The Unexpected Upsides to Quarantine

1. Dae made his first meal from scratch (besides Spam fried rice) in 14 years. Poke bowls! They were delicious.
2. We've had lots of time to play our new Catan game - gift from Mal & Didi. We love it.
3. The entire family deep cleaned bathrooms last week. None of us had ever deep cleaned in this house before that I can recall, which is sad but true. Olin said "That was so fun! Let's do that every 2 weeks or so!"
4. I am curtailing my toilet paper usage. (With my day to day usage, it would be next to impossible for me to have used more)
5. We're barely putting any miles on any of the cars
6. For better or worse we will probably never experience time together like this again. For the most part, it's definitely for the better.

Leftovers repurposed in to ahi nachos

Dae also made pesto meatballs but that didn't count since I accumulated all the items and just told him to do it. haha.

10:30am school break. Dae timed them on a .9 mile run to Safranskis' and back. I think they did 8:34

He is a builder to the core. He logged 8 consecutive hours, literally only breaking away to go to the bathroom and eat lunch, on his Lego Bugatti. This was his progress at the end of Day 1. (The chassis, if you will. haha.) We forced him to do other stuff at the end of the day when all he wanted to do was build. 

Morning of Day 2. Again, all he wants to do, day and night, is build. I can't believe it's coming together so quickly. I had read on reviews that it was taking adults and teenagers 4+  days to build. But I assume that those adults and teenagers had work and school and could only work on it on evenings and weekends. 

The Bugatti is pretty cool. It was expensive but we figured since he has a birthday in quarantine and no real party yet, and plenty of time, it would be the ideal time to give him a huge gift that takes a lot of labor hours. It has a shifter, and gears, and the wheels rotate on real/individual axes. On the reviews, a lot of people mentioned that this was a great way to see how actual cars are made, since assembling this is very similar to real car assembly.

Happy 11th Birthday Dearest Christian!!!

In honor of Christian, a very small fraction of the things we love about you:

• how you remind us to do things, as if you are the parent!
• that you will set out notes for yourself so that you don't forget anything
• your love of science
• your love of figuring out how anything and everything works
• your curiosity
• your big smile
• you are not a picky eater and will dutifully eat the things put out before you
• your absolute love of school and your love of getting tasks completed
• your love of building things and putting things together
• your ingenuity and clever designs
• how your favorite shows are "MythBusters", "Outrageous Acts of Science"
• your thick head of hair
• how you love to be read to every single night
• how you love sharing a room with Olin
• how your favorite thing is family time together
• that you wake up each morning at 6am, rain or shine, come in to see if anyone is awake, and then go downstairs quietly to either 1) read or 2) pour yourself a bowl of cereal
• how you wear PJ's from when you were 5 years old, without complaint
• that you are extremely compliant about brushing your teeth and I never have to worry if you've done it or done it well
• that you likes things to be done just right
• your attention to detail
• that you can explain things to mama that I don't understand!
• how you can be so kind to Olin
• your love of being cozy
• your love of good ambient lighting

There are SO MANY MORE!

Little brother flapping his hands in excitement as big brother opens up his card for him with his "free hug" coupon, no expiration date

The excitement about the Lego Technic Bugatti!

Birthdays in the time of Covid-19. Many, many online chats today. Here he is doing his first 6 friend group Zoom. 

Friend Gabe did a drive-by with his mom to wish him a happy birthday.

Remote cake and ice cream with cousins! I tried to have Mal & Didi look toward 'my camera' and it was hilarious.

Playing Blokus with Mal & Didi was so funny.

Real Homeschool - Week 1

Real homeschool has roughly paralleled the stock market. Spirits and energy seriously plummeted on Wednesday and I knew I needed to spring in to action and make some changes if we all wanted to be sane and somewhat productive. Throughout the day, they were coming to get me at fairly frequent intervals, interrupting anything I was doing for things that were minuscule to major. It was not very efficient, so I implemented conferences, where the kids sign up every hour if they need me for something. It has been working very well the past two days.

I also realized we really benefit from a full 1-2 hour lunch break with a good amount of physical activity as recess.

End of day clean-up. We extended the table since they have a lot of stuff.

Olin has been fully utilizing his conferences and Christian has been at about 75% utilization.

Social Distancing & Shelter In Place (Stay Home)

Two phrases that I've never heard before this past week and are now all I hear. Today Governor Inslee declared a Stay Home (shelter in place) for 2 weeks to all Washington residents. I think 4 or so other states already have this (California and New York among them).

Today was also our first official day of Montessori homeschool. They definitely put the work in to create a full curriculum for each day. Olin barely got all his assignments done by 3pm. Christian was able to self-direct most of the day.

He was very excited when he saw the binder I made for him Sunday night.

The excitement faded a bit on Day 1 of actual work. I'd give it a 5/10 as far as smoothness. Kids weren't used to referring back to the iPad/laptop for their assignments. 

I've been brushing up on my Chinese for adult homeschool. I never really knew how to ask when? And I still don't really know how to use this word.

Socially distant running.

Socially distant meet-up

This huge shin bruise is the remnant of his big ski fall 2 weeks ago. 

To add injury to injury, he got stung by a bee on the same leg this past Sunday.

Driller, Defying all Odds

As part of finding-things-to-do, we did our first thorough fish tank clean, rather than just water replacement.

We took it outside, washed it out, and put the fish in to another bowl. I walked in to the living room as Olin was finishing up the water situation and he was crying and frantic. He said "Mom, I think I killed Driller!" (Driller is our white fish, the guppy that slipped in to the bag of 3 fish that we bought). He was fairly hysterical and I said it was ok, and then tried to calm him down. We sat there on the couch, hugging, him crying badly, and then I calmed him down by asking what happened. He said he think he flushed him down the toilet because as he put a bowl of water in the toilet, there was no Driller. I said ok, and then we got up and I checked the bowl. Only 3 fish. I checked the other two empty bowls, and there were no fish. I was about to go check the toilet when I decided to just look around the bowls to make sure. Sure enough, there was Driller, flopping about on the towel we had placed! If I had to wager a guess, I would say he had been on dry land for about a minute. I very quickly scooped him up with my hand and flipped him in to the bowl with his 3 friends. I think he, and Olin, were both stunned.

We kept a close eye on him that afternoon and this morning and I'm happy to report that 1) the fish tank has never been cleaner and 2) Driller seems to have made a full recovery. Olin said he thinks Driller is going to have a heart attack one of these days because he has had to survive so many surprises, like the fact that he came home with us when we didn't purchase him. haha.

We've rejuvenated our Aquaponics system with some radish seeds that teacher Samuel gave us.  I hope they grow!

Can't Complain

The kids have expressed some boredom, but we can't complain.

Our week, so far:

Day 2: Composition by Christian, prompted by me to "write something"

Day 2 Olin's "Scedrall". He loves writing a schedule. Note how he allots himself 1 minute to wipe down eating areas and 1 minute to sweep, which is pretty much how long it takes. 

Making pesto pizzas. This was from their kids' cookbook and pretty much just involved assembly, which was great.

He tidied up his schedule on Thursday and Christian told him how to spell schedule

Went to the track yesterday to get some energy out. Olin ran a 400m and a 100m and then they did a mile together. I didn't have the right shoes on, so I ran a 400m in socks, at an Olympic pace of 2 min 23 seconds per 400, and that about did me in. hahaha.

Helping me make blueberry muffins. They tasted like Starbucks blueberry muffins if I do say so myself!

The middle two are videos of their 2 piano pieces that I sent in to the adjudicator (official adjudications were canceled so we were instructed to video them and send it in to the Dropbox). As is no surprise, it took me about 2 minutes to videotape each kid and about 2 hours, no joke, to upload them successfully. 

Note:

• I've been chipping away daily at our weeds. If somebody could just tell me how to care for all the other plant life on our property, I'll be set!
• It's been a film festival more or less over here. I guess we've only watched two movies (Pitch Perfect 3 and Knives Out) but I anticipate a lot more before this period is over.
• Our school comes out with their online curriculum starting Monday. I can't wait for some official structure that isn't patrolled so much by me. 
• There are tons of people out walking, biking, at the park.
• Kids have played tennis twice this week, which was fun.
• The weather is perfect.
• The kids have been fighting a little, but not too bad. They've been bored, but not too bad. Each day it's more like "Mom what are we doing today?" and then I tell them "Nothing" and then they are a little discombobulated. haha. 

Homeschool

It is very strange to have absolutely nothing on the schedule. I do work a half day on Wednesday, but I am wondering if patients will show. The teachers are going to meet to come up with an educational plan tomorrow, but in the meantime I am scrambling to fill the days.

We went to Michael's Craft store yesterday. Olin is working on a lovely wreath.

Christian made this egg + thumbtacks. It reminds me of an armadillo's armor

They made dinner last night. Glazed salmon. It is really good! They did all the marinade, gathered and put away ingredients. I helped them flip the salmon.

One of Olin's vocab words was "empirical". When he hurt his knee last weekend he wanted to do "empirical data" on his knee. His two data points were 1) Pain and 2) Walking ability.