First day of preschool for Millie

 My friend texted me in August that there was an opening at a neighborhood preschool, and I jumped at it. Millie had gone to the 3 year old program at our high school, but we had no idea if it would continue this year in-person. This one is a great fit. The hours and carpool so far are working really well. And it is only a couple streets over.

And her teacher is so sweet. (Miss Collette. Millie thought it would Aunt Collette at first!)

JB took her to back to school night, and I took her on her first morning (which was cold and windy!)

Miss Collette texted me this picture, because Millie said "Look, I made Olaf!"

She gets tuckered out on preschool days. This is in the car lane waiting to pick up James and Andrew one afternoon.

She wants to wear a dress or skirt as much as possible. She says pants make her look like a boy!

First day of school for Ben and Max

Max is now a sophomore and Ben is a 7th grader.  But I have no pictures of them on their first day of school, because it's just been so....not normal.

JB did take these pictures of Ben waiting for the bus for the day he was assigned to go to the school to pick up a laptop and get some training. It was just him and one other kid on the bus.

They were delayed 2 weeks already, then the windstorm hit and each day we weren't sure whether there would be or school or not. Then they officially finally began their online work this past Monday. Max had an 8am zoom but Ben's schedule started with remote assignments that day. 

Ben has asked me a few times for help figuring out the system and juggling his 7 middle school classes. Here's the flow chart we were sent to figure it out (before the principal sent an easier-to-understand schedule): 

Max is doing pretty well (the high school cut it to 4 classes each term....which means though he'll have big breaks without learning half the material). At least they each have a device from the district and we are not juggling!

I go back and forth between being sad they have lost so much, and angry the board voted for this. But then telling myself to try to keep a good attitude about something I cannot change. I am trying to have empathy for others and their fears, too, during the pandemic.

I am even more grateful a few days in to this that we got the two little boys into classes in-person (and I pray their school will keep it that way). It takes a lot of tech support and help and supervision and internet access and enough devices.  While both of us parents work full-time from home right now. I've heard from other families how difficult it has been with their little kids. Fingers crossed it gets better.

Windstorm

 Last Tuesday, northern Utah had a severe windstorm. Very high winds knocked over huge trees that took decades to grow.  It knocked out our power for one day (others on the next street for 5 days!) and our internet for several days.

Our beautiful tree-lined neighborhood lost so much.

It also canceled the already-delayed start of the Salt Lake City School District by another week, because it is remote-only and no one could log on.

We are so grateful our next door neighbor's huge pine tree, which shades our driveway, did not fall the other way and hit her house -- or our house.

See below how the top half of the pine is gone? Oh, and look at all the branches we swept up from our front tree (which now looks pretty thin)

Here is the huge tree at our friend Ann's house one street over.  We are also glad it fell the other way and not on her house. Many years we rake her leaves that are all over her lawn. No more, I guess. 

This is our neighbor two doors down. We water for her and mow their lawn and play in their playhouse.

Four doors down from us, the front drive strip tree toppled over

Across the street my friend Sherida lost all four aspens in the front yard. All that shade is gone. 

Our back fence blew over, but it came back up pretty well. JB is on the other side in the picture below.

We spent days cleaning up. JB and the big boys were constantly sawing, hauling, raking, mowing, and picking up tree limbs for neighbors. It was great to see everyone working together, and we are glad no one was injured. But we sure miss those trees. 

Funny side story, we had internet come back briefly Wednesday night, then disappear again for days. JB saw a generator by a pole and wondered if he should fill it up or not. I mentioned it to our  neighbor, who filled it up Sunday morning and magically the Internet/TV came back on. Then they finally fixed it for good by that evening. 

We read books and went to bed early in the dark when the power was out (each kid had a flashlight). When the power came back on but the internet/TV did not, we watched DVDs and I liked how each kid was not on a separate device. But I did miss watching some shows!