What a week!

 A few very stressful things stand out about this week, but looking back through pictures, there were a lot of good things happening, too. In an effort to overcome Rachel's feelings of animosity towards family history work, and several of the kids' similar feelings about writing in their journals, I decided we would do some positive associations in the hopes of improving their attitudes about them. So we started "Journals and Jolly Ranchers", and "Apples with Ancestors" last week. They can suck on Jolly Ranchers any time they're writing in their journals, and they can suck on a candy apple lollipop as long as they're doing family history. Rachel went through maybe 3 suckers last week finding names she can take to the temple when they're open again. She eventually found a very confusing set of people, so I tried to help her sort it out for a little while.

After a while we gave up and passed the problem along to Jacob, the sorter of all family history conundrums.

Annie and Ryan made a pretty cool bunch of trees (some even connected with walkways) and dragons last Sunday. This seems to be their preferred Sunday morning activity. 

We pulled out P is for Pterodactyl last week for family story time. It's a hilarious alphabet book.

Peyton and McKenzie joined us for school at our house this past week. It was tricky figuring out their schedule and what is expected of them, but after a couple of days we got it figured out pretty well. And the kids were so happy to have their cousins around for more fun time during breaks. 

We set up work stations for them with some TV trays we had waiting for just such a need. 

Megan made herself some new glasses. 

Ryan was having a rough morning one day last week, but our mid-day break turned the day around for him as he used his karate skills to teach Sammy how to do a corkscrew punch and a roundhouse kick. 

Friday and Saturday we needed a break from the stresses of life and we went up to La Paloma. The kids did school from the hotel rooms, then had a blast on the water slide and in the pools.

Saturday Peyton and McKenzie joined in the fun.

Mask man on the way to the pools:

I got some new puzzles at the dollar store last week and they've been a big hit. 

I just noticed this is the same puzzle, but they've worked on 3-4 in the last few days, most of them 100 piece puzzles. 

Routine week

Last week was relatively boring until Friday/Saturday. I have no pictures during the week except school work to email to teachers and random blurry pictures of who-knows-what taken by kids who stole my phone. 

We got into our school routine and things went pretty smoothly with remote learning this week. There were some protests against getting on their conferences, or doing certain assignments, but overall, it was pretty smooth. Rachel had a dentist appointment one day and a cavity filled the next day, but with at home learning she just did her work after we got back from the appointment. 

Friday turned out to be an insane day, trying to figure out some stuff helping Justin out, and I basically left the kids to take care of school on their own for a few hours. I think they all got their work done and tests taken for the most part. Megan just got her math and ELA done and skipped social studies for the week, but by the time I was available and willing to help her neither of us felt like it, so we just didn't. 

Friday was Jared's birthday, so we had Eegees and a movie at their house for his birthday party, then Peyton and McKenzie stayed overnight at our house. Saturday was Jacob's birthday, so the party fun continued. The kids spent hours in Grandma's backyard playing with water balloons, the trampoline, and the pool.

We had lunch and brownies (for Jacob) and candy covered cupcakes (for Jared). And that evening Jacob and I went out on an actual date. We went to PF Chang's all the way across town for dinner. 

The food was tasty, the restaurant wasn't overly busy (they have a limit of how many people can come, and people can only sit every other table to keep social distancing, so that probably had something to do with it).

On the way home we stopped at the new store nearby: Candy World. We browsed to see all the candy they have available (and they have a lot). They will soon also have Thrifty ice cream and fudge, so I can see many future Mommy-kid dates ending up there. And FHE outings. 

I'm thankful Jacob is a good husband and father. The kids love him and are so very like him. They all love Penguins of Madagascar and Hank the Cowdog, and can quote from both (and a plethora of other movies/shows) with impressive accuracy. We all appreciate his brains and the hard work he does to bring home the bacon (which they all, also love). And I appreciate his sense of humor and how considerate he is as soon as he knows I need or want something he jumps in to help. His goal seems to be to keep me happy and he does a wonderful job at it. We are blessed to have him in our family and love him very much. Happy birthday Jake!!

Back to School

 We all survived the first week of remote learning school! It actually went a lot better than I had anticipated and after the first day except for a few hiccups, it was smooth sailing.

First day of school pictures (without backpacks this year). Megan is in 1st grade, Annie in 4th, Ryan in 3rd, and Rachel in 7th.

The kids each have their own area set up with all they need for school. Ryan has a couple TV trays and a shelf from our bookshelf in the front room as his work area. 

Megan got letters and shapes and a few other things in a packet from school when we went in for meet the teacher day, so she colored them and we put them on the wall to mimic her classroom. She gets the main desktop computer in the kitchen. 

Annie got a laptop from the school to use just during remote learning time and she set herself up at the desk in the office.

Rachel also got a computer from the school, but it is checked out to her for the entire school year, even when we go back to regular school. Our district normally does that for 8-12 graders, but because of home learning and how they're doing classes for middle schoolers, they made sure every student in middle and high school had their own computer to be able to attend all classes and turn in their work online. Rachel is set up by the window in the family room.

The elementary kids have two live conferences with their teachers each day (synchronous learning), one in the morning, one after lunch. Then they have other assignments they work on during the rest of the day and submit online (asynchronous learning). I put the master schedule for the kids on the bottom of their chore chart. I also made a lunch menu and took on the role of lunch lady. Usually when the kids are home they're responsible for making their own lunch and do fine at it. But since Rachel only has a short lunch break and Megan has had nachos for lunch 85% of the summer, I thought it would be good for both speed and variety in their diets if I just made lunch for everyone. So I have lunch ready right when Rachel is done with her last morning class so she can eat and have a short brain break before she has to get back to work, at which time the rest of the kids do PE to get some wiggles out.

All the kids, including cousins, except Rachel, have a gap big enough mid-day, so we get together either at my house or at Grandma's every day (alternating) for PE. 

Since it's been so hot we've made use of our garage, since we have an AC unit in there keeping it moderately cooler than outside. 4-square was a big hit.

Megan only knows one kid in her class from last year, but her teacher puts the kids pictures up for a short time every day so they can see each other and start to be familiar with each other's faces. At the end of every class they do air hugs, which Megan does by actually hugging the monitor. 

Megan pulled her own tooth out (mostly) on the first day of school. She was finished with her morning school work so she was upstairs playing with her Hatchimals and used her teeth to open the Hatchimal container, which pulled her tooth almost all the way out. She ran downstairs screaming and came into the kitchen with blood dripping out of her mouth. I yanked the last roots that were holding tight out and when B showed up for PE a half hour later they had to get a picture of their matching smiles. 

B lost his bottom tooth first, then the top two (which are growing in very quickly), and Megan lost her top two first, and the bottom one last week. She's got another very loose tooth on the other side which she may lose any day if she can't get her Hatchimals open with her hands again.

Rachel got new glasses! Her prescription had changed a bit, so she was happy to finally be able to have some non-scratched glasses. 

Our monsoon season has been a huge dud this summer. We've had hardly any rain, but Thursday night we finally got a decent one. After the kids rode around with Dad "puddle splashing" in the 4 Runner, they came back home and a beautiful, bright double rainbow appeared. 

One of Annie's assignments for this week was to illustrate the ACT statement (our school district's code of conduct). In the Vail Schools we ACT: we Are respectful and trustworthy, we Care about each other, and we Take responsibility. She spent a lot of time on it and did a really great job.

Monday morning Megan was not enjoying school and we were just barely starting. I think she was wishing they could be in school, and it was just awkward doing an online lesson instead of in person so she kept complaining that her stomach hurt. Finally I got out some stickers and a blank book and told her all the conferences and assignments she did with a good attitude would earn her a sticker. She was magically cured and had a good attitude from there on out. The other kids wanted in on the sticker action, so I went and got a ton of stickers. This is just some of what they earned during the first week of school (some overflowed to a second page). 

By the time we're back to in person school they'll have a physical representation of all that they accomplished throughout the remote learning time. 

Friday night to celebrate surviving the first week of school we had a friend movie night. We rarely get pictures of the adults, but I finally remembered this time. I forgot a picture of the kids instead. They watched the LEGO Ninjago movie (their current obsession).

Next week Karolee is starting to host a drama club in her back yard and Dan's dad isn't comfortable with mingling outside of our small quarantine group, so this was a bit of a last hurrah hanging out with the Reimanns one last time until things are looking better around here and we either have vaccines or Corona spread is minimal in the area and we can hang out again. It was a good time playing Timeline and Buzz Word and just hanging out. 

Last week of Summer (Finally)

 We made it to the last week of summer. Finally. The spring break that never ended and turned into summer break comes to an end tomorrow. Kind of. The kids will still be at home, but school starts tomorrow and they will have to be ready by 8am and have school work to keep them busy and video lessons to attend throughout the day until 2:30. 

We managed to squeeze in a lot of fun for the last week of summer. 

Last Sunday a friend dropped off a huge bag full of girls' clothes. She got it free from someone, let her girls pick out everything they wanted, gave it to her sister-in-law who got everything her girls wanted, and still by the time it got to us there was a ton of clothing. Peyton and McKenzie were staying at Grandma's last Sunday night, so they went through and picked out some clothes they liked, my girls got some, and Eloise got some. Megan just found one dress that fit her, but I think the others all got 4-6 pieces of clothing they liked and that fit. 

When McKenzie was here hanging out for a while on Sunday they decided to do a fashion show. Our hallway was the runway.

New skirt:

Cowgirl Annie:

Ryan tried on some of the clothes just to be goofy, then joined in the fashion show on his own terms. Though he did find a Brazil shirt in the mix that was unisex, so he got a piece of clothing from the lot, too.

It was 100+ degrees outside, but they all still liked the hoodie.

Megan's new dress. She has always had an affinity for denim, so this was perfect for her.

Annie the model:

The braids really help her pull off this look...

There was even one pair of overalls too big for everyone else that fit me. Here's my fashion show:

There were 4 pair of jean pant overalls, one khaki short overalls, and Megan's dress that she counted as an overall dress. All super good quality and totally in fashion these days. 

Monday McKenzie and Peyton and some of the other Knights came over for yoga.

After yoga we did AstroCamp and learned all about light and lenses. AstroCamp has been so worth it. It had so many great things to learn and fun experiments and activities that really taught concepts well, and that worked for all ages. Rachel took a couple of the magnifying glasses from one of the lens activities and made herself double monocles. 

Afterwards they went to Grandma's house and made t-shirts similar to tie dye style, but with sharpies and rubbing alcohol. They turned out pretty nice.

Tuesday we went to the mall to do a mall scavenger hunt with the Allens. We split up girls vs. boys and had a lot of fun. We had to do things like try on 4 pair of sunglasses at once, try on the highest pair of high heels you can find, pose with 5 mannequins (we got that all in one shot):

take a picture of your whole team on an escalator:

And take a picture of your favorite puppy at the puppy store.

Everyone had so much fun. They want to go back and do it again for a family activity, maybe with their cousins. 

Later Tuesday we went to Jill's house. They went on a trip a few weeks ago and have been self isolating for a couple weeks after getting back to make sure no one caught COVID, so it had been a long time since we had seen them. It's always nice to let the kids play and have a chance to talk to my friends. Megan was happy to have a baby to play with.

Wednesday was the last day of swim lessons for our kids. They have all done so well this summer and made great progress. If Megan goes back to Sunshine Swim School in the spring she will be an Otter and get to start learning breast stroke. She has gotten better at freestyle and learned elementary back stroke and regular back stroke this summer. Ryan learned breast and butterfly this summer and built up his endurance and speed quite a bit. Next summer all 4 kids will be able to be on swim team if they want to.

Thursday we had a chance to go help out at a food bank so I took Rachel, Annie, Jared, Eloise, and Rachel's friend Eliza along to do some service. Unfortunately their fork lift had broken so they weren't ready for us to start when we got there, so we just stood around and waited for a long time. They borrowed a fork lift and had almost everything moved to where it needed to be for us to be able to start, then that one broke down. By that point we could only stay for 10 more minutes, so we just left, having spent 2 hours there and accomplished absolutely nothing.

We stopped on the way home for pizza anyway, since if we had been able to stay longer to help we would have eaten pizza they were ordering for everyone. 

But we had to head home to get the kids to their meet the teacher appointments. Megan, Ryan and Annie got to meet their teachers and see their classrooms and pick up a packet of stuff for remote learning. It was nice to just be back on campus for a little while and the kids are really looking forward to being able to be back at school hopefully relatively soon.

The kids each brought their teachers a back to school gift we made with the new Cricut I got from a friend:

Friday being the last official day of summer vacation the kids were insistent upon our annual tradition of Brain Rotting Day where they get all day in front of a screen with no screen time limits. 

We wrapped up the day watching Upside Down Magic at Todd and Savannah's with pizza, popsicles, popcorn and candy. 

Rachel has become wise in her old age. She realizes that if she gets me in a good mood I'm much more likely to say yes to her requests. So she'll clean the house then ask to watch Lego Ninjago. On Saturday she decided to fold all the laundry and put it away for everyone in the family. I walked in to my bedroom and caught her folding and she gave me the evil eye because she wanted to have it all done before I saw. 

I was surprised, however, when I told the kids it was time to go take care of laundry (thinking they'd be surprised and grateful that Rachel had folded it all for them) and we walked in to find not only had she folded it all, but she also put it all away. And she didn't even ask to watch Lego Ninjago right away. She may have actually been doing that all out of the goodness of her heart. 

I've spent a lot of the week getting school stations ready, schedules figured out, plans made to make remote learning hopefully a successful experience for us all. We'll see how things go this week.