Lovely Labor Day!

 For the first time in forever, Matt had the whole Labor Day weekend off work and we were able to drag a couple families with us down to EI.  This was a different kind of weekend for a few reasons, which I'll explain.  

First, the kids and I have been down so many times on mom/kid trips, but this is the first time (beside my whole family) that we've had the dads too.  I thought all the little people might not be relaxing enough for Matt, but ended up working great.  Turns out, we're (finally) at a stage of family life where our kids can just play and entertain themselves without too much parental intervention.  I guess the combo of free time, free snacking, friends, and movies makes parents an afterthought to them.  ;)  It was super fun to hang out as couples and also so helpful to have additional eyes on the kids in the ocean and help with things like the ever-popular sunscreening of little bodies.

Second, we had a family join us that we know, but haven't vacationed with before.  All got along great and it was fun to get to know them better.

Third, in true 2020 fashion, we had some crazy "wildlife" encounters.  The beach was infested with biting flies.  Gray first discovered them on his first night trying to sleep on the hammock shirtless.  His back was covered in bites the next morning.  Then we spent a good bit of time on the beach the next day slapping our legs and later, spraying bug spray and rubbing dryer sheets on ourselves to try to repel them.  Somewhere in there a couple people got stung by yellow jackets on the lip and belly.  Then the weirdest thing happened the last day, when everyone got what looked like little glass spikes stuck in their swimsuits.  There was howling, squirming, running from the water, digging in swimsuits, taking off swimsuits, etc.  Turns out they are "sea butterflies"...some kind of member of the mollusk family called 'pteropods'.  People on the EI facebook group said they've been coming to the beach since the 70's and have never seen such a thing, though earlier this year I heard they showed up on beaches in Maryland.  Other sea life encounters included spotting a big sting ray right close to where all were swimming and watching tons of fish swimming away from what looked to be a shark (fin spotted coming behind them), also close to shore.

In spite of the above-mentioned woes, we had a wonderful weekend full of ocean swimming, sand burying, games on the beach, laughing, talking, games at the beach house, movies, walks, etc. etc.  We did not want to come home and waking up Tuesday wasn't pretty.  :)  But now we are settling in, fun memories to keep us going as we get back into the real world.  Thanks, Nanny and Pa, for the privilege of having a place at the beach to share.  We can't wait to go back.

I will survive ;)

 

We are almost through 3 weeks of school and we are making it.  Some days I'm running from room to room, waking kids, getting kids on zoom, looking for kids, problem solving, getting back on my zoom.  Whew.  Most of the time it's going just fine, but we aren't without our share of mishaps.  This morning, I was a few minutes into my first kindergarten class of the day when I realized Gray was still asleep and supposed to be in his homeroom.  I had to close my camera and run wake him up.  Another day my VIPKID class ran so late that I didn't have even a second between classes to wake the girls and had to say, "Sorry, excuse me" to my student and run upstairs quickly.  I often forget what day it is and what time it is because so much of the day is repetitive (4 groups in a row of teaching the same lesson, then repeat with a new lesson).  But I really love working with my kindergarten teacher and I really enjoy the kids.  Other happenings...or mishappenings with giving a kindergartener free reign of her online schooling:

-Allie loves her PE teacher Mr Westbrook and shouted, "Bye Mrs. Wexperd!" on her first day of PE.  She's still a little confused about his name and yesterday took it upon herself to open his zoom link while a second grade class was in there.  Apparently he let her in so she had PE twice that day.

-I walked in the other day to find her teacher teaching and Allie's face all up in the camera while making silly noises and babbling.  She wasn't muted, but somehow her teacher wasn't disturbed.

-I often find her at the end of a class going, "Excuse me, Mrs. Brooks!  Excuse me, Mrs. Brooks!" until her teacher acknowledges her and lets her share something soooo important like "My Daddy is going to give me money if I put my face in the water."

-She was supposed to cut out pictures of things she likes and make a video for her teacher.  I overheard her making the video and saying, "...and that's a wine bottle".  Yep, she cut out wine bottles as her favorite things.

-She is obsessed with the school-issued ipad and if I'm not careful I will find her surfing youtube or making her own "youtube videos"..."Hi guys, it's me, Allie....I hope you enjoyed this video.  Don't forget to 'scribe!"

-It's been an adjustment for her in not getting the same attention as she's used to.  Especially the first week or two, it was getting cringingly common for her to go bug a sibling while I'm teaching and end up wailing loudly when they ask her to go.  I have to either mute myself if my teacher is teaching and hope she doesn't ask me anything, or smile and speak really loudly if I'm teaching.  Thankfully she is getting more used to her solo time this week.

-On her first day of school, I was encouraging her to be still and quiet when her teacher is talking during her zoom and she said, "I will, Mom, and I'll try not to fart."

Overall, thank goodness, she is really enjoying school and is really making good progress with her writing, which she hasn't really liked to do in the past.  

The other kids are hanging in there. Joshua's work space is in the loft and he enjoys his independence.  He seems to be using boring zoom time to perfect his dart skills.  He doesn't much feel like he's in high school without actually going to the school and experiencing that big crowd. He knows some kids in his classes, but some he has older kids that look like grown men.  He has done a group project somehow and built some sort of bridge in there.  Organization comes naturally to him and he manages himself without much of any input from us.

Gray is present at his meetings but I'm just not sure what he's absorbing.  He spends his day lounging in his corner blue chair looking half awake and often doesn't grasp what his assignments are.  He likes his teachers and they've been super kind to check in on him often.  Much to my chagrin, they do not actually sing in remote Chorus, but do more of a music history class.  I was looking forward to a little musical entertainment coming from that blue chair. 

 Julia has a lot of trouble with math and is good about asking her teacher for extra help on zoom, but she has needed a lot of my help too.  This requires more patience than I have ever needed for anything in my life.  If we don't both end up in tears, I feel like we've been successful.  Julia is able to manage getting on her zooms thankfully, though this week she was trying to pull getting up 5 minutes before and then leaving her meeting in the middle to get breakfast.  She despises me checking in on her or coming near her or looking at her when she is doing her zoom.  She lost a tooth two days ago and I forgot to put money under her pillow.  I remembered the next morning and tried to sneak up to her room, only to find her doing zoom PE there.  Between leg raises, she was giving me the stink eye and hissing at me, "Mommy!!...and you forgot the tooth fairy money!!"  Sometimes you just can't do anything right!  :)

Here are a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.

We've had a couple of pool trips.  We've been trying to help Allie overcome her water fears but not sure the summer is long enough for that!  It's getting cooold in the pool these days.

Mimi came to help Allie settle in to her first real week of school.  It sure helped to have someone keep an eye on her (see above examples) and Allie loved the companionship.

Sometimes the kids go have lunch with a friend, which is nice.  They are missing a lot of the hard things about being in school with peers and a lot of the fun things too, but I think overall it's less stress to be able to put all the school drama behind and just hang out with the few people that you can be yourself with.

Julia took along her daily companion and fish expert Addie to choose a fish of her own.  She had some setbacks saving up money (i.e. she gave up and spent it all a few times) but finally had enough.  She loves Mango!

Always some vehicle maintenance going on with our resident auto expert.  He's tackled some bigger repairs this summer.

And we continue to enjoy time with our adoption group friends.  The girls all got to go make candy sushi together last weekend and this week we got to celebrate Ava's bday at the park with water balloons and cupcakes.  Somewhere in there, Gray got to visit Mimi and GrandGene too and had a great time there as always.  We also had a family dinner on Matt's side to send off Andrew back to DC.  We've really enjoyed our time with everyone this summer.

So here we are, three weeks into school and we are already ready for vacation.  (Which has me wondering how those long, cold winter months are going to work out!)  But for now, we are excited to have a beach trip on the horizon and we're going to keep on keeping on!