After our morning church, the kids decided to start playing with plastic cups. I can only assume that this ranks up there with my friend Sherry Bollard’s tradition of riding bikes over bubble wrap at Christmas time. It was the cheapest day of entertainment ever!
We were glad the kids were having fun, but Stuart and I were quite down for the day. The new electronic hours were implemented which made Jack mad to the point that he lost his electronics for the rest of the day, thus the time spent with the cups.
We decided to have breakfast for lunch, which was yummy. Then we moved to the cup stacking competition in the afternoon. We worked on the new puzzle and tried to not be too upset about the email we had received. We had to do what was right for us.
Sunday evening we played Spikeball and then the kids stripped to their skivies and we sprayed them with the hose. Then they showered, everyone ate and we proceeded with our nightly routines.
Monday morning I was to walk with Sue, but she had to reschedule for Wednesday so I ended up running with Jack for a mile and then walking/running 3 more miles. When I got home we all went to the park.
Jack was discouraged about basketball. Sadly, he is so hard on himself. The isolation is definitely getting to the kids. It was decided that the basketball time at the court would need to be more of a game to make it more fun for Jack rather than him feeling pressure to perform, which he really self inflicts that pressure. Schooling for the kids was relatively productive on Monday, but it’s obvious that everyone is winding down, and we are all a bit tired of school. Sadly, Stuart and I have to carry on until July 2.
We went to Wal Mart to get life jackets as we had ordered inflatable kayaks for the kids. You know how you move to a new country, taking your kids from the only home they’ve really ever know , and then do the guilt purchases to keep them happy? No? Must be just us. Although the kayaks were postponed and would show up on Tuesday, we had life jackets and were ready for when the canoes did arrive.
We spent the afternoon on school work and playing games. We finished the puzzle, which was sad, because we didn’t have another one to do.
Monday evening I had my Math meeting and then went to bed early. I have come to realize the children can wait for me. Especially during Ramadan, the children don’t post until the evening anyway, which is our morning.
Tuesday morning I got up to run with Jack, then headed to a local park to walk with Mary. It was just the two of us. It was nice to catch up with her and her family. I’m so thrilled that we decided to reconnect this way. The canoes showed up in the late morning, which meant we would need to go to the lake on Wednesday. The kids were so excited!
I spoke with Diane about some jobs that were posted on the Chandler website. I was definitely getting a bit discouraged. I started thinking maybe holding off on applying for teaching jobs might not have been the best move. I suppose time will tell.
In the afternoon, Stuart and I went to a party shop to get a Star Wars mask for my class meeting. We had decided to dress up in alignment with our Star Wars theme. So that evening during school hours, I met with my home room class. They all had something on that had something to do with Star Wars. It was so cute! My entire class didn’t show up, but the 12 who did made me very sad. They asked a lot of questions about school resuming, reports, when they would see me again, and questions I wasn’t necessarily read or able to answer. I cried once I hung up. We really don’t know how this is effecting the children of the world. Their emotional well-being will have to be taken into consideration very soon as not to have repercussions many years down the line with that generation. I am afraid none of us know the answers, including the leaders of the states and countries. There seems to be no real guidance, which is scary.
After my class meeting, I had a team meeting. During my class meeting I discovered that some of my pupils hadn’t met with their English or Maths teachers. It made me so angry, not because they were not getting instruction, but because they hadn’t made the connection with the other teachers who teach them. I think their emotional care is of the utmost importance now. I was angry and did my best to contain myself. I sent a message to my head of academics telling her if my irritation. She was kind and said she was sure they would start soon. I then asked my team if I could get their Google Meer codes put in my Class Dojo, which is our communication device, then that way I could tell my pupils where to find the link. They all agreed to do so. They basically lied and said they had meetings, which I knew to be false.
I got up Wednesday morning to walk with Sue. Walking with Sue helps me sort through my feelings about everything I am going through. I feel better after each of our walks.
When I got home we packed up the kids and headed to Wal Mart to get water shoes and Subway sandwiches, then headed to the lake.
Our set up was almost complete.
The kids are ready to go.
And they’re off.
See what happens when you don’t bring Grammie and Pop? You don’t get very good pictures with yourself in them. The day was a huge success. The kids had a wonderful time. We stayed at the lake for about 4 hours. We remembered to bring sunscreen this trip, as opposed to the previous Friday when Jack got as red as a beet.
The kids helped pack up all the things we had set up, and they did it without complaining. When we got home, we put our lake gear out to rinse it off and let it dry. I took a shower and the children chilled. Around 6pm we took Jack to the Jack to the park to play soccer with two other children. Vicki had invited us to come and have a workout with Gavin’s coach. Jack had fun and Millie ran around the park field. Then she did her gymnastics tricks.
Jack did rather well.
We got home for showers and dinner. The kids went to bed after they ate. I had no interest in schooling, so I napped from 9 to 10 pm, then posted my assignments and then went back to bed. I decided I would deal with the consequences of my decision the following morning.
I woke up Thursday with no questions and I did some approving of assignments. We had decided we would bbq the ribs we had bought at Costco a few days before. When Stuart opened the package it stank to high heaven. So we took those nasty ribs back to Costco. The cashier said in the future we could just bring in the packaging and they would believe us. She was a bit reprimanding.
We had lunch of baked chicken that we had purchased with our rib refund money and then just laid around for the afternoon. Thursday evening we decided to make margaritas. Mom and Dad zoomed with their community group. At the end of Thursday I still hadn’t heard anything from the any of the schools where I applied for a job.
Friday morning we were up and Crusing the Zoo.
I’m not sure what they were looking at, but our cruise was amazing.
We bought a car ticket to drive through the Phoenix Zoo to see the animals. During our cruise, I got a text from Diane asking me whether I had heard from the Shumway Elementary principal. I told her I hadn’t, so she immediately contacted her. Diane messaged me back and told me that the principal had told her that they had reached out to me but I hadn’t responded. I had her send my current phone number and in about 10 minutes I had a call from Korry Brenner, the principal. At this point it was just before 11 am and we were more than halfway through the zoo in our car. She asked if I could interview at 12:20 pm that day. Of course I could! Then when I hung up the phone I asked Stuart if we could be home by the interview time, leaving enough time for me to take a shower. He assured me we could, which made me feel better. I had also been in contact with my friend Jennifer, who is the administrative assistant at another elementary school and she had pulled my application for a 2nd grade position at Sanborn, which was the first school I worked at in Chandler. So things were starting to click for sure.
We got home from the zoo and I hopped in the shower. I got into the Google Meets conference just after the entire family left the house. It was just after noon. I felt the interview went well. I made the committee laugh and was just so comfortable during their questions. I felt it went well and was very sure I would receive a call at some stage.
We sat around for the afternoon. I got a call around 3 pm and after a candid conversation with Korry, I was offered the job. Stuart and I will be teaching at different schools next year, but will both be teaching 4th grade. I was thrilled and felt this was the exact job that was meant for me. It was a good feeling to be wanted.
Stuart and I decided to go for a drive with my mom in the late afternoon. We were in search of some homes for sale. It’s become quite the adventure to look for houses. We went up into the Santan Mountains and looked down at the valley below. The view was spectacular. I continue to say that I want to live in the neighborhood where Grammie and Pop are as I want to allow the kids to ride their bikes to Grammie and Pop’s whenever they like. We have found the house we really think would suite us, but have to wait for contracts before we can even apply for a loan. Time will tell. If that is meant to be our house, it will stay available until the time we can do something about it. If it is not available, then there will be another perfect house for us.
Saturday morning we got up and took Jack to the park again to play soccer with his friend Gavin. Before we arrived, we stopped at Sonic and got some breakfast. We advised Jack not to eat the entire burrito because he was getting ready to play soccer. He assured us he would be fine. He came over at one point and said his sides hurt. We called him burrito boy the rest of the hour we were at the park.
Once we were home from practice, Stuart took our Explorer up to have its oil changed. I went to pick him up and then we came back to the house to have lunch. Just before 2 pm we headed out to get his car. It wasn’t quite ready so we went to Home Depot to try to find some travel coffee mugs. We then stopped by the car repair place to discover there were some things we needed repaired on the car. So we decided to leave the car for the weekend, forgetting it was Memorial Day weekend and they wouldn’t be open Monday. We function quite well with one car so it was no big deal.
Once we had located our travel coffee mugs at Lowe’s and then made a supermarket stop for our picnic to the lake the following day, we headed back home.
We attempted to make pretzel bites! Epic fail! They looked pretty decent here, but this was the best they looked. They weren’t terrible, but weren’t pretty.
We spent a few hours at home before the kids, Grammie and Pop headed to the basketball court and Stuart and I went on a date. We decided to get take away from A new Mexican restaurant called Barrio Queen, take it to a park and enjoy a few hours out in our own. The food was amazing. We drove around for a while and ended up popping into Wal Mart to look for puzzles. We were about the only ones with masks. I have discovered that everyone makes heir own decisions about this whole social distancing thing, and it will have to be okay. However, I’m still pretty convinced there will be a spike in the cases in Arizona in the next few weeks. So many are behaving as if it is over. Why not still be a bit cautious? I don’t know the answers in the least. So I will stop.
When we got home, the kids were still awake. They seemed to have had a great time with Grammie and Pop. Jack seemed a bit down when he went to bed. It seems he had a lot of questions about God while we were gone. He told me he wanted to invite Jesus into his heart because he was scared he would go to hell. After much discussion, he asked for Grammie and Pop to come into talk with him. Pop assured him that we had all prayed for his protection since before he was born and that God was going to take care of him. I believe that a person’s spirituality can be challenging to sort out. It seems my boy is starting to learn that and have thoughts of what happens next. We continue to pray for him to work out his own salvations and spiritual well being with prayer and supplication, as the Bible teaches us. God bless he and Millie, both.
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