this week at home: azalea's 9th birthday and home school updates

it's been 2.5 weeks since the kids' last day at school, but we just completed our first full week at home (since we were in oregon for the majority of last week). we are settling into our new routine. i've had to tell myself to set my expectations low for just about everything: the house will be a mess with four people constantly here, the kids will fight extra from too much togetherness/boredom, we will do as much homeschooling as we can, but we will always feel like we should be doing more.

as for the state of things in washington, we are now under a "shelter in place" order, which means no more non-essential outings. since we returned from oregon, we have not gone anywhere beside the grocery store and a few walks around the neighborhood.

thatcher works from the basement every day, but the kids go up and down during the day unless he's on an important call. i have to admit we have not been religiously sticking to our schedule, but we are loosely. we do a bit of school in the morning. for now we do workbooks that were sent home, some online math games, and reading. this week seattle public schools launched some short online videos created by teachers from the district. things like "k-1 book reading" or "2-3 science". the kids watched a couple, but they did not hold their interest because they don't know the teachers on them. thankfully some teachers from their school (like the librarian) are starting to release their own videos and the kids like those much better! 

some other fun school-related things from the week: 

- the kids got to have a zoom video chat with their respective classes. both had great turnouts and ashford's teacher even made an appearance. the kids were all thrilled to see each other. sounds like both classes are going to do it once a week, so that will be nice. 

- we heard that azalea could submit videos of her playing the recorder for the music teacher, so we tried it out and he sent a personalized video response back! how fun is that? 

- azalea's teacher asked me if it would be okay for him to call her and wish her a happy birthday, so we surprised her with that and she was thrilled. it was so thoughtful of him. 

finally, azalea turned 9 on thursday! what weird times to have a birthday, but i know she's not the only one. here is a collage of pictures of her from the past year:

we felt bad that she couldn't celebrate with her friends or even go anywhere, but we made the best of it. we tried to give her as much control over the day as possible, so it still felt special. she requested waffles and bacon for breakfast. we did school in the morning and the kids played. in the afternoon, thatcher created a scavenger hunt for the kids around the house/yard that ended with chocolate coins as the treasure. the kids and i watched harry potter 7 and ate popcorn. we order thai take out for dinner (her favorite!) and thatcher made a chocolate cake for dessert. we did a really fun "zoom" video chat with our whole family: grandmas, grandpa, aunts, uncles, and cousin. they watched her open her gifts and blow out the candles. it was perfect. unfortunately i didn't get any non-blurry pictures of her from the night :(  

 

we love her so much and hope she felt it!