I know, I know, it's been ages since I posted. To be honest, we've had to deal with so many covid-related cancellations and disappointments that finding the motivation to write up a post has been difficult. (Two off-island trips cancelled; additional visits from family cancelled; track & field, soccer, and cross-country seasons all cancelled; homeschool meet-ups cancelled; in-person church activities cancelled; and occasional periods when they're not even allowed to play outside with friends. Even things that weren't outright cancelled now have so many restrictions in place that some of the joy not to mention the ability to make new friends has been taken away. *sigh*) 

Our neighborhood still allowed trick-or-treating, and the girls made awesome costumes this year! They even incorporated the required masks. Sadly, we were not allowed to make it a social event and meet-up with friends as usual. We did come home with a ton of candy, though. 

A griffin, a phoenix, and unicorn

Thanksgiving was also an immediate family only event. The girls decided they weren't up for cooking a traditional feast just for us, but we still wanted to do something special. Then Daddy found inexpensive mini crock pots, and we decided to create a fondue feast instead! 

This past week and half was particularly tough for the girls. One of their best friends tested positive for covid two days after they spent the afternoon together, which meant they had to quarantine for two weeks past their contact. Fortunately, their friend was just a bit under the weather--not seriously ill--and the girls not only remained symptom-free but tested negative (so neither Brian nor I had to quarantine). However, not being allowed to go outside for a week and a half is really difficult when you're used to spending hours outside everyday. We tried to take the edge off the restlessness by having the girls do an intentional period of exercise everyday. They rotated between zumba, yoga, and HIIT workouts (thank goodness for YouTube!). This was sufficient for Monkey and Bug, but Lion--poor little extroverted long-distance runner--was quickly sinking into mild depression symptoms. WiiFit to the rescue! We were thrilled to discover that our hand-me-down WiiFit has a running program that she actually liked. At least once a day, Lion spent up to an hour running in place with that thing! Strange as that sounds, it proved to be an incredible mood booster for her. She cannot wait to outside again!

Everybody Zumba!

Still running

While the local track and cross-country seasons were cancelled, USATF still hosted a nation-wide, virtual cross-country race series. Running alone on streets doesn't have the same satisfaction as passing other runners in a real race, but Lucy still won second place in the 3K and first place in the 5K, 10K, and 12K! (Participants had to have their times validated through a tracking app. Fortuanately, Daddy had purchased a GPS watch a while back that worked very nicely.)

Sporting medals for three out of four races!
(Still waiting for the last one to arrive)

Celebrating National Lemonade 
Day with homemade frozen lemonade
with strawberries.

Shall we play a game?

Since the hiking trails, parks, and beaches are closed, and playing with friends has been banned, we've been spending more time inside, which has led to the girls taking a much greater interest in video/computer games. And, no, I'm not viewing this as a waste of time or brain power. They're getting experience in working with technology (two different game consoles with a variety of controllers as well as laptops with different operating systems and games that have required keyboard controls, touch pad, or a mouse that they'd never used before). They're also working on hand/eye coordination, problem solving, and even specific academic subjects (math, geography, and history come to mind). They were even fascinated by a Netflix docu-series about the history of video games.Of course, they're still playing board/card games too--cribbage, Settlers of Catan, and Star Wars being the current favorites. Fun times! 

Hello. My name is. . . 

It's an important milestone: The girls assembled
a piece of furniture! They outgrew their shoe
baskets, so we purchased a storage unit, which
they built with minimal supervision.

Maybe it's just a quirky way to relieve the Covid-induced boredom, but we named the laptops and the printer. It's actually proved quite practical! We recently purchased a new laptop (Frederick) to replace the hand-me-down from Aunt E that finally, truly died. Frederick is a sleeker, lightweight laptop, but doesn't possess the processing power of Janice (previously, "Mommy's computer" though I spent less time with her than anyone else in the family did). Janice is the current favorite; not only is she the only one on speaking terms with Alexander, the temperamental printer, but she's also the only one capable to running Age of Empires. Finally, we have Kevin (Anyone remember 3, 2, 1, Penguins? You have to say it like that Kevin.) Kevin's a bit chunkier, slower, and runs on a weird processor that won't cooperate with certain programs; however, he's still proving himself useful.

Math

We're in the process of entering a whole new era of math learning! Bug has officially finished arithmetic with Mommy! Daddy will begin teaching her and Monkey Algebra 1 as soon as Monkey finishes too. (Monkey was a bit behind Bug, but the recent reorganization of Khan Academy seriously slowed her down.) In the meantime, Daddy's introducing Bug to discrete math. Yes, the college level course--she can totally handle the concepts and the math skills, but the vocabulary of the text itself can be a bit tricky for her.

One-on-One with Mommy

We were thrilled that Covid restrictions didn't stop our long-awaited mother/daughter beach time! We rented a beach cabin about 30 minutes from home, and I got two days and nights with each of the big girls. Daddy and Lion came for an overnight visit, so Monkey and Bug could trade places. Everybody got boogie boarding and beach time along with burgers and s'mores for dinner!

My time with Monkey and Bug revolved around Focus on the Family's Launch video series and workbooks (the videos themselves were silly and covered the topics very superficially; however, they served their purpose in helping structure our conversations). We had talked about all the topics before as they arose in life (and we'll keep talking, I'm sure!), but this gave me a weekend's worth of uninterrupted time with each of them to talk about big things and just hang out together--taking long walks, swimming, visiting the climbing structure, eating treats, and watching Sense and Sensibility in the evenings. The exciting unpleasantness of the week: I found a Portuguese man 'o war the hard way! Fortunately, it was just a baby one, and the cashier at the nearby mini-mart was very helpful with some sting relieving spray and treatment advice. Overall, though---it was a great week!

Monkey's sand village survived the night's high tide!

We discovered a man-made boulder! They miss
the climbing gym, so we spent a good amount of time here.

Bug and I found some really neat trees.

As year-round home schoolers, we usually just keep doing lessons (regardless of season) unless pleasantly interrupted by trips or visits from relatives. Recently, the girls and I were getting restless and realized that, since Covid-19 cancelled all our trips and visits, it's been four months of steady homeschooling! No wonder my crew of adventurous nomads is getting antsy! So, we declared this past week a no-lessons week. 

We planned this break just in time, and I'm so glad we chose to spend a lot of it outside! On Friday, Hawaii announced new restrictions--the beaches and parks are all being closed for at least a month. This week, however, we hit up our three favorite playgrounds and two closest beaches. Highlights included: a donut breakfast at a playground with some good climbing trees, running into a friend from youth group at one beach (I finally got to meet her mom!), snorkeling and sand castle building at another beach, sushi & chocolate covered mac nuts while we get the car's oil changed (that's an hour long outing at least--"express" is not a thing on island time), inventing new games to play with neighborhood friends (they found a whole gaggle of girls their age who 

also like to play outside!), and still plenty of time for reading books and working on projects at home (Lion rummaged for supplies to make woodland creatures and planets, Bug figured out how to make paper beads and helped me with a couple of sewing projects, Monkey drew pictures and worked on her coding projects). 

  

Other notes:

• Our youth pastor figured out how to do in-person youth group during Covid! Hooray! He's divided the youth into houses (Hogwart's style) then into middle and high school sub-groups, so there are fewer than eight kids per group. Eight sets of parents are volunteering to each host a group and lead a game/ice breaker activity, then the youth pastor will present a message to all the groups simultaneously via Google Meetings. Afterwards the host parents lead a discussion in each home based on questions from the youth pastor (who will be leading an online discussion for the kids who can't attend an in-person group due to illness or other restrictions). Everyone will have to wear masks and be screened upon entry, but we're excited for this to get started in a couple of weeks!
• Lion got to have an online piano lesson with Aunt E! Lion's new piano teacher is not being as cooperative in helping Lion learn hymns as we were hoping for, so Aunt E helped her figure out the rest of the cords for "Blessed Assurance." 
• We're in the midst of our Shakespeare studies. I actually have a book that retells the plays as short stories that's serving as our primary text. So far, we acquired a couple books about Shakespeare's life and times, read the Hamlet short story, watched Lawrence Olivier's version, as well "happy Hamlet with animals" (aka The Lion King) followed by a good compare/contrast discussion. Finally, we'll be looking at the most famous lines from the play to talk more about what they mean and how they fit into the story. 
• We finished Story of the World's volume about the Middle Ages. Next up: The Early Modern Age!

Life continues and things here are starting to re-open, but we're a far cry from normal yet. Here's a run down of what we've been up to in and out of the house the past couple of months (seriously?!--it's been that long since I posted?!).

• In-person music lessons are back! The girls have to wear masks and are separated from their teachers by Plexiglas, but it's so much easier than having to deal with the sound issues and technical difficulties of Zoom. Poor Lion has yet another new teacher! (This is her fourth in our two years here.) Fortunately, she really loves Miss E, who also works as a church pianist. The school admin paired them up intentionally because she remembered how excited Lion was about learning hymns.
• Bug graduated to a full-size violin! She was especially thrilled, because this meant we purchased her own very nice violin from a local music shop (we've always rented before). That in itself was quite the experience with Bug getting to try out half a dozen violins imported from all over the world, and getting to choose which one felt and sounded best to her (with everyone in masks, and everything carefully sanitized, of course). 
• Track and field season was officially cancelled, much to everyone's disappointment. However, the long distance coach recently contacted a few of the more dedicated runners and offered to lead work outs at the local track. Lion was thrilled! (running + people = a very happy Lion!) Daddy and Bug have also been participating. 

The beaches are open! We got to our favorite one early
and had a good stretch of it all to ourselves.

• Their martial arts school has also reopened, but with severely limited class size (10 at a time instead of 50), masks required, and social distancing marked with floor tape. While the girls hate the masks while exercising, the upside of the situation is that they're getting a lot more personal attention from Master C and are hoping to progress faster now that they're the only purple belts in their class.
• The girls have started learning computer coding through Code.org (great curriculum for block coding with plenty of courses and fun projects). Monkey in particular loves coding and can easily spend hours poring over lessons and working on projects. It dovetails nicely with her interest in movie making--she's created a bunch of animated music videos, and I believe is currently creating a simple video game.
• Bug has been spending more time working on a different skill set--sewing. In addition to making masks for everybody (multiple ones for Daddy and I), she made a quartet of stuffed elephants for our friends who moved away, and she even made a fantastic skirt for Lion (comfy, knee length, and her favorite color!).

• We started making use of an actual textbook to cover science recently. Previously, we've always checked off all the standards just by answering questions and exploring the world. Now that we've got middle schoolers, we decided we needed to be a little more systematic, but we're still keeping it casual--once a week we huddle up on the couch, cover the concepts/vocabulary for a chapter (Earth science right now), and go over the chapter review questions orally. 
• Stumbling upon the BBC show Merlin led to an exploration of Arthurian legends (one of my favorite literary topics). Besides watching episodes, we read a bunch of Arthurian stories (we own a number of books) and watched The Sword in the Stone. We've a had fun comparing how different tellings handle different characters.
• We finally finished reading A Series of Unfortunate Events (fantastic books!) and watched all the episodes of the Netflix series (departs from the books, of course, but very well done). Next up--Shakespeare! We're studying the Elizabethan era in our history reading, so the timing seemed ideal.
• The girls are successfully growing things! (I try to stay hands off; my involvement with plants doesn't tend to end well for the plants.) We inherited an aloe vera from a friend, and the girls have been growing pineapples, green onions, and carrot tops from kitchen scraps.

• Sadly, we had to say goodbye to our closest friends recently when they moved off island, but we got in some quality time before they left. (We stopped socially distancing from them awhile ago--she was trying to handle an international move, during a pandemic, without her husband, but with four kids ages 6 and under. We decided her mental health was at great risk than any of our physical health.) We got in lots of outside play time and even went on a hike together their last week here.

 

• The neighborhood playgrounds reopened! Hooray! While the girls are too old to get excited about most playground anymore, this does mean people are relaxing about letting kids play together outside. The girls were thrilled to reconnect with some neighborhood friends and meet a few new ones. They went "friend hunting," in Lion's words--looking for signs of children around neighborhood houses, and knocking on doors to inquire if they had any kids who wanted to play. They only struck out once, but the lady who answered the door was very friendly and still gave them permission to climb in the awesome tree in front of her house.

Happy Easter!
Usually we take a break from lessons during Holy Week in order to have time for Easter-related activities and church and community events. This year, however, all the events were cancelled, and we have standardized testing coming up (public school kids are out for the year here, but home schoolers are still being held responsible for all the usual things). However, we still got creative and made time for what Easter traditions we could manage. The church service itself happened via Facebook Watch as it has for the past several weeks.

Usually we decorate with fresh flowers, but the florist is closed.
This year we pulled out fake flowers from the craft supplies as
as well as making a few paper ones of our own
(finished products below)

The Easter Bunny (one of Daddy's bored coworkers)
 did a drive through the neighborhood to entertain himself and the kiddos. 

Bug made bunny craft kids for our preschool friends across the street.
They loved them! So cute!

We gathered for our traditional Easter breakfast: dyed eggs,
shaped bread, and candy!

Not Easter related, but here are some other happenings: Lion is still trying to figure out how to cope with the loneliness and sadness (we've had lots of good talks and snuggles). One of the highlights of each week has been the hymn studies the chapel children's leader has been posted every Wednesday. Because she is also tired of waiting, Lion decided to film a read aloud for a few of her little friends:

So, taekwondo happens via Zoom these days, but it's a frustrating experience. This week, the girls asked Daddy if he could lead them instead on the weeks he's home from work. Apparently it's a much more satisfying class--and it involves sparring! (the video doesn't feature sparring, but maybe I can catch that next time.)

Shelter in Place

Tuesday's "tea time and reading" happens as usual!
Lion is especially excited about the cookies a friend gave us.

I've joked with people about how "we home school--we quarantined before it was cool!" but in all seriousness this isn't what normal home schooling looks like! Real home schooling involves library and museum visits, park visits, beach days, playing with friends, and for a lot of people co ops--all things that have been cancelled.

Technically, our life doesn't look that different: we do our academic lessons at home following our usual routine, and all our scheduled activities (church events, music lessons, and even taekwondo class) have all migrated online. What isn't happening for the girls? Hanging out with other home school kids during my Bible study, Lion's running around and eating dinner with the kids at chapel, Monkey and Bug chitchatting about life with the other 6th grade girls during games and dinner at youth group, playing card games with their friend N at music lessons, building multi-generational friendships at our chapel's Sunday service, spending hours outside with neighborhood friends, etc.

Taekwondo via Zoom! When classes happened at the rec center, Daddy participated
too, but our house just doesn't have enough room for him.

The neighborhood kids are still spending plenty of time outside,
but now they're limited to their own families and yards. So sad.

The girls are handling this stressful and isolating time in their own ways. Monkey (our extreme introvert) has had her moments of boredom and grumpiness--usually relieved by sending her outside--but otherwise seems to be rolling with the punches with ease. Bug (the most likely to get stressed and anxious) has been successfully implementing coping strategies that we've taught her previously--finding the good stories and humor in a situation, keeping a thankful journal which her sisters have been contributing to with much success, and being intentional about her entertainment choices ("I can't handle historical fiction right now. I'm dealing with my own historical crisis, thank you very much!"). Poor Lion (the lone extrovert in our family) has definitely been hit the hardest by the shelter-in-place order. She is truly grieving the loss of friends; there've been tears, lots of tears. Fortunately, we watched Inside Out years ago, and it's given her a great framework and vocabulary for processing and expressing her emotions

Sometimes you just need to snuggle up with a kitty and forget the world.
(For the record, Pidge loves this. He was purring loudly, and they
stayed this way for quite a while.)

(I highly recommend this movie!). On the first evening it really hit her, we snuggled in my bed while she cried and explained it like this: "I don't want to be sad, but it's like Sadness just keeps taking over. I think Sadness touched a core memory--one about the G girls [our neighbors and best friends] and friendship. I just start crying every time someone mentions them." As a parent, it was a heartbreaking moment. We cried together, prayed together, and brainstormed some ways we could try to connect with her friends even when we couldn't see them in person.

Pre--Covid-19 Moments
Once again it's been ages since I've posted. Here are a few pics from a month ago:

A picture perfect Hawaii afternoon: We moms circled our lawn chairs,
a dozen or so kids ran around, and I caught this bestie moment with
Lion and her friend from across the street. 

The girls were awarded their purple belts for taekwondo!

We decided to do donuts and a park day, and just happened to be
there for a meet up of other home schoolers! They were a great
group, and we're looking forward to seeing them again once the
shelter-in-place order lifts.

Potato Got Hitched!
Just as Covid-19 was beginning to show itself in the US, we headed to the mainland to visit family and see Potato get married! In light of the impending pandemic, he and Aunt KJ decided to cancel the big, fancy wedding and we spent a crazy three days pulling together a backyard, wedding-party-and-family-only event. It may not have been the wedding they planned for, but it was beautiful, and--more importantly--they are now husband and wife! In the meantime, we had a great time hanging out with family.

We also got to spend a couple of days with Daddy's side of the family--playing games, roasting more marshmallows, hot tubbing, reviewing firearm safety, watching movies--lots of good times!