What a dewsy! God decided to challenge us in 2020. He may have noticed that we had become too querulous (apparently that means full of complaints). However it happened…covid19 happened. The entire human population was forced to slow down and enjoy the simple things…or face possible extinction.
In the beginning we were anxious and scared. We didn't know much about this evil virus and took the recommended precautions. The scariest thing about those first two weeks was that schools closed their doors to students. Having lived in Los Angeles for most of my life, I had never seen an issue so big that schools and other important institutions stopped operating indefinitely. We stayed home for two weeks and drank wine for entertainment. Thankfully we had a healthy supply of two-buck chuck from Trader Joe's.
After two weeks I started noticing that the information coming from the news outlets wasn't completely making sense. I wasn't sure just how afraid of this thing I should actually be. The general sentiment was that we needed to stay indoors and not interact with anyone outside of our homes. I created social media accounts, deleted social media accounts, texted often with people I normally don't text with much, and became a tik tok fanatic. After a while I didn't understand why we couldn't go hiking or to local parks as long as we stayed away from people. If we were willing to take that risk we should have had that freedom. This confusion lead to more wine drinking and selfie-taking:
Growing more impatient and confused by the data we decided to venture to different counties for outdoor recreation. We discovered a couple of beautiful hikes in Santa Barbara and began to visit them almost weekly. Santa Barbara Hiking is a great source of information about these beautiful pockets of nature. My kids' ages ranged from five to ten-years-old at the time. So, we had a bit of complaining initially but they soon discovered the fun that could be had in nature. My youngest grew an affinity for rocks and sticks and my oldest built his tolerance for things not having to do with electronics.
We also discovered our appreciation for road-tripping. Pre-pandemic I argued with my husband that road-trips were a bad idea with three small children. We would all be nauseous and uncomfortable and irritate each other for hours in a small space. So, we hopped into our minivan and drove to states we had never been to before. While driving we savored all of the new sights. We compared local ordinances and the sanity levels of local people. I'm so grateful for these experiences.
Unfortunately, with the pandemic and resulting lock-down and social distancing hysteria we discovered that we only had each other to count on in times of need. So, we decided to multiply ourselves! That is how we became a family six! Therefore, the pandemic has actually helped us achieve our goal of having four children, with two boys and two girls. In our twenties this seemed like a dream, but here we are at the Hilton Beachfront Resort in Santa Barbara:
Thank you to a lock-down, drag-out, looney tunes year 2020!!!