Space Kitties Charter School Diary - Episode 5

It turns out that the reality of the social distancing homeschool experience doesn't really inspire daily blog posts. For the most part, our days are the same. Sleep in. Eat breakfast. Do school work. Lunch. Watch TV. Play outside. Dinner. Once in a while we'll get a wildcard in there like a trip to the grocery store, or maybe picking up a free school lunch. These are simple, quiet days.

When I don't have to commute or drive kids to/from school every day, things seem infinitely simpler. When I have a meeting in the afternoon I don't have to worry about arranging alternate childcare. I can just plug in my headphones and Zoom away. There are no weekend birthday parties to shop for, no soccer practices to attend, no play dates, no quick trips to Target or the mall to pick up some item previously believed to be "essential". We take walks around the neighborhood nearly every day because...what else do we have to do? I've had more time to do video chats or socially-distanced walking dates with friends because...what else do any of us have to do? I'm reading more. I have more time for working on puzzles, playing games with the kids or random "Cafe Nights" where the kids create elaborate menus with the miscellaneous items in the cupboard. While I do miss some aspects of "normal" life, I find myself settling into this quieter pace of life. I know this won't last forever, and I've given up on hoping or wondering when it will end. It will end when it ends. For now, I'm relatively content with this homebody lifestyle.

So, in this relatively quiet season of life, when the opportunity to visit a farm (with new baby cows) presented itself, we nearly peed our pants with excitement and eagerly accepted the invitation.

Because...what else do we have to do?

The kids got up at 7am (earlier than they have in weeks!) so they could finish their school work and be ready to go after lunch. They piled into the car and were so excited to be going somewhere that they didn't even bother to ask if they could bring an electronic device along for the 45-minute drive down to Corning.

Our day at the farm was a much bigger adventure than I had anticipated. I figured we would drive down, look at the cute baby cows, say hello to the sheep, and then head home. What we got was a full-service farm tour complete with petting (!!) baby cows, visiting all the sheep, practicing our sheep herding skills, playing with the dogs, picking mandarins, learning about how prunes are harvested, looking for fairy rings in the pasture, climbing hay stacks, a peacock sighting, and asking about 1,382 questions about animals and farm life. Our hosts (My sweet book club friend, Ann and her husband, Henry) were so gracious in answering every last question and making sure we experienced all the fun things about farm life. (And thankfully none of the real, actual work or un-fun stuff that I know goes on at a farm every day!)

As we were leaving, Clara commented this was the "Second best day of her life" (second only to the day she got to play baseball on the field at AT&T/Oracle Park). I'm not sure if she really loves farms, or if every fond memory has faded so much she can't even recall what fun is anymore. Both kids asked when we could go back again.

If we had been living "normal" life, I doubt this farm trip ever would have happened. Weekdays would be busy with school and work. Weekends would be busy with church, soccer, or birthday parties. The drive would seem too long for something as simple as looking at a herd of cows. I would have forgotten about the invitation in the clutter of other obligations, appointments and events.

And yet.

We're not living normal life. And suddenly a simple afternoon on the farm ranked as one of the top life experiences EVER. Simple, quiet days bring a new flavor of joy. While we all want COVID to go away as quickly as possible, let's not miss the magic of this season of life. Because, what else do we have to do?

Clean hands. Open Hearts. Growing Minds.

Space Kitties signing off.

Home School Day: Lost count
Toilet paper inventory: 28, which is interesting since we had 27 a week ago and I haven't purchased any new rolls.
Wine on hand: 1 box, plus a bottle of rum, because 80 degrees is fruity cocktail weather. (And maybe this solves the mystery of the poor toilet paper math...)
Crying fits: 5-ish

Space Kitties Charter School Diary - Episode 4

Spring Break!!

There's a lot of bummers about living in COVID isolation, and cancelling our Spring Break mini-road trip is near the top of our list. As I saw this week approaching on the calendar I was kind of dreading it because it's hard enough to get my work done while the kids are (mostly) occupied with school work. Without school work to keep them busy, I figured it was just a disaster waiting to happen. Bored kids. Distracted mom. No play dates or road trips. Ugh. We needed SOMETHING special to distinguish this week from every other week stuck at home, so I came up with two low-budget, easy ideas to spice things up a bit. First: Nightly theme meals. Second: A jar of Spring Break Surprises. None of this is Pinterest-worthy, but I think it's safe to say it made the days pass less painfully and actually made things a little bit fun.

Monday:
Spring Break Surprise: Color-by-number drawing sheets. Remember how I mentioned this wasn't exactly Pinterest worthy? It's not. But it does bring to mind an ancient marketing secret. It's all in the presentation. If I had suggested we print a color-by-number sheet off the internet, they probably would have rolled their eyes and said, "That's boring." However, when I print off the coloring sheet in secret, roll it up, tie it with a ribbon and place it in a jar marked "Spring Break Surprises", it suddenly becomes remarkably fun.

Dinner Theme: Backwards! We wore our clothing backwards, turned our chairs around backwards at the table, and ate dessert first. The "dessert first" part was my secret ploy to get them to love the theme dinner idea, and I have to say it worked. They were lukewarm on the whole thing until I brought out chocolate chip cookies and insisted they eat them first. There is keen anticipation for tomorrow's theme dinner.

Tuesday:
Spring Break Surprise: I printed instructions for a game called "Snowball" which involves tossing around a bunch of crumpled up balls of paper, and a few other rules that nobody bothered to read. They weren't having it. The instructions sat on the counter all day, waiting for someone to play.

Dinner Theme: Crazy hats! We did "snow-cial" distancing today and took a drive up to Bunny Flat to do some sledding. After a long drive and lots of fun in the fresh powder, this easy theme dinner was a great fit for our dinner of BBQ take-out.

Wednesday:
Spring Break Surprise: Today was the jackpot. They each got $20 to order something off of Amazon. I tossed this in the jar as a Hail Mary pass in case the Spring Break Surprise idea flopped. Surely they couldn't feign indifference at free money! Turns out they weren't as excited as I thought they would be. I mean, they didn't turn up their noses at online shopping, but there were no squeals of excitement. Sigh. It's hard to generate excitement in this house-bound life.

Dinner Theme: Pajama night! We actually did all manage to get dressed in real clothing today, and then had to change into PJ's for dinner (Pancakes and bacon!). Then we had to change back into our clothes for our scheduled grocery pick-up time slot from 7-8pm. As luck would have it, the grocery store computers all crashed and they were not able to fulfill our order. So tomorrow we'll be digging through the freezer and getting creative with our meal prep.

Thursday: 
Spring Break Surprise: Recipe for homemade play dough. By Thursday, the enthusiasm for the Spring Break Surprise jar was pretty weak. Around 4pm, I had to remind them they still had a surprise to pick for the day. They ended up getting excited about making play dough and figuring out which colors to mix together to make it purple. Can we count that as a science lesson?

Dinner Theme: Raccoon Night! Did anyone else have a Raccoon theme night at their house this week? No? Just us? Hmm. Well, if you want to re-create this gem at your house it's not about eating roadkill, as my kids feared. It's about eating like a raccoon. Raccoons don't have opposable thumbs, so you achieve this raccoon-like status by taping your thumbs to your palms. It's fun. And slightly ridiculous. I would suggest that you get all of your serving dishes to the table first before taping everyone's thumbs down. Managing hot pots of food sans thumbs is just an unnecessary layer of danger for the raccoon theme night.

Friday:
Spring Break Surprise: Some writing/letter game. Still sitting untouched on the counter

Dinner Theme: Formal Night! Of all the theme nights, this one garnered the least amount of enthusiasm. One kid was excited about an excuse to play around with make-up, and managed to put on a fancy-ish shirt. The other had to be bribed and threatened before he put on a shirt with a collar, and he only agreed to be fancy "from the waist up." Clearly living life via Zoom meetings is starting to affect how he relates to the world.

On Saturday night I asked the kids how they would rate their spring break on a scale from one to ten. One rated it an 8, the other said 9. I think that is pretty fantastic, given the circumstances, and the fact that they saw right through my feeble Spring Break Surprise efforts by day two. The theme dinners were definitely the fan favorite, and they are already hatching up ideas for future theme dinners. For the most part, I tend to be a "make the best of it" kind of mom, but even I was skeptical we could pull off a spring break rated 8 or above in the middle of a global pandemic.

I'm proud of my kids and their ability to adapt to disappointment after disappointment during this era of COVID. I'm proud of my low-budget creativity that produced some pretty fun results. And I continue to be grateful for good health, meaningful work, ample food, shelter and the blessing of living in the moment with these two little people that I love so much.

I know that so much of what we do as parents will be lost and forgotten in the dusty memory banks of our kids. But these simple joys will be indelible, even without spending a lot of money or traveling to exotic locations. I write these words as a reminder to myself for the days ahead, and to the future me in 2021 scrambling to make plans for the Best Spring Break Ever. Perhaps the Perfect 10 is within our grasp, and more simple to create than we ever imagined.

Clean hands. Open Hearts. Growing Minds.

Space Kitties signing off.

Home School Day: Spring Break!
Toilet paper inventory: 27 rolls (Thank you Costco and Susan Tieden!)
Wine on hand: 1 bottle
Crying fits: 2 (we had another one in there somewhere but I can't remember when or why)

Snow-cial Distancing.
Fresh powder, blue skies epic sledding.