*Written on 9/15/20 It is hard to believe that six months ago today we went through customs at O'hare and had the deep feeling that things would never be the same again. Even though I felt that way half a year ago, the reason for my feelings was very different than the reality. I thought having my kids home for "FOUR WHOLE WEEKS" was going to forever alter me. This is hilarious to me now. After all the weeks and months at home we have adjusted to a new normal that my March 15th mind could not have understood. As tricky and challenging as things have been during the last six months, there have been so many joys and experiences that I will treasure forever.
So... how are things on our end? It is probably time for an update. My lack of blog posts should be an indicator that things are busy over here. I will try to think of the main topics and give an update.
School: The kids both started last Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. We had LOTS of big feelings leading up to the first day, but over all, things have been so much better than I could have imagined. Homeschooling T is MUCH easier than doing the remote learning option we had in the spring. We have only done school for 6 days (now 9) so far and I am 100% certain that she has learned more in these 6 days than she did in the 13 weeks of remote school in the spring. I am so thankful that I set the schedule and curriculum now. For those who are interested, or maybe just for our own entertainment later, I will share what we have been using for curriculum. We are using Good and Beautiful for English/Language Arts, Easy Peasy Homeschool/Classical Conversations/Library books for Social Studies/History/Geography, Typing club for typing, Zaner-Bloser for for handwriting, Grandma Judy (retired Science professor and lover of teaching) Zoom sessions for Science, Origo (the curriculum they use in T's school)/worksheets for math, and a smattering of several resources for the other subjects (Art, PE, music, social skills). It has been so beautiful to see how the curriculums are connecting to each other without me trying a bit!
M is doing 100% virtual school from in house teachers. He is with 10 other 5th grade students and they have their own time with teachers for google classroom synchronous learning. They are never live-streaming what in person kids are doing. There are so many blessings to this option. He is able to meet middle school peers and feel like he is a part of TJ. He was very worried about the google meets, but he enjoyed them almost immediately. His teachers are incredible and the perfect fit for him. The main drawback to this model is the lack of flexibility. He has many scheduled meetings throughout the day and assignments due at certain times. It is hard for me, as it feels like we don't get to reap any of the benefits that homeschoolers get. However, even as I say this, T thrives on structure, so I think that allowing her to have a set up that is a lot like school is probably for the best.
Health: Both kids still have fevers. We are all tested out and Dr's can't point to a specific infectious disease that is causing all the sickness. We have sort of been released from the urgent caseload and will transition to monthly blood draws and phone consults with the infectious disease Dr. M's latest blood work showed some trends with lower than desired and higher than desired levels. It is important to monitor these trends. Over all the kids are feeling well most of the time. M seems to have periods to sickness and weariness most days, but often the only times I think about the fevers are the moments I am doing temp checks and when their cuddles feel extra warm. The fevers really don't add any stress or drama to our times, they are just here moving through life with us.
Brandon has had some health issues with a sore back for a couple of weeks and some recent eye trauma. It seems the fall is always really hard on his eyes. I imagine the air getting drier isn't helpful. I haven't really had fevers in weeks which is great news.
*The rest was written 9/20/20
Church/Work: The fall is always a busy season of ministry, getting fall ministries up and going and of course the big adoption fundraiser to prepare for... well this year (as in all things) was a very different fall. There is no big adoption fundraiser which does take some stress off of my plate. There are no in person classes for kids or Wednesday night ministry, so it would seem that ministry commitments would be light, but this is simply not the case. Earlier this month I was VERY busy prepping the first packet to be delivered to church students age 3-8th grade. Thankfully there are other people helping with the older classes, so I mainly focused of 3yrs through 3rd grade. This is still a lot of content to prepare. We are using the curriculum we have used in the past, but none of the activities suggested for the class work in the home setting. I created a structure for families to ask the children questions about the story, study the books of the Bible, act out the story, do a craft, and do a coloring sheet with embellishments. I also have a recorded video story and object lesson etc that launches each Sunday and connects to the lesson. Every part of the lesson is time consuming, but the first one was especially taxing on my and my crew. Thankfully we made it through recording (3-4 hours) and printing (4 hours) and compiling folders (6 hours). For the first round of packets I decided to deliver them to each of the 33 families, not really taking into account how far away many of the families live. The deliveries took about ten hours and every single one was done in the rain! Wild! Thankfully, I will not be making more deliveries in the future. I also learned at least 50 lessons on how not to do things with the first packets which should make the second packet set MUCH easier to prepare. God was faithful through it all and He sustained us all through the craziness of the first packet.
General Update: We had a long stretch of rainy days which kept us inside and feeling a bit gloomy. The last few days have been chilly, but lovely and sunny. We are thankful to have neighbors to play with. The kids have lots of good moments of playing and laughing together. Each one is a treasured blessing. At some point this spring we started family movie nights on Saturdays. We have all enjoyed watching many good movies together. Last night we watched "42" which had quite a bit of language, but was a very impactful movie for us all. Last week we finally had the mold removed from our attic and basement. It was a big blessing to have that project completed. It did make schooling much more chaotic on Thursday and Friday. I am really hoping that this week will be our first typical week, but it seems nothing is typical in 2020.
COVID update: Cases in our state have been skyrocketing recently. I am almost shocked to not see our state making national headlines because of the crazy curve we have been creating in the last weeks. After having a previous record of 1300 cases in a day we saw three days last week have 1500, then 2000, then 2500. Breaking COVID records multiple times in one week isn't a fun thing to brag about. The local headlines point to college campuses, but when I go to their data pages I do not see enough cases to point to the huge daily increases in cases. We received word this week that both of the kid's schools had cases. This was affirming that having them at home is a very good decision right now. A whole class has to be quarantined and I also glad T doesn't have to go back and forth from remote to in person.
Here is a brief update on the stats. To rewind a bit, on June 29th our county had cases 223 and our community had 29 cases. On July 23rd we had 440 cases in our county and 77 cases in our community. On August 15th we have 757 in our county and 117 in our small town. Today on September 20th (but actually September 18th as they don't update the local stats on the weekend) we have 1173 in our county and 177 in our small town. Over 400 new cases in the county and 60 in our community. I didn't share any state stats in my August update, but on July 23rd we had 45,899 cases in our state. We now have 101,227 cases in our state!!! This is crazy increase. The craziest part is that our recent days have had HUGE daily increases that we have not ever seen in this pandemic, with lower testing than normal too. Our positive percentages are in the high teens to 20%. We are not heading in the right direction, which is a sad reality and we head in to cold and flu season. Thankfully our hospitalization rates are only around 7-8 percent which is pretty good. As I type this we are less than 600 deaths away from 200,000 COVID deaths this year. How heartbreaking!
I feel like I should share something encouraging to end the post with. The COVID stats are pretty depressing. I guess I can just say that I am hoping to get in some post posts this week. We have lots of fun pictures to share!
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