The First Half of June, at Home

Life at home continued as usual in June. We continued home school until June 10, Oceanside Unified's last official day. I still haven't been into my office since the first week of March or possibly the last week of February. The office tried to start opening up after being shut for a while because of the pandemic (we technically are an "essential business" and could have stayed open, but the partners voted to close). Then it promptly shut down again because of the protests and unrest caused by the horrific killing of George Floyd (a black man) in Minneapolis by a white police officer. Such a crazy time right now for so many reasons.

The girls spent hours upon hours planning Tiny's birthday. I told her she could pick two types of candy to add to the piñata; I already had really old Dum-Dums and some Andes mints I wanted to get rid of in it. Ever laboriously went through the options with Tiny and narrowed it down.

Marin kept doing the weekly Girl Scout snack chats on Zoom. Anna arranged for a teenage family friend to do a lesson on bullet journaling. Ever was very excited about bullet journaling for a second afterward. She also participated in a Girl Scout webcast about coding.

Tiny made a map necklace. Anna called it a "statement necklace," and that it was.

I registered Ever for a Girl Scout thing where the girls camped at home and tuned into Zoom for various portions of the evening. Most of the Zoom stuff was pretty painful, and we skipped some of it. We ate s'mores outside.

We (Jim) set up a tent outside for the girls and me. Jim opted out of the tent sleeping, but he did read to the girls before we turned in. 

We Zoomed from the tent for a little bit of astronomy before bed, too. 

I had a terrible, terrible night's sleep. Somehow Bear Bear ended up sleeping on my pillow, so that didn't work out for me.

Ever, having already read the first three Harry Potter books in the last month, decided she had to read the fourth one  in two days so she could get the AR points for it before AR closed for the school year. She is a crazy determined little lady when she wants to be. I didn't think it could be done, but she started it on Saturday and then read all day Sunday. When I say all day, I mean all day. She started at 6:30 A.M. and finished it at 8:30 P.M. She broke only for a quick breakfast, home church, and dinner.

Toward the end of the year, she kept increasing her AR point goal. Ultimately, she said that if she passed 615 points, she'd get on the school championship board. She ended up at 618, which made her no. 1 in second grade (by far - Leela had a little over 100 points and got third place) and no. 2 in the entire elementary school. She is amazing.

Tiny decided each button on our My First Piano is for a different "show," and the shows are activities we do at home. She walked me through each button. My favorites are "just plainly sitting on the couch," "playing with Mama and loving her," and "snuggle-festing with Daddy."

After her successful creation of banana chocolate chip muffins all by her lonesome, Ever wanted to make the chocolate chip cookies out of her cookbook.  

I explained how she should skip mixing the dry ingredients separately and just start with the wet ingredients and then add all the dry ingredients at one time. She did not understand, and she mixed all the dry ingredients and then tried to add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. It was a disaster. Mixing was nigh unto impossible. She and Jim voted to forge ahead, though, and Jim kneaded the dough by hand. The cookies turned out a little different-looking but quite delicious. 

Ever desperately wanted to sleep in the tent again before we took it down. She was even willing to sleep out there all by herself. I agreed to let all three girls try to sleep out there by themselves while Jim and I slept inside. I thought there was virtually no chance they'd make it. I was sure Tiny would cause problems, and they'd be in within the hour. Also, after I agreed, I became concerned about their safety. I imagined them waking up at 6:00 A.M. and playing in the yard and having a coyote jump in. The new fence did give me some peace of mind, even though a coyote could easily jump it. I also realized that while the fence may deter animals, a crazy person could just open the side gate or hop over the fence and come right in. Anyway, nothing crazy happened. The girls were quiet. Wrenzy came in after about an hour to get a drink of water. She said Ever was asleep, but Tiny was still up. There was no sign of them again, and I couldn't believe they were really doing it.

When I awoke in the morning, I went quickly out onto our deck to check on them. Wrenzy was no longer visible through the tent window, so I thought maybe they were inside quietly having breakfast. Instead, I found them all passed out on the couch.

They said they had come in at 4:00 A.M. because they were cold (I'd left the tent windows down), and they went right to sleep on the couch. So close to totally nailing it.

More baking happened. These two are quite the dream team in the kitchen.

Schools now take pictures multiple times a year and try to sell them to you. At least ours does. I bought a small package of the first pics, but I had to take a picture of a later proof to memorialize the fact that my eight-year-old started borrowing my clothes. This is my flannel:

We made it a tradition to make pancakes (or sometimes waffles or french toast) every Sunday (or Saturday if Sunday is fast Sunday). I felt good about feeding the girls pancakes even more frequently than that when I was using a recipe that used whole wheat flour. But Jim started researching pancake recipes and trying new ones, and then the pancakes were all white flour, with whipped cream and other junk. One day he got really wild and made cinnamon and sugar swirled pancakes with a sugary glaze. They were quite exciting.