It’s hard to believe that it’s been 5 years since I was watching Frozen 2 while refreshing the news of the pandemic. Every time I hear the song, “All is Found,” I’m still reminded of that feeling in my gut when I started to realize this virus would affect our lives in significant ways. Honestly, it’s not unlike the uncertainty I feel from my current news refreshes. (“Is this really happening?”)

I took a lot of photos during the pandemic. I shared a photo story about my pandemic experience here, but I wanted to share more from my archive of that time. I don’t want to forget the toilet paper shortage or how we tried to keep each other safe with garbage bag hugs and homemade masks.

During the extended social distancing period, we spent a whole lot of time outside, chopping wood, clearing out our little Secret Garden, sunning on the deck. We celebrated birthdays and holidays outside. We played card games outside.

We navigated how to do school from home for the rest of the school year, and then I dusted off my teacher’s hat and hosted a pandemic pod for the following school year. You can see images of that experience here.

We traded tickets to Greece for old-fashioned feet-in-the-air airplane rides. We traveled up and down our street. We explored the parts of our yard that got buried when they decided to pave a giant highway back there 70 years ago. We toured our favorite neighborhood spots and discovered some new ones.

We had lots of time at home to lean into behavior challenges. At the time, I thought the challenges we were having were all my fault. I thought that I must be getting my parenting wrong because the effort I was putting in was not producing the outcomes I expected…it would be a few more years before we would start collecting the acronyms to help frame our experience…PANDAS/PANS, ADHD, ODD, Anxiety, Dyslexia…to name a few. I’m sure I’ll share more about all of that some time too.

I know everyone’s pandemic experience was different, and it’s not lost on me that we are fortunate to be able to look back on this time with relative fondness.

We got the time to be together. We had work. We made it work.

We got covid at some point. We got better.

We languished. We lived.

a young girl sits on a package of toilet paper playing a small pink guitar

a birds eye view of someone playing the pandemic board game

a girl pokes her pencil through a hole in her tights with a sad face because she doesn't want to do school at home during the pandemic

a birds eye view of school lunch on a table

3 children work on sewing up stuffed animals outside

a girl leans her head on a window and looks out

a child sits on a couch watching a computer for school during the pandemic

a child lies on a couch while two other children build with legos in front of a window with a rainbow painted on it

one child stands on a headboard and yells at two other children on the bed

kids look at their easter baskets outside

a child wears easter bunny ears and smiles at her dad while she swings with him

a girl hugs her grandma who is wearing a mask and garbage bag as protection from covidduring the pandemic