Letters from Pemberley

Lots of reading going on. With the libraries closing and the kids having already read through the few hundred books we brought along, we invested in a new Kindle Fire to expand our ereader capabilities. But the little girls are still going old school with actual picture books. Annie’s current obsessions include Goodnight Moon, Ten Little Babies, and Fox in Socks. She’s actually reciting Fox in Socks while reading Where the Wild Things Are:

Everyone is reading the paper these days. Tommy goes to sports, I usually only make it through the op eds, and Elizabeth admits she only pays attention to the weather. But yesterday Susie carefully looked through the whole section on stocks while eating her breakfast. We’re certainly a very up-to-date family!

We’re taking advantage of all the online tutorials and free streaming activities! We’re watching Met operas a couple times a week, Tommy listens to Andrew Peterson reading his Wingfeather Saga on facebook every night, and we’re watercolor painting with Let’s Make Art. The big kids are writing a Chubby Baby story on a google doc with the Ragland kids (not surprisingly, the main characters are named Lucy and Annie), the girls are having a virtual book club with the Fishers, and we’ve had a lot of video chats with family.

Virtual church. I always liked the *idea* of Family Integrated Worship, but it’s really hard in an actual building. Now we get to try it out every Sunday! Since our church back home is three hours off, we’re watching Alistair Begg’s church service and enjoy singing all the Getty hymns. Annie is semi-disruptive but kindof gets that she needs to at least fold her hands while she prays. Next we just have to get her to stop telling everyone, “Shhh! I’m praying!”

I don’t have any pictures of me shopping because it’s happening so infrequently. I made it nine days before we were out of butter (we could have lasted another day before running out of eggs and milk), and it felt so surreal to don gloves before heading into Aldi to find no flour on the shelves (is everyone truly baking bread???? one friend messaged me saying that the store was out of yeast, so she was “making her own” and what were the proportions to substitute for dry? I sighed as I explained that sourdough is a totally different animal than yeast bread and pointed her to the King Arthur Flour blog for my best sourdough recipe.) I also found it pretty crazy that we’re expected to only grocery shop every 1-2 weeks, yet we’re limited to two gallons of milk and two packages of meat, total? That goes a lot further with a family of 3-4 than a family of seven. But I did stretch two chicken breasts into chicken scala for seven. Rice fills kids up! Fortunately I already have a lot of low-meat meals in my rotation, so the kids didn’t mind too much when I made white bean pasta last night and saved the other half of our chicken breasts for dinner tonight. It’s hard to stock up since we’re leaving in 6 weeks, but I think we’re now in a good place of canned goods to stretch the meat and veggies and will hopefully only need to pick up fresh dairy and produce in a week or 10 days. I just have to ration the flour, so Elizabeth’s baking activities may drop off until the stores happen to be restocked while I’m shopping. Oh, and I totally wiped off all of our packages when I came back in. I was a little disturbed to see only one other shopper at my Aldi wearing gloves and a mask, and the cashier was not wiping off the checkout, wearing gloves, or social distancing as she checked out me or the people before me. I don’t trust other people (especially in the lower income, less educated area where my grocery store is located) to take common precautions against spreading their germs, and with Annie’s weak lungs and compromised immune system, our family has to be hyper vigilant.