Grocery Shopping

Ian carries these stuffed animals around the house every day. This photo (taken today) was not staged in any way.

Paul has taken over the grocery shopping for our family because he's the one who is still interacting with people outside our house since his business is allowed to continue operating. The man who works in the office is working from home. Paul's dad is taking a hiatus from working. Paul has most of the crew only working four 10 hour shifts (Tues-Friday). There are only three people (including Paul) working there on Mondays and Saturdays. Shopping for groceries is not an easy task at the moment as the prices have gone up dramatically for some items at some grocery stores, and all of the stores are struggling to maintain an inventory that matches the demand. I've seen so many memes about the lack of toilet paper, but that's certainly not been the only item that is hard to get these days. A few days ago I thought I'd place an order online through Walmart, but I didn't do so at first because so many of the items I wanted to get were out of stock. Also, I found it was very difficult to reserve a time slot because they are only booking one day in advance. Yesterday I went online in the morning and was able to get a slot for this evening, and more of the items we wanted were available. I planned out our meals for three weeks to determine what we needed to buy. Then I emailed Paul a list of what items we needed that we couldn't get at Walmart (margarine, hot dogs, bologna, ground beef, chicken breast, etc.). Paul got some of the things on my list at the Weis in Danville on his way home from work last night.

This morning I went on Weis's website and placed an order with the Weis in Lewisburg. The earliest available slot was Sunday afternoon. I knew when placing both orders that there was no guarantee we would get everything that I requested. Never in my life do I recall praying about the inventory of Walmart or a grocery store, but I found myself praying about it today. I was relieved when I saw that they filled about 90% of my order at Walmart. They were out of sausage, one of the cheeses I tried to buy, one of the kinds of yogurt, and only gave me one dozen eggs although I had tried to buy two dozen. I will say that I didn't notice any price increases at Walmart. Hopefully Weis will be able to fulfill our entire order on Sunday. Walmart lets you modify your online order, but Weis doesn't so I couldn't add the items that Walmart was unable to fulfill. The plan is that when Paul picks up the online order on Sunday that he'll also go into the store and pick up a few things. If Weis fulfills all of our order and Paul can pick up the other few items, then I think the only shopping he will need to do in the next three weeks will be to pick up things like milk and produce that can't be bought three weeks in advance. The governor has said we are only to go grocery shopping once a week, but Paul will have gone three times in five days by Sunday, but that's only because it's been hard to find things. I had to pay more for ground beef than I think I've ever paid before, but I did find a price that wasn't utterly ridiculous. I'm thinking at some point we should invest in a chest freezer. My normal grocery shopping routine is that I stock up on items when they are on sale in the hopes that I buy enough that it will carry us through until the next time that particular item is on sale at a great price. It's easy to store extra boxes of pasta, canned goods, and cereal, but I'm very limited in what I can store that needs to be frozen. If we get a chest freezer, then I think in the future (once life returns to normal) I could stock up more.

Since the kids and I are not going anywhere by vehicle these days, we have more time for being outside. Nadia and Ian went a short distance today on their scooters and then played in our yard until Oliver and I got home. Oliver rode his bike for almost 5.5 miles, and I walked most of that and jogged part of the time. That's the most exercise I've gotten in awhile! I used to go that route (or other longer routes) 3-4 times a week when Paul was a professor. When he went back to the family business in May 2016, that was one of the sacrifices I had to make - no more running. I'm not in good enough shape to run that many miles yet, but I'm so happy that Ian and Nadia are now old enough that they can be unsupervised for a short amount of time and Oliver is able to ride his bike for 5+ miles with me. I believe I'll be exercising outside on a far more regular basis over the coming months! I vastly prefer exercising outside to exercising in the basement. Oliver and I were enjoying seeing different animals, and I was thrilled when he noticed things that we've studied recently in science such as moss.

Oliver brings different stuffed animals down each day. He brought these down yesterday and asked me to take a picture.