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.