School was supposed to start Monday August 17th. But back in the spring, in a decision that had to do with teacher contract days and not COVID19, the district changed the first day to Wednesday August 19th.
So we spent Monday and Tuesday enjoying the last few days of the longest break from school ever.
Derrick has had behavioral therapy Monday-Thursday all summer long and his company made sure there was someone to work with him all summer long. That allowed me to work Monday - Thursday all summer long. We plan to keep up the schedule with the school year. However, I have been worried that the schedule couldn't be maintained if coronavirus continued to spread. So Brandon arranged his work schedule so he goes into work later in the morning.
On Sunday night we got a text from the therapy company saying that he wouldn't have therapy on Monday and Tuesday due to illness. Thanks to our earlier schedule adjustments this didn't cause much stress. I went into work a little earlier and came home a little early. Brandon went into work a little late. Derrick was covered the whole time. I'm so glad we already came up with this plan. It would end up helping us later in the week as well.
On Monday afternoon my friend Kaymie texted me to see if I wanted a long table she no longer needed. A long table is EXACTLY what I needed to finish getting the family room/school room ready. She also had 4 chairs to go with it. I couldn't believe it. She and her husband brought everything over later that afternoon and we finished setting up the room. Here's the table and chairs in place.
Here's a long shot that shows how our family room is set up. We now have two tables down there. In theory one is supposed to be the computer table, but our chromebooks haven't shown up yet. So right now they are both art tables.
This long table has been a GAME changer. The kids love having somewhere to sit and do art. They've always either done projects at the kitchen table or on the floor. In retrospect, neither of those places were that great. Our kitchen is too busy to allow for all day art projects. And the floor just looks junky with art supplies all over it. A table holds the projects and makes them look orderly as long as needed. 
At about 8:00 I remembered that I'd been hoping to catch part of the Democratic National Convention so we could see Michelle Obama speak. I was able to pull up the convention on youtube on our big screen and so we all watched the convention and listened to her wonderful speech.
The kids surprised me by listening to the whole thing. They were doing their own thing, but they were all listening. Brandon was the only one who got board and went upstairs. (He had a few other projects to do and knew I'd give him the recap.)
Here's what Veronica was working on. She loves to make little books. This one even has a tiny calendar that shows her birthday.
Later I found this cute picture in her room. She'd drawn a beach for her kangeroo family.
Wednesday was the big day. We officially started home school. I loved the fact that we didn't have to wake the kids up at 6:45 to get them ready for school. Instead we woke them up around 7:40. I went into Charlotte and Lydia's and said, "Guys we're late! School starts in 20 minutes!" Lydia sat right up in bed and looked so worried. Then I laughed and said, "just kidding. We're doing school at home remember."
Tuesday was our last day before school started again. I let the kids watch as much TV as they wanted. I also let them play racing games on the poki games website. I sat on the couch and re-read Jenifer Fulwiler's first book, "Something Other Than God."
In the evening I took Veronica to her first soccer practice. The teams are set up by grade which means that Veronica is the tallest girl on her team. She is at least a head taller than the other girls. She had fun running around and learning to kick the ball. She has a lot of work to do with listening, but she had a great time.
The kids were ready for school to start around 8:00. Brandon had them come downstairs and sit at the table. He'd dressed up in a white shirt, bowtie, and vest. He said his name was Mr Science. The kids totally went with it. Even Derrick would say, "Mr Science, I have a question?"
We didn't have log in information for any of the online curriculum that our homeschool program uses so Brandon had decided to do his own demonstration for the first day of school. He had everything he needed to demonstrate electrolysis.
The kids were so engrossed. They watched the pencils/leads intently for any sigh on bubbles.
We all were excited to see the bubbles.
Here's a link to the little video of what was going on. https://youtu.be/Bn4NCCmE_lk (For some reason the video didn't embed.)
Then we had the kid draw a picture of what was happening. Derrick immediately drew a picture and described everything. Normally it's a struggle to get this kid to hold a pencil so this was super impressive.
Mrs Dana was with Derrick on Wednesday. I love Dana. She is probably the main reason we stayed with this therapy company when we moved to Twin. I'm always happy when she drives over from Pocatello. We stood outside my office for 15 minutes talking before she left with Derrick.
Work had been super busy for me on Monday and Tuesday. We've added more staff and I have a lot of little things that all needed to be done. Wednesday was the first day I felt like I had a minute to breath.
Derrick and Mrs Dana came back and I took Derrick home. I let the kids play while I heated up corndogs for lunch.
After lunch we started working on a craft project. Again, this is probably different than how things will be when we have the computer and the login info, but this was a great way to spend the first day.
We made little paper people because Charlotte says this is always her favorite thing to do at school. They turned out super cool.
We took a break and pulled up GoNoodle videos on Youtube on the big screen. The kids had fun showing me their favorite ones. Even Derrick - who had been having a hard time with the new schedule and had spent most of craft time having a tantrum in his room - asked for "Magic Purple." This was actually called Purple Stew. Charlotte said her second grade class did this video al the time.
We ended school with reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid the Wreaking Ball for 20 minutes and then 15 minutes of silent reading. Derrick and Veronica weren't exactly great at the silent part - but we put in the time.
We finished around 2:15. I was exhausted. The kids watched something on Disney Plus and I went upstairs and took a super long nap.
But we'd done it!
That evening Lydia wanted me to take her to Target so she could buy a $7 LOL pet with her money from babysitting herself. We'd looked it up online and saw that Target had the $7 pets, but when we got there we could only find the $13 ones. So we tried Walmart. They didn't have them either. So we came home and ordered it online. (Which is what I wanted to do all along, but Lydia had wanted to do it in person.) Charlotte wanted to buy one too. I wanted to avoid another trip to Target so I just ordered two and said Charlotte could get hers from me when she had $7.00.
Oh and Wednesday was also the one year anniversary of when we moved into this house. I had plans for taking some before and after pictures of how we made this house a home in the last year, but I was too tired to do that.
I'm so glad my aunt recommended these flowers. They have transformed this spot.
I helped the kids make Easy Mac for lunch. Then we went downstairs and worked on another project. Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica decorated boxes to hold things like books and folders. Derrick and I worked on making a "Clip Up Chart."
We did school again on Thursday. We had access to Generation Genius for science so Brandon did something in conjunction with the video on there. (I didn't take pictures because I was getting ready for work.)
Derrick and I left at the same time again. Next week his schedule changes so he'll be home longer with Brandon before going to therapy. My boss as out of town for the weekend and no one else was in during the morning so I was able to get a lot of things done in a quiet office. I don't mind when we are busy, but I always like the quiet days.
When I got home I had a message from my Aunt Vera asking if any of my morning glory flowers had bloomed. I went out to check and found one!
The air was really smoky and every time I went outside I coughed. We had fires in the Magic Valley and a lot of smoke was blowing over from California which had historically large fires. Veronica's soccer coach cancelled practice because there was so much smoke in the air.
When we'd stared turning the basement into a school room Derrick had asked where the clip up chart was. He really liked the chart in his second grade class an I knew it helped motivate him to have good behavior. So I told him we'd make one.
We found an image of one online with my phone. I brought my laptop downstairs and typed in words as Derrick read me the letters on the picture of the chart. Then we found construction paper in the same colors as the chart and cut and glued everything together. Derrick was so proud of it. We sent a copy of the picture to his 2nd grade teacher. She loved it.
The trailer arrived and we formed a line with the other people and passed bags from the pile to the trailer. It was stuffed! Other people had trucks that we helped fill too.
When the trailer was full we drove over to the YMCA to help unload it. My kids ended up with a wagon and were taking turns pulling each other around.
The girls were still working on their projects so I had Derrick get onto one of the reading programs that we'd got login info for the night before. He did pretty well on it. Veronica has to use the same program so I had her try it out as well.
Then we cleaned up the crafts and sat down for reading time. Derrick had been doing much better this afternoon than he had the day before. He sat and listened to the book without any resistance. I was feeling much better about my ability to teach him. After we read Diary of a Wimpy kid for 20 minutes we did silent reading. And it was actually SILENT. Sure Veronica was coloring and Derrick was reading DVD covers, but it was silent. I was so impressed.
We finished school around 2:45 and then went to Target to pick up the LOL pets. I ran into the store with Lydia and we got them from guest services. Then we took them outside. Veronica immediately started asking if she could have one. I knew I should have ordered 3. So when we got home we ordered her one and planned to get it on Friday. (So much for avoiding extra trips to Target.)
On the way back from Target we passed a kid walking home. Charlotte said she knew him from class last year. I started wondering if we'd really done the right thing by choosing the homeschool option. Was all this work really necessary? Would school even be cancelled this year? Should we have at least tried the in school option?
Well a few minutes later I got an answer to those questions. I got an email from the district saying they were closing school on Friday due to COVID - sort of. The air quality was higher than the district allowed for outdoor recess. And they couldn't do indoor recess and still maintain social distancing procedures. So they closed school.
I was so happy that we made home school a priority in our schedules this year. If Brandon and I didn't already have our schedules set up to cover the kids all day, this news would have sent us into panic mode trying to figure out who would be home with the kids when. But instead it wasn't a big deal at all.
In fact, I actually went to work on Friday because I knew I could fit in a few hours of work before Brandon had to be at work. I was able to make an important phone call and process payments that would have had to wait until Monday.
When I got back home the kids and I drove over to a neighbors house to help with moving bags of clothes over to the YMCA for the clothing swap happening on Saturday.
I've organized a few clothing swaps over the years, but I've never even imagined a swap on the scale of the Magic Valley Clothing Swap. Actually, I don't think the organizers expected this one to be this big either. It was originally supposed to be two swaps. And adult clothing swap in April and a Children's clothing swap in August. When COVID shut down the April swap the organizers just decided to combine the two.
They had been collecting and sorting clothes since January. They had a huge pile of garbage bags full of clothes that needed to be moved to the YMCA. I'd never been able to make it to any of the sorting days, but I could make it to this day. I brought the kids along so they could help too. Here's Lydia lounging on the pile before the trailer arrived. There were even more bags than this. There were bags to the roof of two sheds.
Derrick had been helping a bit, but spent most of the time in the car. He got to the point where he was more trouble and I wasn't able to help at all. So it was time to go home. Charlotte and Lydia wanted to stay and help some more. (or maybe just play with the wagon.) So they stayed and later walked home.
I took Derrick and Veronica home. When we walked in the house we discovered that Marcia had chewed up Veronica's LOL Doll. I was LIVID with Marcia. We'd thought she was fine to leave home alone, but apparently not. I yelled at her for a while. (Poor dog was getting some of my frustration from how Derrick had been acting.) Then I found Veronica and tried to console her over the loss of her doll. When we first got Marcia she had chewed up one of Lydia's Calico Critters and I'd replaced it. So there was a precedence for me replacing chewed toys. I told Veronica that when we went to pick up her LOL pet we'd go in and she could pick out a new LOL Doll.
So when Charlotte and Lydia came home we headed to Target again and found a new doll for Veronica. We paid for that and then picked up the online order for the pet.
If I'd known that I'd end up spending this much money and time on LOL toys in three days I would have just ordered it all online and had it shipped to my house.
Charlotte had a tooth fall out and that was exciting. She told me that she wanted to tell the tooth fairy to bring extra money instead of money and candy. That sounded great to me since I've always been surprised that our tooth fairy includes candy.
We also didn't expect the tooth fairy to come Friday night because Charlotte would be sleeping in my bed that night. It was Veronica's turn to go camping with Brandon which meant it was Charlotte's turn to sleep with me.
I helped Veronica pack her backpack and we found the camping supplies, but when Brandon came home from work none of us were really feeling like a camping trip would be a good idea. We were all tired and Veronica didn't seem too excited about camping. Brandon suggested they just stay here and sleep in the tree house.
So Brandon and Veronica slept in the tree house and Charlotte and I slept in my bed. We stayed up and watched Brother Bear.
Having Brandon stay home from camping helped me out immensely with my plans for Saturday. The clothing swap would start at 9:00 the next morning. I'd planned to take Charlotte, Lydia, and Derrick with me. But I knew Derrick would hate being there. Since Brandon was home I was able to leave Derrick with him and take Veronica with me and the other girls.
The swap was set up with three different times. 9:00-11:00 was for Early Birds who had donated clothes before a certain date. 11:00-1:00 was for anyone who had donated clothes. and 1:00-3:00 was for the general public. I'd been hanging onto my early bird ticket ever since I'd donated my first box of clothes in late January.
The swap organizers asked that we take about as many clothes as we donated. I'd donated a lot over the last few months so I had plans to take home a lot. Me and the girls each had a laundry basket that we planned to fill.
We arrived around 8:45 and lined up along the fence outside the Y. Last year the swap was held inside, but this year they had so many clothes it was held outside. Here's our view from our spot in line.
We were allowed in right at 9:00 and immediately went to the shoes. We found new tennis shoes for all the kids, Sunday shoes for all the kids, soccer shoes for Veronica, and some new shoes for me.
Then we headed to the 8-10 kids clothes and filled up all four laundry baskets. We found so many cute things for all four kids. Shirts, pants, Sunday dresses, pajamas, and even a coat for Veronica. We didn't even get to look through all the 8-10 clothes before our baskets were full and the kids were asking to leave.
I took the kids back to the car and drove them home. I emptied the baskets in the laundry room and Brandon started washing the clothes. I took two baskets and headed back to the swap to find clothes for me.
I sat myself down in the extra large womens clothing area and it was the equivalent of heaven for me. I love sorting through clothes so it was so fun to go through and find so many cute things. I had to guess if I'd fit some things, but since everything was free there wasn't a ton of pressure to make sure everything was perfect. Lots of other women were going through clothes too and it was so fun to have little conversations with them. We laughed about how ridiculous some of the clothes were and commiserated over how extra-large is such a stupid size measurement. I'd searched through 1/4th of the pile before my basket was overflowing. I headed over to mens and found some things for Brandon - and a really nice church coat for me.
I took my basket back to the car and grabbed my last empty basket. I went back in and went back to the children clothes to see if anything stood out to me there. I found a few things. Then I went back to womens and sorted through a different part of the pile. I found a few more cute things, but I could tell I was wearing down. The day had been getting warmer and I wasn't drinking a lot of water. There was a moment where I could feel my blood sugar drop and I realized it was time to go home.
I made it back to the car and drove home.
When I got home it was 12:15. Brandon made me a quick lunch (I was completely worn out) and I sat at the table drinking water for a long time. Then I went downstairs to assess the laundry situation.
I spent the rest of the day doing laundry, sorting clothes, trying on clothes, and putting away clothes. Anything with short sleeves or pants went into closets and dresser right away. Things with long pants and sleeves went into boxes that we'll get out when the weather is cooler. The clothes we got at the swap combined with what we already had should last us till next summer. I migth have to buy more pants for Derrick and I might need more for Veronica if she goes through a growth spurt, but otherwise we are set.
And I was so happy with the clothes I found for myself. I'd been smart to hang out in extra large. I probably could have done well in large, but everything in extra large fit me perfect. There were only two shirts and one pair of pants that didn't work.
And since I was adding so many new clothes I was able to replace others that we've grown tired of. I already have a big box of things to donate.
It was a day well spent.
I'm glad we can go back to our church building every three weeks, but I also really love these laid back Sunday mornings we can have now. I was able to sit on the couch wrapped up in a soft blanket until after 10:00. Brandon and Derrick sat next to me and played silly tickling games.
After a while we decided it was time for at home church. Derrick somehow got talked into wearing one of Brandon's ties. He was so proud of how grown up he looked.
Here's Charlotte showing the amazing orange shoes she found at the swap.
And Lydia in her shoes. (We already had the dress, but I'd forgotten about it until I was going through my box of clothes to put fall clothes into.)
Someone said they all looked like they were ready for a dance. Derrick and Lydia went into the living room and started dancing. They've learned the box step from an episode of Curious George so Lydia helped Derrick do that. Charltote took a turn and taught Derrick how to bow and ask, "May I have this dance?"
We had sacrament meeting and then the kids went back to dancing. I was able to get a video of it. So adorable.
(Veronica was having an emotional morning and was not interested in a picture.)
And that pretty much sums up our week. Let's do a quick garden check in before we go though.
These flowers have done so well through the heat.
Well that's us for this week. Hopefully next week will include fewer LOL dolls and more computer log ins.
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