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 🙂
The summer that we planned for in the beginning of the year is turning out a lot different than the summer we’re experiencing. Two of the three summer camps the kids were planning on attending have been cancelled and our August trip to Alaska has been cancelled. We did however plan to spend a week on the boat and decided that since we’re already working from home, why not extend time on the boat and work from there. So we spend the last three weeks on the Chesapeake. The first week we were at my in-laws house in Rock Hall, and then we hopped on the boat. The kids spent two straight weeks on the boat and then Dave and I and his parents traded on and off traveling with them.
We took the first leg from Rock Hall to Broad Creek, the Wye River and then to St. Michaels. The Sharps met us in St. Michaels and spent the next five days traveling down to Smith Island, Solomon Island and then to Crisfield, MD, where we met them for another switch.
Over the next seven days we traveled a little further south to Tangier, Va., which is a small island off the coast of Virginia.
It’s been a destination on Dave’s list for a while, and I’d actually never even heard of it, even though I grew up in Virginia! It was like no other place I’ve been in the US, and felt a lot like coming into a small Caribbean island. The marina hasn’t been well maintained, mostly because it’s run by a man named Mr. Parks, who has been running it for decades and is now 89. It’s unclear if there is a succession plan in place, but based on our experience, when Mr. Parks is no longer with us, I think the marina won’t be long for the island. But that might not make a difference because it’s projected that the island won’t be there for much longer anyway. It’s slowly sinking into the Chesapeake. It’s also beautiful.
There are about 450 people that live there full time, most of them professional crabbers. We were able to walk the full island and we saw 2 ice creams shops, 1 restaurant called Lorraine’s that had the best soft shell crab I’ve ever had, 2 churches, 1 K-12 school, 1 island history museum, and a heck of a lot of Trump supporters. Most everyone drives around in golf carts on the roads that still exist, and parts of the island that are no longer accessible via golf cart are accessible via boat. We brought our sea kayaks along with us and explored the island that way as well.
A fellow sailor told us about a beach that we could walk to, which was about 1.5 miles from the marina. One day we walked there and fortunately on the next day we brought the girls razor scooters so they rode there – much less complaining 😉
After two days in Tangier we headed back north and over the next five days hit Lookout Point, Solomon’s Island, North Beach and Flat Island.
We anchored out the last night at Flat Island, but the other spots we docked at marinas. Most had pools which was nice because it was pretty hot and unfortunately in a few of the places there were sea nettles, which hurt terribly when they sting, so the kids couldn’t jump off the boat and swim.
The girls did a lot of fishing off the back of the boat, but only made one catch all week, which was unfortunately too small to eat. They were not deterred though.
Over the two weeks Sophie learned to crab from a fellow boater we met. She caught over a dozen crabs, but we didn’t end up keeping any. Lauren learned to dive and by the end of the week had almost perfect form. And I worked on my boat handling skills. The bar was pretty low there, but still, there was good improvement.
We made it back to Rock Hall for the 4th of July and the weather was just too nice, so we hopped back on the boat for a day of anchoring and swimming at our favorite spot, Swan Creek. The Sharps joined us and Dave brought his sunfish to sail around on.
It was just the long break we needed! At the end of the two week the girls 2 hit 10 ports of call and 273 nautical miles. Not too shabby!
On June 6th we lost our beloved Benson.
He was our first kid and the girls first dog. We were so fortunate to have had almost 14 years with him. When we got him from Philadelphia Animal Control, a horrendous organization that has since been closed, he was about 7 months old and pretty sick, but with the most loving heart you will ever know.
He made three house moves with us, and was my work companion for the first six months of Maven while we worked out of Rebecca’s house. He was our travel companion, tagging along on many the boat vacation and car trips up and down the east coast. In his younger days he was our hiking and trail running buddy, only straying from our side when he saw a squirrel. He loved people and had a healthy fear of small yappy dogs and cats, having no idea of his size and strength.
Both of our kids learned to crawl by trying to reach him and to walk by pulling themselves up on him. While he would give us the occasional side eye, he never once yelped, barked or tried to hurt them.
Both girls loved him, but it was clear that Lauren was really his true companion. She always wanted to know where he was, would wake him up if he was having a bad dream, would drape a blanket over him if he looked cold, and gave him endless snuggles, whether he really wanted them or not.
While the last months have been tough on everyone, quarantining allowed us to spend literally every day of his last three months with him.
We’re all still feeling sad and missing him so much, but our hearts are also full of great memories of the best dog there ever was.
At the beginning of all of this I realized quickly that I needed to pick my battles, and one of the battles that I just wasn’t up for fighting was getting Sophie to brush her hair. She constantly needs to be reminded to brush her hair, and even then it doesn’t happen regularly. She has very thick hair that gets knotted easily, and if I try to brush it major drama ensues. So, after a week or so I just threw in the towel and stopped pestering her. And here’s what happened…
It was bad. Really, it was beyond bad. Dreads had started to form. Attempting to brush it was out of the question. Cutting was the only option. It took several days to talking about it before Sophie agreed to let me do it. I wasn’t super comfortable, it was a lot of hair, but it had to be done. I watched a lot of home haircut YouTube videos first.
Here’s how it turned out. Not too bad if I do say so myself! Once it was all off of her head she was really happy. I think it felt really good.
And not to be left out, Lauren also wanted a cut. I took off a few inches, but was nervous to do too much more. She really wants it as short as Sophie’s, but I’m not confident that I could recreate that again.
We’re all anxiously awaiting salons to open again so that mom doesn’t have to be the resident hairdresser for much longer. And honestly, no one wants them open more than me, as I’m starting to see just how gray I really am!
We had a very low key Easter this year since we’re all still under a stay at home order in Pennsylvania. We died Easter eggs on Saturday and then on Sunday morning we had a hunt in our backyard. Unlike the last few years where we get dressed up and head to brunch at the Union League, the girls didn’t even get out of their PJs until the afternoon. In general it’s been a challenge to get them dressed each day, and honestly, who can blame them! If you have the ability to wear pajamas all day, it’s hard to not do that.
I don’t even know what title to give this blog post because it encompasses so much. But I think “weird times” is at least accurate.
On March 12th we were informed that schools would be closed for two weeks because of the Coronavirus, which they’re now calling COVID-19. Rebecca and I decided that we should also close our officer for two weeks because it seemed to be spreading pretty quickly. At that point maybe half of the professional service businesses in Philadelphia decided to have their staff work remotely, if possible. Within a week we were looking at more closures, and recommendations of social distancing, and two weeks after that we were living in statewide shutdown, schools were closed indefinitely, restaurants were closed, and we were all living under a stay-at-home order.
I’m writing this blog post about a month into it and here’s what our new normal looks like.
SCHOOL
Dave and I are homeschooling the girls for the remainder of the year. They both have time during the day where they Zoom with their classes, as well as Zoom into their “specials,” like French, art, gym, music, etc. We’ve set up a schedule for the girls to keep things consistent and predictable. Right now we’re doing math in the morning and reading/language arts in the afternoon. This is all between juggling our work schedules. Challenging doesn’t even begin to describe it.
SOCIALIZING
Since we can’t see anyone in person anymore, we’ve been setting up Zoom get togethers with friends and family. Although not quite the same as seeing people in person, they’re actually a lot of fun and still fulfills that need to interact with people! Not seeing friends has been pretty tough on the kids. Sophie has been FaceTiming with a few friends who have devices, and Lauren has a friend in the neighborhood that she visits with from across the street. Last week one of Sophie’s classmates had a birthday and the family arranged a birthday “parade” where people decorate their car and slowly drive by the house to wish Happy Birthday to the birthday person. We’re all just trying to make it work.
ACTIVITIES
Sophie’s choir and Lauren’s ballet have both moved to virtual classes. Definitely not the same, but it works. Both of their spring recitals have been cancelled already (although I haven’t told them yet, because they’ll both be really disappointed). They’ve stopped taking piano lessons because their teacher said it’s a little hard teaching kids so young virtually. I’ve kept them up with it though, having them practice each day and working with them on new songs. It’s been a very long time since I’ve really sat down to play the piano, so I’m not going to say it’s been seamless. I have kept up with my violin lessons, still taking them every other week via FaceTime with my teacher. It actually works pretty well. The only real snafu is that we can’t play together because there is a slight time delay.
We leave the house every day to walk or to ride bikes, but haven’t been to a store in over three weeks. Fortunately there are a lot of delivery options for us. Restaurants are all closed for dining in, but a lot of them are doing take out and delivery. Grocery story delivery is pretty hard to get now because of demand, but we’ve found some commercial food distributors who are now doing home delivery. We have to order in the bulk size that restaurants get, but at least we have no shortage of food. We’ve been doing a lot of cooking and baking, which is actually one of the upsides of this whole situation. Since Dave is home now he cooks dinner almost every night, which has been amazing. That’s another upside, having Dave home. He hasn’t not traveled for this extended amount of time ever. It’s actually the longest consecutive amount of time we’ve spent together since college!
Right now we’re not sure when things will start to go back to normal. The PA Governor just extended our stay at home order until May 8, but I’m pretty sure it’ll go beyond that. Right now we’re just taking it one day at a time!