Lodge Life: Quarantine Week 5

It is hard to believe we’ve been in solitude for more than four weeks now. In some ways it really feels like forever, but it has flown by. Time is moving in a really strange way right now.

Ben has started referring to the mountain house as “home” and saying things like “when we used to live in Seattle” or “our small house.”

While there are so many emotions going on in all of us, I imagine, one thing I’m dreading is telling Ben about all the things that won’t be happening in the coming months. I don’t expect he’ll return to school this spring {how could he?} and gosh, I’m wondering if the pools and beaches might not open this summer. A friend of mine was given the advice by a physician to write off the rest of the year.

This week we celebrated my 34th birthday. Alex and the kids made the day very special for me, despite having limited options. The kids and I baked really delicious cupcakes that only use one stick of butter and minimal ingredients.

Throughout the duration of our time here at The Lodge I’ve been focusing on gratitude, being the light for others and being in the moment as often as possible. I have been absolutely loving the time with my children and husband. Additionally, I have been feeling really proud of how resourceful I’ve been with food.

We made it 15 days without replenishing our food supply. That was my goal, and honestly, we could have made it a little farther, but I didn’t want to go to the store on the weekend and I was starting to get stressed out about running out of flour completely.

We’ve been baking a ton. The kids have both been very into it and they’re actually helpful, sometimes more than others. Sure, it takes twice, or three times, as long but what else are we doing right now?

I stocked up on long-lasting produce, like apples, sweet potatoes, clementines, carrots, etc. and every one of the 15 days we had some type of fresh produce. The last few days we pulled out some frozen or canned fruit and on night 14 we had frozen vegetables, though we still did have a sweet potato in the pantry.

I did venture out to the store on Friday morning at 6 a.m. and was successful in finding flour {!!}. Surprisingly, they also had disinfecting wipes in stock. They even had some store-brand toilet paper, though we’ve got plenty so I left that for others.

I felt that the other shoppers were very respectful of the 6 foot parameters, but I was outraged to see almost no store employees wearing gloves or masks. It ended up being a four hour affair for me, from the time I left to the time the last item was put away. This includes 50 minutes of driving, getting gas, taking a shower immediately upon my return and wiping down and putting away all of the items. I did wash all the produce before putting it away.

I’m feeling so grateful and have so much admiration for the people who are showing up in public to continue to do their jobs and provide services and goods for the rest of us. That’s true bravery.

Anyway enough about the pandemic – back to Lodge Life 🙂 The kids are great. We had a really, really good week. Ben was in a terrific mood all week and made some stellar choices. He has been loving this reusable sticker pad and we’ve had a blast playing soccer outside.

Ben and Hannah are starting to play together quite a lot and it’s just the absolute sweetest. Hannah is such a good listener and if Ben asks her calmly she’ll share just about anything with him.

We’re about to start potty training Hannie. I said this as sort of a joke at the beginning of our time here but now I guess we’re going forward with it. I need to wrap my brain around my approach because it’s going to be different than it was with Ben…. Maybe we’ll start this week? I’m not sure!

This week one of the highlights for me was talking with the kids about starting a vegetable garden. We made a {very long} list of fruits and veggies they want to grow, which I’ve scaled back on quite a bit. There’s a local farm that is doing online ordering and curbside, contact-less pickup right now that we’ll get some garden starts from.

Thanks to my farmer friend, Kelsey, and the adorable books We Are the Gardeners and Eating the Alphabet we’ve come up with a loose plan and I ordered a raised bed for some of the veggies. I’ll do some herbs in a pot that I already have. I’m still not sure about strawberries but I want to make that happen for Ben since he was so excited about the prospect. We’re going to have a blast with this and I love the life experience and educational value it provides.

One very small project we’ve had going on has been to make Ben’s “mountain room” a little more personal for him. When we designed the house we really weren’t sure how the sleeping arrangements would look for the kids, nor did we expect we’d actually be up here as often as we are. Certainly we didn’t expect to move up here for a couple/few months. Ben has been sleeping in the room that is normally reserved for Alex’s parents when they’re here.

We decided to get a few extra sets of sheets to make the room feel a little more special for Ben. When we asked what he wanted on his sheets his response was: rainbows, mountains, trees and houses. I have no idea how but I managed to find some sheets that met his criteria and his little mountain room has become so cozy.

We enjoyed sticking close to home this weekend with some work on the yard. Alex has been working to clear out the brush and downed trees in the forest on our property. It’s really coming along!

Here’s to another week in quarantine… our current “stay home” orders are through May 4th, so it looks like we’ll be here for quite some time. Sending our love to wherever you’re reading this. We hope this finds you well, and I hope you find this Instagram post as beautiful as I did: