Covid Containment

Friday, April 23rd was the kids' LAST DAY of online school. The school district moved to 5 days a week in person on Monday, April 26th! The kids still have to wear masks and all of that jazz, but they are allowed to sit only 3 feet apart in classrooms instead of 6 feet apart, which is what made it so the schools could go five days a week. I'm pretty sure I've written these details lots of times, so I'm not working too hard to explain it thoroughly. It all seems so normal right now in the moment, but I wonder if any of this will make sense if I ever look back at my feeble explanations in the future. 

Bottom line: Friday was the last day I had to police online kindergarten! "Pay attention! Stop running circles around your iPad! Participate!" Etc. etc. etc. It was never easy.  Kindergarten parents totally deserve some kind of award or accolade for making it this far. So do the students, I guess. Needless to say, we are all very happy that online school is over. The irony is, however, that right when school stopped being available online, my kids had to finish their Covid quarantine. Jay and Amber only missed two days of school at the tail end of their ten day quarantine, and went back to in person school on Wednesday, April 28th. Rose will not be back in her classroom until a third of the way into May, thanks to a long weekend that falls right at the end of her bonus-round school-nurse-mandated quarantine. 

We've been employing all the usual methods to maintain sanity, as evidenced by the following jumbled photo album from Covid Containment Quarantine Part 1: 

The canal and bridge right by our house on an exceptionally pretty morning.

Queen Amber, using our funny half-pantry in the kitchen as a throne.

Amber's favorite yoga pose is Tree Pose. She was so proud of herself for keeping her balance!

The girls' basement bedroom has a very tree-house vibe with the wood paneled walls, quilt on the window, string of white lights, and mountains of pillows and blankets heaped everywhere.

I always love it when they play with my favorite toy. I had a similar Fisher Price Neighborhood house when I was little and loved it. I got this one off of eBay years ago, and it always warms my heart when the kids get it out.

Content alert: yes, those are severed cow heads. The house half a mile down the canal from us has a ripe collection of cow skulls from the beasts they've had butchered. They used to only have two white skulls, but a few months ago they had five cows butchered on the same day. I actually ran past their house when the carcasses were being drained (gag). Apparently the butcher lets the owners keep the heads if they want them. I know this because my friend raises lambs and she told me they always say no to the head question. Anyways, the air smells like rotting flesh along this section of fence and it always  weirds me out every single time I run or bike past this cow-head garden.

Rose and I have been going on more bike rides together, and one day we biked past this large pile of still-blazing-hot ash from a burn pile at the back of our landlord's property. Juan collects yard debris and other burn-able items into a big pile over a few months, and then lights it on fire. When we biked past this pile, we were hit with a face-roasting WAVE of heat that was still emanating from the ashes.

Another picture from our "backyard" bike ride. The perimeter of our landlord's property behind our house is nearly a mile and a half, with fun dust and hills and bumps. I'm slowly getting Rose accustomed to unpaved pedaling, and we had fun on this ride!

For the final day of online school, Amber built herself a blanket fort by hanging blankets over the backs of the recliners in my bedroom. She wriggled inside and attended her final class Zoom meeting from her dark fleece cave.

Peek a boo!

Rose, at her last day of online school.

Jay, hard at work on his last day of online school.

Duplo-building. We keep 90% of the toys in one of the cabinets in my bedroom because that's the only place for them, and the girls like to come choose a toy and play with it on the big wide-open carpet in my room. 

Last week I helped compile my Grama Brown's personal history all into one printed book. It involved joining three separate PDF files together and then tweaking some details to make it work in book form. Once I finished the project, my sweet Grama ordered and mailed me a copy of the finished, printed book! It turned out quite well, if I must say so myself. Really, though, Grama did most of the work years ago when she wrote a well-formatted series of memories. Her kids and grandkids helped scan the pages in and she wrote a second addendum to include at the end with some more pictures, even though she's mostly blind. Go Grama!

Another mother daughter bike ride with Rose. We rode 7 miles together that day!

The fields and orchards are looking so thick and green now. I went on a nice long run on an overcast Saturday morning, and the gray sky seemed to accentuate the texture and greenness of the ground. Welcome, spring.

Jay started adding some workouts into his running routine last week, and after one tough run, he told me "it was hard for my lungs." He wasn't mad in this picture, just describing how running faster is hard, haha. It's hard having older kids because Jay is big enough to tell his own story and I should really stop telling it for him from my point of view on my blog, but... he's still my Jay and I want to remember these cute little moments! It's a dilemma of balancing his privacy and my mom-memory-making.

Since all the kids on Scoon Road were exposed to the same source of Covid, all of the parents agreed that the kids could play outside together during the quarantine. Thank goodness for a quarantine bubble! It probably would have been fine if we even let the kids play indoors together, but I saw an opportunity to carve out extra outside time for the kids and I took it! My little house is so peaceful when the only place kids can play with friends is outside.

Meow. I love it when kids bask in the window sun-squares.

Rose has been doing a lot of sunning and lounging in the sun over the past week. The awful endless wind seems to have moved on (for now) and April finished up with some gorgeous weather.

The friends two houses down have a koi pond, and Rose and Amber showed up at feeding time one day. 

Mt. Adams has made several majestic appearances on the horizon. 

Arg, I really wanted a hilly run on Tuesday so I risked going back to Reeves Road. And got chased by dogs, just like always. They weren't as menacing as many of the dogs who have terrorized me in the past (hence the picture), but STILL. Restrain your loud toothy animals, people.

Service is rarely glamourous. On Wednesday I made funeral potatoes for a funeral, and an extra batch for my family because these days it feels like a waste of energy not to make extra food when the mess is already happening. Gloppy gray cream of mushroom soup should be banned, and yet, cheesy potatoes are sooo gooood. I enjoyed some for dinner that night with the assistance of two lactase dairy digestion-aid pills, and my poor Norwegian digestive tract is still playing catch-up. Genetically, I am only one-sixteenth Norwegian. Physically, I think I'm closer to 80%. 

My current favorite lunch: toast, one piece with lime avocado and another with hard boiled egg, mayo, and a few shakes off Cajun seasoning. Yum.

The men, leaving for school together at 7:15am this morning.

In the two days we've been home alone together while the rest of our family was at school, Rose and I have had lots of quiet reading time. This girl is either SUPER chatty and bubbly or totally chill and silent. There is no in between, unless you account for tired/grumpy, but we all get that way. 

That reminds me of the "quarantine sympathy card" my mom sent earlier this week:

Inside, it says "I meditate, I do yoga, I chant...and I still want to smack someone!"

HAH, I laughed so hard. It was snarky, well-timed "life is rough so you may as well laugh about it" humor.