I had a much-needed social distance mom date with a friend this week. We sat in the back of our cars 10 feet apart and gabbed for two hours. One of the things we talked about was how one of the most stressful parts of this already stressful situation is being completely unable to plan anything besides maybe what’s for dinner. Birthdays, vacations, family visits, holidays, summer camps, sports leagues and anniversaries aren’t happening as scheduled. Pretty much all we can look forward to right now is an unknown time some distance in the future where life might go back to being boring and normal and we can complain about stuff like traffic and Dunkin’ making my order wrong.

In a lot of ways, this isn’t that big of a change for me. We don’t live near parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles, so we often spend our holidays as a nuclear family. I’m also an expert at postponed or canceled plans thanks to our life being at the mercy of the Navy. Oh, you thought you had a beach vacation? Too bad, your husband’s work schedule has completely changed and you’re not going. My kids are old hands at Daddy missing their birthday or not seeing him for months at a time so the travel ban that keeps him in New Hampshire is disappointing but not insurmountable.

Unfortunately for me, the way I’ve always handled the uncertainty and inevitable disappointments is by staying as busy as possible. Military families can handle a lot, but we do it with a little help (or a lot of help) from our friends. The combination of social distancing and a completely empty calendar is tough. Add in things like a broken dishwasher or a flooded basement to deal with alone – because although there are people I could call in a life-or-death situation, I feel terrible asking them to leave their houses for something so low on the emergency scale – and I am not the woman I’ve been pretending to be for the last 10+ years. I can do it completely on my own for about 72 hours at a time before having some sort of ugly breakdown.

But I don’t think that’s unreasonable during quarantine. I don’t even feel bad about it. I just keep reminding myself that at some unknown time some distance in the future, life will go back to being boring and normal. Hang in there.

Here is what April 7th looked like at our house:

Last year I heard about the Wicked Tulips farm over in Rhode Island, but never actually made it there to check it out. I just stalked local photographers and Instagram for pictures and then cursed myself for not finding time to go. But I also had a small baby and was counting down to our Disney trip, so my attention was elsewhere. Wicked Tulips just didn’t happen.

This year, I am in the middle of what feels like the longest underway in submarine history and desperate to find things that wear out my kids and keep us out of the house. But I also really really hate people, especially crowds of people, especially crowds of people all trying to look at the same flowers I am trying to look at. I knew the weekends would be super crowded at the tulip farm (they sell tickets and sold out weekends within hours of releasing them) and I wasn’t totally convinced I should let the kids skip school just to pick flowers. Luckily, Wicked Tulip offers early bird tickets on Tuesdays – from 7-10 am only people who bought the early bird tickets can come in and take pictures or pick. It was the perfect solution, especially since early morning light is better than 2 pm light when you’re in a field with zero shade.

The only downside to 7 am tulip fields is that it’s about an hour away, so I had to get my kids up at 5:30 to get there. I bribed them with both candy at the tulip farm and donuts on the way home, so it went pretty well. We made it back and I dropped the big kids off at school before the morning bell.

We had such a good time the first time, we went back and did it again the next week. I highly, highly recommend the early bird ticket if you’re going to visit in 2019, but even if you just go on a crowded weekend you should go. It’s so much fun.

Now the farm is closed for the season and I’ll have to wait a whole year to do it again. I did manage to take JUST A FEW pictures though.

The first morning we went to Wicked Tulips it was very sunny. The left side of the fields in the pick-your-own area had some shade from the trees at the very beginning, but the show garden was full sun the entire time.

The second morning it was overcast, with even, grey cloud cover. It was also slightly foggy, but in a way that old shows in the background. I actually like the way the light and colors look in the second set of pictures more, even if they do look like they were taken on a movie set instead of real life.

About 1/3 of my pictures have people photoshopped out of them, the rest was just really good angles, using long lenses, or timing my shots between people walking past. There were several dozen people there both times, I’m just good at keeping them out of my pictures.

I’m actually really proud of that one of Linc on the bench, I only edited out one person.

See all those people in the background? That’s way less than the sunny day. Most people have DSLR cameras and are there to take photos of the actual tulips, not kids. There were almost no kids there at 7 am.

General tips for the tulip farm:

1. Wear boots, even if it’s not raining. It’s a farm. Plus they’re super cute in pictures.
2. Bring cutters or clippers. It’s easy to pull the tulips out of the ground but you get really long stems that are hard to break. You can make pretty bouquets wrapped in paper at the wrapping station but you’ll want to trim them all to the same length.
3.  The tulips cost $1/stem. They take cards. Buy LOTS of tulips.
4. The temp at 7 am is 20 degrees cooler than the temp at 8 am. Layers are good.
5. Bring your DSLR if you have one and whatever your longest lens is. Shoot zoomed in (so if you have the 18-105mm that came with your camera, set it at 105) so you get the blurred background and can avoid people.
6. You should go. Really. Even if you hate people. It was still fun and the kids loved it too.

I am sticking with my theory that if we stay really super busy all the time that this underway will pass quickly.

I REALLY hope it’s working for the kids because all it’s doing for me is making me exhausted. I live with a constant vague sense of dread that I’m forgetting something or that we’re late for something or that I’m supposed to be somewhere else.

My iPhone seems to agree with me, because every 2 minutes the little alert pops up that says “blah blah number of minutes to get home” and offers me directions back to my house. Usually, it’s offering me directions to ballet or swim or cheer or karate or whatever else we’re supposed to be doing. I find that very helpful, if somewhat creepy since I never specifically told my phone I was going those places. It just learned them. But constantly telling me I should be headed back to the house is freaking me out. WHAT AM I LATE FOR, IPHONE?

Yesterday we were 15 minutes late to Caroline’s mandatory extra ballet recital because Lincoln lost his shoes at our morning playdate. The good news is we did eventually find them, but every single time we need to get from point A to point B something like that happens.

It’s really hard to be Fun Mom when you also have to be Find Your Shoes Mom and No You Can’t Have Freeze Pops For Breakfast Mom and Stop Talking And Go To Bed Mom. I want to have ice cream for dinner too. I don’t want to spend the afternoon putting away laundry and changing sheets and doing dishes. Fun Mom doesn’t have to do that stuff. But there isn’t anyone else, so right now I’m Fun Mom and Regular Mom, which means I go to bed at 9:30 and haven’t seen a grown-up TV show in three weeks.

But we have been having a lot of fun.

p.s. It was about 73 degrees at the first beach and 65 the second time. I am raising hardy New England children.

Happy Easter! I didn’t take pictures of the bazillion eggs the bunny left all over the house – or the mess the kids made ripping apart their baskets – because I prefer to just remember the adorable, photogenic parts of our holidays. Even so, you will notice a distinct lack of pictures that include all four children. Did you know four children is a lot of children? It seems like even more than usual when you’re running around a busy farm full of old buildings, tempting mud puddles and tons of baby goats. Plus that’s an exhausting way to spend the morning if you’re a baby, so Finn slept through most of dinner.

But yay for baby goats at Beltane Farm! They also did an egg hunt, and Evan found the golden egg that said “winner” inside. He won the cheese of his choice from the store and picked something called “Duchess”, which was super delicious and not at all what you would expect an 8-year-old to be excited about. My kid is pretty cool.

That last face is Caroline trying the lemon meringue pie we made yesterday. She’s a fan.