Life In The Magic Messy Kingdom

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...Continued from yesterday:

    Soon after my daughter and her family arrived from Los Angeles to spend a month sheltering in place with us here in Gahanna, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio (See yesterday's post, "A Month in the Magic Messy Kingdom"), my daughter Maria and son-in-law Justin set up their office at our dining room table. 
   Tom and I looked after our grand daughters while their parents worked, though visits to the office were allowed,

...and work was occasionally moved off-site.

        Our days soon settled into more or less of a routine, some days more, some days less.
        Since Los Angeles is three time zones behind Columbus, Maria and Justin's workday generally didn't formally start until 10 or 11 a.m., which usually left them some time in the morning for some family fun.
        After breakfast they often went on a long bike ride around the neighborhood, or sometimes on an outing to a local park.
        Twice they drove out to Alum Creek Beach early on a week day morning when there were few other beach-goers.

         One Saturday morning Tom and I took the girls to downtown Gahanna,

...which on this day we found alarmingly crowded and unmasked.

   However we donned our masks and stayed far from the crowds and walked to Creekside Park,

...to play in the creek.

     Once the girls and Aunt Theresa and I we went for walk around the neighborhood,

...where the girls were particularly enamored of the fuzzy pink flowers on a tree and  wanted to stop to take some pictures of the tree to text to their mom.

     Everything was a wonder.
     And so the mornings were generally for fun and playing until lunchtime.

    One day the girls were craving pizza for lunch, and so we made my now-famous canned-crust pizza. (See post from 8/3/2017 for the recipe).

     After lunch it was time for an hour of two of summer academics,

...which they often preferred to do outside on the front porch,

...or in the back yard.

...or sometimes on the swing.

    The day typically included an arts and crafts session.
    Here they were making some book marks.

    And I gave them their piano lesson.

     They often helped with the cooking and baking.

     But there was still always plenty of time to play,

...until dinner, at which time every day Justin and Maria would temporarily relocate their business headquarters so we could eat dinner in the dining room.

      The day was often book-ended for Maria, Justin and the girls with another family bike ride around the block before bedtime.
       I suppose the days were nothing special. But they were special just the same.