Highlights: Family Hike, School Starting Up

September is 1/3 over, yikes. As slow as 2020 has gone by, this seems a bit crazy to me. A few weekends ago, we took a drive over to Franklin Falls for a family hike. It's only a 2 mile round trip hike, very easy and kid friendly, so we thought achievable for our family. It was a Saturday so it was busy, but we all had fun! Unfortunately Nathan fell in the water after we had been at the falls for a while, so he had to walk back wet:-/. I thought walking back would be a total nightmare, but to his credit he was able to dig himself out of his misery and did really well on the walk back! I was very proud of him! It was a nice activity, something we will definitely have to try again!

Other than that, we haven't done much over the last few weeks. School started on September 1st, but of course we are remote learning to start the year so it was a bit anti-climactic. It's going okay so far, I think Nathan gets a bit bored with all the video conferencing, but hopefully he gets used to it and can still learn from it okay. Lynsey is managing it all by herself again, so far so good. Adam started in person learning at the school on Tuesday, he goes four afternoons a week, 2.5 hours at a time. It's not a lot of time, but they have been able to get him to focus and do work so far, and he's going a great job at wearing his mask, too! I know they are doing their absolute best to maximize the time they have with him, which alleviates some of the pressure to try and do great remote learning with him the time that he's at home. We are hoping he can learn to do some, but I'm not holding my breath. We will see how it goes!

The home projects continue here at the Kroeker house, we have been painting doors, and even installing doors - Brian put the new patio doors in last weekend! Unfortunately he's going to have to do some drywall work because the new doors are a bit smaller than the old ones, but nothing is too hard a job for Super Brian! It will just take a bit longer, so no after picture yet!

Gym classes started up again this week (in limited form of course) and it felt sooo good to be back at Body Pump yesterday! This is a big piece of the puzzle of my routine that has been missing, and I'm thrilled to be able to get back at it. The fact that I definitely need to lose at least 5 Covid pounds may have something to do with it lol. Love getting some parts of normal life back, keep 'em coming!

 

One more week of summer!

Well, we are rolling into the last week of summer, who can believe that! We took a little mini vacation over to Sequim last weekend (well it was Sunday - Monday to avoid crowds - would definitely do that again, even just for the ferry advantages!). We had a really nice time! We went to the Olympic Game Farm, where animals stick their heads into your vehicle so you can feed them bread, and all the kids thought this was great fun! I was happy to see that Adam got into it as well, although he was definitely done before the other kids were:-/. We also went to visit a first cousin of mine that lives in Sequim, which I really enjoyed! An unexpected taste of home, even though we haven't seen each other for probably 30 years. After our visit we went to the Dungeness Spit which was really close by. We didn't walk the whole thing, an 11 mile walk just isn't in the cards for our family right now, but it was beautiful and I would love to come back and do it someday! It was a much needed little getaway in the midst of a summer full of disappointments and plans fallen through.

About a week ago, I was fully planning on going up to Calgary and doing the two week quarantine so we could finally see our families. Adam's therapy was going through a transition and they offered to put it on "pause" for us to take this trip, as normally you would lose your spot if you were to take off for a month. I started researching and things were looking like it would be totally possible to do! We even learned that you can quarantine with people over 65, which we didn't think we could at first, so we would have been able to spend our two weeks with Brian's parents (how fun for them, right??). However, we ultimately decided not to go after all. Covid is spreading quite rapidly in La Crete right now, and of course if we went up there we would want to visit everyone, so it just didn't seem like a prudent decision for us to make. Adam is returning to in-person school, so we would have to pull him out for at least 3 weeks, likely more, and then since we would have visited so many people up in Canada we would have felt obligated to quarantine again when we got back, at least keep Adam out of school (imagine if we came back and started an outbreak in his school causing it to shut down, all these poor kids that so badly need in-person school!). Such heavy decisions, such a high cost on both sides. We know that this is just a season, and we will get to see both of our families again - we just have to accept that this is how it is right now, and do what we think is best for our family. 

The weather is looking pretty good for our last week of summer, so hopefully we can do a few fun things before it's back to school, as weird as back to school will be this year. I have been quite busy the last few weeks figuring out my new role as the head treasurer of the PTSA. It was a bit daunting at first, but it's been a bit fun learning how to do something new and a bit challenging. Hopefully I don't screw things up too badly! 

 

Summer marches on

August is one third over, and life is plugging away as usual over here. What has happened the last few weeks: lots of swimming (even a few evening swims which was a lot of fun!), some baking, a very brief playoff run for the Oilers (trying to forget about that one!), some baking, a very wet but very fun hike with my friends, Adam learning how to wear a mask (woohoo!), that's about it! Quite a summary! 

We are still waiting to hear if Adam will have in person school to start the year. We already know that the district will be remote for everyone else, but there is still a small glimmer of hope that the Learning Centers will have in person teaching. I am certainly crossing my fingers for that possibility! He needs to get back to school! He has been doing so well the last several weeks, so happy. He still sleeps a lot, but I feel like he has a reasonable amount of energy during the day and is just generally happy. His repetition is way down. I have to think that the new medication is working. So far we haven't seen a huge downside other than possibly making him a bit lethargic at the beginning, and possibly now, although it's hard for us to differentiate how he would be without it - he wasn't super active before. We are certainly going to continue it for the time being!

Not much else to report! We are going to Sequim for a few days on Sunday, just to get away for a little break. Adam is looking forward to staying in a hotel, and hopefully the kids enjoy the Olympic Game Farm. Hopefully it's a fun getaway!