Week 2 of closure - school closure day 6.

This is shocking.  The number of cases that have been confirmed are more than double from a week ago.  Granted, test kits were not readily available 'til a few days ago, but... wow.   New York City numbers are growing at a really scary rate.  They have so much density... I have no idea where people can go??!!    Here in Georgia, the number of cases reached 800 and 26th deaths.  The small down of Albany is really high proportionally to the population.  Cobb County - where we live - is the 2nd highest county in the metro area with cases.  

We had 1 day of nice weather, so we took advantage of it / went for a hike in the mountains.  (But - a lot of people had the same idea.)

Since baseball was cancelled -- we did something that we used to do before baseball took over our lives:  we jumped in the car and headed to a new destination.  This time, we checked out Dukes Creek Falls.    The falls is that tiny little white line across the valley -- behind the kids.

The hike was pretty easy.  relatively flat, winding trails.  There were parts of the trail that were more congested (at the trailhead @ the overlook, for example) and at the bottom observation deck area.  Other than that, we were able to "socially distance" while getting fresh air and exercise.

There was one moment where a woman took our family picture with my phone... and then we both realized... oops -- you can't do that anymore!  I had sanitizer and we wiped down hands /phones.  The woman and her family were from metro Atlanta area too and we just had a discussion about how this changes a lot of things!  

One thing we noticed is that not a lot has changed up north.  Little stores and restaurants were open for business like normal. We looked up their county on an interactive Georgia map and they didn't have any reported cases of the virus yet.... YET.   It's crazy how this is spreading... there was a lot of pressure earlier today for the Georgia governor to issue a shelter in place order and require that people NOT go out.  But he did not.

Even though it was more crowded than we expected, it was a gorgeous day and we LOVED getting outside. Next time, however, we may need to stick to places that we're familiar with and make sure there are no bottlenecks no spaces that are too crowded.

Sunday was rainy.  We stayed indoors.  One thing we did, however, was set up a "playdate" with Mercer and a friend over Zoom to practice the tool.  It was funny....I had it on in the other room / Mercer pulled it up on his phone.  The two boys played a video game online together but got to talk, joke around, see each other.  They acted so goofy and weird.  The mom and I were texting back and forth the whole time.  They were so goofy, but it was cute... and the smiles they had -- at the beginning of the "hour long zoom meeting" were awesome!  (Isabella piped in and you can see her reflection in the computer screen as she's waving to KJ.  "I miss you" is what she kept saying over and over again.  He was embarrassed, but he finally said he misses her too.  

We'll have to set up another playdate.


Using Zoom is the new thing.  Isabella's teacher set up some meeting times for one-on-one face time sessions.  This is GREAT because when Isabella has been watching her teacher's morning messages.... she gets upset that the teacher can't see her wave or respond to her when she tries to talk to her.  (She doesn't understand that it's a pre-recorded video link.)  She was so excited to talk to her teacher and here she's showing her the lizard and crickets in her room! 


One final thing that I recently became aware of is courtesy of an infographic that I have seen a couple of different ways:  history of plagues and pandemics.  I don't remember the swine flu (H1N1) being as bad as reported here (and in other areas that I've seen H1N1 data not so colorfully presented).  Mercer was a baby - in daycare.  That's our "major" medical issue in our lifetimes.  We did start to get flu shots when once we had children. Maybe that was the push that we got from this pandemic about 10-12 years ago?