Tag: kids

The view from my window.

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Today marks the first time in a while that I could just sit down for a little while and look out of my window. It also marks one of the few days recently that the sun has been out. My kids are wrapping up their first fully remote semester of school and they have learned and accomplished a lot considering that. Before all of this, they had done home schooling, but this has been somewhat different, especially in light of all of the other closures and social distancing. Sometimes I hope that we can adjust to being around people again when it is safer and things go back to, um, more normal (?) Some days, I know we all mourn the loss of the way things were before, but today I will be thankful for the progress and the sunshine.

Hello September.

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Around my house we’re getting used to the onset of the new school year. For as long as I have remembered, it has meant coordinating school supply, clothing and activity purchases and making sure everyone had what they needed. This week it means keeping everyone calm, exercising, eating as healthy as we can, and integrating the work we have been doing all Summer into the work that is beginning now. This is not what I would wish for us, but I am completely aware that it could be much, much worse.

The Ride.

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roadI do a lot of things with my kids in terms of spending time with them and making sure they have experiences that enrich their lives and help them learn to be happy and healthy adults. A lot of times my kids are resistant to a lot of the activities and things I try to do with them, but every now and then there is a glimmer of hope that they appreciate the positive impact I am trying to have in their lives. One of the things we used to do a lot more often when they were younger was going for a ride. Sometimes we’d go to the mountains and go hiking or just a ride into the country to look at the changing seasons or just to calm everybody down and take a break from the screen. Recently, after we had run some errands, Miss A asked if we could go for a ride. It really meant a lot to me that she wanted to have some quiet hang out time because it means that I did something that was good for her that she enjoyed.

Arctic air? Again? Aw man!!

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snowIn the past 24 hours I have gone from coordinating my usual activities (with Thanksgiving on the horizon) to dealing with falling temperatures and high winds at the same time to preparing for frozen precipitation. Oh joy, right? Usually we don’t find ourselves even thinking about this sort of thing in the lower elevations until winter has at least graced us with its official presence. I went out this evening and it was quite frosty and windy at the same time. The kids’ school is doing a late start to compensate for the snow forecast. I appreciate the sleeping in part. I just hope I don’t find myself dealing with the late arriving snow part because that happened last year and everybody in the district was scurrying to get home in whiteout conditions. If it looks anything like that tomorrow, we will all have to sit around and read and play board games or something.