September on Facebook

Me: I can't wait until Isaac goes to kindergarten so I can get some alone time and do some volunteering and start figuring out what I want to do for a career!!!

2020: Yeah, about that..... 

I love fall - pumpkin spice everything, cooler temps, beautiful leaves, and stacks of paperwork to fill out for the public schools!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends

Michael went through 3 school computers in 2 days before he got one that worked, Isaac threw up right as school started, I broke several pins and the sewing machine needle, our air quality is officially "unhealthy", Ben's chair is the right size for his desk and body but way too short for his cello, and I ate a pint of Ben and Jerry's for dinner one night this week.

TGIF

Dear Oregon and California,
This is NOT how friends treat each other. Didn't your parents teach you that if you can't do something nice, don't do anything at all?
Sincerely,
Mom of 2 kids with respiratory issues

Any guesses on how many times Isaac is going to pick his nose during his zoom classes today??

Living in a state that gets an average of 673 days of rain a year, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I REALLY wish it would rain!

The air quality is ever so slowly getting better, Isaac only cried a couple of times in online school this week, and we were able to get a replacement for Ben's chromebook very quickly today. Things are getting a little bit better, but this is 2020 so I don't expect it to last.

My goals for our second week of online kindergarten:

1. Have more charity for the parents who don't know where the mute button is

2. Have more charity for the parents who don't know where the mute button is

3. Have more charity for the parents who don't know where the mute button is

What was your first day of college like? I bet you weren't dropped off at your grandmother's house to use her wifi and piano because of a zoom meeting time conflict at your house. This kid is thrilled to be taking college classes and hopefully he'll get a more traditional experience soon.

Talking about the weather in Isaac's Spanish class this morning

Student: It's windy.

Teacher: Si, hace viento

Student: No, WIN-dy

Teacher: Si, si hace viento

Student: NO. WIIIIN-DEEEE! WINDY!! WIIIIN-DEEEE!

Teaching 5-year-olds a foreign language is not for the faint of heart.

Teacher: Give me a thumbs up if you have a grandma in your family.

Isaac:

Me: Turn those thumbs up

Isaac: ??

Me: Nana and Oma are your grandmas!!

Isaac:

Sorry Jo Ann and Diane!!!

Isaac's class is talking about families this week. With a group of oversharing 5-year-olds I can only assume this is going to be entertaining.

Isaac's class was asked to draw pictures of what they do with their families. And while it's understandable if his drawing makes you concerned that we keep him in a cage, he actually was drawing a picture of himself on the trampoline (it has a net around it). I was VERY relieved when he told the teacher that. 

Kindergarten Chronicles

Once upon a time there was a small child whose personality was far too large for his petite body.  With nowhere to go, his enormous emotions had nowhere to go but out into the wide, wide world wreaking havoc at times on those people nearest to him.

And so it was that after 5 years, 8 months, and 30 days that the small child was supposed to attend a dual language program (English-Spanish) at a local elementary school where it was hoped that a lovely pair of women trained in education along with peer pressure (it's not all bad) would help him self-regulate a little bit. 

Alas, a plague afflicted the land and on that no longer glorious day in September, the small child began his education on a laptop computer. For 3 hours+ a day.

Does this story have a happy ending? Who knows.

Sigh.

Some examples from kindergarten remote continuous learning 2.0:

--Isaac spends his time during his Spanish class telling me that his teacher is saying the wrong words

--One day Spanish class ended with Isaac yelling at his computer during the alphabet song that "z for zapatos" is NOT the right sound for that word

--He called his English teacher "poopy butt" TWICE...luckily with the mute on

--Isaac likes to take the cursor on the screen and "poke" the eyes of his teachers and classmates while laughing maniacally

--Zoom has a lot of options for how the screen and screen-in-screen are set up...he has found them all...during class

--If he isn't chosen first (18 kids in the class), he throws his arms in the air and says "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!"...on mute...but I'm pretty sure the teachers can read his body language

--If Isaac doesn't like a video with music the teacher plays, he covers his ears and glares at the screen (see picture above).  Fun fact: Isaac doesn't like any of the videos his teachers use. He finds the Spanish sounds one especially offensive.

First Day, part 3

I didn't ever imagine that for my oldest's first day of college I would be dropping him off at my Mom's place at 8:30 a.m. and driving back home to act as the (unappreciated) assistant for my kindergartner.  Another unexpected consequence of a global pandemic. 

Josh is taking a piano class (on zoom) that happens at the same time as Isaac's class (on zoom). Which is pretty unfortunate since our piano is in the same room as Isaac's school area and neither can be on mute the whole time. So we're feeling pretty good about Rachel's decision to buy a piano. Then he came home in the afternoon to work on his other classes (U.S. History and English). 

Definitely not the college experience he was expecting either. He's a good sport about it, but I am hoping he can do some in person classes this year. 

Jason Birthday

(A day early) We went on a hike to celebrate Jason's birthday AND the fact that the air is breathable again. I took the opportunity to get some pictures of the most handsome men in my life.

Side note: Do you know what the chances are that I can get a picture with all 5 of the them looking at me and smiling? ZERO.

But I still love them.

And then there was some cake later on, too.

First Soccer Game

Soccer in the Age of Covid means:

Wearing masks on the sidelines.

Combined team - Ben's coach normally coaches both of his boys' teams but this season they are combined and playing 2-3 years up for kids from Ben's original team. Also, combined team name: Orcats.

Only one spectator per player. 

Only 7 players per team on a smaller field than usual.

 And Ben's number is taped on his shirt because his coach didn't want the younger boys to have to buy a new jersey for just one season.

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.