First Day of School, part 2

 

Summer Week 12/School Week 1

Monday

Labor Day gave us an excuse to go on a family hike. We left early(-ish) in the morning to beat the crowds. You may laugh, but this is a state that is serious about the outdoors. This was also a good excuse for Josh to get some some driving practice. This tends to be stressful for driver, parent, and passengers for different reasons. 

Jason is stressed because, well, honestly he is a little bit stressed when anyone else other than him is driving. A beginning driver makes that worse. Josh is stressed because he can tell Jason is stressed and because the peanut gallery in the back thinks they are very funny. His brothers are stressed because they don't trust Josh yet. And, on this particular occasion, I was stressed because I had to listen to 40 minutes of overlapping Minecraft talk from Michael and Isaac.

So we arrived at Deschutes Falls in good spirits! Ha! Luckily it is a short walk to the water and we had lovely weather. I think the boys really did have fun and enjoyed exploring, grumpy faces in the pictures notwithstanding.

 

Tuesday

To give the summer a fun send-off, the boys were given (mostly) unlimited time on wi-fi and electronics. We normally keep a pretty strict schedule so they were thrilled with option. With a few exceptions, this is what the day looked like for them. I spent most of the day running errands and visiting the various schools schools the kids aren't going to be attending in person this month.

The middle school had an online open house in the evening which was only successful for half the classes (Ben has the same teacher for 4 periods and none of the zoom links for any of her classes showed up) and made me rather nervous for how school was going to go the next day.

Wednesday

The BIG day...well, the first BIG day. Isaac doesn't start until next week and Josh's community college classes don't start until even later. But this was the day school started for Ben and Michael (and kinda for Josh) so I made a special breakfast.

The morning got off to a good start and then quickly went downhill. Michael's computer began spontaneously turning off and then Isaac started throwing up. After we got Isaac situated with a bowl, towels and the TV, then I moved on to changing out Michael's computer....with one without a working mic or camera. Fun times.

Luckily the vomiting didn't last very long. The boys were able to log in to all of their classes that day. I had to reschedule Isaac's kindergarten assessment, but that meant we missed out on being in lock down at the school as the cops were chasing a guy with a gun around that area.  Oh, and the National Weather Service started warning us that CA and OR were sending us some very unhealthy smoke clouds to round off our week of fun.

In preparation for a rough day, I had planned weeks ago to meet up with a couple of friends (with masks, outside, 6 feet apart) in the evening for a pity party. I brought a couple of extra friends with me. Delicious friends.

Thursday

Isaac seemed much improved so we visited his new school and teacher.  We came home with a chromebook and bin of supplies to get this par-tay started. His class is the tiger class. He wasted no time asking me to set up a Lego Ninjago picture on his desktop. He also seems to think that having a computer means that he will get to watch Minecraft videos on it. 

He's going to be disappointed.

Saturday

The day that has been threatening to come finally arrived. It was hit or miss there for a little while, but eventually Rachel had her official orders and today is the day she flew out to Fort Bliss (trust the military to pick a sadly awkward name for a piece of land near El Paso). She's got a couple of weeks of quarantine there and then a flight to Germany and then a couple of weeks of quarantine there.  It's an awful lot of quarantine, but hopefully she has a great time in Germany and I have high hopes that Americans (and by Americans, I really mostly mean me) will be able to travel there by next summer.

It's always sad when she leaves, but she thankfully does these one year gigs and then comes back. In the meantime, Mom likes to paint so I told Rachel that she should probably expect to come back to a slightly different house.

First Day of School, part 1

Just to keep things exciting and more fun to keep track of, we will have a whopping THREE first days of school this year.

We've got some education skillz over here.

Josh is starting 11th grade. He is only taking one class at the high school, but I told him he had to get a first day of school picture like everyone else. He's excited to be an upperclassman, but pointed out that this isn't how he thought this year would go.  

Michael starts 8th grade. He had been looking forward to being one of the older kids and participating in the mentor program that pairs 6th graders up with 8th graders, but no such luck. However, he did manage to get THREE band classes (again) and NO yoga this year and that makes up for a lot of other disappointments.

Ben is starting 6th grade. He wasn't thrilled about middle school and actually seems happier that it is online (yes, I know he's probably in the minority).  Along with other expected courses, he also got History of Rock and Roll this semester so this should be fun.

Summer Week 11 (Paradise Point, Naches Peak Loop, Millersylvania, school prep)

Sunday

Our last full week of summer before school was a fun one. We began with a camping trip with Rachel and Mom (but no Jason - apparently he has this "job" thing so he can't drop everything last minute?) as Rachel's birthday party/going away party. She's headed across the pond for a year in Deutschland. 

On her actual birthday Mom made the phenomenal toilet paper cake, so we stuck with simple s'mores for our campout. Rachel showed us a trick of shoving a piece of chocolate inside the marshmallow before putting it over the fire. She appeared to be happy with the results. 

I can't eat graham crackers and normally don't like marshmallows (how are they food???), but this did look pretty good.

After stuffing ourselves with food, some of us decided to check out the trails in the park. Descriptions online said there was a 1 mile trail so we thought it would be easy.  However, descriptions online did not have an accurate map of the trail(s) so Mom, Isaac, and Michael headed back in frustration while Ben, Rachel and I pushed on.

It turned out to be kind of an interesting trail that paralleled the river.

It also turned out to be 1 mile one way and we started the hike later in the evening. Luckily, we brought a headlamp and made it safely to the end and back to the campsite. Also luckily, Isaac didn't have to poop while we were gone as I am not sure Mom would have appreciated taking him on that adventure in the camp bathrooms.

Monday

This was a new campsite for us and it seemed quite full Sunday night. Luckily, it cleared out Monday morning. We reserved two campsites - one for tents and one with a yurt. Mom's idea of camping involves a hotel room, but we did manage to pique her interest when we told her about the yurts at the state parks. Josh and Michael were more than happy to sacrifice and stay in the yurt with her (sleeps 4), especially when they found out that there was a heater and electrical outlet. So Ben, Isaac and I stayed in the big tent (Ben got to sleep on Jason's cot - win!). Rachel also opted for tent sleeping as she hasn't had a chance to camp this summer.

 This kid is a pretty big fan of camping. 

These kids take about 12 hours to wake up in the morning.

In a first for us, this park had a volleyball net and large field to play in. Since Rachel and Michael were going to be in the same place at the same time, I had brought the volleyball. Rachel and the older boys were happy to spend the morning playing while we waited for the clouds to burn off so we could go to the beach.

Isaac, on the other hand, was devastated and VERY cranky about the fact that he couldn't play with them. Not that they had said that he couldn't, but it became incredibly obvious within minutes that he was never going to get to hit the ball and could possibly get trampled. To soothe his outer beast, I gave him my camera and made him the sports photographer.

When volleyball became boring, they moved on to monkey-in-the-middle frisbee.

This game got a little intense.

Eventually everyone was hungry and thirsty, we we returned to our campsite for water and lunch. By about 2pm we figured it was warm enough to get in the water, so we packed up the kayaks and drove to the "beach".

On some positive notes: the water was not frigid, the river was very slow, the river was quite shallow (at low tide), and the sand was great to walk on.

We had three kayaks and Ben decided to hitch a ride on the back of Michael's and Rachel's. At one point he walked down the river to catch up with them. It was crazy shallow.

By the time Rachel and the older boys got back from their kayak adventure, I had managed to quickly evacuate our spot on what was actually a sandbar (oops!) and relocate all our gear to higher ground. The boys stayed there with snacks while Rachel and I went down the river for a bit. Then we all worked up a sweat drying the kayaks and packing them back up so we could head back to start a fire and make dinner.

Tuesday

WE FINALLY BROKE THE CURSE! For the previous FIVE camping trips it RAINED on the second night. It takes for-ev-er to take down three tents when you have to dry off three rain covers, three tents, and three tarps. It makes the minions very cranky. Especially because we then have to put everything back up at home to dry off and then pack it all up AGAIN.

But Tuesday morning arrived dry after a dry night and we managed to pack up in record time. I had forgotten that it doesn't have to be torture! Of course, the yurt was even easier: they packed up their gear and just swept the floor. Done! The kids are now huge fans of yurts.

We took a few pictures to commemorate our adventure with Rachel before she leaves.

Thursday

Wednesday was a rough day with the minions so I texted a friend to see if she wanted to go hiking before I lost my ever-loving mind. Luckily she said YES! Naches Peak was on my list for the summer, but I just couldn't handle the thought of another mentally and emotionally exhausting day with my recalcitrant hikers. This was a much better way to go.

We missed the peak for the flowers, but we also missed the peak of the traffic as the crazy masses crowded this hike earlier in the summer.

Why are mountain lakes so much prettier than other lakes? Am I just biased?

It was not a great time of day for pictures, but the views of Rainier are stunning on this hike.

In the end, we didn't hike in crazy heat (my husband's concern) and we finished the hike well before dark (her husband's concern) and we had a great time.

Saturday

This next little while is going to be filled with lasts! This was our last Saturday morning walk with Rachel. We headed over to Millersylvania just to mix things up a bit. I think we got 4.5ish miles in.

Then we met up with the head of our walking group to get our participant medals. You get one after you've done 10 jog-or-nots with the group. This has been Ben's motivation from the start, but we had to wait a while to actually get the medals. Thanks, Covid!

I don't know what Rachel did for the rest of her Saturday, but I know what we did. The boys worked on their chores while Jason and I made big messes so we could reorganize the house for remote continuous learning 2.0. Josh and Michael already have decent learning spaces, but we've been slowly accruing items to get desks etc ready for Ben and Isaac. It took hours, but I promise the table no longer looks like this.

Ben is almost set. I think Jason added a couple of things (light etc) after I took this picture, but Ben seems happy with the space. I am sure it will up with other things as the year goes along.

This is the start of Isaac's space (formally where the big beast of a desk we had stood). I'm waiting to see what materials his teachers provide before adding to much stuff. He doesn't actually start until the 14th, so we have more time.

Big events coming soon with school starting and Rachel leaving. Guess we're going to have to figure out a new normal again.