Social Distancing Party

These are crazy times. Normal life vs. Pandemic. How do we celebrate our milestones and still protect each other, our loved ones, and those at the highest risk of complications from COVID-19? Wanting to celebrate the end of high school and the departure for college, we had to get creative and host a social distancing graduation party. Since the next few months include holidays, and birthdays, we thought we would share our tips on what we learned and what we plan to do for the holidays.

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Covid-19 Return to Classroom Plans for our College, High School, and Junior High kids

The posts on Facebook say it all. Team “they must go back” and Team “keep them online” keep flooding my feed. School districts are slowly rolling out their plans to return to the classroom with Covid-19, but also giving parents only days to decide between options for the upcoming school year. Seems almost more stressful than Spring Break of 2020, and now with the 2020-2021 school year on the horizon, there are choices to be made. With three boys entering three different schools, we had three choices to make.

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Pandemic Photo Shoot

These last few months have been weird. There’s school but it’s all online. We work (both essential workers) but once home we’ve nowhere to go. No after school activities. No concerts. No Booster meetings. No shopping. NO HAIRCUTS. Our governor gave the green light for social distancing photo shoots to take place and we (ok, I) jumped at the chance to document this weird time. You should, too. Here’s why…

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Class of 2020: Senior Year Quarantined

I had *really* high hopes for 2020. January did not start out how I had hoped and really planned for February to pick up the slack. Then March happened. Don’t even get me started on April. Finally, the gut-punch came this past week when the governor announced that students would not return to the classroom this year. This meant my oldest, Class of 2020, would not be returning to his high school as a student.

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Seeing the World in Color:  Enchroma Glasses Review

We first realized our middle son, Carter, was color blind when he was in kindergarten during Parent-Teacher conferences. While going through his “coursework” for the first part of the year his teacher was showing us his drawings and one was of a shark.  It was a lovely drawing of a shark swimming in the ocean with a brown boat, but the water was purple.  A few drawings later, the sky was purple.  A few more pictures later, more purple water. Later that day we asked him what color was the sky, what color was the ocean.  His response was blue. 

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Electronic Storage: Technology Gadget Organization

With our technology collection growing it is becoming harder and harder to convince the boys there was a life before “electronics”.  Determined to reign in some control of screen time I decided to centralize all the electronics in the house.  Of course, it had to have some flair – so after months of searching, I found the perfect desk to house it all.  With a little bit of elbow grease & imagination, I have the perfect electronic storage unit for all our gadgets.   Now all I have to do is pat the boys down each night so they can get a good night sleep & the electronics can recharge as well.

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Three Boys & Three Schools: Consider Yourself Warned

For the last two years, I have had three boys at three different schools.  Sounds like that should have been a piece of cake.  Yet I have spent the last two years juggling three different PTA, PTSA & Booster clubs (of COURSE they all had different names).  Three different school calendars of events.  Three different groups of after-school activities.  This might not seem like a lot – but at the end of a grueling two year saga of juggling it all, there are signs I might make it out intact.  Granted, with one week left to go I have a to-do list of 72 items and haven’t been home before 9pm the last two weeks of school, but I feel like the end is in sight.   Read more

School Year Tradition – Dr Seuss “Oh The Places You’ll Go”

How can this school year be over already?  I am pretty certain I still have back to school flyers sitting on my desk.  Yet, here we are, another year wrapping up another year at warp speed.  Last band concert. End of the year picnic.  Open house.  Backpack full of evidence that the school year did indeed take place.  The school has so many end of the year traditions, I couldn’t help but add a school year tradition of my own.  Read more