organisms. We heard about it from some friends in HB and decided to see if this tide was glowing at Coronado. We didn’t expect much.
I got out of the car at Coronado beach to look over the rocks to see if there was anything to indicate that the water was glowing. To my surprise, the waves crashed onto the sand and a burst of blue light flashed all around the water. Eeeeeeek! I couldn’t believe it!! I waved to Jeremy and the boys to come right away, there was definitely something to see!
We walked by the hotel and were amazed at how well we could see the glowing from the sidewalk. Even with the street lamps and car lights, we could see the lights in the water.
The beach was closed, but handfuls of people there were running down to the water. We of course did too! We were not going to let some stupid beach rules hold us back.
Except Tanner. He was very concerned about the beach rules. He was afraid that the cops were going to arrest us. And I guess with all of our recent experiences at this beach during Covid, he had good reason to think the coast guard would get mad at us. It was hard to get him to enjoy the experience.
Jeremy and I decided to set the kids on a blanket in the dark because they didn’t want to come to the water with us. They complained, “We see the glowing from here. Can we go home now?” We were surprised. “NO! We are going to enjoy this amazing part of nature!” We ran down to the water and splashed around.
The boys slowly joined us and saw how the wet sand would light up if you stepped on it! We rubbed our hands in the wet sand and it looked like our fingers had painted the ground blue!! It was absolutely incredible. I rubbed the water on my arms to show the boys how it looks like glitter on my skin. Throwing water against the ground or our legs also showed the biolumincence. The smaller waves didn’t yield much, but the huge waves that crashed and tumbled made such amazing light, it looked like LED lights or a light display in Vegas. We could see the waves glowing all along the shore for about a mile!
Hands down one of the most amazing encounters with nature that I’ve ever had. Jeremy and I were smitten.
And then the lifeguards drove up and told us all to leave because the beach closed at 8 pm.
We came back the following night. The waves were brilliant again! We found out that puddles of the water had tons of dinoflagelights in them. I tried to boogie board in the water before the lifegaurds made their way to us. It was actually hard to see what I was doing because the water doesn’t light up constantly, just when the big waves crash. The kids still weren’t that thrilled to be there. Before leaving, we filled up some water bottles to take home
At home, we shook the water bottles to see if they lit up enough to show people on video calls. Our cameras didn’t pick up the light, cuz it was such a small sample. BUT we could see the little glitter lights if we let our eyes adjust to the dark for a long time. I discovered that if you pour the water into the sink and then stick your head in the sink, you can see lots of the little organisims glowing as they drip down the edge of the sink. If you hold your head there for a minute, it feels like you’re being transported to another universe.
The following night, Jeremy agreed to stay home with the boys while I checked out the tide at Mission Beach. There were a lot more people there, and sure enough you could still see it. The light pollution did make a difference here, making the bioluminescence not seem as bright. However, it was still mesmerizing to watch, and fun to see people discover it all for the first time. The water glowed for almost 3 weeks!
I took the boys back to the beach during the day to show them why it’s called a Red Tide. They thought it was cool to be in the same spot that we were at the night before. The water was actually red and has a gnarly smell! It looked like blood and mud swirling around in the water. This happens because the water is filled with nutrients and algae plumes, or something like that. We learned that Red Tide comes every year (something we vaguely remember from living in HB), but only shows bioluminescence every 5-10 years, and rarely is as bright as this year. Truly a once in a lifetime opportunity that I will never forget.
Dallin enjoying the neighbor’s swing.
Our Alexa Echo floated around the house a lot as we tried to find ways to make video calls work. I remember this being a special moment because Dallin actually engaged with someone for a few minutes on a call (it was Grama Z).
I took creativity up a few notches by volunteering to produce a virtual tour of the Hormel Historic Home in Austin Minnesota. We called the online tour “A Peek Into the Past, 1918 Flu Pandemic” and posted it on YouTube. I became the writer, costume designer, director, actor, and editor of the project. It was SO MUCH FUN!!
Here is a link to the tour video: HERE
The video’s synopsis: An Irish housekeeper named Margaret from 1918 figures out how to use a smartphone from the future to show viewers around the iconic Hormel house (built in 1871). Each room features something that the housekeeper and other family members have been doing to stay safe from the Flu. As viewers watch the tour, they can immediately see the uncanny similarities to the current Covid19 Pandemic, along with a few differences. From the sewing room where Margaret is making masks, to letters that George is writing to his serving in the war, all the information, rooms, and objects shared in the video are historically accurate. Viewers are left with an Irish blessing of health and hope at the end of the tour.
In order to make this project without being in Austin Mn, I had to do some collaboration calls with the team at the HHH. The director, Holly Johnson, was very gracious to let me run with my ideas. After some briefings about the concept and the script, we did some rehearsals for the tour portion of the video. Amanda Barber did a video call with me to understand what angles and shots needed to be included. The two of them staged the home to match the script and get everything in place. Then, she did a silent filming of the home without ever showing herself in the video.
Next, I filmed myself in my own house, greeting viewers and saying goodbye to the viewers. My backdrop was a bedroom door that looked similar to a spot by the housekeeper’s bedroom. Then, I recorded an audio of me speaking throughout the tour of the house, timing my audio (near) perfectly with the video. Finally, I pieced it all together on Windows Movie Maker to make it look like I was the one in the house from start to finish. It all came together better than I anticipated!
To get my costume and hair “just right” took a bit of effort. I wanted it to reflect the time period as best as possible. But I was limited to my own closet of costumes and to what amazon could send me with a short turn around. (Remember- at the time, the world was in shutdown mode and shipping products of any kind was delayed by 3-6 weeks). I scoured the internet and my Hormel Home book for photos of housekeepers or housewives from 1915-1920, and learned a lot about hair and clothing styles of that time. I did some practice runs with my hair and finally got a look I was really pleased with:
My costume features the black choir skirt from BYU Women’s Chorus. It had the perfect length and poof that was needed for the maid’s dress. I used a black long-sleeved shirt that I received from my grandma’s closet a few months earlier. My white apron from an old “Alice in Wonderland” costume tied the shirt and skirt together seamlessly. I made a tall collar with a white handkerchief and tie pin from my grandpa, which ended up matching almost exactly the collars that I found in photos of the time. The little pocket necklace I’m wearing is to resemble a camphor necklace that people wore during the Flu Pandemic to keep the air they were breathing clean (jury is still up on whether it works). I didn’t have any burlap, so I made it out of a corner of a dish towel and a shoelace.
I watched at least 10 different hair tutorials to get my head piece and hairdo accurate. The bonnet was a lucky find on Amazon that only took 2 weeks to deliver. The hairdo was easy once I figured out what I wanted to do and once I found all my bobby pins. I capitalized on my grey hairs by parting my hair down the middle. My hope was this would make me look a little older, adding to the sense that the video was coming from a time long ago.
I had fun taking selfies with the lighting in my room to make it look like I was vintage.
What can I say? Filming day was a very fun day for me!!
The video ended up being a big success! Several teachers in Austin shared it with their students. Even our teachers here in San Diego were excited about it. Tanner’s 2nd grade teacher included the video on See Saw with an assignment in their social studies unit. (And Tanner was really excited to do the assignment. I could tell he was really proud of me, and that made all of this worth it). The video received over 250 views in the first couple of weeks. KSL news in Rochester did a story on it in August, including a video interview with me that aired on live television. Today there are over 870 views! I’m really grateful I could keep giving back to Austin from so far away, and that I could get really artistic and creative in the process.