Social Distancing

 Today ended up being busy. To help out our friend Natasha and to give Alice some social time, we went and got Izzy for the afternoon. First we went to White Deer Park to play for a while. Simon always plays in the fort-building area.

Then we went back to our house, where Zac had arranged for his dad to come over for the afternoon. It was our belated Christmas celebration. We kept waiting for a warm weekend, since we have to be outside, but this month has been consistently cold. We all hung out by the fire pit and ate pizza. It was a cold day, so the fire was quite helpful. This is how we do it during a pandemic.

Jordan Lake Junk Hunt

We went to Jordan Lake for a cold but sunny  hike with Anna and Jess. Zac and Simon went magnet fishing. They both love to find junk.

Jess gave us a bag of hotdog buns, and the kids started eating them in the car. Weirdos.

Joe and the Cat

 Today, Joe Biden was successfully inaugurated. Trump's reign of stupidity is finally over, although we'll be feeling the impact forever, I'm sure.

But, more importantly, while we were watching the inauguration, Simon played the Goose Game with the cat. He had to roll the dice for her though. I suggested this as a joke, but he really did it. Anyway, that's why I hate the game, because a cat can play it since all you do is roll dice and move spaces. Simon loves it though.

He loves the cat and has recently started letting her sleep in his room at night. Previously he was too scared to let her. I'm not sure how the cat feels about this.

Ritter Park & Swift Creek

 Since Simon was so sad about not being able to play at the river on yesterday's hike, I promised him I would take them to a river today (since it's MLKjr day and we don't have class). So we went to Ritter Park, which is just on the other side of Hemlock Bluffs. There is a nice section of Swift Creek to play in there, and I had them both wear their waterproof boots so they could walk in the water a bit.

Simon still carved a spear.

Then we walked up the greenway a bit to another section of the creek where they played.

Luckily, no one fell in and we made it safely back home.

Spear Hunting at Hemlock Bluffs

 I took the kids on a little hike to Hemlock Bluffs on Sunday. Because the schools are closed, we feel the need to try and go out for a hike at least once a weekend just for a change of scenery.

Simon got really sad at the beginning of the hike because even although I warned him it was on a boardwalk near a river that he wasn't allowed to go in, he still cried when he was confined to the boardwalk and not allowed to go in the river.  

After doing the brief loop hike, I took the kids off the trail and up one of the bluffs. Then he had fun! What he likes to do these days is find a big stick and whittle it into a spear. Then he hunts for giant leaves and generally just throws the spear around and acts wild.

Kites

 Cam sent a batch of really cool kites for Zac's birthday. We can't wait until we have a beautiful day to fly them! 

No return...

 I had long been looking forward to January 20th for two big reasons. It was the date Joe Biden would be inaugurated and the day the kids were scheduled to go back to school. I had been mentally preparing myself for the worst in both cases...that Trump would successfully carry out a coup and interrupt the peaceful transfer of power, and that the kids' school would stay closed indefinitely.

About a week before schools were set to open, the school board voted to delay reopening. Part of it is because the Covid numbers are so high and vaccination distribution is slow. Even though teachers are a priority, we haven't gotten vaccinated yet. But the other reason is that faculty and staff keep having to quarantine after exposure, and they can't get enough subs to cover classes. Online, there are people mad at the teachers and mad at the school board. I'm just mad at Trump and every single person that voted for him and enabled him. It didn't have to be this way.

Hui is the reporter on the school beat

I had been stealing myself for the news that they wouldn't open, but it still took the wind out of my sails when the decision was finally made. It's not good for the kids to be home so much. They need to be around other kids and have other adults in their life. They need to do class activities, and get all those social skills and mental stimulation that they get from being around other people. They need to run around on the playground and chase their friends. It really, really sucks that they've missed almost a year of in-person schooling. And of course, I know things could be far worse and that ultimately everything will be fine. But in the moment, I am devastated. I'm just so tired of everything. Tired of dragging my own students through online classes. Tired of watching my kids do online classes. Tired of being a 2nd and 4th grade teaching assistant. Tired of everyone being home all the time. Tired of having to be so much more for my kids because there are so many fewer people in their life right now. Just tired, tired, tired of it all.

I've no idea who Tanzina Vega is, but I'm exactly in this same mental place right now.

On the bright side, the kids are doing ok in their online classes. The days are technically not horrible. Just relentless and never-ending. The kids fight a lot. It's probably just harder because it's January and it's cold and miserable and we can't be outside enough.

In other news, Simon got recognition for doing so much DreamBox work. It's a math game he does on the computer to practice math skills. Really, the award should be for Zac for having him do it every day.

Alice and Google Forms

 Alice saw me making a Google Form for my classes, and asked me to show her how to do it. Her teachers also sometimes use Google Forms for their online lessons, so she was excited to learn she had the ability to make them herself. For the rest of the day, she kept emailing me random surveys. The first ones were mainly about rules and punishments for her and Simon. But one of the later ones was about my teaching. She was really happy to have found the book picture to go with it.

Gifts from Grandpa

Nelson sent the kids letters where he wrote silly stories about them with illustrations. So here's a picture of our kids reading the letters they got in the mail by candlelight. It may be 2021, but some joys in life are classic.

A couple weeks later, Simon got a package from Nelson with some lures from great-grandpa Kinley Shogren. Simon was pretty excited to see an ancient fishing lure.

Thin Ice

 Simon was thrilled to find some ice at the pond today. The kids are desperate for snow and ice now that it is January.

A few days later, Simon decided to take matters into his own hands and make ice in the freezer.

Saturday Morning

Jordan Lake Hike (New Hope Overlook)

 Is this blog getting tedious? Because we're just doing the exact same things over and over again? Yes. Welcome to life during a pandemic.

This afternoon, it was sunny after a rather dreary week, so we met Jess and Anna at Jordan Lake in the afternoon for a hike. It felt so good to be out of the house, socializing, and enjoying nature.

Our hike is about 3 miles, and takes us three hours because we stop and play a lot.

Alice asked me to take this picture of her, and I told her she looked like a hostage.

Meanwhile, Zac and Simon had their own adventure walking along the shoreline. Simon looked for lures and creature, while Zac practiced his his photography skills.

"You'll shoot your eye out!"

Simon has been interested in slingshots lately.

A few minutes later...

Zac's 42nd birthday

We celebrated this guy's 42 years around the sun on Thursday. The kids helped decorate the cake.

The attempted coup

 And on the 6th day of January, Trump's cult members tried a coup. We watched it live on TV in the afternoon. When I was vomiting on the night Trump was elected four years ago, this was the sort of nonsense I was fearing.

So, here we are. Welcome to 2021.

Back at it

 Online classes started for the kids on Monday, which means Simon is back to his weird giant morning snacks.

Bye, tree.

 On our last day of winter break, we dismantled our Christmas tree. The holiday season is over. On to the drudgery ahead!

Simon in the woods

We don't know what Simon will become as an adult, but I feel like his current interests are foreshadowing something interesting for his future.

Happy New Year: 2021

We are cautiously optimistic as we enter the new year. We have 20 more days of Trump's cruel insanity to survive until Biden is inaugurated (even though Trump hasn't conceded yet and continues to promote lies of the election being stolen from him). But things won't magically get tangibly better on that day. And I know there's a long hard road ahead for the pandemic, as the vaccine rollout has been slow, cases and deaths are skyrocketing (~4k die every day), and now there's a more contagious variant of the virus. The kids aren't going back to school until Jan 20th (if we're lucky), and my own classes are still going to be online for the foreseeable future. So things are rough. But I remain grateful for our health, our jobs, our peaceful community, and the friendships we've been able to maintain through the pandemic. I am glad we have a large house and a large yard and a pond, greenway, creek, and park nearby. I appreciate that we can still hike and that I have a couple of friends who hike with me. I'm thankful for our family that is weathering the storm with as much alacrity as we can summon.

After some morning Mario Kart on the new Nintendo switch, we made gingerbread cookies.

Zac and Simon ended up doing most of the decorating.

How we all feel turning the corner from one rough year to another.