Zac started removing the wallpaper from the kitchen at the end of January, and by the end of March, we have no wallpaper, new paint, and real tile instead of torn and cracked linoleum! All it took was Zac working relentlessly for two months and having tile workers take over the kitchen for six days.
Spring is a bit late this year, or maybe it was early last year. It feel like it's taking forever to get green again. This was the longest winter.
But the tree in our front yard is blooming, the daffodils Zac planted are popping up, and the frogs are reproducing like crazy in the shallows of our pond.
The same week the kids' school went to full-time in-person classes, my school is also started to open up. The principal announced that the school would have students come back at quarter-capacity (meaning about 6 students per class) and we'd have to do hybrid teaching starting April 12th. I have to say, I have mixed feelings about this. The teaching is going to be challenging - catering to six students in the class and fifteen who are still zooming in on the computer will be weird, and probably very annoying. On the other hand, lots of students are doing terribly academically and with their mental health, so it will be very good for many of them to get to leave their houses and get a little extra support and social time.
To prepare for this transition, teacher's were asked to come and teach from the building to get used to that and start figuring out our tech requirements for hybrid teaching. So on March 15th, I went back to school, almost exactly a year after we shut down on 3/13/20. It was good to be back in the building and have those little hallway interactions with other teachers. But an empty school building is fundamentally a sad place, and it seems none of us are looking forward to hybrid teaching with masks on and keeping the kids six feet apart all the time. We just want things to return to normal, not this "worst of both worlds" scenario coming up in a couple of weeks.
But on the bright side, spring is finally here and on 3/26/21 I got my second Covid-19 vaccination shot, so two more weeks and I don't have to worry so much!
Today was another one of the many "asynchronous days" that the schools have instituted this year to give the kids a screen break and teachers more planning time. The reality is the kids have about every-other Wednesday off of school. They have some online work to do, but it doesn't take more than a couple of hours. Pity the parents with less flexible schedules always trying to coble together childcare with this erratic schedule! Our challenge this week is that the workers are here installing our kitchen floor, so having the kids running about would be a problem. So once they got their schoolwork done, Zac took them to Eno River for the rest of the day.
Simon came home from school the other day with a lima bean plant growing in a plastic cup. I'm so glad the kids are back in school so they can do all these little activities that just don't work with online instruction. He transplanted it to a bigger pot himself, and then when it gets warmer we'll have him put it in his garden in the back yard.
On Sunday, Jess drove me and Alice along with Anna out to Raven Rock State park for a hike. We spent many hours there, and I took only two pictures. But the kids had lots of fun and Jess and I enjoyed visiting, as always.
Alice will finally be going back to school full-time! I can't describe how good this is. The poor girl has been doing online classes at home by herself for about a year. She's gone to school at school for only about three weeks total, due to it being closed most of the time and one three-week rotations when it was open. She's in school this week, and now gets to stay for hopefully the rest of the year.
I continue to be impressed by the kids' choices for their snacks.
On Sunday I took the kids to a section of Falls Lake known as Beaver Dam Lake. After yesterday's hike, Simon didn't want to go hiking again (he loves playing in the woods by hates hiking). So I said we'd go to a lake and he could magnet fish while Alice and I read. The point was just for us to be out of the house so Zac could do the kitchen painting uninterrupted.
The actual fishing was entirely unsuccessful. But magnet fishing he caught a few bits of metal, some hooks, and once his line even got tangled up in a fish attractor! Another time he accidentally threw his whole rod in the lake while casting, but we managed to rescue it with the magnet rope.
On Saturday, Zac was still tireless working on the kitchen painting project, so I took the kids out to Eno River for the day. This time we went to a new area: Pleasant Green. We found lots of fun places along the way to play, and ended up at the Cabe Lands & Eno Quarry (a 1.5 mile hike). Simon likes to get into small spaces and cling on trees and have me take his picture, as you'll notice.
