Before: (By the way, Romney's birthday stuffy was up there because she made a little cave for herself and hung out up there.)
And after:
Thank you. Okay back to actual events in our lives.
Every school district on the planet, I'm sure, had the same dilemma ours did. Do we go back to school in person? Online only? Some type of hybrid? The debate is a heated one and there are many feelings on all sides and I don't believe there is a single clear-cut clear-winner of an answer. Everything is just a big old mess.
In the days that followed it was just shocking to see the damage. Liberty Park lost so many absolutely massive trees. It's so sad! And school didn't start the next day, or the day after that. Sadly they made those decisions each morning at the last minute - It wasn't until Thursday that they just said forget it, let's start on Monday. So basically we had an extra week of summer but it was quite cold and we still had to get up and act like we were going to school every day. I know a lot of people were out of power that whole week, and some didn't get power into the week after that. Man oh man were we lucky. Our biggest sadness was that this year we had some of the best porch plants we have ever had. The cold snap seemed to basically kill everything, right at the beginning of September, which is sometimes the best porch hang-out time of the year - it's not so hot, and the plants are glorious. Luckily we were able to nurse many of them back to health and we enjoyed them for a few weeks longer.
For a while I thought our school district was considering a hybrid-model of school but then they changed their minds and decided to go with online only. I know this is a really hard thing for a lot of families. However, the upside I see is that our teachers have been able to focus 100% on teaching online. I've heard a lot of stories about teachers having to do both in-person and online and how it's basically them having to do two jobs at once, and it usually is just too much to be effective in both situations. Also there are schools that opened but are shutting down every week because of covid. I'm glad we just have done online and put our best efforts into it. I know that there are kids and families suffering from it though. There is just no easy answer!
Once our district decided to go with online school, they also postponed the starting date of school for two weeks in order to give the teachers more time to really get prepared. In some ways this was great - our summer got extended until after Labor Day! But...we really weren't up to much, so we did all start to feel anxious about just getting started.
We did have a little fun over Labor Day - we set up a screen in our backyard and invited friends over and watched the new Mulan movie, which kind of got panned by the critics but we really loved it and have watched it more than once since then. We also had friends over for some burgers on the back porch as a little end-of-summer celebration, though it was a little subdued. Get togethers just aren't the same right now. But of course we always love seeing the Moores so it was fun. They headed home for an early bedtime and we cleaned up and went inside. Troy gave the kids each a beautiful father's blessing to help them get off to a great start for the year. We didn't exactly lay out first day of school outfits since they'd all just be at computers all day, but we did set up some learning spots for each of the kids and got some school supplies. (What a weird year! We didn't have any school supply lists, no new backpacks or lunch boxes! Sad.) We got everyone tucked into bed and set our alarms.
Well, coinciding with this first day of school was a sudden change in weather for our city. We went from very summer weather to nearly wintry, with a huge windstorm bringing in the colder air. It didn't seem like it was going to be that big of a deal though.
Wrong!
Just as the kids were starting up - Chase and Romney were both in the middle of first period - the wind was really revving up. It was loud and alarming and quite violent. Luckily our power stayed on but we were truly one of the lucky few. We started getting reports of power going out all over the city, including at many of the schools. So at 8:30, literally just as Emma was sitting down to log on to her class, we got word that school was cancelled district wide.
Well nevermind! Back to doing nothing, everyone. Emma immediately wanted to get together with the one friend she still sees. I walked her over to their house and it was actually quite hair-raising (both literally and figuratively) to walk around in that storm. Frankly, it was probably dumb. I had no idea but trees were coming down all over the valley. HUGE HUGE trees were getting blown right over, including up and down the streets all around us. We didn't lose any big trees ourselves, but a couple of already-dead ones went down in our way back yard. No harm to us but that wasn't true for many many people and places here.
These photos I snagged off the internet:
Before the storm:
(Waaahhhhh!)
Finally on Monday, September 14 we started school. It has been really different from online school in the spring when school was first sent home. In the spring, the kids had zero live meetings with their teachers and classes, just assignments posted online that they had to complete. And the grading was super lenient. I understand why the district needed to not do that indefinitely, but my kids have had a hard time being in online zoom classes all day long. It's just a LONG time to be staring at a screen. Then they usually have homework after that. They all get a little discouraged and frustrated but also they have adjusted and are doing well. This is definitely not true for the whole district - families are taking their kids to other in-person schools in droves and many kids are just not really doing school at all - just not showing up and failing. This is such a rough year. I'll be so interested to see how the effects of the pandemic continue to develop over the next five, ten, even twenty years.
I'm grateful that for the moment I don't have a job so I can stay home and support the kids. I'm sad for my high school senior who is not really having a senior experience at all. I'm sad for my actress daughter who is missing doing the school plays so much. I think we are all in mourning. But those things considered, we really are lucky. Praying for a vaccine soon.
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