Sunday: walking on water

 We walked on the lake today.  It's been several years since we've done this and it always feels weird.  It also felt windy, so we didn't stay on it for too long.  The boys enjoyed sledding for a bit afterwards.

Friday: recycling

It's a good thing our house is on the "second" side of the street for garbage and recycling pickup.  The recycling only comes every other week, and I've lost count of how many times I've heard it on the street and rushed the recycling container out, hoping that I heard it on the other side and not going past our house.

Wednesday: life

 Joshua made a den for a bear to hibernate in.  He did a really nice job on it with minimal instructions.

We getting more birds now, although the squirrel hasn't really come back yet.  The birds really like Isaac's bird feeder, even though it has the cheaper bird food.  Maybe they like the stability?

Isaac: 96 -108 months

 I'm behind on Isaac's pictures too.

96 months:

97 months: missed

98 months: 

99 months: ...it looks like he grew three inches!  This was also the start of quarantine and pajamas 24/7.

100 months: The hair gets messier in quarantine, apparently.

101 months:

102 months: 

103 months: 

104 months:

105 months:

106 months: 

107 months: 

108 months: 

Tuesday: school? or no school?

Well, I had school today.  Day 1 went pretty well.  The worst part was that I forgot my water, so 2/3 of the way through the first class I was thirsty.  There's always a few oddball things that need dealing with, but overall it went well.

The boys would have had a snow day, had it been a normal year.  I was a bit surprised as there wasn't much snow on the ground, but I'm (very obviously) not privy to the decision-making criteria.  However, the boys did have an easy day!  Joshua had about half of his work.  Isaac had less than half of his work and it was more optional.  I feel like the state might be getting cheated out of a school day, because the students still had to join a meeting so they'd be counted as present.  But at the same time, there are some snow days built into the calendar so I'm not that concerned.

The boys apparently played outside for at least two hours with the babysitter this afternoon and had a great time sledding.

Monday: headache

I had a small headache that I couldn't quite shake until about 4pm.  I still got quite a bit done, but felt more distracted than normal.

Teaching starts tomorrow.  There were a ton of emails to deal with today.  I expect this is how it'll be until the end of the semester.  It's been very nice not having to work.  I expect that once I get past the first week it'll be nice working again though too.

Yesterday a squirrel finally found the corn.

There was no snow during the day, but we're supposed to get some/quite a bit/a lot over night.  We got an email from the school saying that if there would have normally been a snow day it will just be a remote learning day.  Burn.  I started wondering if they were going to do that in future years too, but decided probably not  There are a lot of technology things that need to be figured out, and it probably wouldn't make sense to do it if students hadn't already figured it all out.

Sunday: tropical storm Ben

I was looking through the tropical storm names here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_naming).  I found Joshua's, who belongs to Australia.  I kept looking and suddenly let out and "Oh!" of surprise.  Ben asked me what was up.  I mentioned that I found his name in the tropical storm list!  He was not as excited as I was, to say the least.

His name is actually in the queue for Southern Pacific Storms (Fiji and New Zealand), so next time there's a B storm that causes significant damage his name will go in that spot.  Then we can all be in rotation at the same time.  (Although Isaac and Amanda can never happen in the same year.  Ben and Joshua are on different types of lists that go through all the names in four or five lists and then just start over, so they could come at any point depending on how many storms there are.)