We’ve been completely socially distancing since March 16th. No grocery stores, no take out… not even Starbucks. If you had told us even just a few months ago that this would be our life, I don’t think I would have believed you!

As a photographer, I itch to create. I really, really love my job. I love playing with light, and laughing with families. I love capturing love & authenticity. I don’t like not working. On the flip side, I’m horrible at photographing my own family. Sure, I take dozens of iPhone photos/videos each day, but I’m not intentional with them. I whip my phone out, snap a cute moment, and then go about my day.

I decided to use this quarantine period as a time to capture my family. We’ve drastically cut down on screen time, and it feels like we’re slowing down & getting back to our roots. We’re playing in the yard, having dance parties in the kitchen, and building forts. And I want to capture it all.

Someday, my kids will learn about this in school. Right now, they’re little. My 3 year old MIGHT retain some memories from this period, but my 1 year old certainly won’t. So I’m going to blog each week with some favorite photos I’ve captured that week, along with some excerpts to help me remember exactly what life is like at home.

Weeks one & two notable stuff-

Completed a 1,000 piece puzzle of Cinque Terre. Remembering when Ian & I hiked all 5 villages in the summer of 2008. Travel seems so far away these days.
All parks, trails, & playgrounds have closed.
Ben Gibbard did a live show every single day for 2 weeks from his home studio. I didn’t miss a single day. It was a welcome break from social media, news coverage, & work. It began to feel healing and almost meditative. I’m convinced it helped me start off this craziness in a good, relaxed mood. He’s still doing shows, he’s just reduced them to one a week. I’m so thankful for his generosity & for him sharing his talent in this way.
Celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary on 4/1. We cooked a nice meal & drank champagne out of our wedding flutes.
We finished our guilty pleasure binge of “Love At First Sight” & have moved on to Schitt’s Creek. We don’t get much time to watch TV as we don’t watch our own shows until the kids are in bed, but we’re almost done with it. It’s worth the lack of sleep!

April 2- April 9

Established a “sanitation station” in the garage. A folding table with Lysol spray, Clorox wipes, paper towels, and hand sanitizer. Every package from Amazon sits in the garage for a few days. When it’s time to open, I remove the contents & wipe everything down. It goes into a “clean” plastic bin to be carried inside. The bin is then returned & sprayed with Lysol just in case. Groceries each get unbagged, wiped down, & transferred to plastic bins to go inside. Produce soaks in veggie cleaner for 10 minutes, rinsed, & then put into the fridge with freshly washed hands.
So. many. forts. All of the forts. We got a Nugget about 3 days before the shelter in place order was made, and it’s been a total hit! Every day we built forts with it, make a slide off the couch, use it for TV time, etc.
Grayson has been into dressing up lately. After Halloween, I purchased a BUNCH of costumes for $1 a piece on clearance. Lately he’s been into combining the different pieces. His favorite was a “dinosaur cowboy viking.”
It rained for a few days & with all the time in the world, we figured we’d let the kids splash & get dirty. Afterall, a daytime bath is a fun way to pass the time! Grayson could’ve jumped in puddles for hours. Maddie adores the rain & practically begs to go outside the moment it starts. The kids had fun looking for snails & splashing around.
Our kids are blessed to have both sets of grandparents here in San Diego, so they don’t do much video chatting in real life. We’ve been chatting with the grandparents this past week & it’s so fun to see the kids interact with them, even via Zoom. Not seeing them has absolutely been the hardest part of this whole thing, so it’s nice to chat for awhile & see their faces!
Grayson has been into board games more lately. He loves Yeti in my Spaghetti & My First Orchard, but we introduced Spot It and Zingo this week & they’ve been huge hits! He requests to play them daily.
We wrote letters to grandparents & friends last week & plan to do so again this coming week. It’s been fun to get their responses in the mail, and Grayson kisses each letter he receives. Any mail that comes in goes through a 3 day quarantine period in our garage. We feel like we might be crazy, but we also feel like we can’t be too safe with this.
When Onward was released to Disney+, we had our first official movie night. We made snack boxes with popcorn (which Grayson NEVER gets, so it was a huge treat for him), fruit snacks, strawberries, & mini chocolate chip cookies. We turned off all the lights, turned the volume up loud, and cuddled on the Nugget on the floor. It made me remember doing similar movie nights with my mom when I was little. At one point Grayson looked over at me, hugged my arm, and said “thank you mama, this is the best night ever.” Talk about instant tears! It reminded me that no matter how much we adults might lament over fancy stuff like movie theaters and restaurants, those things don’t actually matter to our kids. This experience will shape them in MANY ways. My privilege isn’t lost on me; we are so lucky to have our home & be able to stay home with our kids & wait this whole thing out.

I meant to include like, 5 maybe 10 pictures, but I just can’t pick. So here’s a ridiculous amount.