Distant Teaching has Improved!

We are one week into distant learning, and I have to say that I'm incredibly impressed with the improvements made to the teaching and scheduling process for our kids.   I had no doubt that our third grade teachers were going to be amazing, as we know them well and trust them completely.  They have divided their large combined class of 46 students into 5 groups, and each group has their own very specific schedule for the school day (Colbie and Addy are in different groups).  Their class starts in a group zoom at 8:30 am where the teachers review the plans for the day, as well as do some warm up activities.  Then Colbie and Addy pretty much switch off on zoom calls every hour doing reading, writing and math lessons with their teachers until lunch.   My girls really enjoy the zoom parts of their days now.  The non-zoom portions are reading, writing, cursive work as well as completing a specific project each week. 
Example of their schedules:

Cute art project this week- self portrait with and without a mask:

Jake's middle school schedule is hard for me to wrap my brain around, but he has figured it out really well, moving between Google classrooms and zoom meetings every 40 minutes throughout the day just fine.   He has had little homework yet, as many teachers are putting kids into breakout rooms for get to know you type activities.   We don't hear a ton about the content of his classes yet, but our back to school night is next week so hoping to understand a bit more about what he will actually be learning then. 
He has 6 periods plus an advisory period at this point.  His school is still trying to figure out if additional electives will be possible, as many of their elective teachers have become core subject teachers during this remote learning period.  If they do figure it out, Jake will be taking Spanish on top of his first elective which is Band. 

Cheers to a great year despite the many challenges!

She's Painted!

It took us 8.5 years to finally paint our house, but it's finally done.  I found a wonderful painter who really spent a lot of time fixing and covering up all the cracks and holes that have appears on our nearly 90 year old home over the years.   We're stuck with the strange stucco texture unfortunately, but after three coats of blue, every little spot as been painted.   We wanted a pop of color for the front door, and while we all love yellow in this house, I found a great orange instead (it's called Pimento).   On a street where every single house is white or beige, everything feels quite bright at the moment.  After we put up the new lights and house numbers to modernize things a bit, our home is feeling refreshed and great though!

Before:

After:

Happy Birthday Nana!!

Today we wish Nana a wonderful HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!   We love you! 

First Day Of School!

Here were are, August 19, 2020 on the first day of a new school year!   Mid July our district decided to pivot their school opening plans given the COVID-19 spread, and opted for distant learning for at least the first 6 weeks of school.   The San Carlos Teachers Union strongly pleaded for this decision, for health and safety reasons.  Many parents and teachers predict that distant learning could last through winter too, but we will see!   Our teachers have now had a months time to properly prepare to teach virtually, and we have high hopes that things will feel much more structured and academic this fall vs last spring. 

Colbie and Addy are starting 3rd grade at BA, both in the same class with Ms. Lansing and Ms. Hawkins as co-teachers.   The district opted for all twins to be in the same classrooms this year for health reasons- if we do return to school at any time, the twins will easily be able to stay in the same class pods, eliminating unnecessary exposure in separate classes.  The girls are actually thrilled to be in class together again, especially with two of their best, best buddies having moved away this summer and others signed up for the 100% distant learning class for the school year.   Thankfully, there are number of other wonderful friends who were assigned to their class, including most of their Brownie troop! 

Jake is starting MIDDLE SCHOOL this year!   Going into sixth grade virtually is certainly not ideal, but we are going to help him as best we can.  He has three primary teachers; one for Advisory meeting and math, one for English and Social Studies, one for Science.  Additionally, he will have Band and Spanish classes that will start next week.   If he were going to campus, he would be learning to move to different classrooms for different periods, etc.  Virtually, he will be signing into multiple Google classrooms daily and learning to organize his time and manage his homework across subjects.   It's going to be quite a change for our Jakey!

 Without knowing quite how to manage it all yet, Jake has opted to use his green table as his desk, where he can spread out and also position it in a way where his room is not on display for all of his zoom calls.   We're going to give it go and see how it goes! 

It's going to be quite a day today!

Happy Anniversary Nana & Granddaddy

Today we wish Nana and Granddaddy a big HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!   We look forward to celebrating with you sometime soon.   We love you!

Nice to be Home

After being away for a week, the kids have found renewed interest in their rooms and toys and barely want to leave.   It was a weekend of pool time in the backyard, skateboard practice and enjoying our newly painted house.  I'm still waiting on the new lighting fixtures to arrive before I post a before and after picture.

 (check out the size of the tomatoes on Addy's plant- they are finally almost ready to pick and EAT!)

 Mr. Baker has been in a cookie mood lately.

Lake Tahoe Part 3

For our final day on our Tahoe getaway we headed down to the beach at Donner Lake super early.  To keep visitors spaced appropriately, the staff has created literal roped six foot boxes for each family to sit in, all distanced apart.   We opted for a spot way down on the grassy end away from the sandy beach and swimming area, and it worked perfectly as the kids could walk right into the lake with no one else around. 

For the afternoon we booked a rafting trip down the Truckee River like last year.   Given the amazing snowfall this past winter, the river was much higher this year, so the rapids were much more manageable we didn't get stuck on rocks like two years ago.   However, given our active week, none of us were quite ready to just float down the river and relax like most people we floated by were doing.   But the end of the two hour ride down the river, we were ready to get out! 

What a great week it was- a much needed break for Josh and a fantastic change of scenery for us all.   We are so very grateful to Mark and Gail for their generosity.   Tahoe 2020 was slightly different than normal, but equally wonderful!

Lake Tahoe Part 2

Day 3 of our getaway: When the girls and I spent a week up in Truckee last summer after dropping Jake off at sleepaway camp, one of the absolute highlights were these incredible zip lines that we found.  As they have literally been talking this place up for a year to their brother, we absolutely had to take Jake this time around.  Well, Tahoe Vista Zip Lines yet again did not disappoint, even with the more socially distant protocol.  Given Josh's preference for safe activities and can't potentially hurt his heal, he opted to drop us off and take a huge seven mile run along Lake Tahoe instead.  

Our kids are truly fearless and I was incredibly impressed with their maturity and ability to work through their nerves on each part of these challenging courses.   

We did treat ourselves to one dinner out on the trip- early, safe, outside dining along the lake at Original Mo's BBQ...yummmmmm.

Day 4: We fit all three of the kids bikes into my van, so we brought them all up to Tahoe with us.  On Tuesday we rented bikes for Josh and I, and together we all rode the most picturesque paved trail along the Truckee river.   The kids did great, as this was a hilly trail and they had never gone on a ten mile bike ride before.   They did the entire thing wearing their masks too, as we did ride past runners and walkers.  Side note: Jake is totally comfortable with wearing a mask for hours at a time, through heavy activity and not.   This summer has been great practice for him if he ever does get to return to school, as he is honestly the least bothered of all of us!

After our great ride, we headed down to Lake Tahoe but had little luck with the first four beaches we drove past (SO packed and unsafe!).  Finally we found a tiny little, relatively empty spot (it was primarily used for locals to launch their boats into the lake) and we had a perfect afternoon swimming and relaxing.  The highlight was when Josh rented a two person kayak and the kids took turns taking 10 minute rides out onto the lake with him.  They all enjoyed it immensely and begged for multiple turns and are already talking about putting a kayak on their Christmas lists (eye roll).