First Month of School and Crazy September

September is always a crazy month for us, but this year it has been crazier than ever before. Josh is working his new position at the police department as a Lieutenant, I am working from 8am-4pm as a teacher (and then usually 6pm-9pm at home grading things, creating content for online students, and emailing parents about students who have missing work from being absent), Gabe is doing a club soccer team, and Caleb is doing grid kid football. Avery isn't doing dance this fall because I really didn't know what was going to happen with Covid and I didn't want to end up paying for something that was going to get cancelled. She isn't sad about it either. She's very content to come home from school, do homework with her college girl tutor for an hour, and then go play outside with her friend until dark! 

On a typical day, I head to the junior high with the boys at 7:45am and Josh takes Avery to Burton for school. Then at 2:30, Avery' s school ends and she walks across the street from the school where our college girl helper, Matilyn, is waiting for her. Matilyn walks her home, gets her a snack, does some reading and math, and then just hangs out with her until the boys get home. They choose to ride the bus home at 3:30 when their school ends because it gets them home a little sooner than it would if they waited for me. They usually get home from the bus at about 3:55. Then Matilyn leaves and then Josh and I usually both get home somewhere around 4:15 or 4:30. 

Then we usually have about thirty minutes to try and throw some food at Caleb and Gabe, get soccer cleats, shin guards, football pads, mouthguard, and water bottles organized, and then Josh usually heads out the door with Caleb to his football practice at 5:15 and I take Gabe to his soccer practice at 5:30. If Avery is playing with one of her neighbor friends (Maggie or Kendalin or Lucy or Soleil) sometimes I will leave her if it's okay with whatever mom is home, but usually she will ride along. 

Then I typically come home, find some food for me and Avery, work on grading whatever assignments I haven't gotten to during the school day, input some assignments into the online Schoology program for whatever students where absent that day (usually about 20 percent of each of my four classes) and try to lesson plan what I'm going to actually TEACH in person for the NEXT day. It's a blast. I'm not feeling overwhelmed AT ALL. Just kidding. I totally am. I keep telling Josh, "We will see if I do this next year." The principal has even come and talked to me and basically begged me to come back next year and said, "Please don't burn yourself out. You're doing a great job. I promise it will be easier after this first year. You'll have all your lesson plans and it will only get easier." But right now, especially with all this COVID CRAP, it is SO HARD. 

Then here are some pictures of the first day of school on August 26!

On Labor Day, we went to Wade Lake with our friends the Summers. It was pretty packed there, but we still had fun swimming and kayaking around with the kids. Then we brought hot dogs and snacks and cooked them over a campfire for dinner and came home at about 7:00. 

Other news with Gabe... Gabe is able to start drivers ed in a few months, which is so crazy. He actually could start it September 23 (because that's his 14.5 birthday) but so many classes were already full. They got really behind over the last six months with Covid and now every 15 year old is scrambling to get in. So we bought a car in preparation for Gabe! Right now it is mostly just sitting in our garage. We don't usually need it because I drive the Buick and Josh drives his police car.

Gabe has also been doing well with his soccer team. At first, he was wondering if he made the right choice by not doing the JV team this fall as a freshman. But the JV coach ended up taking every single boy that tried out, meaning they ended up with 27 boys on the JV team alone. Only 11 can play at a time, so that means that usually most of the freshmen boys sit the bench. The coach is also somewhat obsessed with soccer, and if you try to have a life outside of soccer in August-October, he basically tells you, "You chose something besides soccer," and then you NEVER get to play. I'm not really excited for Gabe next year if he decides to play high school soccer. This team that he's on right now has been such a good experience. I am so glad he decided to do this one. His coach, Freddy, is a hispanic college student from BYUI and he LOVES coaching these boys. He is so nice and so committed. They haven't lost one single game out of the five they have played so far. Hopefully, they can keep it up and have an undefeated season! They have three games left and then the finals. Gabe usually makes 2-4 goals per game. He is one of their "strikers" and he typically is the one shooting the ball at the goal. 

Its kind of funny because the league has this new rule that you can't win by more than six goals and if you score a seventh one, then the other team automatically wins. So they've had games before where they are up by six and then they just have to basically pass the ball in circles around the other team, but not try and score. I feel like it's just a pain because they game gets so boring. They might as well call the game then if they are up by that much! But instead we just have to sit there and watch them play monkey in the middle and pass the ball around the boys from the other team. I need to get a good picture of Gabe in his soccer uniform, but it hasn't happened yet. Here is what I have so far. The kid standing next to him is a hispanic kid named Julian and he is small, but mighty. He can dribble the ball around anyone! lol Gabe is also the tallest one on his team, so they just look funny standing by each other. 

Caleb started out his football season really strong and they were winning games like 39-12 and 36-7. Then all the crazy other coaches from other teams started coming and FILIMG our games so they could know our plays! It's ridiculous how crazy some dads get into this who coaching thing. So this last game that we played yesterday, we lost. They literally knew every play. Our coach was like, "Sorry guys, but I don't have time to go to these other team's games and film them so we know their plays. If anyone else wants to, you can." I don't blame him though! That's insane. But either way, Caleb is enjoying it and he loves being on the team. At homecoming last week, all the little seventh grade boys asked girls at school to wear their football jerseys on Friday. Caleb asked this girl named Briley, who has been his friend for a while and has worn his jersey a lot. I guess they are "good friends." She seems like a nice girl, so that's good. I have lots of Caleb's teachers come up to me at school and tell me how funny Caleb is and how much they love having him in class. One teacher said, "Your son has lots of confidence." Yup! That's Caleb. He's never shy.

Avery participated in this cheerleading camp that the varsity cheerleaders put on. It's a fundraiser that they do every year. You pay $15 for your daughter to go and then the older girls teach them a dance. They practiced for a week and then performed at a half time of a high school football game. It was a beautiful night and Avery loved being out on the field at halftime. Avery also has become good friends with the new girl that moved in next door in July. They have four daughters and they are all very nice. The one that is Avery's age is named Maggie. They dressed up as twins one day for school during spirit week. Here are some pictures of Avery!

Zeus (the new dog that we got last month) has fully infiltrated himself into our home. He is totally a social dog, way more than Drax ever was. He wants to be wherever we are all the time. He loves sneaking on the couch or anyone's beds when we aren't looking. He somehow has convinced us that he should sleep in the house at night instead of outside in his kennel. I don't know how we ended up having this huge indoor house dog. He is not the size of dog that should be a house dog. But he's so nice and so friendly that it's hard to turn him away. He cries when we put him outside in his kennel alone. It's like an ultimate punishment for him to be away from people.

Here are a few pictures to summarize my teaching so far. I had a kid wear a giant WW2 type gas mask to school one day. I didn''t feel like I could deny him his right to wear a mask, so I just took a picture instead. Then on the Friday of homecoming, they dismissed school early at 11:10, which made each class period only 25 minutes long instead of 70. So I did what ant good teacher would do and we played games the whole time. Here is a picture of them playing "heads up seven up" (a classic game from the nineties that I used to love!) You have to try and guess who put your thumb down. It did require them all touching each other's hands, but I figured, "You know what? They've been sharing laptops for the past two weeks soooo.... is it really any different?" Covid can just shove it for all I care. There is this one teacher who has been so concerned about everyone in her class wearing a mask every day. She even sits in her classroom, ALONE, and wears her mask while she works. It's actually insane. But guess who JUST tested positive for Covid? Her! hahaha I know I shouldn't laugh. But I find it ironic that of all people, she's the one to get Covid. I guess that mask really saved her! 

Most of my students really are super great. I even went through the Freddy's drive-thru one day with Gabe and I don't know who was in front of me, but when I got up there to pay at the window, the worker said, "Your meal has already been paid for by one of your English students. They told me to tell you that you are a great teacher." Awww... see? They aren't all little turds. lol Most of them really are great kids and make class really fun. Hopefully, this whole Covid thing will get under control and we can remain in school. All of the BYU-I college kids returned last week and our numbers have been soaring. We went from having about 30 active cases in the summer (when the students weren't here) to over 200 now. This last week has been really bad. Every evening, the mayor stands on the corner of Main Street by this sign we have and announces our numbers for the day. I am just wondering if we will stay in school if the numbers continue to rise. So far, it hasn't been bad because the majority of people who are getting it are young and healthy. But if our small hospital would start filling up all the beds in the ICU, I think that is when school would go online again.

Right now, we just started our "spud harvest break." They were planning on us being out of school for one week from October 2-9. Then last Wednesday, they made the announcement that they were extending the harvest break to TWO weeks and that it would start on September 28 and go until October 13. All the teachers found out along with the kids! I'll admit, a collective "HOORAY!" may have been screamed by both myself and the students on Wednesday during class when we found out. lol So I am going to try and use these next two weeks to lesson plan, get more things put on my website (in case of a shut down) and just try to sleep in and enjoy some time to breathe! I feel like we haven't had much of that this month!

Lastly, as if life isn't overwhelming enough right now for the Rhodes family, Josh just got called to the high council in our church and I just got called to be in the young women's presidency. (It's as if they think I love being around teenagers or something? lol) When they asked if I would do it, I answered, "Well, you know, life is a little crazy right now, but we will figure out a way to make it work!" So, wish us luck!

End of Summer, Family Pics, New Dog, New Car

I have a lot of things to write about this month! This will be my last blog entry before we are FINALLY back to school! Everyone is crossing their fingers that school will start as planned this Wednesday and Covid won't rear its ugly head and mess anything up!

We are one of the few school districts that is opening up, planning for a full in-school return this fall. The nearby town of Idaho Falls is opening, but with an adjusted schedule where they have every Monday off. I think Rigby, Sugar City, and Ashton are opening as a full in-school return. Bigger cities in Idaho like Boise, Twin Falls, and others are planning things online. I know in Wisconsin they were planning to let Kindergarten through 5th grade go back in-person about a month ago,  but then the Covid cases flared up and they changed it to only 2 days per week in-person and the rest online. My mom is hoping it doesn't change this week to ALL online. I am planning to just use the first week of school to get my students very familiar with Schoology (a new online program we have) in the event that we go back online. The problem is, I found out this week that we don't have enough Chromebooks for every student. We only have enough for about half! (You would think that with this big push for online learning, our schools would've gotten more laptops, but apparently not.)

I am stressing to get everything prepared for a crazy year. Was it a good time to become a teacher? Probably not. I am kind of rethinking my life choices right now. lol But we will make the best of it! Here is how we have spent the past month:

Family pictures

My friend, Claire, took our family pictures again this year. We tried something slightly different and went out towards the sand dunes to get some "sage brush" background pictures. Last year we went to the sand dunes, but we had the actual sand as our background. Here are some of our best ones.

Gabe got his braces off

Gabe was able to get his braces off in time for his freshmen year of high school to start! He had them on from April of 2019 to August of 2020. The last two months were basically just getting him to wear his rubber bands to adjust his bite. Here is a picture of Gabe in front of the orthodontist's office:

Lava Hot Spring

Lava Hot Springs is actually the name of a town, but they have a big swimming pool there with an outdoor pool, indoor pool, and some hot pools. The hot pools are fed from the mountains where they actually have hot springs that flow down. We didn't go into any of those, but we did spend most of the day taking turns jumping off the high dives and into the pools. The kids all pushed their limits and jumped off things that were higher than they've ever done before. Avery jumped off the low diving board first and then even did the "high" diving board. Then, even higher than the "high diving board" there was a separate structure that had three levels of diving platforms. The boys (including Josh) had all gone off the low and the middle platforms. I had been watching this all afternoon and was asking Gabe when it was just he and I laying on the towels, "Do you think you're brave enough to go off the highest one?" Gabe said "No way!" and I said, "Will you do it if I do it?" He looked at me and just laughed. Keep in mind, I had not gonna off a single diving board at all at this point. He just said, "You won't do it." I replied, "Sure I will. I'll do it right now," and started walking over to the table where you signed the waiver and got a special wrist band. 

At the waiver table, the teenage boy working said to me, "Okay, you're all set! Just start at the lowest platform and work your way up!" I replied, "No, I think I'll just go to the highest one." He looked at me (kind of scared) and said, "Oh, okay then!" and off we went. Gabe was trailing behind me, I think questioning my sanity, as I charged up the spiral staircase to the first level. I didn't stop. I continued marching up to the second level...Gabe looked at me, hoping I would stop...then the third. When we got to the very top level, we saw there were a couple of kids waiting there. I laughed and looked at Gabe and said, "If these kids can do it, we can do it!" So, we waited until both of the kids had taken their jumps and then the lifeguard sitting down below held up a paddle with the number 3 on it. It was my turn to jump! I honestly had kind of hung back from the edge of the platform this whole time so that I wouldn't look down and lose my nerve. When she held up the 3, I just marched about 5 steps forward and without even thinking about it for another second, jumped off. I had that split second thought after I jumped where I was falling for a good five seconds and just thinking, "This was a bad idea," but it was too late! Then, before I knew it, I was splashing into the water!

I had spotted Josh, Caleb, and Avery swimming down below right before I jumped and then yelled, "Josh!!" so they could see we were up there. He said he would've taken a picture but we went too fast! So there is no documentation, but we did it! Gabe went after I did. There was no turning back! Here are some pictures of Avery jumping off the high dive and Caleb and Gabe off the middle platform.

Huckleberry Picking

This year, we went out picking huckleberries with the Summers family. This was the same family that we went on our cruise with. We went out on a Sunday afternoon, on July 26 (I always have to document this because the huckleberries are only on for about two weeks and it varies slightly every year.) We went up to Kelly canyon and this time we followed the Summers to their spot. It was only a little bit past where we usually go. We were able to find lots of berries. We stayed for about two hours and then drove back home where Josh did his usually washing and freezing of the berries. He puts them in Ziploc bags in the freezer and rations then for ice cream and pancakes for the next year! Here are some pictures of huckleberry picking!

Camping at Colt's property

The kids were itching to go camping before school starts, but the typical camping places like Yellowstone and Grand Teton have been CRAZY packed with people. It's been their busiest summer in years because of the pandemic. People are taking "stay-cations" and driving to national parks instead of getting on airplanes and flying to other faraway places. So the parks have been overrun with people from Oregon, Washington, California, and Utah. It's been practically impossible to find a campsite (from what we have heard from friends) and so we decided to just take the kids to someplace close by. Josh has a friend that owns some property near Warm Slough where we always float down the river in tubes. So one night, we did our usually float down the river and then set up a tent just down the road. We cooked hot dogs and smores on the campfire and slept in the tent with the rain guard off so we could see the stars. We heard coyotes in the middle of the night (which was a little scary) and cows mooing in the morning. I was grateful to get back to my bed the next night.

Caleb's football Jamboree and One Last Float with Friends

Caleb's grid kid football season has officially begun! They started practicing about two weeks ago and they had their "jamboree" yesterday. They meet up with teams from all over the surrounding areas and play brief, 20-minute games just to kind of size up the competition. Then they make the game schedule. So we did that on Saturday in Idaho Falls. Then we went floating Warm Slough with the Summers, the Munns, and the Benefields. These are all Caleb's football friends' families (Colter, Colton, and Kai). We had the jamboree from about 10am-12pm, then we floated from about 2:30pm-5:00pm, then we ditched the kids at the Munns' house and the adults went out to dinner at Costa Vida. (Don't worry, we got the kids pizza.) As we were floating, we pulled off to the banks for a little while and let the kids play in the sand. The boys buried Kai and then made inappropriate boobs on him out of sand. Boys will be boys. 

New Car

For the past year, we have been toying with the idea of getting a second car. I have my Buick Enclave which I love and plan to drive until it dies. Josh just got a new police SUV because he had to give the K9 one to the new K9 officer. Now he has a newer Dodge Durango that doesn't have a kennel in it. The new vehicle that we decided to buy as a second car is a 2005 Toyota Camry. We decided to buy this so that we have something when we have soccer games in one place and football games in another place this fall. Josh can't drive his police vehicle out of the county, so we really needed something else in case they have games out of town. Plus, we knew that Gabe will be taking driver's ed (scary!) in the next year and will need something to drive. So here is the new, white Camry we bought!

New Dog

Last but not least, Josh surprised the family with a new dog on Friday! When Josh had to give up Drax, he was really sad and we planned on getting something else. Josh was hoping that Drax would get this other lady dog pregnant and had even arranged "play dates" but it didn't pan out. The lady dog never got pregnant. So about a week after he found out that the lady dog was NOT pregnant, he received the text message from this lady who works at the animal shelter in Idaho Falls. Apparently, there was this dog there that they were having a hard time adopting out because it needed someone with some police background to adopt it. It had been owned by someone who had been teaching it special commands and the shelter had a policy not to adopt a dog out to anyone that didn't have certification in bite-dog training. She asked if Josh knew of anyone who would be looking for a dog like this. I wasn't there when Josh got the text, but I can only imagine the look on Josh's face when he saw the text. I'm picturing like pure joy and excitement. He quickly texted her back and said he wanted to come to meet this dog. That was on Monday. On Tuesday, he drove to Idaho Falls (unbeknownst to me) and met this dog, Zeus. He didn't even tell me about any of this until Wednesday night. He told me he met this dog and was planning on getting it. That was basically it. I would like to stress that he did NOT ask. He told me. I was like, "Oh really?" and he insisted that they had bonded. So then on Friday afternoon, he drove to Idaho Falls with Gabe and brought Zeus home. I have to admit, he is a nice dog. It still makes me a little nervous to have a new, big dog that could eat me, but he seems okay so far. He knows the basic commands like sit, lie down, and this funny one where he comes in the middle of your legs. Caleb and Gabe already like him because he listens to them when they give the commands and not just to Josh. (Drax would only ever listen to Josh.) Here are some pictures of Zeus.

I think I have covered all of the exciting changes and things going on for us! The only other thing is that fires have been raging in California and our air quality is awful. Hopefully, we can get some rain and clear the air a little! Gabe has a sore throat right now and a cough but I asked him if he wanted to get a Covid test and he said, "No way." He realizes that a positive result would mean that our whole family wouldn't be starting school on Wednesday! So, we are just going to see if it passes! 

Here are two final pictures I didn't really have a category for! It's Avery and Caleb eating cotton candy at the local carousel and then Gabe, Caleb, and Colton (their friend) jumping off a bridge!

Happy end of summer 2020!! It's been a weird one and at times required masks, but we still had some fun!