The crazy times became even crazier one night last week. When Hurricane Isaias came through, we got the joys of a tornado warning on our phones at 12:45 am. Jip and I hopped out of bed and turned on the TV. Our favorite weather guy showed the tracking of the radar-indicated tornado as being over our neighborhood at 12:55, so we woke up kids and dragged them downstairs to be ready to head into the half-bath under the stairs. As soon as we got downstairs with the kids, the tornado started turning. It went to the west of us by a good ways. No real damage was reported on this side of the water, but a couple tornadoes that formed later did some considerable damage farther west and on the north side of the James River. Once the tornado warning went away, we all tried to go back to bed. A couple hours later, the wind and rain started. It was loud, but we've been in worse for sure. Our power went off 7-10 times, but it was always back on within a minute or so. But, there were other parts of Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads that were without power for 24-36 hours. We lucked out!
We are still on the lookout for somewhat normal experiences in these crazy times. Ryleigh was able to go to a friend's house to play in their pool and jump on their trampoline. She had the best time, despite a sunburn that she is still recovering from. While Ryleigh was at her friend's house, RJ hosted Noah for some physically distant gaming and pizza.
A few days later, RJ was able to go to Noah's house to play on their inflatable water slide and eat mac and cheese. Boy time did my boy some good. Girl time for Ryleigh made her a new girl, too.
Ryleigh is still plugging away on her sewing machine. Her class starts this week, but in the meantime, she took a stab with making a couple masks from patterns we found on Pinterest (I cut, pin, and press, Ryleigh sews). The first one was reversible one with earlobes that turned out to be a little too small--the blogger wasn't clear on what size (Kid S, M, or L) goes with what sizes of faces, and we made a M. Next time we'll make a L. The second one was me modifying another pattern we found in order to make the mask fully reversible and have straps that go over and behind the head. Ryleigh remarked how comfortable it was compared to some others we had purchased on Etsy because of how far back on her face the fabric came. That was unintentional on my part, but I'm glad it worked! Now we have to find some more cute fabric quarters to make some back-to-school masks and such.
Next week, RJ has another camp at Code Ninjas--Coding Drones. It should be fun! He has continued to do the online Code Ninja assignments and has been having a grand time working in TinkerCad designing 3D objects. And, RJ is nearly done with his Orange Belt. I think he'll be on to Green around the time school is starting up again.
The rest of life continues to plug along. Jip is wrapping up at the Shipyard--he only has 2 more 8 pm phone calls. Yay! Next week he's going to go to DC to see the apartment we rented sight unseen and figure out what he needs to take with him to be there during the week and what would keep him comfortable if for some reason he can't come home on a weekend. I've started collecting supplies for meal prepping. We bought a super nice cooler to transport the meals I prepare as well as some basics each week. It's going to be hard to not have Jip here during the week, but given COVID and staring school online and everything else, I'm definitely glad we are not trying to start all of us over again in a new place and in new schools and activities.
That's about it for now. As always, pics to come of whatever happens in the next week or two. Until next time, cheers!
No comments