Crazy Times, Part 3

Who knew that this was going to turn into an epic tale with multiple parts?   We're all ready for this tale to be over so we can move on.  We know there is a light at the end of this tunnel--we just can't tell how long the tunnel is.  Sigh.

School continues on.  The kids are staying on top of their work.  Ryleigh has had more than RJ most days, so trying to balance out their days can be a challenge.  But, if one of them is done before the other, I try to have them do additional math using Redbird (Redbird measures and tracks math ability and places the kids where they need to be, so they both are doing math a couple grade levels above their current grades, and I'm more than fine with that.) or playing a word game or doing some coding.

The adults in my kids' lives continue to find ways to reach out and establish routines.  And Mom is trying to be creative, too.  Our local pottery place has a curbside option, so I picked up a pre-drawn canvas for RJ to paint and Ryleigh and I some pottery to paint.  We then dropped the pottery back off and they'll call us when it is ready for another curbside delivery.

I had the kids make me a stained glass window with tempera paint I had on hand.  Who knew that my overstocking craft and art supplies would come in so handy?

The kids' gifted teacher emailed us a fun game called Maths 24.  I printed it out on card stock (again, thank you to me for overstocking supplies) so we could play away from our electronics.  Four numbers are on each card and you have to figure out a three-step math problem to equal 24.  Some are really easy, some are not so easy. They are fun when we need to get our brains going.

Dance classes and gymnastics conditioning continues via Zoom.

RJ ran his Shamrock Final Mile at home since the real run got cancelled.  This was going to be the first year he could actually run it, as it finally didn't overlap with the William and Mary gifted workshop.  The run organizers mailed the shirt, bib, and medal, so we did our best to make a big deal in our cul-de-sac for him.  Hopefully next year, kiddo.

The kids have rediscovered chalk and their bikes.

We celebrated Easter with a couple baskets for the kids and a ham and cheesy potato dinner for the grown-ups.  The kids helped the neighborhood put on an Easter Egg hunt by putting their artistic eggs in the window.

Jip took Friday of Spring Break off to hang with the kiddos.  We lucked out with some lovely weather, so we decided to support a local farmer by visiting his farm. He had it set up so people would pull up, give the staff a list of what you need, items get put it in your trunk, pay without making contact using a Square reader, and then leave or go park to pick strawberries.  I bought a grab bag of veges and fruit, extra strawberries and blueberries, lettuce, and poundcake.  We also bought a basket that we used to pick our berries.  We wore masks and stayed away from everyone.  Everyone there was doing a great job of staying in their own spot, and we had a lot of fun.  I then had the makings for a wonderful salad and an amazing corn and potato chowder.  I'll eat the squash and zucchini (without Jip) this week.  And some strawberry-banana bread baking is the planned after-school activity tomorrow.

School resumes tomorrow.  I'm going to try to exercise my brain a little and do a webinar this week.  The kids have dance and gymnastics and coding.  And we'll keep finding ways to stay busy and help make that tunnel feel shorter and make that light brighter.

Until next time, cheers!

Crazy Times Continue

Has this been the longest year ever?  I can't believe we're only three months into 2020 and it feels like 2019 was ages and ages ago.  I know everyone else is feeling the same.  I just want the stupid virus to move on so the rest of us can move on.  But, until then we plug away.

The kiddos will not be in a classroom through the rest of the school year.  The teachers are trying their best to keep some normalcy while doing everything electronic.  Video conferences are happening daily for RJ, and a couple times per week for Ryleigh.  As you can imagine, 2nd grade is still pretty paper heavy, so moving to an online classroom has been a huge adjustment for her class, but they'll get there.  Starting next week, the kids won't have contact with their teachers on Mondays so that teachers can get together (virtually) and share best practices and such.  And, hopefully the technology companies will be able to make whatever adjustments they need to by then for this sudden influx of kids on all at the same time so that the various platforms we use stop crashing.  Then, maybe this Mama's stress can go down a little.

The shipyard has been nutty.  They sent civilian people away who met certain criteria, but as the CDC learns more about the stupid virus, the criteria change.  That makes for unhappy and uncertain workers who no longer meet the criteria and need to report back to work, which makes for a stressed Operations Officer.

While we are under a stay-at-home order, we are still trying to support local business as the Governor's order allows.  Our neighborhood has organized food truck nights on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  We text our orders with a pick-up time and prevent lines.  When the truck can't do that (Rita's Ice, for instance), everyone does a great job of staying 6 feet apart.  We are also doing drive-through at our favorite ice cream shop and we are excited to support our favorite pottery place by picking-up some take-home art kits in the next week or so.

Enjoy a few pics from our last couple of weeks.

Office Depot still delivers, so we now have a school-at-home station to keep their paper and Chromebooks under control.

I bought two puzzles at the start of winter for the snowstorms that never materialized.  They work well now.  Trying to hold off on starting the next one until Amazon begins delivering non-essentials again so I can order a few more.

PE Class, Mom Edition: Just Dance

PE Class: Creative Shuttle Run using a book to fan a plastic bag back and forth between two ends.

Ryleigh trying the shuttle run.

Gymnastics Team conditioning done via Zoom.

Ballet class done via Zoom.

Code Ninja can't do their regular curriculum virtually, so they have been creating projects and assigning them to kids.  RJ is in the advanced group, doing LUA coding in Roblox.  He has built an obby (obstacle course) and is currently working on collecting and selling items in an adventure game.

Ballet has videos of the choreography loaded in a Facebook group for the kids so they can practice over and over.  Ryleigh was not too keen on my taking a picture while she was doing a run-through.

RJ was so delighted to see everyone in his Hip Hop class.  He got in nice and close to say good-bye and make a few faces at his friends before he hung up.

Ryleigh's art teacher has asked her kiddos to just make some art whenever and wherever they can.  We can then upload pictures or shoot FlipGrid videos to show off their work.

I'm so grateful for all of the adults channeling their creative juices to keep things going for kiddos.  They are all so awesome!

I'm thinking about all of you, wishing you good health.  I'll continue to take pictures of our activities, though I think it might become redundant. :) But, that's what we need, right?  Nothing new and exciting to keep the virus at bay?

Until next time, cheers!

Crazy Times

These are some crazy times, yes?  The kids are doing their best to figure it all out.  Their parents are doing their best to figure it all out.  These days have the same feeling to them as the time after the 3/11/11 earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown--uneasy and unsettled.  Still, we'll get through it.

Ryleigh (and her Mom) are pretty darn sad that the April meet and the State Championship has been cancelled for gymnastics.  The gym is doing their best to send out ways for the girls to stay gym-ready and we're lucky enough to have a kip bar so Ry can work on some stuff on her own.  Dance teachers are uploading videos of the choreography for the recital in June so we can stay on top of that, too.

The kids get to video conference or message their teachers every day. There are online lessons to complete in math, reading, social studies, science, and yes even music and PE.  Mama is throwing in some virtual museums and National Parks and an online doodling class with kids' book author Mo Willems every day.  We have recess and play games outside.  We also have recess and play video games on the AppleTV.  The kids found a game that all three of us can play together, and we're all hooked!

Jip is doing his part to help keep things under control at the shipyard.  We will be eager to find out how this whole thing is going to affect his transfer to a DC-based job this summer, as the person relieving Jip is coming from Japan and moves are virtually on pause right now service-wide.  Right now, it is just one day at a time filled with change after change to policy and procedure.

Here are a few photos of what life looks like at the present.

Recess with a game of Murbles (it's like bocci) 

Happy St. Patrick's Day from RJ

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Ryleigh

Learning how to draw the beloved Pigeon from the author Mo Willems

Doodle Prompt: Draw something with lots of legs

Doodle prompt: Start with a letter and make a drawing

Ryleigh made a story that involved Elephant and Piggie meeting Pigeon.

The kids asked that their drawings be sent to Mo.  I'll let you know if they show up in his videos over the next couple of weeks.  In the meantime we're going to do our best to stay safe and sane.  Jip will be picking up take-out for us on his way home so we can keep supporting local businesses.  We'll get outside when we can.  And, we'll all work on adjusting to our new normal, though we're hoping that the old normal can return.

Stay safe out there, all.

Until next time, cheers!

Shamrock Invitational 2020

Ryleigh had another great meet.  She finished 2nd overall for her level/age division/session.  The vault is still her nemesis.  But, she gets to sign the board two more times for two more 9.5s and up: one for floor exercise, and one for beam.

Ryleigh helped me work the last session of the meet.  Despite being tired after competing the day after the time change, she enthusiastically clapped for and smiled at each competitor on the floor exercise.  She was tickled to be able to stay until the end of the evening so she could help accept the team award, and even more so when Coach Terri picked her as one of the girls to accept and hold the team banner when Ocean Tumblers received 1st Place for Level 3.

Enjoy the video I put together.  She looked so serious all the time--but, I promise she had a great time.

Yep. It's been a month since the last post.

I'm not sure how the blog got away from me, but it did.  Apologies.  So, this will be a random post to catch you on up on what has been happening (and not) for the Mosman Family.

RJ hosted Greer for a night, so Ryleigh and Amy had a girly night.  We enjoyed our charcoal (Amy) and chocolate (Ry) masks.  I put Ryleigh's on way too thick and it never dried.  But, it was still fun.

On February 20, we had snow.  It was our first snow of the year.  When it was heading our way, everyone was sure that it was going to dump more than 5 inches.  All of the schools cancelled after school activities and most cancelled school for the next day.  It looked promising when it was coming down.  The kids put on their snow gear and asked me to get the sleds out.  After they had been out for a bit, I looked out and asked Ryleigh what she was doing.  She replied, "I'm building a snow hill, mom."  Okay, kiddo.

As you can see, the snow stopped as quickly as it started.  The kids got super wet from the super wet snow.  We warmed up.  Jip made it home on time.  And, school was only delayed by 2 hours.  VB was the only school district not to cancel classes.  

 A few days later, it was beautiful enough for a little baseball, sans jackets, in the front yard.

Ryleigh's class recently wrapped up their social studies unit on three Native American tribes.  They got to feel some animal pelts and use virtual reality headsets to put themselves into a Pueblo village.

RJ once again did a Gifted and Talented workshop at William and Mary.  This time, it was over 2 weekends, with the sessions being 5.5 hours on each Saturday.  And instead of a Lego robotics class, RJ took an aeronautics class.  They did some fun stuff, like trying to build the best payload container to prevent your egg from breaking.  They also launched some small rockets to test their parachute designs.  RJ's team's rocket ended up in the trees.  It was so high up there, it's going to take some crafty birds or an enterprising tree trimmer to remove it.

RJ had a couple of field trips in addition to our normal gymnastics, hip hop, ballet, Ninja Zone, and Code Ninja activities.  We're plugging along and doing our best to get through this long period of five-day school weeks until spring break starts April 13.

I'll try to do better about posting more often, but no promises.  So, until the next time, cheers!