Covid coming out of

• “I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”– Oscar Wilde

Everyone faced different COVID battles. Some people's lives were touched only minimally. Other people lost someone they loved. Some quarantined very hard based on high-risk factors. Others were able to be more flexible. 

I truly cannot judge everyone's decisions. Truly. This was a pandemic. And there is not a handbook on pandemic. There is no one alive who can remember a past pandemic ... and life was quite different 100+ years ago. 

Ironically, just about the time this pandemic hit, we were reading the book Fever. Man, to watch the reality of that come into reality just a few weeks later was an incredible coincidence.

For my immediate family (John and me and the kids), life got a lot easier once COVID hit our family. We were able to make choices that we would not have made had we not gotten the virus. This resulted in a lot of survivor's guilt for me. But it was our reality. (And again, no handbook for this pandemic.)

Either way, our deep quarantine continued on because of the amazing family we do life with: The Koytnski's. Eddie (the dad) is my first cousin and through a bunch of divine interventions, they ended up moving five miles down the road from us nearly three years ago. They are the ONE thing that had been missing from my life here at The Bauernhof prior to their arrival ... that close-by family that you could count on for anything at any minute. They ARE our people. They have made my life SO much richer and have truly "completed" our home here. 

John was exposed to COVID on a Tuesday evening in the hospital. We spent an entire day with the Kotynski family on Wednesday. Thursday was Thanksgiving. We were with our in-laws that entire day. And Anni and her foster daughter. We believe John "became contagious" on Friday morning. He and Jacob went to do hay together, and Jacob was the second person to come down with the virus. (Anni would also get COVID from us. Ironic since we had been quarantining from here for quite some time.)

Gabe (the eldest Kotynski child) was with us all of Friday, but he wasn't with John, and none of us were contagious yet. So somehow, in the end, their entire family, AND John's parents, were spared from COVID. 

So quarantine sort of "ended" for us, but for them, it was still at least+ six months from ending. Now, Eddie's parents (who live across the street from him) and both he and his wife have obtained the vaccine. We are therefore, slowly lifting the quarantine. Their vaccines aren't "solid" until May 6th so we are doing small things right now.

The beauty of this is .... breathtaking. On Thursday evening, for the first time in over a year, Kari and Ana were at a ballet lesson with Abigail. We have continued doing only private lessons this entire year to protect us all. But the girls are in a showcase on May 1, and so they had an opportunity to perform in front of their fellow dancers. 

These two pictures make me SO happy. I watched them dance, sobbing ....