Day 1 of Coronavirus Homeschool and my head is still spinning a little. I'm sure everyone else feels the same around here! There we were, chugging along through March, had all our ducks in a row for summer plans, looking forward to celebrating Matt's and Gray's bdays and going to the beach for Spring Break, getting settled into spring lacrosse and BAM! Everything has changed.
Before we got here, this is how things were going...
We had one of my favorite gatherings ever-- the Newlywed Game party. So many laughs, a little angst, lots of stories and getting to know each other better. Love celebrating Valentine's Day this way!
The celebrations kept rolling. Due to Matt's work schedule and the boys being away for the weekend, we celebrated Allie's Family Day and Valentine's Day early. Cake and gift from China for Allie, treasure hunt with Valentine gift for everyone. This year, candy and $ were popular choices. Everyone had their things they were trying to save for. Joshua- shoes (always shoes), Julia- fish, Gray- spending $ for Wyldlife camp. Allie- well, she always wants $ for gum. Nevermind her bucket of 6-8 packs. We gave her a Frozen 2 dress instead. :)
This pic of Allie in her new dress at preschool is a little more meaningful now, given the current medical climate.
Somehow I have no picture of this, but on actual Valentine's Day, I was thrilled to finally get to go to IKEA for the first time. My friends joined me, including Susan from Greenville and her daughter. It was such a big place and bit overwhelming. I had moments of wanting to reorganize and decorate my whole house, but ended up using my gift card to replace some of our ratty towels and deciding to be okay with the furniture we have, since I was really okay with it before I saw all the shiny new stuff!
Then the boys were off on their adventure to Windy Gap. Last year, if you recall, Gray contracted a stomach bug from some fellow campers and threw up on the bus ride home and almost the whole group ended up with that bug and/or flu. It was one for the books. This time I was feeling cautious, but happy to see their smiling faces and hear about their fun times when they got back.
Unfortunately Joshua did end up getting some respiratory virus and though he wanted to tough out the week for lacrosse tryouts, ended up home a couple days. I headed to the high school without him for an introduction to 9th grade curriculum. It was hard to believe it was time to think about high school, but comforting to see so many familiar faces there. We went back a few weeks later to register for classes and all went smoothly. Joshua was accepted into their Engineering Academy and will follow those course choices throughout his 4 years. Looks to be challenging, but hopefully will guide him on to a good choice of college for whatever type of engineering ends up sounding most interesting to him.
Joshua ended up missing less school than we thought because lo and behold, we finally got a snow. Just when we had all but given up hope that we'd get any flakes, we got a beautiful snow, albeit a light one, that was enough for a day of fun sledding and snowball fighting with friends.
We also got in a poker night with some of our favorite families.
And the kids got extra friend time playing at the park, at homes, and the ice skating rink. Not bad at all for that little bit of a snow, turned long weekend.
The boys found out they made the lacrosse team and began practicing. Somewhere in there, we headed to the school to wrap up the winter sports with an award night. Gray got a championship shirt for the frisbee team's success against their division schools. And Joshua received the biggest trophy they give out-- the Sportsmanship Award for his team. This season was such a character-building experience and did not go at all the way he hoped. We even went out on the bad note of having the last game canceled when he was all set to get to start. This helped make the season a little better in our minds. Thankful that he displayed a good attitude, even through his frustration.
It was such a treat to celebrate Lisa's birthday with a trip to a restaurant we've never been to, which served all sorts of delicious crepes. Then we headed to Lisa's fav-- the thrift store. Allie loved it and would ask when we got separated from the group, "Where's the party?" We found quite a few great deals and I sure do love a bargain!
We also got to celebrate little Molly's birthday at Chuck E Cheese. Allie was sooo nervous and reluctant to try anything. For about two whole minutes. Then I made her try a game and there was no stopping her after that. She was swiping, putting in coins, feeding tickets left and right. She could not get enough.
Meanwhile, Julia was having major inner conflict over the games telling her she had won, say, 2 tickets, but the machine giving her 3. This was seriously troubling to her heart.
Matt's work schedule was a little different this month so I had Allie instead of subbing a few Thursdays. One such day, I decided to take my first solo trip to Aldi. After hearing Jeannie rave about it so many times, this was a long time coming. Clearly from the picture below, I found some things that worked for us. I wasn't even through at this point. I think it took me about 15 minutes to bag it all up.
Then we got warm days and did a lot of playing outside, walks, etc.
The trampoline became popular again. And apparently it makes you so hot, you are willing to jump in only bathing suit bottoms...never mind the neighbors walking dogs on the trail a couple feet away.
I don't really know what's going on here.
Gray still asks us to carry him up to bed sometimes. I can make it to the steps and that's all for me!!
Allie loves her time with Matt so much!!
That brings us to the last week of school. We had quite a bit of excitement. First, I had a job interview at The Expedition School on Monday. I had enjoyed subbing there and was thinking that since it's in Hillsborough and the TA hours would enable me to be home long enough to get everyone to school in the morning, it would be the best fit for trying to work longer hours next school year. The interview went well and by the next day I was told I had the job. Now that was quick. The tricky part will be starting work end of July. Lots of logistics to figure out!
Next exciting moment-- some wildlife came to preschool. Allie was great about joining right in with the other kids to pet them.
Next exciting thing- the boys had their first two lacrosse games. The weather was perfect and watching both boys on the field together, often passing to each other, playing such a fun game is just the best. The team was so happy to get two victories. In the second game, the Hillsborough Sports network even did a play by play. I shared it with the boys the next day and they were in awe. They thought hearing their names and their friends' names was just the coolest. So fun!
Thursday, I spent the day subbing in an extremely difficult classroom and trying to monitor the growing concern at work and in the schools about the coronavirus. I signed up to sub Friday at Julia's school in order to help teachers get material ready for closing. By the end of Thursday, they had called everything off for 2 weeks plus spring break. Friday was another whirlwind of a day, bebopping from class to class at the school so the teachers could meet. I had one class of each grade level and my head was spinning by the end. But no time to rest, because the girls and I were on to the 2nd lacrosse game after school, and after that I had a ladies' night.
Finally the weekend came, the kids were home for the time being, and there was time to rest and process. We spent Saturday eking out the last bit of outings, as Julia had her last ice skating lesson for awhile and the boys had a youth group park trip. Sunday we went to church and did a movie with friends, which had been in the works for months. And that was that. Monday (today) would be the start of the (relative) isolation.
I made up a homeschool schedule and we started Day One. The kids got their school stuff done for the most part in the morning. Julia enjoyed a group chat situation with her classmates and teacher. Allie even got some lessons with me. Then we had 3 hour afternoon recess and I got a walk with friends. The kids reconnected with each other a bit. We had some bumps, such as when I came home from grocery shopping, supposedly to a house of kids starting schoolwork and instead found Gray having a near meltdown about the way his milk was going on his cereal, while Julia found that she needed help on her schoolwork the moment she read the first problem, and Joshua had just woken up and was tearing apart the house looking for his lost ipod, which in fact Allie had hidden in a throw pillow. But overall, it's nice to slow down. I'm sad about all the things scratched out on my calendar. I'm most sad to probably not get to watch the boys play lacrosse together anymore this year. But I think there will be blessing here too. Now just praying for Matt, as he has a difficult job that will probably get a lot more demanding and critical as the weeks go on. Thankful that God loves us so much and good can be found in the hard places because of him.
