I can't believe that we've been living this weird pandemic life for 6 months now. We have been living like this for half of a year. I know when this all started in March, we thought it would be a few weeks and then we would have things under control and life would go back to normal. Now, 6 months later, those hopes are gone and a new understanding has settled in. This is life for the foreseeable future. This is the new normal. It's equal parts depressing and liberating letting go of my expectations for my old life to return.
We are mostly still staying home. We are mostly still isolating ourselves. I'm still trying to keep my kids away from others as much as possible. I don't want Tucker exposed with all his respiratory issues.
Back in July we made the decision to keep our kids home from public in person school and we intended to do virtual school through our school district.
But then we talked with the kids. We learned more about the expectations for virtual school and we decided to homeschool. So the day before we left for Oregon, we turned in our chrome books and I unenrolled my kids from the Bentonville Public School district. It was a terrifying decision. Now I am solely responsible for their education. But knowing how hard and involved virtual school was in the fall, I feel good about the decision to homeschool instead. Now that doesn't mean I haven't had more than my fair share of anxiety over this new prospect. But I do feel like it's our best option.
I was most nervous for the amount of my energy that will be needed each day. It's so much of me for so much of the day. I go from "Mom "in the morning, helping the kids get ready for school. Then I'm "teacher" from 8:30am - 2:30 pm each day. And then back to "Mom" again from 2:30 pm to bedtime. I hardly have any time alone and we are all together, all the time. This still makes me so anxious. I feel like this has definitely been a circumstance where Heavenly Father has had to qualify me for this calling. He has needed to make me more than I am because I can't do it alone. And I am learning how to rely more on him because I like to do things on my own.
I really like getting to work on our "Come, Follow Me" lessons each day as part of our curriculum. That is the best part of this setup. I get to make our school day into whatever I want.
We do language arts, math, history and science. But I also add in a daily scripture study and some life skills each day. I hope to add in art, music and P.E. too. There is so much to consider but with a little planning and preparation each week, I can make it more manageable.
So homeschooling is the biggest change since my last "COVID-19" update.
We are still working on our fixer upper house. Of course, while we were in Oregon for a month we didn't make any progress. But now that we are home, we are working on it any chance we get.
That's something else that has been hard on me. Chris is gone a lot in the evenings, working at the house. And I'm home alone with the kids. I put them to bed and then I'm home at night until he gets back from the fixer upper. It's very isolating.
However, I have been going to "High Fitness" classes 2-3 days a week and that helps me. They are usually in the evenings and while my days are still long, I like having exercise to look forward to. Chris says I can go out with my friends whenever I want so I can have breaks. However, I feel guilty leaving because he either can't work on the fixer upper and then we are even further behind or he has to take all the kids to the house and then he isn't as productive. It's hard. I will be so happy when this house is finished and we can be done with this commitment.
On the COVID-19 front, cases are still on the rise. Our state started school in person on August 24th after delaying for two weeks. But now students have been in school for about 3 weeks and although cases haven't skyrocketed like I thought, cases still are on the rise. As of today, our total confirmed cases sits at 73, 211. It's crazy. I really hope that after the election in November the crazy amount of cases drops off and we realized the media has been using COVID as a scare tactic. But who knows?
We've started doing ZOOM sacrament meeting now. It's every Sunday at 9:30 am and it lasts for about an hour. We still haven't had the required 14-day downward trend we need to return to in-person worship. So I guess until then we will continue with the ZOOM church. I kind of like it. It's hard to get kids to sit still but it's good practice for when we eventually get to return to church in person.
I think that's everything for now. Stay tuned for some more boring pandemic life.
No comments:
Post a Comment