I finished my birthday sweater earlier last month. Less than two weeks to complete - I love working with bulky yarn for big warm sweaters!
Although we had some snow days since I finished the project, I haven't worn it yet. No where to go, no one to see, and couch days are not worthy of hand-knits!
How appropriate for Earth Day! It was a strong double, with a faint yellow-green-blue below the violet. Does that make it a triple?
I scrounged around and found some razor scooters for the kids. Most places are selling out especially in their favorite colors, but I scored some non-pink scooters to help get the kids outside.
It worked! They have gone out 3-4 times a day circling the neighborhood over and over. Lots of bumped ankles and some tumbles, but they seem to love it anyway!
Yeah, all the pictures are them zooming away from me. They don’t pause for me!
Look who has a bright new pair of peepers!
I'm impressed that the look and fit are very close to the virtual try-on from Zenni Optical, and that they got to us one week after ordering them!
Jack seems nervous and delighted. He says it's like looking through a magnifying glass. He says it's weird seeing everything so sharp :-) I think he looks quite sharp himself!
Here's a long update of the last two weeks. I probably should have split this into a couple posts. Ah well.
Like everyone in the country, we have drastically altered how we are living. Ben and I are extremely fortunate that we can already work from home, so we have job security and I have been able to fully help the kids with their school-work-from-home.
The schools scrambled to get everyone set up. We already have chromebooks at home, so we could leave those for other families to check out. Sam's teacher sent him home with notebooks, pencils, crayons, etc, just in case.
We did one week of remote learning before spring break. The kids took to it really well. I'm not sure they are learning as much as they would have in a regular class, but I'm satisfied that they are learning SOMETHING and staying engaged and have a schedule for each day.
After the week of school, and after the winter storm abated, I took the kids to Grand Junction. Ben and I and my folks debated the safety and ethics of coming. We are virus-free, as far as we know, and so are they. We wouldn't stop on the drive over and wouldn't be going anywhere but house-to-house, so I couldn't see any harm in coming. In the end, I'm really glad we made the trip. It would have been a LONG week of no schedule and nothing to do at home. At least they could putter around a different house with different toys and books. Then the same day we got back to Arvada, the state issued a shelter-in-place mandate. So once again, we were doing something at the last possible time (previously done for the zoo, a movie date, and then a local trip).
We went for a hike on the Mica Trail. It was so cool! Quartz and mica shimmered everywhere, and lots of interesting terrain for Sam to scramble over. It was moderately busy, as everyone was trying to get out of the house where possible. But everyone kept a good distance apart, even when passing each other on the trail.
We made spaghetti from scratch.
Dad and Sam and I made an apple pie.
Now we are back home for a few days before remote school starts on Monday. I'm being relatively lazy with the kids. I'm sleeping in. They get to play video games later in the morning and earlier in the afternoon than I usually allow. It's a shame the weather turned cold again or we would go on more walks. Oh well.
We got the new Animal Crossing game and are all infatuated with it. I was hard core into Animal Crossing on the Game Cube back in 2002-2004. This new version has lots of good updates but is the same game at heart. The kids are loving its exploration and creative aspects. It's really great for all ages and a good way to pass the day inside.
We had a chilly but fun morning at the zoo. They were limiting capacity, closed all indoor exhibits, shows, and most restaurants. But we had a nice venture out of the house and saw some great animal interactions.
And, like everyone else, we are so sick of talking about the coronavirus. The schools announced they are closing and doing remote-learning from home. There are terrible rumors flying amongst the kids at school that I've been trying to squash. I'm actually really happy they are shutting down school and church and other gatherings BEFORE it got a strong foothold in our area. Our plans to watch a local high school's performance of Spamalot tonight was canceled. We hope that tomorrow we can take the kids to the zoo - I figure it's a wide open park that even on busy days doesn't get too crowded. As long as places are open for business we are going to try to help the economy if it's reasonably safe to do so. We have movie tickets to see Emma tomorrow night and a babysitter set up, we'll see if the movie theater stays open too.
We talked to the kids a lot about the school closures and got chromebooks set up with their school accounts. Sam stayed on to play Prodigy (a math game) before going to bed. An hour later he dropped this note on me from the stairway:
Well put. And yes, we will have fun, and you can play Prodigy.