Thursday Night Rollers

Way back in 2012, I was in a bowling league called the Thursday Night Rollers. It was the best and worst of times. Seriously though, those were some good, carefree, fun times, when I had a lot more spare time. Well tonight we reunited the Thursday Night Rollers - at least the Dream Crushers and Team 3 (those were our team names) - on Zoom. One of the things to be thankful for during the pandemic, catch ups that would have never otherwise happened. {You can read more on the original Bowling team here} How was this eight years ago?

In other daily news...it rained pretty much all the daylight hours. Quinn enjoyed her umbrella and rain boots as well as a mani-pedi and her class show and tell on Zoom. The life. My biggest accomplishments were vacuuming my car, making a video, and laundry. Also keeping everyone alive and fed. My whole house smells like lysol because Matt brought home the history of America. That's about all I've got.

Keep Calm

Found some yard art on our walk. 

Today's weather was such an improvement from the last few days (it might have been a week, I really don't remember). We spent a lot of time outside today. Both of us did some academics this morning and then we were out the door for a very long walk. I am so impressed with Quinn. Today we walked 3.2 miles around new parts of our neighborhood (we have a HUGE neighborhood with lots of trails), and she hardly complains until the very end. I don't think this would have been the case at the beginning of March. She's a good walker now. And just a note that all 3.2 miles were in the Elsa uniform.

We came back and had our 'girls day lunch' on the couch and watched a Tivoed Price is Right and of course Quinn picked to watch an episode of Doc McStuffins. Matt had to go into his office today to trade out some of the boxes for the project he is working on. This afternoon we tackled washing the downstairs windows, which went about how you would think it would go with two people who have the same strong, Type A personality. We finished off with some Sidewalk Chalk in the driveway. I had to take a picture for a school video we are doing. And Quinn demanded outlines to color in.

The rain returns tomorrow I feel like I might need my own advice.

To Do

I taught Quinn the art of a 'To Do' list yesterday. Mostly because the girl loves TV. I was trying to help her understand that we can watch TV everyday, but it's not the most important thing to do, even though I would love a day to just watch TV all day. I bargain by telling her she has to cross a thing or two off the list before TV can happen. It has worked the last two days, so I'll probably be looking for something new by Friday.

We tried something new today in the food acquisition department. We did a curbside produce box pick up. Well actually my friend picked it up and then dropped it off at our house for us. The quality was definitely better than my last curbside pickup experience for a local grocery store, and I'm pretty sure the amount that we paid was equal to my pre pandemic, normal grocery shopping. So, I would recommend this option, especially if you fly through the produce at your house like we do. You can find more info about it {here}.

Our other adventure today was taking my car for an oil change and inspection. Naturally since we are getting our stimulus checks on Thursday, the tires on my car needed replaced. Always something. It rained most of the day...just little sprinkles, but Quinn never checked that walk off the list. I am really looking forward to what looks like a warm, sunny day tomorrow.

Another Monday

Looking at a dead crayfish with a kaleidoscope, naturally

I find Mondays to still be Mondays during all of this, except without the Sunday night dread. It takes a little bit longer for everyone to sit down and check the boxes. Thankfully Mondays have been a day without Zooms so far. Today was a bit of a rocky start...I didn't get up and go out for my miles like I planned. Quinn was being four. Matt was also pretending it was still the weekend. After we got over ourselves, we got a lot done before 11:00. The weather here recently has been Pittsburgh-esque. Gray, rainy, cold. It's not great for my motivation, but I'm happy it is still cooler before that Virginia heat and humidity comes to ruin all running motivation.

Already has that middle school attitude that "it's not cold and I don't need a coat."

After lunch Quinn wanted me to take her to see the painted rocks at Patriot and to ride her bike around the parking lot, so we went. I was also glad to see her wear something besides that Elsa dress. I had to document the occasion. It was so cold and windy when we were there, but after about 4:00 it was like a totally different day, sunny and no wind so I went back out for some solo miles when we got home. So all in all a typical day around here.

Weekend Six

There's not much to report this weekend. It was pretty quarantine quo. We walked a lot of miles and did sidewalk chalk between rain storms, read books, did a bunch of laundry, and baked this awesome focaccia bread that Quinn helped me to decorate. Matt also tried out the tube game and was quite pleased with himself. We also had some FaceTime with friends and family, and we are capping off Sunday night with Mary Poppins.

Socializing

Today was marked by two big events. Grocery pickup and visiting our friends. I use to not mind grocery shopping, even enjoy it. I do not enjoy managing food acquisitioning during this time period. This week we did our first grocery order online and pick up. I had low expectations, especially because this wasn't from Wegmans. I am disappointed in our order for sure, but I know things are not ideal right now. I am glad to have some fresh produce, and will try something different the next time. 

We also went to visit our friends today. By visit I mean we sat in the car and they stood in the front yard and we talked for a few hours. It was nice to have an in person conversation with someone outside my street. We also got some real books to read and picked up some other new and different resources, so I'm excited about that. You can see in the above picture that I have to get pretty creative to excite learning around here. This is the sight word game I invented yesterday where Quinn sits in the bathroom with the door closed and slides the words under the door to me as she reads them. Whatever works. The motto of 2020. 

Down the Tubes

Today was sprinkled with meetings. One for each of us. This morning we got out for two walks in between meetings before the rain came. I have also been stalking the mailman the past two days in order to avoid a trip to the post office, but I have failed. I ended up going this afternoon. They had plastic sheeting hanging from the ceiling in between me and the postal worker. I also wore a mask, opened the doors with a kleenex, and sanitized when I got back in my car.

We tried a new activity today, and Quinn was enjoying herself until I tried to show her an additional option. Then it went quickly downhill. Complete with storming out the front door. Then she realized it was raining and came to a halt. At this point she sat on the porch by herself pouting. I was glad for the peace, but Matt was worried about CPS coming. She did occasionally storm back through the house telling us how hurt our feelings should be that she had to do this. I really can't wait for the teen years. 

We finished off the evening with putting the Elsa dress in the washing machine. I prayed over it first. Don't worry, I'll live to see another day, it came out unscathed (tied in a pillowcase, delicates on cold - incase you even need to wash a princess dress). 

4.5

My representation of 4 1/2 candles on a half cake.

Today we celebrated Quinn turning four-and-a-half. Pre-pandemic we might have told her it was her half birthday and measured her on the wall, but today we basically celebrated like it was a real birthday. Years ago (pre child), I was eating lunch in the teacher's lounge with some of my colleagues and conversation sparked about one of my friend's her celebrating her only child's half birthday...I teased her, telling her that was an only child holiday, and how we use to tease one of my college roommates about this because she was an only child who celebrated her half birthday (hi KD)...now look where I am. Paybacks, man, paybacks.

42 inches on our measurement wall

Quinn is currently 42 inches and 37 pounds, also information we recorded today like it was monumental. She clearly loves some Elsa and the movie Frozen. She is learning to read and knows her letters, letter sounds, and about 60 sight words. She can count to 49 before she says her favorite number, 100!!!! She is so stubborn and sassy. Quinn likes to challenge my school counselor competencies everyday. She likes to play games and is competitive. My favorite thing about her is that she is hilarious. She also loves to do arts and crafts.

Elsa and Olaf

We baked a chocolate cake with purple icing per the Queen's request. When I was out for my solo miles early this morning, I made a great chalk discovery and had Elsa come back out with me later this afternoon to get her picture with Olaf. We also went looking for painted rocks by the creek. She is also celebrating her birthday by having a sleepover with me (which she begs for every night). I feel like we are setting ourselves up for a major letdown when she turns 5.5, but it worked for today.

Bagels

Today I got up early, early for our new lifestyle anyway, and made some bagels. From scratch. Because why not? I won't tell you how many are left. The day was a pretty typical day otherwise - meetings, work, outside time, etc. We also got some designer masks from the one and only Mimi Miller. Quinn ended up with 2, so one went to precious Toto. Tomorrow will be an exciting day in our house. Stay tuned.

Sharks

So there's been some bittersweet news here in the past few weeks. The sweet, exciting news is that I will start a new job at the beginning of next school year. I'm transferring within my school district to a high school. I am going to be a Colgan Shark! This of course means the sad news is that I am leaving Bennett, my home away from home for twelve(!) years. It's pretty crazy to even write this post because I love Bennett, my colleagues, and the community so much. Soooo let me explain. 

For a few years I have been considering a move to secondary counseling. I just felt like everything was always the same. I never really had a teammate because typically there is only one counselor (and a part-time counselor a few days a week) in an elementary school. It's a lot to be the only person. I was just ready for a change of pace. The past few years, I went on interviews, and told myself I would only move for the ideal situation. This year I saw an opening for a high school and I applied on a little bit of a whim, thinking they would never even interview a elementary person. Well I about fell out of my chair when they called for an interview. Then I went on the interview and felt good about it. Now I was torn because this year I've also hit the jackpot and been riding the waves of school counseling with a full time perfect teammate for me. Finally, my stars aligned and now I am leaving them! But my stars have also aligned going the other direction, and I am so excited about the school and team I am transferring too. I am also excited about a total change of pace, working with the opposite end of the K-12 spectrum. 

I feel so lucky to have been hired for my first ever real job at Bennett. I have learned so much from the incredible teachers and staff, and of course my students and their families. It's crazy to think I was 24 when I rolled in there knowing next to nothing about the real life of a public school employee. I knew not a single person (for the most part) when I moved here, and the staff at Bennett have become a work family, the best of friends, and they make work easier to come to each day. I don't think there is another place like Bennett. Truly. 

Being offered this job a few weeks into a pandemic has also just been the weirdest. I will never get a goodbye at Bennett and I don't really feel like I get to finish it out the way I wanted. I didn't get to tell anyone my news in person, also making it weird to text or email this news everyone mid Spring Break. It's also weird to think I'll just be kinda dropping off the scene after 12 years. But everything about life is weird right now, so why not just add this to it. Maybe the pandemic is prepping me for life in the Shark Tank. 

Let's Go Fly a Kite

Well weekend six was a throwback to when I use to clean my own house. Backstory...I had always wanted a cleaning person. It's not that I mind the actual task of cleaning, I hate that I have to spend a portion of time on the weekends to clean instead of spending time my family. Matt finally caved and gave me a temporary cleaning lady gift for Christmas in 2018. I said that's fine, but you'll have to be the one to tell them we don't need them anymore, and so they've stayed. Until now. We decided not to have them clean during the pandemic. So all three of us deep cleaned the house on Saturday.

It was also a super windy, but sunny day. We went out for a walk and Quinn lived out her Mary Poppins kite flying dreams. Two things I am grateful for during this time period are increased time spent with my family and being able to get back into running. I got lots of miles in this weekend as well. Other than this it's been a kinda lazy weekend around here. There is a giant tent currently located in the playroom. There are toys strewn about mostly everywhere, making it feel like the house is already a mess again, but I'm trying to remind myself it's just a disorganized mess, it's not actually dirty.

We are down to the not very exciting food in the house, which is not a great situation, but handle-able. I put in an order for pickup at Harris Teeter with the earliest time slot I could find for Friday afternoon, so we are going to make due until then. I already miss Wegmans. We were also able to watch the Dolphin documentary on Disney+ last night. The Disney nature films have been a welcomed break from Frozen II and Mary Poppins. Now if I could only convince her to not put the Elsa dress on every. single. morning.

Quinn sets this lunchbox and keyboard up as a computer a lot, but now it has transformed into a Zoom meeting with the Wizard of Oz characters as well

Bag Lady

The contents of just one of the many bags

Quinn is a bag lady. Seriously, has been since before she could talk. She loves to just pack bag after bag with tiny parts of things and carry them around. When she was really small she would carry multiple bags, probably totaling more than she weighed, around the house. This drives me crazy. She can never find anything because everything is always dumped at the bottom of a bag. I occasionally venture into the playroom to try to restore order and spend hours reorganizing the contents of the bags. I do not understand this. I let the playroom go for the last few weeks after a big clean out on day one or two of quarantine. Tonight I tackled the bags in prep for deep cleaning the house tomorrow. I just shook my head the whole time. We found a lot of missing things though.

In academic news, I've been receiving some criticism from the non homeschooling parent about my focus on literacy skills (deep eye roll here, incase you aren't sensing my tone), so today we did some math activities, mostly games. We facetimed with my parents and took a very long walk after lunch back down to the creek. It's been colder this week, and rained a bunch, so we hadn't been there in awhile, but it was fun to go back today and find more painted rocks on the way. There are some serious rock painters in this neighborhood. 

The tent was revived after the walk and then I went on my miles alone. I also learned what about some ridiculous prank today called Swatting. Apparently someone in my neighborhood got Swatted and what seemed like the entire police force, complete with shields, assault rifles, and helicopters came. Google it. I hope someone is in big trouble. Anyway we made Thug Kitchen's Chickpea Burritos for dinner. I love this recipe so much. We eat it regularly, and tonight it was with some edits, but still delicious. We sent the bag lady to bed after we watched the Tivo-ed Disney Singalong from last night while she was dressed as Elsa of course. I hope Elsa is ready to feel a little like Cinderella tomorrow as we clean the house for our big weekend plans.

The Insurance Policy

Does anyone watch Handmaid's Tale? Matt and I were very into this winter. At the start of this whole pandemic, as things were getting more serious, I kept saying this is like in the Handmaid's Tale when things started to go down and the family didn't get out. There were all these warning signs, but they stayed. Why didn't they leave? This is now us, except there's no where to go - it's global.

I had this same thought again today as I was doing my miles. I decided I needed to leave my neighborhood. I just needed to see something else. I don't love running on main roads because it's loud and you have to worry about crossing intersections. As I was making my way back I was facing oncoming traffic and all the people were wearing masks. Another car had painted their windows stating they had cloth masks for sale. I just thought of myself ten years ago, and someone telling my 26 year old self ..."hey in ten years you are going to be running back to your house in Prince William County and you are going to see people wearing masks with signs on cars stating they have masks for sale." I would have been like OKKKK...because A. I would have never believed I would be running anywhere or living in PWC, and B. because who really could have imagined this.

In other news, the tent came in handy for some peace again today. Quinn zoomed it up with her classmates, I zoomed with my counseling supervisor. We did a little bike riding, and now we are watching the Penguins documentary on Disney+. I also made a new recipe for dinner, black bean soup. It was pretty good! The most exciting/reassuring part of my day came in the form of my new insurance policy...a giant blow up pool. I mean giant. I'm probably going to get fined by the HOA, but I don't care. I love going to the pool. I actually have refused to move to a newer house/neighborhood because I will not give up the pool in my neighborhood, conveniently located across the street. I can't do a Virginia summer without a pool, and I fear our neighborhood's won't open this summer. Get yours now, the price has already gone up $10 in the time I started researching it a few weeks ago.

Build the Tent

There's not much to report today. Meetings were had. Lessons were posted. Plans were made. Words were read. The usual. Miles were run. We did try out the Walking Rainbow experiment. It's a winner. My favorite part about it is that it just keeps getting better and better the longer you leave it. I highly recommend it, and you probably have everything in your house to do it tomorrow.

We also built a tent. Quinn begged to build a tent for a long time today. Kids never just want to chill. I mean can't we just do nothing. Our neighbors (who Quinn LOVES and stalks) tell us all the time how they are glad we are the ones with a kid in quarantine because they couldn't do it. I'll tell ya, it's not for the weak. Anyway, back to the tent. I finally built the tent. She went in there and didn't come out for a long time, and she didn't even need constant attention. I did let her have a thing of Nutella and worry like 60% of the time she was in there that I was going to be scrubbing the carpet after, but I think the towel I made her take in took the brunt of the damage. I only wish I built the tent earlier.

It's Snowing

We've been a bit loosey goosey with some rules and schedules that we usually cling to over here. We are trying to get back to them to help everyone around here. Today we were up and moving earlier and I made a better effort to get myself to bed earlier last night. Our morning was definitely more productive. I told Quinn there would be no morning TV until I started my meetings. She was pretty good about this and we got her reading done first thing followed by breakfast. I allowed her to have TV while I was in my smaller meeting, and then during our big staff meeting (pictured above) she did a cut and glue rhyming project I prepped for last week while I was on Spring Break. This week my school has started actual instruction - school counseling included, not just providing review resources.

We took a break and did some bike riding before lunch and then played a little before I had an afternoon of back to back meetings (more on these at a later time). These were very small and I couldn't have Quinn accidentally popping in, so she was with Matt for the duration of this. I could hear it was not going well for about the first half. The second half I heard nothing. I found them outside after I finished doing the most "dad in charge project" you could imagine. They shredded papers and they proceeded to pretend the shredded paper was snow because she is Elsa. At least he knew to take her outside. I decided to not get involved.

Teacher Workday

The Pandemic S'more

I love teacher workdays. I feel like I can get so many things done, get some type of handle on my professional life, and maybe get rid of the stacks I have neglected for weeks on my desk. Today was a teacher workday. I woke up not feeling great (just a bad headache) that lasted most of the day to varying degrees, and it was raining also to varying degrees most of the day. It wasn't a great day. I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing at any given moment, and I still have virtual stacks. l also have 5 zooms tomorrow.

The good news is the sun came out this afternoon and I took Quinn out on her bike and she did a mile around the block. I went on for a few more after I dropped her back at home with Matt. I felt moderately better after that. After dinner we put a Peep in the microwave and made a "Pandemic S'more." It was bite sized, made out of hopes and dreams, and random bottoms of bags in the pantry, but it worked out.

Easter Sunday

Happy Easter! We had lots of excitement today and many wardrobe changes. It was different from all our other Easters because we weren't with family, we didn't go to church in person, or have the typical Easter dinner, but it was also very much the same. The bunny still came. We still had church. We still did an egg hunt. We visited family electronically. And I made a different dinner (pasta carbonara - a first for me to make).

It has been a fun "Spring Break" and a very nice reprieve from the virtual learning madness. I'm truly dreading the relentless zooms and emails that tomorrow will bring. I'm not even going to get into all the other parts that go into this madness. I'll save that post for another day.

Peeps

Mad Libs

Sandals on the wrong feet with socks...battle I decided not to fight.

Locked upstairs while I frantically hid eggs in the yard so she would think the Easter bunny did it last night. 

A good kind of zooommm