Our little girl, queen of expectations, had been working herself up for over a week, and woke up at 4:30am. She was kind enough to stay in bed til 6:30, and (barely) waited for Jack to do baskets at 7:30... but wow was she overtired and hungry by 9:00! A full crash and burn before she could eat a meal (par for the course for Ivy but really not such a great way to start off the holiday...)
Add to that a cold rainy morning (indoor egg hunting, sigh...) and an edge of melancholy to not be rushing off to church in our finery, and I was not in the best state to put up with anger and ingratitude from my children.
(photos from the part of the morning we made it through... you can see the grumps starting to take over as the children await breakfast...)
We all took some time off from each other and the holiday and we were able to rally by midafternoon. We dressed in our finery because why not? And dragged children to see bloiming flowers like we always do. And rushed around getting the table set and dinner all on the table right on time...
Beautiful advneture-run through Forest Hills... discovering secret bridges and abandoned buildings and amazing waterfalls...
Wade Oval Lagoon...
Our first Zoom family dinner was slightly chaotic and full of technical difficulties... but Anna did capture this photo of our whole family toast, and we had a nice grace, and chatted amongst ourselves and it was almost (not really at all) like the real thing...
Our meal was delicious and we had a bounty of candy and gifts and we were able to see the smiling, healty faces of our family. I have nothing to complain about. We even have pictures to prove it was a picture-perfect holiday. But let me go on record to say that quarant-Easter is not my favorite. This is hard. I hope and pray that we don't have cause for holidays like this to get easier. I'd rather not get used to this.
A general record of our lives outside of the holiday:
Friday-- cleaning up from the week and getting the house all holiday ready! Plus a little time at the lake, of course! And we organized the junk drawers!!
Also-- Monopoly! Beleive it or not these two played fairly peacably for about an hour and a half. Jack's quote, "C'mon Ivy, Lets get unhappy together", paired with this photo, garnered a TON of likes. The love-hate relationship with Monopoly is universal.
Saturday-- a pre-Easter exploration day at Hinckley Reservation. We have this little book of all 18 Cleveland Metroparks and we're going to try to visit them all. The problem with this is that right now a lot of the main attractions are closed. On this trip we did not get to see (/use) the York Road Archery Range or Whipps ledges. Never hurts to decide where we want to come back!
Nat and I also ran off to Euclid Beach, and ordered Zoma for dinner. Date night!
We took the remainder of our 4 day weekend very seriously, doing a great deal of nothing at all on Monday. We've borrowed Wii Sports Resort and so sword fighting and 100 pin bowling took up lot of our time. I also deep cleaned Jack's room which, no joke, took most of the day. But now our 12-year old has the cleanest room in the house...
Giant peace signs in our local park...
Today- back to school for week 4! Kids are now resigned to their lot in life and we slipped back in to our loose schedule of one hour of work, walk for lunch, chores, finish the work, play on screens til your eyes bleed. Jack's school adopted a new plan for communication of assignments-- all on one shared google form-- and I am so happy about it. Made my morning of list making so much easier. My teaching continues to be both busy and unrewarding, with lots of prepwork and then no actual interaction and feedback and opportunities to coach and reteach with the kids. Today I did a little bit of direct instruction with one of my reading students, via Google meet with screenshare to look at the text together but you guys, it is really not the same.
We continue to have our Hiram happy hours every other night and we've developed a crowd of faithful "regular" and I think we all kind of depend on each other and these hours of chatting about not-much-at-all... Last night we got into some good Hiram story-sharing for the first time since we started Zooming together and I am reminded that it takes time and committment to build relationship, even with people who have a shared history.
Nat and I went grocery shopping today, which was super exciting. We wore our masks and sanitized our hands frequently and Target was nearly empty so I think we were safe. Stores have so many THINGS in them, things we don't already own! SO stimulating! We bought ALL the food. Including a number of things we didn't really need because we totally forgot about of our secret hidden pantry storage areas. Good thing pasta doesn't spoil...
Be well and carry on, friends!
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