this week at home: school will not resume, car parade, canceled trip

friday seems to be my new day for posting. a little something for me to look forward to at the end of each week :) we're another week into quarantine. it's....going. some days feel pretty normal, some days feel like the hardest day ever and like it's never going to end. one day at a time! 

we've had beautiful weather all week, which is a huge mood booster. it's been around 60 and sunny every day! we've been trying to spend as much time outside as possible. one day we had popcorn happy hour in the backyard: 

 i've gotten out for some walks in the neighborhood too. one night i picked up dinner from scooters and it felt like a vacation! same with my walk to target to pick up some essentials that were shopped/bagged for me. we've been relying pretty much exclusively on grocery pick up and delivery. the wait times can be far out, so it's made for a few days when we've had to be rather creative with meals. 

we painted our nails out on the front stoop: 

 

azalea has gotten mail from two friends (one from school and one from minnesota), so we walked to the mailbox to drop off stuff to send back. 

on the school front, we learned on monday that school will not resume for the rest of the year. i knew that was very likely going to be the case, but i was holding on to a tiny shred of hope that they would just extend the closure for another few weeks. *sigh*. i feel bad that my kids won't get to finish kindergarten and third grade in person, but it's far sadder for kids graduating from high school and college.

 the kids continue to zoom with their classmates and teachers once a week as well as doing some school work with me. this week ashford also had a class zoom with the school librarian, which was fun. 

the highlight of this week (and month for that matter) was participating in a car parade for their principal. a mom had the idea to have as many families that wanted to participate line up in their cars at the locks and then drive by the school with balloon, signs, and streamers and wave to our principal. our principal has been amazing for the past two years, but especially since the school closure. he is at the school multiple times a week to make sure every family has everything they need: be it a laptop or grocery gift card, etc. he was so surprised by this gesture and had the biggest smile on his face as we all went by. it was so fun to be a part of and also nice to "see" tons of friends from school in their cars. there was even a story about it on the local news.

 

we've continued our weekly baking sessions. azalea and i made chocolate chip cookies last weekend and they were delicious. hopefully we'll bake something fun for easter. 

thatcher and i also made the viral whipped coffee. we had to buy instant coffee because we didn't have any on hand. it was pretty strong (and i like coffee flavor), but it was fun to try. 

 

the kids and i were supposed to fly to minneapolis yesterday for their spring break/easter. it's disappointing that we had to cancel it, but it's for the best. hopefully things will calm down enough this summer for us to go back.