Starting A New School Year at the End of the World ;)

On Wednesday I wrapped my cute, zebra face mask around my wrist and loaded my car with my own school bag and the girls.  We were headed to the First Day of School, but strangely, I was the only one actually going!  The pandemic has pushed the girls' start date out till after Labor Day, but the preschool operates under different mandates, so we could launch a new school year on our empty campus.  Delia was going to spend the day with her friends doing fun NOT First Day of School science experiments and Ella had been babysitting for a fellow teacher all week.  As we braced for the predicted 111 degree day, with ash raining down on our car, and a creepy red sun above casting an apocalyptic orange glow over everything, I asked, "Hey, if Jesus comes back today...you guys are good right?"  We discussed our salvation and the new heaven and the new earth as we made the familiar 20 minute drive to the town our school is in.  STRANGEST FIRST DAY EVER.

  

So, what does teaching preschool in a pandemic look like?  Here are a few visuals that I once again just want to record for memory.  Because oh how I hope we'll someday look back on these strange days and say, "Remember when?"

We teachers wear masks and shields.  When I'm interacting with parents, I like the fabric mask.  When the kids need to see my face, because it's impossible to teach without facial expression, I wear the clear shield.

We practice social distancing.  Half the spots on my carpet are closed, my kids spread out at snack time, and do all their lining up in marked spots we carefully put all over the grounds.  I taught a new song on the First Day this year: "Let's keep a little distance, some distance, some distance.  Let's keep a little distance between you and me.  So my germs stay my germs.  And your germs stay your germs.  Let's keep a little distance between you and me."

Look how amazing the kids already are at sitting and lining up!  It's only been a few days!!! I have a couple wonderful classes this year!

My kids all have their own personal supplies (crayons, play dough, folders, etc...), we wash our hands and the toys lots and lots.  We don't mix with other classes, parents no longer enter my classroom, everyone who enters the building gets their temperature taken.  We teachers worked hard to plan, re-imagine our room, and get on the same page about new procedures.  And it paid off, implementing these changes has actually gone pretty smoothly this week!

But, if navigating a whole new way of running a classroom wasn't enough of a challenge this week, we also had a crazy heat wave and nearby wildfires making our air quality super unhealthy.  On Wednesday it was okay enough for me to take the kids out for just a few minutes to show them the playground.  But since then, we've  been indoors all day.  I'm getting the wiggles out with aerobics, obstacle courses, and movement games.  The good news is that school is so new, my students don't know what they're missing yet, I guess!  The pictures above are my First Day pics and they have NO filter-- this is what it looks like outside right now!  See all the ash on the slides?!

So, we'll see what this year brings.  My co-worker came in this week and said, "Who has 'State Destroying Wildfires' on their 2020 BINGO cards?"  I continue to rest in the assurance that God is in control and the knowledge that being resilient and able to pivot are skills we've developed well this year!  

Summer 2020, Still Good

About mid-June I hit a low point.  It had been months of purposelessness, sameness, disappointments, and anxiety.  I thought we'd be losing an entire season of our lives to COVID.  Praise the Lord, we have not experienced the illness, but I have to believe that the melancholy and short tempers resulting from us all hiding from it was almost just as bad.

Then, we went to Pismo, and hosted Heather, and took little trips, and had a little Drama Camp, and got together with friends, and conquered a big hike. And, though these things probably came with risk, life started to feel a little more normal again and that was healing.

We made a lot of s'mores!  And watched lots of movies.  And read lots of books.  And took lots of walks.

Our friend groups are pretty specific, so we allowed the girls to keep getting together with them, since we figured we're kinda all in the same bubble.  Outside reunions were encouraged-- swimming, meeting new baby goats, campfires, even sleepovers in the tent!

 I was blessed to keep connecting with some of my dearest work friends for outdoor lunches and coffee dates.

 Ivy got SO MUCH LOVE with her people home all the time.

We continued our support of local small businesses.  A highlight was checking out this ADORABLE new, but vintage feeling, ice cream parlor, complete with marble counter tops, glass jars of old fashioned candy, friendly soda jerks, and fancy sundaes!

The number of puzzle pieces we've put together this season would total in the 10,000s!  This was a fun 1000 piecer that we opened and just couldn't stop working on!  We all stayed up late and knocked it out in one sitting!

Our awesome Director even found a way to keep Aladdin alive for a short time!  She invited the cast to come to school for a few hours each day for Aladdin Drama Camp.  The middle schoolers would move around in small (masked and socially distanced) groups to different stations to learn about production, choreography, vocals, and improv/acting games.  The groups and stations were lead by high school drama students, so Ella got to be a part of it also!  We all got shut down again, so unfortunately a performance is still TBD, but getting together with drama friends to sing, dance, and act did lift our spirits for a few weeks.

We pulled old toys and games out of the closets to help with our boredom.

 I'll look back on the Summer of 2020 with mixed emotions.  It was surely a strange one, with lots of highs and lows, but definitely not a total loss, as I initially feared.  Thank you, Lord!

Summer's Last Splash?

This week we got the news that the girls' school start date is pushed back until after Labor Day.  Though we respect the reasons for this and are thankful our school is still optimistic about in-person learning this year, we just LOVE school and our friends and activities so much that this disappointing news of a month delay was met with tears and lots of big feelings.  I, by the way, am NOT delayed.  We still open the preschool in mid-August because we, as essential childcare, operate under different mandates, I guess.  We needed a little distraction and one last big summer outing, since I'll start classroom prep next week.  This inflatable water park, recommended by a friend, was perfect!! Sorry for the load of pictures, but I went to the work of charging and waterproofing my old phone, thought I'd take advantage of having it with us!  And everything was just so fun, I wanted to capture it all for memory! 

 Like a cross between Wipe Out and Ninja Warrior, this made a day of exercise and activity a blast!  I am sore everywhere today from all the climbing, sliding, swinging, crawling, balancing, swimming, jumping, and holding on tight we did for 5 straight hours!   

MH at Home

This was to be Ella's first year up at HiCamp, the high school version of the Mount Hermon Family Camp we called home for one week each summer for a whole decade.  Mount Hermon had to cancel all their summer programs, another bummer of a loss.  Though we weren't registered for Family Camp this summer, we mourned the cancellation with Ella and decided to support this beloved ministry by purchasing their Mount Hermon at Home box.  We reserved a week to dive into all the devotionals, activities, and speaker links the kit provided. And we made our own list of ways we could still enjoy some of our MH favorites at home.

On our first day of MH at Home, we got creative.  We took the challenge to recreate an old picture from a Mount Hermon summer in the past.  How we giggled at how huge the girls have grown!  And yes, I can still lift Delia! :)  We also decided to make our own banana slugs to hide and find around the house, which turned into the wacky art project of turning them into different characters!  Fun tidbit: while searching for banana slugs in the house, we found an old iPod that's been missing for 6 years! ;)

Part of our MH at Home experience was a menu intentionally full of some of our favorite Mount Hermon meals.  We cooked up the First Night BBQ picnic, complete with a bike dash to the store to grab our favorite ice cream bars.  At MH, you literally have to run to get the one you like best!

Instead of a strenuous early morning hike up the hill to Pancake Ridge, we instead took a mid-morning stroll to the Waffle Factory.

And we had to make Tuesday Night S'mores happen!

Tuesday night is also Glow Stick Zumba Night at Mount Hermon.  A link to the instructor still leading it from the field house lawn was given to us in our box, so we glowed and Zumba-ed around our living room!

An old favorite at Mount Hermon was always the day the girls got their turn on the giant, wild Day Camp slip'n slide.  On our list was digging the old slip'n slide out of the shed so we could recreate this fun.  We had a ball!

Our last day of Mount Hermon was always enjoyed with a beautiful afternoon hike along the redwood forrested creek. We decided to head to the local river spot we discovered this summer instead.  And we brought Ivy along to splash around while fetching her tennis ball, which she absolutely LOVES.  It was a good substitute. 

One of my favorite parts of MH at Home was the time we were encouraged to carve out each day to connect with God.  Links to a morning and evening speaker were provided in our kit, as well as devotional books for us all to work through.  Mount Hermon forces you to embrace a week where the wifi is weak, but the connection to God is strong.  Even at home, it was good to get a small taste of this.  As we learned about David and Moses we were reminded again of God's faithfulness, deliverance, provision, and promise to go with us when we feel anxious and uncertain.  SO applicable today!

Honestly, any excuse at this point to do anything out of the ordinary is quite welcome!  We've fallen into a bit of a dreary routine.  By tweaking that just a bit to include intentional devotion and family time, and a few special activities and foods, we were able to create a memorable Mount Hermon at home experience that we'll tuck away as yet another of 2020's Plan B oddities.