At the beginning of October we celebrated Kathy’s birthday with a small celebration at our house. Gotta love the low key COVID birthdays. The weather was beautiful so we ate outside and I made chocolate peanut butter brownies. I was a lovely family evening.
Because the positivity rate of COVID cases around us has gone down, the public schools have started opening on a hybrid schedule. At the elementary school they’ve divided classes in half and half of the students go for three hours in the AM and half of the students go in the PM. The girls are both in the PM cohort, so they’re there from 1-4PM. Lauren started the week of October 6th and Sophie started the week of October 12th. Even though it’s only 3 hours, it’s made such a huge difference for them – especially Lauren, who just can’t work that independently yet.
It’s the first time they’ve gotten to meet their teachers in person and one of the few times they’re interacting with other kids. Half of the desks have been removed from the classrooms and there’s no moving around the classroom – all work has to be done at their desk – and masks have to be worn the whole time. They also have lunch at home so that no kids are eating at the school.
We’ll see how long this lasts, but I’m hoping that we’ll make it at least a few weeks (months?) before cases get bad again, which is what’s predicted. And the best part is Dave and I have three glorious, uninterrupted hours a day, which hasn’t happened in 7 months!
It’s become our October tradition to go to Milky Way Farm to pick pumpkins. It’s about 45 minutes away and they do a great job with farm animals to pet, hay rides, and the best part – homemade ice cream. It was a little more of a low key affair this year with COVID – we had to buy tickets in advance and there was no hay ride, but otherwise it was the same. It was also unseasonably warm – about 75 degrees – so didn’t feel all that autumnal. The girls picked out huge pumpkins that we had to carry back (since there wasn’t the hay ride to take us back), so we were all sweating. Thank goodness for the ice cream 😉
This weekend we decided it was time to adopt a new dog. Over the last few weeks we’ve been checking out adoptable dogs through a local rescue, Savedme.org, and knowing that we have months of time at home still ahead of us, we finally decided it was time. We made appointments to meet three dogs on Saturday, and the second one we met ended up being our dog.
She’s a 2-year-old mixed breed who looks a lot like Benson. Since she’s a Philly rescue she’s definitely a little Pit, maybe a little American Bulldog, maybe Boxer. Who knows? We like to refer to them as the “Philly Special.”
She’s a sweet girl who has a lot of energy. We don’t think she’s had a lot of time with grass because when she went into our backyard she completely lost it and ran around like a mad dog for about 15 minutes. She’s already figured out how to escape the one small spot in our fence, so we’re going to have to get that taken care of.
We’ve got some training work ahead of us, but she’s already a part of the family and we all love her!
My family didn’t take a vacation this summer because of COVID-19 and they’ve been dying to get out and do something, so the Sharp’s graciously offered their house in Rock Hall for the weekend for a little getaway. Dave and I and the kids met them down there for a three day weekend and it was lovely. All three kids are still in virtual school, so they all did their own remote learning on Friday, and then we had the rest of the weekend to just chill.
Although the weather was only so-so all weekend, we were still able to get in some good beach time, including Penny’s first time ever on sand (she loved it!), and some biking around town, a little shopping (our first time shopping in a store other than a grocery store in six months!), and a visit to the boat (no actual sailing).
And of course, there was a lot of ice cream consumed!
The first day of school was also Dave’s 41st birthday. As a result, it was a pretty low key celebration. We had a family dinner and the girls and I made him a Peppermint Pattie cake (his request). I have to say, it turned out pretty well – very decadent.
The start of school this year was a little (okay, a lot) different that the last few years. School is starting totally virtually this year, so while the girls got dressed in their first day of school best, they settled down at their computers in our house to log in an meet their teacher and classmates – Sophie 5th grade with Mr. Keeler and Lauren 2nd grade with Mrs. Sam-Dorley.
The first day was a little bumpy – some technology issues – a lot of frustration with sitting in front of a computer for six hours – but we made it through.
We’ve got Lauren set up in the living room and Sophie in the dining room. What we learned from home school in the spring is that they need a dedicated “learning place” in the house – rather than just doing work wherever. The school also provided both kids with laptops, and all of their books – which we didn’t have in the spring.
We’re now in week two and things are going a little more smoothly. Neither of the girls love it (in fact, Sophie actively hates it), but they’re both staying as focused as they can. Dave and I are still both working from home and one of us works from the dining room to help with tech issues or answer questions.
Our planned August vacation this year was supposed to be Alaska, but since that couldn’t happen, we decided to do another week on the boat on the Chesapeake. We didn’t travel quite as far as we did the first go round, but did stay in a new spot each night. This time we also met up with our friends the Townsends, who were supposed to be in St. Maarten the same week, but obviously couldn’t go. They chartered a boat out of Rock Hall and we met up 4 of our 7 nights out. At one point we also met up with a family we had met down in Tangier the last time we were on the boat. A dad and twin 7 year olds who have been on their boat nonstop since the spring.
We spent a few days with the Sharps in Rock Hall before heading out.
We always travel with sea kayaks, which are the best way to get around into little coves and shallow rivers. The Townsends up the game with inflatable standing paddle boards, which were pretty cool. Sophie in particular loved them and was really good getting around on it.
The Townsends also brought along a huge pink blowup unicorn, which was of course a hit with all the girls.
It was another amazing week on the boat!
The girls usually spend one week of the summer down in Charlottesville with my family. Since I’m working from anywhere these days, I went down with them and stayed the week. We hadn’t seen everyone in-person since Sophie’s birthday back in March, so it was really nice to finally give real hugs. The week was pretty low key. Most of the activities that the girls do while down there are closed this summer, or we just weren’t comfortable doing them, so we spent a lot of time at the house and just took a couple of trips out.
One day Becky and I took the girls to Sugar Hollow, which is a beautiful hiking spot where I spent a lot of time in high school.
Another day we went to a lake that was open for swimming.
One afternoon we met up with my friend Sarah and her daughter Lexi, who is 2 weeks younger than Sophie. We typically see them once or twice a year. The girls have totally different personalities, but get along pretty well. This time they bonded over Tic Toc (if I could find an eye roll emoji I would insert it here).
And the rest of the time we spent at the house – playing in the yard, fishing, and just hanging out.
Lauren lost a tooth while we were down there – her 8th tooth, and third to lose while we’re with my family. Must be a tooth fairy preferred location.
We of course travel with all of the animals, which right now just included Lauren’s tortoise, Jewels, and Sophie’s parakeets, Princess and Zebra. Jewels had an opportunity to meet Vahid, and she was not thrilled about it. She kept her head in the shell the entire time.
Lauren and Ari are pretty inseparable, and spent nearly the entire time together. At times it makes it tough for Soph because she feels left out. She and Ari also play together, but their personalities are very similar, which usually means it leads to fighting pretty quickly.
Mom also wanted to recreate a picture that she took of Dad, Becky and I about 30 years ago when we had Hannah, who is a doppelganger of Penny. Penny wasn’t super into taking direction, and we’re all a lot bigger than we were 30 years ago!
My birthday was very low key this year – partially because of the coronavirus and partially because I turned 41. Who cares about 41 really? We spent the day at the house and my big present was a bench for the backyard, which I love.
Here are a few shots from the lovely evening in the backyard. We enjoyed some champagne, takeout from the Guardhouse in Gladwyne, and some good snuggles on my new bench 🙂