When COVID closes in... 7 weeks home.

We have had a very eventful last week.  It is hard to believe we have now been home for over 7 weeks.  While all the days seem to run together, we are making memories and learning and growing together.

This week marked the milestone of getting caught up on the blog.  This is something that hasn't happened since M was a baby.  Because I am going to be posting pics in real time (from the last week) I will wrote less in the weekly wrap up posts.

This week we did have some events that we don't have pictures of.  Last Monday (one week ago) our libraries were allowed to open for curbside pick up.  This was very exciting for our family of readers. I made several requests for books during the week before.  I then learned I needed to change my list because we could only request books directly from the library vs the whole library system.  There are no books currently being returned, so the selection becomes more limited.  Thankfully we were still able to find many new titles.  On Tuesday I went to two local libraries to pick up the requested materials.  One library had books in bags on an outdoor cart.  The other library delivered them to my trunk upon arrival.  The delivery guy was wearing gloves and masks and he set them in my truck without touching anything.  The process actually made me a bit emotional.  It is all so different than it was not so long ago.

Another development in our lives without photographs was news that a good friend of ours tested positive for COVID-19.  This family comes to potlucks and playgroup and support group for adoptive families.  They are so special to us.  J and his wife K live in the next town north with their four foster children under age four, the youngest is only about 2 months old.  Hubby J had the positive test, but the Dr's are assuming that the entire crew has it.  One of the kids is showing some symptoms and K has mild ones.  J is being hit pretty hard.  He is young (25) and healthy, but he is wiped out.  The wild thing is, we were zooming with their family at the "zoom luck" on Friday and then he started showing symptoms last Tuesday.  He believes he got it from a co-worker about two weeks before he started showing symptoms. Please join us in praying for our dear friends. J's positive Dx really gave COVID a face for me.  Each stat is a person, a good friend, a family member.  Each life in precious.  I pray we are all learning this more and more each day.

Many parts of the country are opening up more and more this week.  It leaves everyone wondering what will happen with the freedoms that people are experiencing.  The projected potential American death totals are rising extremely quickly as people distance less.  Watching J's story unfold, seeing how long he waited for a test and for the results tells me that we won't truly see the effects of opening up states for another three weeks.  It will be interesting to see my Memorial Day post in a few weeks and find out how opening things up has changed things.

I will end the post with some updated stats.  I am continuing to use the world meter website so my stats are consistent. There are now 3,645,342 cases in the world.  This is about 600,000 more than last week.  There are 1,212,835 cases in the US which is over 200,000 more than last week.   These growth numbers are consistent with the growth from the previous week. There were 24,713 cases and 1,324 deaths the US in the last 24 hours.   There have been 252,241 total deaths worldwide with 69,921 American lives lost.  Just a couple weeks ago the projected death total by August was 60,000 and we hit it in April.  Yikes.

We now have 8,236 cases in our state, 95 cases in our county, and 7 in our community.  Our state had over 2,100 new cases this week.  Many meat plants were hit hard causing numbers to rise.   The cases in our county and area are on the rise as well.  I am so thankful that we are not venturing out anytime soon.

Brandon had quite a tricky time getting the photos from our phones tonight.  My eyes don't want to stay open, so I will have to start the next post tomorrow.  Sleep well friends.