Asheville 2020

We had big plans to go to California with the Skoniecznys before everything came crashing down, so all of a sudden our summer vacation mindset had to change. Despite all that was going on we decided to take advantage of the North Carolina mountains and the numerous outdoor activities that Asheville has to offer. We have been there before, and we had some ideas for new things to do, but couldn't pass up repeating some of our old favorites. Tubing down the French Broad River was top of the list of repeat activities. Since we have done this before, we brought our cooler so we could fully indulge in food and beverages on our leisurely float.

It was a beautiful day, and the floating was just as much fun as we remembered it to be. Because travel was up in the air for most people, it wasn't crowded and we even had the opportunity to go for a second float at a reduced rate. We jumped at the chance and spent another couple of hours on the river. It was fun, relaxing, and great to be outside and not in our house.

We rented a apartment that was right over a bakery and some restaurants. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed and the bakery only had to go orders on a limited schedule due to Covid. But that's alright because we weren't planning on spending much time inside anyway. However, it did rain a couple of days so we had to be creative indoors until the rain passed. An artistic photo shoot fit the bill.

We had the goal of trying to hike every day. On the drive down we actually stopped at Big Creek in the Great Smokies to do what turned out to be a really cool one. Our next stop was Dupont State Forest that had a number of great hikes that took us to several different waterfalls.

Tbe hikes weren't all that difficult, and it is always nice to be in the woods in the summertime. 

One of the claims to fame of this particular area is that it is also a place where scenes from the Hunger Games and Last of the Mohicans have been filmed. This picture of us at the Triple Falls should be familiar to those who have followed the life and times of Katniss Everdeen.

Each waterfall gave us something different. Here is Reese at High Falls, soaking it all in. We had to do a little scrambling to get to the base of it, but the effort was definitely worth it. Both of the girls enjoyed any opportunity they could get to do some rock hopping.

As always, Sarah did her best to document the trip so we would know where we had been and what we had done no matter how long afterwards we were looking at the pictures. Out of all of the waterfalls we saw that day, Hooker Falls was actually the least impressive, though we didn't stick around to see what happened to the guy who appeared to be preparing to go over it in a kayak. 

One place we knew we had to go to this trip was Sliding Rock in Pisgah National Forest. On a typical summer day there are crowds of people who line up to experience this natural water slide. If you go at 10am on a cloudy day during a pandemic, however, you don't have a problem with long lines.

First of all, it's really cool and you need to try it out. Second, the water is really cold. Like, really cold. Reese went down only once because it was that cold. You slide down one of three different routes down the rock and land in a natural pool. The hardest part is trying to keep your body straight so that you don't enter the pool backwards. John never mastered that part.

The next day we went on another short hike before we did some white water rafting on a different section of the French Broad River. In this picture the girls didn't know what fun awaited them.

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the white water rafting because we were afraid to bring our cameras/phones on the boats. In hindsight, it would have been fine. But we also had a great time just enjoying the ride, which didn't have crazy rapids, but still wasn't the Zen Tubing we had done earlier in the trip.

But our fun wasn't done. To bring our trip to a rousing conclusion we left Asheville and headed to Black Mountain to meet up with the Abrahams. Kelly was already there with Ella, and Kirk and Claire were on their way down. We were excited to spend a couple of days with them exploring Montreat. We did get one cool hike in to Lookout Point before we met up.

Much to the girls' chagrin, our planned activities involved more hiking. But at least this time around they got to be with Ella and Claire, which tends to make everything better. We never get tired of taking pictures of this foursome.

In between our hikes we stayed at the Assembly Inn in downtown Montreat. Because of the pandemic we were literally the only guests there. We took over the lobby like we owned the place. It was quite an experience.

When all was said and done, our trip to North Carolina did just what we needed it to do. It got us outside and out of Kentucky. And between the family time with just the four of us and the quality time with the Abrahams it recharged our soul.

Reinvented Summer

 One thing that the girls have looked forward to most summers is summer camp. This is especially true for Callie. Callie's favorite camp by far is Cathedral Domain, which is a one-week overnight camp. When her and her friends found out that this was not going to happen this summer, they sprung into action and developed their own plan. Each girl would host a night of fun at their house. They came up with food options, activities, and even a detailed schedule for the parents to follow. When it was our turn we were ready.

We were assigned a scavenger hunt for the activity, make your own dessert bar, and tacos for dinner. Breakfast was also planned out. For the scavenger hunt we developed an activity based at the Henry Clay Estate right by our house. We divided the girls up into two teams and they had to take a photo or video as described on their assignment sheet at different locations on the grounds.

They are a great group of girls, and are both goofy and competitive. They were also kind to include Reese in the activities and she of course loved being a part of it. We had a great night with all of them.

Holland a day at the reservoir planned out. Maddie had a camping theme, Addie had game night, and Lydia had a movie extravaganza. All the parents were impressed with the level of planning and it was a great way to spend a week during a summer without so many planned activities.

Callie also got the opportunity to head to the lake for the day with the Fletchers. She and Addie have become great friends over the past couple of years, and certainly complement each other well. They even started a book club for two over the summer where they would go the local park and read in hammocks.

Biking also became a regular activity where all the girls would get together, bike to a new location, have lunch, and then bike home. The pandemic certainly forced the cancellation of a lot of activities, but it also led to unexpected developments. For Callie and her friends it was a newfound independence. And it actually was true for Reese as well. She and Callie spent a lot of time biking around by themselves, something that we don't know we would have allowed them to do if the circumstances were different.

Fun with the Johnsons

As virtual school ended and summer began, it was all about trying to find activities to keep everyone entertained, safe, and connected with friends. Local parks were restricting numbers and you had to reserve a time to go and hike. We managed to arrange a reservation for one Saturday in June to go to Raven's Run with the Johnsons. It was a beautiful day and everyone was so excited to be out of their respective houses.

There's always fun stories involved when we get together and this time was no different. We learned on the hike that Mason would not be removing his hat because he had attempted to cut his hair since barbershops were closed, and let's just say this won't be a profession he will pursue in the future. We managed to be good and not knock "by accident" to see what the damage looked like.

Emerson charged into the open space like a penned up thoroughbred let loose in the field. Reese was right behind him, and we constantly had to make sure they weren't leaving us all too far behind. The whole hike was a good reminder of how nice Raven's Run is and how much we enjoy spending time with the Johnsons. The only drawback to the day was that our reservation was only for a two-hour block which meant we couldn't just lose ourselves in the day. We had to return to our car by a certain time, which added some unneeded stress to what typically is a care free hike.

Although we didn't get to spend a lot of time with the Johnsons at Raven's Run, we did get to have a whole week with their two cats. They were getting out of town and needed someone to feed and love on Charlie and Greta. Reese and Callie said yes before the request was even complete, and we stocked up on benadryl for Reese so that the love affair wouldn't lead to a swollen face.

Overall it was fun having the cats around, though it had some drama. Our hamster Charlie was not necessarily a fan of the intrusive guests and we soon moved him out of the living room. The cat Charlie, meanwhile, was not sure what to make of this house. He disappeared for the first 24 hours until John found him in the crawlspace under our addition that he had managed to crawl into and couldn't find his way out of. Ultimately he spent most of his time in the rafters of our basement. Greta barely had time to breathe because Reese wanted to hold her every minute of the day. With a cat fix like this we would avoid getting a pandemic pet of our own.

Continuing Healthy at Home

Sunday family Zoom calls were something we looked forward to as we began each week with some good family connection. We tried to continue the theme of dressing up with items we have in our basement and were able to keep it going for a little while at least. Even our costume bins weren't prepared for how long this was going to last, which is saying a lot.

Mother's Day also looked a little bit different this year, but it certainly hit the spot. Since the girls had taken up riding their bikes around the neighborhood a lot, we decided to take a family bike ride down town. Sharon and Chris let us borrow their cool rides and we packed a lunch and off we went.

After having lunch at Triangle Park downtown we cruised around a very empty University of Kentucky campus. It was strange to see it so quiet, but also fun to have so empty paths to bike on. We had a great time and certainly enjoyed getting to see Lexington in a way that we don't normally see it. 

We weren't the only ones taking advantage of the quieter surroundings in Lexington. One afternoon we looked out our back windows to see a wild turkey roaming around our backyard. He was perfectly calm and just appeared to be out for a stroll. He hopped up on our back patio to check things out and we had to call out the Chrismans to make sure they didn't miss the show. And then just like that he walked out our driveway just as he had walked in. 

Spring was strange to say the least. The girls continued to go to school through their NTI and didn't have any real interaction with their teachers. And there was not any end of year celebration like normal. However, Cassidy teachers did put together a collection of online field day activities/challenges that at least got Callie and Reese outside having some fun. 

The school year may have ended but the cooking certainly did not. With no soccer, school, or summer camps, the girls had to spend their days in other productive ways. We had hopes that they would take over dinner responsibilities, but like so many kids around the country they were all about the desserts. 

This particular cake was a shared creation. Callie took on more of the baking responsibilities and Reese led the decorations. Neither of them really maximized the eating responsibilities, however, so many of the baked goods ended up growing stale on the counter. We ate enough macaroons, cheesecake, and other goodies to be polite, but we had no chance of keeping up with what was being produced in the kitchen on a daily basis.

Thankfully the girls also had their respective reading obsessions that gave them a break from the kitchen every now and then. Reese made up her mind to tackle Harry Potter, and it was so great to see her excitement with how the story unfolded. And we celebrated each finished book by rewatching the movie version of that book as a family. Amazingly enough, she completed the series of seven books in three months. It was impressive to say the least.

The days were long and you can only read so much and bake so much before you have to come up with new ideas and challenges. One day the girls decided to have a 24-hour tent challenge in the living room. Guess it's a good thing we never really furnished that room. They set up the tent and began transferring all the items they would need to last the whole length of the experience, beanbags and all.

 

And yes, they even took advantage of the small refridgerator we had acquired from the Chrismans. They plugged it in, and all of a sudden their 24-hour journey was going to include chilled beverages and other goodies. They had a lot of fun and we even all shared one meal together inside their accommodations. They slept their one night, but the tent stayed up for at least a week. Truth be told, they fell short of the full challenge by about six hours, but in the midst of early quarantine it provided a good distraction.

Even in the midst of a public health crisis we managed to get in our annual physical for the girls. Clearly they were willing to ham it up while waiting for the doctor to show up. Callie grew three inches over the year and, at 5 feet 2 1/2 inches she was on the verge of passing her mother. Reese grew 2 1/2 inches over the year. But the big difference is in that year Callie added 14 lbs to her frame while Reese packed on a mere 3 lbs. Reese's motor burns hot and nothing much sticks to her frame. But the key thing is they are healthy and strong as ever.

Early on we made a decision that the Abrahams were going to be in our Covid bubble for the duration of the pandemic regardless of what it brought. We spent a lot of time outside, an experience made even better by outdoor movie nights and firepits. A big thanks to Kirk for all the work he had put in to their outdoor patio the year before. 

Although our wine club took a hiatus, we couldn't let the first 50th birthday pass without celebrating. For most of us this night marked the last time we ate at a restaurant for a long, long time. We wore masks walking in and felt a bit strange since these mandates had only just begun. It was a wonderful evening celebrating Tracy's big day and a good memory to hold on to in the months that followed.

Easter at a Socially Appropriate Distance

One of the adaptations to life in a pandemic for us has been online church. We are fortunate that technology allows us to stay connected in that way, and our church has also tried to keep the congregation involved by having different members record the readings for the week. Reese and John were asked to do a reading for Easter, so they had to pre-record it. One look at this picture tells you all you need to know about what it takes to look the part in a virtual world. They say a mullet is "business in the front and party in the back." Well Covid has introduced the virtual world of "professional up top and comfy down below."

As we have previously discussed, Callie was becoming quite a baker. For Easter she delved into Pinterest and came up with a caramel-filled toasted coconut delight that looked like an Easter basket. So fun and so good. She is definitely helping us up our game.

Since the virtual world has brought out our costume side, we thought that Easter sunday was the perfect opportunity to bring out our old Easter bonnets and fascinators that the girls had made years before for a Derby day. There was certainly a lot to celebrate on this day, as we took advantage of the smallest opportunities to be together with Chrismans even if it meant Easter would be outdoors and at two different tables.

 

Fortunately the weather cooperated and we were comfortable with a blanket or two for some. The spring overall was relatively warm, which made gathering outdoors that much easier. Sharon and Chris once again made a wonderful meal and we felt blessed to share another Easter with them.

It certainly helps that Chris shares a love of peeps with most of the Bowes clan. It didn't take but a few seconds for Reese to open up the skewer of Peeps that the Chrismans gave the girls for Easter. This is no fake smile in this picture.

In honor of our governor Andy, Sarah convinced the Easter bunny that the theme for this year's Easter basket should be healthy at home. The Easter bunny was happy to cooperate and, next to some candy provided a lacrosse stick, a soccer ball, a few books for reading and a one with baking recipes, and other goodies to keep them entertained within our four walls. 

Spring 2020 - Coming to Grips with Covid

In the second week of March, our worlds changed dramatically. John was on spring break and learned that EKU was going fully online for the rest of the semester. The girls were told that they would have two weeks of NTI (non-traditional instruction) at home leading into their week of spring break. So when they left school on Friday, March 13, they were going to be home for at least the next three weeks. And Sarah transitioned to remote work until further notice at the same time. It was weird and unsettling, but we decided to make the most of it. Initially that meant taking advantage of a well-timed Christmas gift, the Nintendo Switch. We were going to dance until Covid-19 dissipated.

The extended Bowes family was on top of the situation, and almost right away Aunt Suzy scheduled a weekly Zoom calls for us to connect and provide updates from our respective locations. That first call was memorable for a lot of reasons, but especially because Uncle Chris called in as Father Guido Sarducci. This Zoom point of view was one we are all going to become very familiar with over the months to come.

In Kentucky, this first days and week of the pandemic is when we fell in love with our governor who had just been elected months before. His positive attitude and willingness to make the right decisions for our community were very clear from the start. His 4pm daily updates became must-see TV and we often found ourselves quoting him - "You can't be doing that" and "We'll get through this together." Like many other families looking to spread the positive energy and to keep our kids busy, we had Callie and Reese do some chalk art on our driveway. This was also when we started taking regularly family walks to get out of the house.

In our neighborhood, like many around Lexington and other places in the country, some good person organized a stuffed animal scavenger hunt. We walked all over looking for stuffed animals that people had placed in their windows. This inspired us to do some outreach of our own to let the people we knew and missed that we were thinking of them. We wrote cards and on a couple of Sundays taped cards and felt hearts to the front doors of our friends throughout the city. This was a great way of channeling the nervous energy built up in our strange new world.

Everyone was trying to find ways to spread good energy and the messages we needed to stay healthy. One of our favorite local companies, Kentucky for Kentucky, put out a great shirt that Callie has on in this picture. Our state seal declares, "United We Stand, Divided We Fall." For Covid-19, they changed the slogan to "United We Stand, Six Feet Apart." Every challenge has its silver lining, and the silver lining at this time was seeing so many people taking walks as families and being creative to pass the time.

Speaking of being creative, as the weather got warmer, Callie and Reese found it easier to spend time outside. And the tree in front of our house was just right for their hammocks. But they also discovered that they could just use their hammock straps to do some routines you might see in a cirque de soleil production. 

We got the news that after spring break the girls would not be going back to school but would officially be in NTI for the foreseeable future. The schools kept waiting to make it a permanent call, but we were pretty sure that they were not going back in person for the rest of the year. So as the teachers from Cassidy prepared to do a drive-by parade for their students we made the girls redo their back-to-school posters from the beginning of the school year. The reality of things had begun to slowly seep into the adult's minds at least.

That didn't mean that all was doom and gloom. Inspired by Guido Sarducci and Sarah's bins of Halloween extras we tried to bring the funny and unexpected to the weekly family Zoom calls. It definitely sparked some good conversations, if nothing else.

Puzzles, they were a big thing. When people tell the story of Covid in the years to come, puzzles will definitely deserve their own chapter. We had a pretty serious puzzle phase in the first couple of months and completed at least six or seven 500 piece or more puzzles. We knew we had to provide some manner of balance to all the screen time everyone in our house was dealing with at that time. Again, puzzles brought our family together in ways we hadn't seen before. Another silver lining.

As Covid began to take lives in Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear asked Kentuckians to show compassion by lighting their houses green to memorialize the lives lost. It is a simple and yet powerful gesture, especially when it happens on a large scale. John started counting all of the green lights he saw on his morning runs, and as the days went by the number of green lights grew exponentially. What started out as 20-30 lights turned into nearly 100 within a couple of weeks.

No matter what color the lights were outside, things were getting a little crazy inside. Our family had never spent so much time together and all rules were starting to get thrown out the window. One night the girls decided to see if they could eat with their feet. And for some reason we let them. And not only did we let them we took numerous pictures. This is definitely not the only picture taken.

In other flexibility news, Reese spent hours on end mastering yoga poses. However, the ones she enjoyed the most were the tandem yoga poses she found on You Tube. Sarah was happy to work with her on all sorts of circus tricks. We have a few pictures of Callie trying similar poses with somewhat less artistic results. Callie is heavier than Reese and definitely not as flexible.

But Callie did develop into a better baker than her sister. After we scoured the town for flour and yeast, Callie was able to produce some very tasty desserts as well as bread. The kitchen was a mess more often than not, but the products of Callie's labor made it worth it.

All in all, this picture kind of sums up what was going on in our house. We were spending a lot of time together, making do with what we had on hand, and being creative as possible. By the way, who knew we had that many hair ties in our house? There were lots of things to be disappointed about. No in person school and the NTI was not challenging or engaging. Their spring soccer seasons were cancelled and they didn't get to see their friends. But Callie and Reese handled it all as well as we could have asked, and the entire situation reinforced what we have always known - these two girls love each other a lot and have a bond that is truly unbreakable.