Week #2 – A New Routine

Kayli and Aidan are on spring break this week. Which means they don’t have to worry about remote learning until next week. UC Berkeley announced this week that they will be doing remote learning for the rest of the school year. They also cancelled the commencement ceremony. Kayli is pretty upset about this since she is graduating this semester. She is sad that she had her last in person college class at Berkeley without even knowing it was the last one. She is also upset about not having a graduation ceremony and not being able to take her graduation pictures with her friends. I told her we will still do graduation pictures when all this is over, but it won’t be the same since her friends most likely won’t be able to travel back to Berkeley to join us for the pictures.

The twins’ high school sent an email Thursday stating the school closure would be extended until April 17. The high school is still trying to determine how to do remote learning, so they didn’t have to worry about doing school this week either.

Falyn is into week #2 of remote learning and getting into the new routine. I have been getting up at 7 am to having my morning cup of tea and read through my email and take care of any urgent matters for my business. I wake Falyn up right before my 8 am zoom workout class starts so she can get her breakfast before her 9 am zoom class. I love that I can still “see” all my workout friends each day during our class. There is such a wonderful group of ladies at Mo-Mentum Fitness! Being able to workout with them every morning is the highlight of my day.

Falyn has zoom classes until 1:15, which a 15 minute break in the morning and a 1/2 hour break for lunch. She then will get her homework done. While she does school, I get stuff done for my business. I’ve discovered the joy of my noise cancelling headphones this week. With 5 kids at home, it can get really noise around here.

Now that I no longer have to go multiple places each day, I’m finding myself with extra time. This week I made homemade lemonade from lemons my neighbor gave me from the tree in her backyard. It was so good!

I also tried my hand at baking French Bread. I’ve never made french bread before and had to look up how to “roll the dough up”. It came out really nicely. I turned one into a garlic bread loaf and served them both with dinner. There was none left, so I’ll call that a success!

I wasn’t the only one doing baking, the kids made this quarantine cake.

The Week Everything Stopped

All last week as we watched the COVID-19 cases numbers creep up in the state of California, we knew it was only a matter of time until it started to affect our daily life. Since there has been a halt to our every day routine, with everything from school to scouts cancelled, I decided to start documenting our life under the Coronavirus “Stay at Home” order.

Last Thursday, we got an email from the school that the 8th Grade DC trip had be postponed to a TBD date. Last Friday we received emails from both the twins’ high school and Falyn’s school that they were going on remote learning and to make sure they brought home all their school books, notebooks, and any other materials they need to be able to do their school work at home. Right now the high school says it is until March 27 and Falyn’s school has it resuming on April 20.

Kayli came home from UC Berkeley last week because they went on remote learning until after spring break. Aidan had his last in person class last week as well, with UC Irvine announcing that the 2nd quarter finals would be done remotely and all 3rd quarter classes would be via remote learning.

On Tuesday night, Orange County released a stay at home order. That resulting in my gym going to zoom classes only. I’m keep my regular routine and zooming into my workout everyday at 8 am. On Thursday night the governor put the entire state under a stay at home order too. We are all learning how to use zoom and practicing social distancing, and 20 second or longer hand washing.

Falyn’s school started their zoom class on Thursday. We set up a table for her downstairs to serve as her school work area. Trying to sort through all the emails from all her teachers to help her figure out what she is supposed to be doing has proven to be a bit of a challenge. She has a schedule for when she has to zoom into each class. Some teachers are doing “flip the classroom”, which means she has to watch a video teaching the subject before the zoom class. Then the teacher asks questions about the subject for that day during the zoom class. She then has to do homework for each of her classes. By the end of the week we were starting to get it all figured out and hope that next week will be easier.

For one Falyn’s assignments, she had to go make a 3 course dinner for the family. She was required to plan the menu, make a shopping list, go shopping, cook the mean, set the table, serve the meal, and then clean up afterwards. On St. Patrick’s day I took her shopping and she made the dinner.

We were shocked by how little food their was on the shelves! She had planned to make a Taco Crescent Ring, which requires 2 packages of crescent rolls. We got lucky and snagged the last two at the store. Besides the Taco Crescent Ring, she made a salad, mashed potatoes that she dyed green for the holiday, with ice cream for dessert. It was all very yummy!