Alice and Anna and Games

 This Friday and the Friday two weeks ago we had our friends and Anna and Jess over for a campfire supper in our newly minted fire pit. It's great for these times of social distancing. Both times Alice and Anna got bored at the fire and after a while we let them come up to play games on the iPad. Alice has recently become a gamer (an inevitability that I pushed off as long as possible). She's addicted to Minecraft and Animal Jam. There's no going back now.

Flood

 We got a lot of rain today. Simon's school let out two hours early because of the rain. So we used to extra time to go on a walk to check out all the flooding.

On the way back, Simon mucked around in the drainage ditch rocks and pulled out a big frog (or toad?).

This kid.

Fall

Heading to the park on a fall day.

 

Weird snacks

 We're finally getting around to trying to get the kids to be more independent. Sometimes this means they pick their own snacks. Simon is very hungry in the mornings, so his mid-morning snack is huge. Then he usually doesn't eat anything between lunch and supper (usually because he's out fishing). Although on school days he'll have a snack right when he gets home from school around 4:15.

Dill pickles and raisins...yum?

Alice is a little bit more normal, although she does love to eat a bowl of frozen corn (still frozen).

Simon's first day of school

 Despite Covid numbers rising, the Wake County elementary schools are finally opening up again. The logic of it is baffling, but I guess we understand better now how to prevent the spread of the virus and everyone is just tired of trying to get little kids to do online classes. 

This week Simon goes to school for four days (Wednesdays are still asynchronous remote learning days). He says he only has 4 other kids in his class this week. That's because they're rotating the kids in in small batches first, probably to practice all the new social distancing rules and work out the kinks. Next week all the K-3 students will be back, minus about half who chose to do virtual learning all semester. 

So, I went back-to-school shopping in October and we sent Simon off to school today. Our new routine this year is that Zac will drop them off at school in the morning on his way in to work, and then they ride the bus home in the afternoon--the opposite of last year, but it seems to work better with our schedule and since they don't offer after-school care right now, plus we don't need it since I'm home all the time.

Anyway, Simon seemed content to go back to school just so he wouldn't have to do any more computer classes, which he (understandably) hates.

He wears a mask all day at school and comes all the way home wearing it. Alice and I usually go greet him at the bus stop in the afternoons. She'll go back to school Dec 7th, since they're rotating the older kids in later.

Bike Trail Tree

Since we're home so much, I feel compelled to take the kids on excursions just to add a little exercise and variety to life. Today's trip took us on a bike ride up the bike trail, where we stopped and played a few places. They had the most fun at this giant fallen tree.

Simon climbed in the broken stump and pretended to be part of the tree. His lollipop is a berry, he said.

November 7th 2020: What we did on the day Biden Declared Winner!

Although the election was four stressful days ago, today there were finally enough votes counted for the networks to confidently declare Biden the winner of the 2020 election.

Election night was scary, because even although the polls had Biden leading by 10 points, we knew from the 2016 tragedy that polls couldn't be trusted and that nearly half of voters are amoral idiots.  I didn't throw up all night like I did in 2016 when the NY Times had the needle pointing firmly towards Trump. But I felt nauseous and couldn't sleep, eventually dry-heaving over the toilet. Maybe the past four years have rendered me unable to truly horror-vomit.

Anyway, things were looking slightly better by the morning, and each day brought more favorable votes for Biden, so our anxiety eased.  But let it be noted for the historical record that it was on Saturday morning at 11:38 am, while having a snack break near the fountains at the lovely North Carolina Museum of Art with our good friends Natasha and Izzy that I got a text from my neighbor Kelly Wiemer telling me it was finally time we could say, "Bye Don!" I'm not particularly excited about Biden or Harris (although the woman of color part is pretty cool!), but I am so relieved that enough people voted to end Trump's tyranny. The disconcerting part is that it wasn't a landslide for Biden and the dems didn't take the senate. Democrats are good people but terrible politicians.

So it was a great day.  We had a beautiful morning at the museum. In the afternoon I took a walk on the greenway while talking to my friend Shanu. That evening, our neighbor Linda took Alice and Simon out for pizza, so I used my Postmates gift card (given to me back when I had surgery a year ago but just never used it) to order in some Mediterranean food for Zac and I to have a peaceful supper without the kids.  Since I didn't have to cook supper, I baked some celebratory "dump Trumpcakes" and the kids decorated them after supper. That night, we watched Kamala and Biden's acceptance speeches while the kids went bonkers in the living room and drove us nuts. But at least our democracy will survive for the time being and there is hope for the future!

Portrait of Alice at the art museum.

Izzy and Alice at the reflecting pool.

The fuzzy spider Simon spotted on our deck during lunch.

Yes, we do!

Simon also found a praying mantis today.

Making our celebratory cupcakes!

Of course, now we just need Trump to concede the election, but that'll probably never happen.

Halloween 2020

This was the first year the kids were able to carve their pumpkins almost entirely by themselves.

Our totally normal son carved cow udders into the back of his pumpkin.

On the afternoon of Halloween, I took the kids to Umstead for a hike with Andrea and her two kids who were camping there that weekend. It was too cold for us to want to came, plus after so many vacations I was tired of packing and it just wasn't worth it to camp in the wood a few miles from my house.  Anyway, we had a nice hike.

When we got back from the hike, one of the neighbors (Monica) had left some treat bags on the porch for our kids. How thoughtful!

That night, after a rushed supper, we head out to trick-or-treat with our neighbors, Kelly and her two sons. It was really fun this year since everybody was outside and had tables set up in their driveways with candy for a contact-free Halloween. I'd been so worried Halloween would be cancelled due to the pandemic. It was so nice to have one fun thing still happen. In fact, it was more fun because people came up with creative ways to distribute candy, such as this lit-up graveyard where the kids had to pluck their candy from amongst the bones.  Another yard had a long PVC pipe that they put the candy down like a chute. It also all went faster without having to run up porches and ring doorbells. I loved it.

The kids were all pretty tuckered out after about an hour.

We went back home to our deck where they did some candy trading.

What a fun day!

Simon's October fish

10-4-20 

10/28

Afternoons at the park

 The Governor said parks can open again, so sometimes in the afternoons I'll take the kids there to play.  The first time we went, I told Alice to stay away from everyone. Within a few minutes she had found some friends from school to pal around with.

Simon busied himself with some sticks and sand.

Sometimes when we go they'll just magically make some new friends.

Heading to the park with the late afternoon sun in our faces.

A day at the lake

 On Saturday, Zac wanted to go to Site One Landscaping to pick out another pallet of rocks to build the walkways, and we wanted to scope out some plants as well. Since it was halfway to Jordan Lake, we decided to make a day of it and go together and then hang out at the lake. It was beautiful day. Simon and Zac fished, I took a little hike, then Alice and I listened to podcasts while lounging on a mat. It was a relaxing day.

Fall Mountain Trip Day 3: Hike down Linville Gorge on the Conley Cove Trail

For our final full day on our brief mountain trip, we planned to do the opposite of yesterday. Instead of hiking up to a mountain top, we'd hike down the Linville Gorge to the river.

But first, a hearty breakfast.

The drive to get to the trailhead was about 10 miles of gravel road, but not quite as treacherous as yesterday. It offered some good views along the ridge when there were breaks in the trees. Here is a view from the ridge of Lake James.

Here's a view of the road.

We finally made it to our trailhead after about an hour of driving slowly on the bumpy road.

The weather was beautiful and it was a lovely hike down to the river, along a narrow and not heavily trafficked trail that was basically switch backs down to gorge.

We found an awesome cave to play around in.

There were lots of little creeks and waterfalls.

We finally made it down to the river and spent a long time climbing along the boulders there. It was gorgeous!

Simon loves rock-hopping.

Our kids are so good at scrambling up rocks!

As it was getting late and we wanted to be able to get home before dark, we headed back up the trail around 4pm. Needless to say, going up was much harder than coming down. Simon needed to relax on a rock once we made it back up to the cave. We had a good snack break and mustered the energy to finish the climb up.

Back at the cabin, Simon got the worms out of the fridge and went right out fishing. This kid is relentless.

Although our accommodations were lackluster, it was a great little trip with a perfect combination of hikes: Lakeside fishing, up a mountain, down to a river.

On Sunday we just packed up and drove home.