An Ultra During a Pandemic

Jason has been dying to get out and run again. So many races are being canceled, including the one that he signed up for in Marin County in March. Also, the army has said that you cannot travel over 100 miles from post due to the pandemic. He was able to find this one race still being held in South Carolina. It is a 100K night race through a national swampy forest. The race is called the Hell Hole Hundred. it started at 6pm last night. In past years participants have dealt with angry snakes, large spiders, feral pigs, alligators, coyotes, ponds full of dead fish, and plenty of mosquitos. This year it is on the heels of Tropical Storm Bertha. Yep, ultra runners are a bit crazy. He should be home tonight. I'll let him tell the story. This is a picture from the course last year.

Later:
He's home! And asleep on me. He came home with stories of swamps, snakes, mosquitos, and even a feral pig.

Do You Know the Muffin Man, uh, Woman?

Eva usually makes muffins every Saturday morning. However, this morning she slept in. Darby woke up early and decided to make some. Now that Eva is awake, she is making her customary baking. So we will have lots of muffins today. Quarantine has awakened the baker in my girls. I don't even need to help anymore. They've made muffins, cookies, tarts, and pie all without me.

My alias, Part 2

 Hi, this is Eva.  I was reading some old blog posts, and I found one where Mom had posted a whole bunch of those nicknames where you take, say, your favorite color and favorite food and put them together and you have a superhero name or something. So I decided to do those names in my style and post them, just for fun. If you want to do the same, you can see how to do these names in the original "my alias" blog post. So, here goes.

                                                         
My rock star name: Buddy Minivan. (....sure.)
My gangsta name: Mint chocolate chip ( Kinda wimpy, don't you think?)
My fly girl name: EMcD ( Okay?)
My detective name: Purple dolphin (What kind of a detective name is that?!?)
My soap opera name: Christine Greenbrae.  ( I like this one. It's kinda pretty.)
My star wars name: McDeva
My superhero name: The teal Fanta ( That would strike fear into the hearts of my enemies, right?)
My Nascar name: Jerry David
My entertainer name: Brownie Cherrysours (?)
My witness protection name: Marie Scott ( This is kinda funny because you are supposed to mix your parent's middle names, but Dad doesn't have a middle name. I put the one he would have had.)
My TV anchor name: Potwin Phoenix (This one is supposed to be your 5th grade teacher + major city that starts with the same letter. So I put a pic of me on the last day of 5th grade.)
My spy name: Autumn Lavender ( Sounds like a candle scent, don't you think?)
My cartoon name: Apple Skirtie ( I know, it sounds dumb.)
My hippy name: Cereal Pine
My rockstar tour name: The Reading Snow tour

I hope you had fun reading these! This is Eva, signing off.

Chess Improvement

One of Brendan's goals is to improve his chess skills. He's been playing in an app lately. Today he played the computer at a higher level than he really is and he thrashed it. The even better news is that he could see where the computer made mistakes, thereby helping him to understand the game even better. 

Lego Scripture Stories

We met virtually with the missionaries and they challenged us to find a way to share the gospel. Darby and Eva came up with the idea of recreating King Benjamin's speech from the tower out of Legos. We went this to the missionaries so they could put it on their Facebook page. 

Last Day of School

It is the last day of school. There are mixed feelings about today. Here are the sad faces. A few of my kids already cried over their last virtual class meetings.

And here are the "excited for summer and no more distance learning" faces. Side note: I didn't make them change into real clothes or brush their hair unless they wanted to for the pictures. pajamas and bedhead have kind of been the uniform around here lately. 

More Online Awards

The virtual second-grade class awards assembly was today. Paige's teacher dropped off funny hats and sunglasses to all her student's mailboxes yesterday so they could wear them today. 

Paige got perfect attendance, a Terrific Kid Award, and was in the 100 AR Points Club (meaning that her AR point total for the 3 quarters they were at school was over 100 points). 

Paige has a great second-grade year. Her teacher, Ms. Palmer, was challenging, supportive, creative, fun, and loving. Paige really bloomed this year. She got the "Positive Attitude" superlative award today. That makes me happy. 

Her teacher also collected pictures of the kiddos and their classmates and friends.

At the end, Ms. Palmer read a poem she wrote to her students and started to get choked up. Paige cried too. Goodbyes are hard. Tomorrow is the last day of the school year. 

 

Typical Days Lately

The days lately kind of flow into one another. It's a very weird time. Lots of free time is both a blessing and a curse. Most of us are trying new things. Jason decided he might pick up the guitar again. It was just a really cute shot of Paige in her pajamas plinking out a song on Daddy's little guitar. 

The kids being home all the time is a bit rough for Stella. She really wants the kids to play with her and doesn't understand why they arent during school hours. Poor puppy. Instead,

Stella follows me everywhere and parks herself right next to me most of the time. 

There is always some baking going on. Darby got an apple pie recipe from her Kiwi crate. She and Eva made it all by themselves and man, was it good!

We still have screentime rules and specific times but video games have become a daily occurrence. Brendan wanted to play on cooperative with Jason though he has only played a handful of times before. He was a good sport about it. Watching Jason's fast fingers on expert makes me tired. 

 

Online Awards

 Its the last week of school and usually my kids owuld have end-of-school parties and assemblies. The teachers are trying to keep things as normal as possible so both Darby and Paige's teachers had virtual awards assemblies. Darby's was today. She got the "Future Teacher Award". 

Darby will miss this class and these teachers so much, more than any other school year so far, I think. Mrs. Frye and Mrs. Dingwell have been amazing. Truly some of the best teachers our kids have had. Its got to be hard to teach everything virtually on such short notice. 

Strawberry Picking

In keeping with tradition (and we are SO glad they are open even during the pandemic), we went to Gillis Hill this weekend for strawberry picking.

We got three baskets and split into three teams. it was surprising how quickly we filled those baskets with ripe, juicy strawberries.

For dessert, we had strawberry shortcake. Freshly picked strawberries, homemade shortcake, and handmade whipped cream. Heavenly!

We have strawberries for days so I put some in the fridge and froze quite a few. Here is recipe number two - strawberry scones. I made these for our FHE treat. Super easy and pretty tasty. 

We also bought a huge watermelon at Gillis Hill Farms. We finished that off today. Summer is almost here.