The last time I wrote was May 1st, which was the first official day that SOME of the Coronavirus quarantine restrictions were lifted. Honestly, in Idaho we were pretty relaxed about the whole thing by May 1st. We had taken it pretty seriously from mid-March to mid-April, not letting our kids play with friends, not taking our kids to the stores when we had to get groceries, etc. We would occasionally take them out to places like the nature park or to the mountains to go on hikes, but for the most part they were at home and in our own backyard playing with each other. The weather was pretty cold and gloomy at the end of March too, so it made it easy to just stay indoors and watch movies and play games. But then by the end of April, when the weather starting warming up and the sun started shining, I think everyone was like, "Okay, enough is enough. We are going back to normal life!"
Finishing up the school year
So on May 1st, we started letting the kids play with friends more often and they would be outside a lot during the day. The school district officially cancelled in-person school for the rest of the year I think at the end of April, but we continued to do "home school" until May 15th. The official "last day" of school was May 22, but there are usually field trips and class parties and field days that whole last week. Also, Gabe and Caleb's teachers made everything due to be turned in by May 18th so that they could get grades submitted. The whole "grades" thing was kind of a joke though because the superintendent basically told the teachers not to fail anyone. So you could have done absolutely no assignments during the "home school" months and still passed. But for the kids who actually tried, they could give an A or a B. Gabe and Caleb both had straight A's. Avery's grade was simply a P for passing because that's how they do it for elementary school.
On May 21, the room mother of Avery's second grade class decided to have a little class party since the school wasn't having one. She made little buckets of goodies for each student and then she had everyone drive up and wave to Miss Homer (their teacher) and grab a goodie bucket. If you wanted to, you could park and let your kids get out for a minute and play. Avery is good friends with the room mom's daughter, Briella, so she was ecstatic to have the opportunity to go to her house and play for about an hour (outside.) She also was excited to see some other friends and her teacher. The fun thing is, her teacher got moved up to be a third grade teacher next year and most of the class is requesting to have her again, so even though they didn't get closure at the end of this year, it will be like they are all returning to her class again this fall! Here are some pictures of Avery writing with chalk at the school for teacher appreciation day and then the little class party at Briella's house.
Gabe and Caleb didn't really have any class parties. At the middle school, Caleb's teachers stood outside at tables and had taken everything out of the lockers and individually bagged it, so as you pulled up you would say your student's name and they would bring over their "locker contents" bag. Caleb's included his jacket, two water bottles, some gum, and lots of other random junk. He said to me, "I feel bad for the teacher who had to clean my locker out." haha
Gabe's school had a day where you would also drive-up and they would give you your yearbook, but I had already taken Gabe with me to the school to make copies for next year and he was able to empty his locker and get his yearbook already.
Gabe and Caleb both have a lot of their friends in our neighborhood anyways, so it wasn't like they weren't able to see their friends. Avery's friends live more spread out around town, so we have had a couple of play dates in the past couple weeks with them.
Getting my classroom ready
Once school had officially ended on May 22, the teacher whose classroom I was taking turned in her keys and I was able to get them. It was kind of confusing, but basically the CLASSROOM I was taking was not the actual TEACHER's that I was replacing. They kind of took the opportunity to shift things around because they wanted all of the English teachers closer together and then the History teachers closer together. It actually worked out better for me because the classroom I got was better! haha So I am the new inhabitant of classroom 183. The lady that was retiring, Mrs. Munns, had been teaching history in that classroom for the past 10+ years and boy did it show! There was sooo much stuff in that room! She had every shelf packed, ever wall cluttered with posters, every inch was used. It was kind of giving me a panic attack when I first walked in to be honest. It was like "Hoarders: Teacher Edition." On one wall, she had even put up this HUGE wallpaper map of the world. I mean, it was kind of cool, but I thought, "How am I going to apply this to English?" She even said to me, "That map IS NOT coming off the wall. I used wallpaper glue." Yikes. So once she turned in her keys, I went to the school to assess the situation. She had so sweetly left me many "treasures" that she apparently thought I may want. These included buckets of markers that were all dried out, used file folders that had writing all over them, and lots of old bookshelves that took up tons of space in the room. So the first thing I did, was haul a lot of stuff OUT of the room. To her credit, she HAD already hauled a lot of stuff out and she probably felt like the room was pretty much empty (compared to what it had been), but I still needed to remove even more.
The desk that she had used was easily older than me, so I also chose to get rid of that and bring in my own desk. The school is super tight on funds (especially lately with all the COVID budget cuts) so I didn't even bother to ask them for a new desk. I just placed an IKEA pick up order and Josh, Avery, and I drove down to Utah, picked it all up, and drove home all in the same day. I go a new desk, a cubbie book shelf, and a few other things. It cost about $200, but in my opinion, that is money well-spent for my sanity. Also, we got that stimulus check so I figured it was putting it to good use.
I don't have my classroom all put together yet, but I will show some pictures soon! I still have a few things to do, but the classroom is almost done. Then I need to focus on the actual lesson planning!
Getting Outdoors
As the weather has gotten nicer over the past month, we have tried to get out and do some fun things. We were so cooped up for the months of March and April, when May hit and the weather warmed up everyone was like, "Let's get outside!"
We went to the BYU-Idaho gardens and walked around a few times. Avery and I even had a picnic there one day while Gabe was at soccer practice and Caleb and Josh went to the gym. We walked to the campus and bought Chick-Fil-A from the food court (which was only partially open and you couldn't stay there to eat) and then we walked to the garden and had our picnic lunch.
We also went there two separate times and Avery had me take about a thousand pictures of her in the gardens. We also walked up to the temple and took some pictures. The temple has been closed since mid-March too, but you can walk around the grounds outside the gates.
We also went to Rigby Lake last week. This was our first time going there this year and the water was still pretty cold!! The boys took the inflatable canoe out across the lake and Avery played on the beach in the sand.
Just this last week, the weather was REALLY warm and on one 90 degree day, we floated Warm Slough in the inflatable canoe and tubes. It only took about an hour and it's really close to our house, so it's a fun, quick little afternoon float. Here are some of Avery's glamour shots in the gardens and us floating the river!
Football and Soccer
Gabe had signed up to play soccer for the spring. This usually begins with indoor practices in January-February and then they start having tournaments and games in March. They were actually supposed to have their first tournament on March 28th in Boise, but then it got cancelled of course because of the plague. So they didn't practice at all from about March 18-April 30th. Then they resumed practices outdoors on May 1st, three times a week. Gabe had his first games last week on Wednesday evening, May 27th, and another one on Friday evening, May 29th. They lost the first one and won the second one (9-4!) and Gabe had two goals. It was a really fun game to watch! I need to get some soccer pictures of Gabe. I haven't taken any yet!
Caleb started his 7 on 7 football season in mid-May. They usually have practices twice a week and then their games are on Saturday mornings. Because Caleb is a big kid, he usually plays defense. This whole 7 on 7 thing is really more for the offensive players to practice their running and passing plays, but Caleb decided to play anyways. It's just fun to be with his friends and get out and run. His time to shine though is really in the fall when the regular season starts. Yesterday, his team played two games in Idaho Falls. They lost one and won one. Caleb even had a couple of good catches. After his games, we went and got pizza with some of his friends on his team and their families, which brings me to his birthday!
Caleb's 12th birthday
Since Gabe didn't really get a party this year (Coronavirus and all) and Avery isn't going to either, we decided not to do a big party for Caleb. He played his football games in the morning and then we bought a big cake from a local grocery store, which I picked up after the game in Idaho Falls. Then we went to Lucy's Pizza with his friends Colter and Colton (haha and Caleb... the three C's) and sang to him there. After that, he ended up going over to Colton's house and swimming in his pool in the afternoon, so he still kind of ended up having a birthday party! He also had his friend, Benson, some over two nights earlier and they watched movies and made smores and popcorn. So he wasn't TOO neglected. For his presents, he got this game called, "Nuts about Mutts" (a card game), some football gloves, some shoes, and a virtual reality video game (the most expensive present).
Caleb also had kind of a second little birthday "party" a few days later when he had a few other friends over (Benson, Kyler, and Cole) to just hang out at our house and have cake!
I think that about brings us up to speed! Oh, I forgot to mention... we took our house off of Zillow six days after we posted it. We showed it about five times in those six days and everyone "loved it" but yet no one offered! So we felt like maybe the timing wasn't right. Also, that townhouse that we had wanted to rent got rented out to someone else, so then we really had NO idea where we would go if we sold. We decided with all of the changes in our lives this year with me teaching and Josh potentially being promoted, it might be best to just stay put for the next year. We will keep looking out for land to buy, but we will probably just stay here until next spring. We have still had realtors and people calling us and saying, "Are you sure it isn't for sale??" So hopefully we won't have any problems selling it next year. Our next-door neighbors just sold their house (or at least ALMOST have sold it, contingent on the sale of the buyer's house) so we will be getting new neighbors soon.
Some days I am excited at the thought of moving and other days I am excited at the thought of just staying in a small house and not having a mortgage past age 44! lol So we will see what happens!
