Corona Virus Week 10

Sunday we went on a walk at Charlotte Yancy Humphris Park.  I had been wanting to go on a walk here the past few weeks.  Its a great paved path through some woods right in the city.  We hadn't gone the last few years and it was nice to be back.  Jared and Lydia both want to ride their bikes there which I guess would be okay. It would be hard to keep up with them on bikes though and there are lots of turns. Its not very big and all the paths do cross back over each other. I feel confident that eventually we would meet up.  They have watches (to set a meet up time) and we could take walkie talkies so we could talk if needed.  We should just try it out. Although there are some hills because, Charlottesville so I don't think they will like it as much as they think they will but I'd be happy to be wrong.

Exhibit A.  Lydia is still 60/40 on right and left so I am not sure she would turn the way we discussed if she got to this spot on her own. Its likely she would just wait for us but still. 

I love pictures like this, a path through trees.

Lydia was feeling quite "posey" 

On Sunday I made strawberry shortcake for my weekly new recipe challenge.  At a family reunion a few years ago my sister in law Cecily made strawberry shortcake with this recipe and it was the best I have ever had.  Sadly mine did not turn out as good as hers but it was still good. 

Lydia has been asking to make stress balls for awhile so we did that Sunday too. Mark made 4 stress balls and Lydia broke 3 of the 4.  I did not think she was particularly stressed but maybe she is? Jared still has his.

We also had a fun surprise from our ward primary chorister.  She stopped by the houses of all the families in our ward (and there are a lot) who have primary kids and left cute signs in the yard.  I love this picture of Lydia.  Even Jared talked about how nice it was of her and how much he loved them and he is really undemonstrative.  It was really thoughtful of the chorister, she is so kind and fun. 

Jared and Lydia spent most of the week reading, playing in the creek and playing with Barbies.  Jared has been a really good sport about playing Barbies with Lydia.  Lydia has been thrilled. They especially love to take them outside where they have all kinds of adventures.  Things are admittedly getting a little weird though.  I think we have been home too long.

Even though remote learning was not the way anybody really wanted the school year to go they did  get to finish 2 weeks early because of it. Jared and Lydia are both happy to be done with school.  Just one more year at Baker Butler for Jared. He had a whole class, final, zoom meeting Friday (normally they are split into 2 groups) and was happy to meet one last time.  A few days before his teacher suggested students decorate their area to celebrate moving on to 5th grade.  I asked Jared if he would like to decorate and he said yes so we did and we were the only ones but it didn't matter, he loved it and I had fun doing it with him. Lydia had her last class meeting Wednesday and then her teacher sent a cute slideshow with pictures and memories from the year which was nice.  We celebrated with grade level donuts for breakfast and ice cream in the afternoon for our annual end of the year traditions.  The Shaw's came over to enjoy ice cream with us which was the first time we had anyone in our house since this all began. I am pretty sure they have joined us for ice cream the last day of school every year we have been at Baker Butler so we are glad they could make it. It was really nice to hear Jared and Lydia talking and laughing with friends in our house again.  

I introduced Jared and Lydia to crumb (now called crunch) donettes.  They were my absolute favorite growing up. For 4th and 5th grade I attended the school where my Mom taught which I loved.  If we ever needed to stop at a convenient store on our way to school (she always had a stash of Diet Coke in her classroom to help her make it through the day teaching) she would always let me get a package of them.  I bought powdered and crumb in case they didn't like the crumb but they both now love the crumb donuts the most too. 

We are all happy school is out but it is going to be a long(er) hot(er) than usual Summer. All city pools and county lakes will be closed for the Summer.  We hope we can travel somewhere but there are still a lot of restrictions and things that we would enjoy seeing are still closed so I'm not sure there is much point in going.  Flights are starting to fill up. Mark worked at the airport 3 days this week, from 2:00 - 7:00 and each flight was about half full which is what I believe the new policy is. It could have been a busier week because of the holiday weekend though.  We plan to make our Summer fun list tomorrow and will have to be extra creative. We did start off with a morning picnic on the trampoline and cleaned off our water table which will likely be put to good use this Summer! 

Seen on my walk at Chris Greene today:  This was not there earlier in the week so I think they wanted it up before Memorial day.