Never in a million years did I ever consider that we would live through a National Disaster or National State of Emergency. I have never considered being on “lockdown” in our own home, and never even knew the definition of the word, pandemic. Yet here we are living through it all.

The best we can do in a situation like this is stay very aware, be super cautious and listen to the medical professionals, countries that have walked this road before us, and our National government.

For us as a family, that looks like “social distancing”. We have decided that our girls will stay home from school (schools were to be shut down on Wednesday anyway, and even before that holidays were from Thursday and Friday), MC will work from home and conference call, I will be at home with our girls for a minimum of two weeks, or until the situation changes. Our special Gogo lives with us permanently, and only goes home to her province twice a year so she has chosen to stay with us, our other domestic lady and gardener have been sent home with full pay. Our amazing au pair has chosen to visit us on certain days to spend time with the girls, as she is only going to be at her home and ours. And we will be visiting certain shops if need be (although we have stocked up most items for the next two weeks).

Unfortunately, during times like these, hard decisions have to be made and pre-cations taken – we have cancelled all play dates and kids parties, won’t be attending friends dinners or functions, we won’t at our church home group and our church has closed with only online services, we won’t be visiting any public areas like parks, play areas or movies. We have chosen to be at home, just the five of us and make the most of the family time, a fun little school routine, walks on the beach and bike rides around our Estate.

Our girls thrive on routine and structure – MC and I do too! So I loved putting together a little daily schedule for us to follow. It is very flexible but it allows us to plan our days around this and get a little organised with our different activities. Our girls also know what to expect and what is happening each day. We are nowhere near perfect, we won’t always follow it too strictly, and we are going to have many a meltdown or degrees of frustration! But we are going to try our best, maximise this quality time and lean in to each other and Jesus in this very uncertain time.

How are you coping with this pandemic? What decisions have you made?

x

You can follow our updates on my Instagram.

You can download your own schedule to print and edit here.

You can download the below schedule here.