At packet pickup yesterday we got Joshua's hallway sign from wisdom.  It's always nice to see the reasoning behind why the child got the award.

Isaac received October's respect award.  This one makes a lot of sense to me.  Sometimes he's gotten awards and while I don't feel like they're wrong, I don't always see it as outstanding.  (I know.  Parent eyes are different than teacher eyes.)

It was a beautiful day today!  I had the windows open all day.  I finished winterizing the stuff, the kids played with bubbles, and I gave the last haircut of the warm weather.  (I try not to do it more than once during the winter because it makes a mess!)

Friday: virus

Yesterday I got out the crazy fort pieces to hold the camera for piano lessons.  Of course, they were new again and so the boys instantly started building with them.

That leads us to today, when all they did was play "virus."

The big one is the king virus.  I heard there was a prince virus and several other viruses too.  They attacked Ben a few times (from far away).  At one point I heard Isaac say, "oh, the virus changed.  We'll need new medicine now."  I feel like it's a great example of dealing with life through play.

I guess they did build a house first, after looking at my pictures.

The numbers of confirmed COVID cases are rising at a crazy rate.  I feel as though they'll have to level off sometimes soon because they won't be able to test any faster.  Hopefully someone smart is thinking about this in order to open up more testing/processing sites.  Then the numbers can just climb really quickly.  And we'll win!  We'll have the biggest numbers!

Thursday: quarantine

 Well, here we are.  In quarantine.  Of course, we don't actually know if we should be in quarantine.  

Ben came home yesterday with cold symptoms, and those symptoms overlap with COVID symptoms.  He made an appointment last night to get tested and the first available was Saturday.  SATURDAY!!  It takes 2.5 days to get tested...that's absurd.  It'll take another 3-4 days to get results.  Case numbers are sky-rocketing and there's no end in sight because people can't even get tested in a timely manner.  (I know there are a lot of people and they can only test so fast.  But it is still so annoying.)

So Ben is by himself a lot.  (Let's face it, I kind of wish I was by myself a lot.  I had to go on an Easter egg hunt today and then do silly things that were in the Easter eggs in order to get shiny rocks.)  I'm sleeping in Isaac's room.  Um...we canceled a few things on the calendar but we were already pulling back so those aren't too bad.

I taught from home today.  This went fine.  The class is set up well for remote learning anyway and I have some good TAs.  It's a little hard to not see the students to know if they need a bit more time to catch up with what I just did, but I think I did ok.  The second class asks a lot more questions than the first class and I could hear most of the questions too...so it didn't always have to go through the TA.  (Now that the second class isn't quite so slow I have been enjoying it a lot more.  They ask good questions, and questions make the whole class a bit more enjoyable.)

Isaac had his first piano lesson today.  It was going to be by zoom anyway, so nothing had to change there!

Pictures.  I should be taking more pictures because it makes the blog more interesting.  But let's be honest, I can't even keep the dishes from piling up or get the laundry put away right now.  I'm not sure why.  Yesterday I felt quite productive, but then I looked around and it was a mess.  I was probably productive on things you can't see.  Yeah.  That's it.

Wednesday: writing a book

 Joshua is writing a book!  It's called "The Adventures of Isaac and Joshua".

Also on the cover is this very important note: "This is not a library book."  As Joshua explained it, library books are made of paper and his book is made of paper, so he wanted to be clear.

Tuesday: opinion

 I was unwillingly listening to Isaac's lesson about facts and opinions today when I heard the teacher say, "'I love to dance' is an opinion."  After thinking about it for a few seconds, I realized that no, I think that is a fact.  It's one of those weird ones that is right on the fence.  It could change into an opinion with one slightly different word ("I should love to dance."  "Everybody loves to dance.") But saying it about yourself is really a fact.  It was bothering me so much that I emailed Ben, who confirmed what I was thinking.  (Now, I get what the teacher was trying to demonstrate.  It just ended up being a poor example.)

The babysitter woke up late and called in sick 45 minutes before she was supposed to arrive.  I frantically called all the people.  Some were unable, some were able but it'd be a pain, and so Ben came home.  It was actually a good thing, because Isaac's chromebook was acting up again and it took some work arounds to get Isaac in the meeting he was supposed to be in.   There was supposed to be a second meeting, but Ben never found the link to that one.  I think there were some network issues today at the school, but a little more communication would have been nice.  (It wasn't quite as important though, so not a big deal.)

Friday: downhill

Well, COVID seems to be doing downhill in our county.  I guess I should really say uphill, since we are increasing at a crazy fast rate.  Our seven day new case average is double what it was last week at this time and we keep breaking our one day records.  So our household is pulling back a bit.  My grocery trips will go back to pick-up (after my single week of getting them at the store).  Karate is going to Zoom.  I might even do curbside pickup for the library.  Ben is working at home every other week.  It's rather annoying, but it is what it is.  (Also note that we are doing (mostly) fine being at home.  While we make these decisions mainly for our safety, we also realize that by not being "out there" we also free up space for people who are unable to stay home, whatever their reason may be.)

Joshua wanted his nails painted.  I did it in such a way that it would come off rather quickly.  About two hours later, the first one had come off and Joshua peeled the rest of right after that.  I had been hoping it might stay on a bit longer, but that was long enough for Joshua.

 

Sunday: first snow

Today was our first snow!  It snowed a surprising amount of the day, but it was just flurries.