11 Years Old!

 

Caleb, Eli & Thomas are 11 years old!

Well a lot of time has passed since I last posted, more than I intended. Boy life gets busy and the time just slipped away. I could barely remember to take the boys' quarterly pics and sadly they aren't our best work, haha! Anyways a whole year has passed and I'll try to mention the highlights. 

CET 10 years and 3 months. This was back in December. School was still online which sucked. The hospital I work for announced they had extra COVID vaccine for non essential hospital staff and everyone in my building literally ran to get their vaccine. I was so fortunate to get it so early on. 

CET 10 years and 6 month old. Early spring we rented a little cabin in Bend and had a great time exploring new Oregon territory. 

The boys did flag football in the Spring. I'm not sure who enjoys the games more, the boys or me! They are so fun to watch and they are really quite good at it. The boys also went back to in person school around this time. It was only for a measly two hours a day, four days a week but we took what we could get. Two hours where they actually learned something was better than nothing.   

CET 10 years and 9 months old. In June there was an insane heat wave that came to Portland and the surrounding. We're talking 115-120 degrees depending on the area, we rarely get over 100 degrees so you can see how crazy this was. With only a window AC unit we high tailed it to the coast. What a relief, it only got to about 85 degrees there. It was awful inland and sadly many people died from hyperthermia since most people don't have air conditioning : ( 

We have done a lot of fishing during the pandemic!

Our big summer trip was to Yellowstone, we saw some amazing landscapes!
What an incredible place.

Besides Yellowstone we camped for a few days in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming.
Another incredible place. 

In August my mom came to visit.
It was more than a year since we last saw her so it was extra special. We were in Astoria here, where the Goonies was filmed. It was a fun day! 

Another special visit was from Phil's two aunts. We had a great time with them.

First day of 5th grade. Going back full time, woohoo! Our local COVID numbers actually went down in the weeks after school started. It was what I had hoped for, going back to school safely! Everyone wears masks plus some other safe guards. Only a handful of cases where a student got it elsewhere and didn't spread it to their classmates. None of us have gotten COVID so far and hoping to get the boys vaccinated as soon as we get approval for those under 12.

Caleb's 5th grade school picture. 

Eli's 5th grade school picture. 

Thomas' 5th grade school picture. 

Obligatory 11 year couch picture!
Till next year, take care!

Personalities 10.0 (10 Years Old!)

It's a long one, gotta make up for my lack of posts in the last few months, ha!
 

CET turned 10 years old!

Obligatory couch photo

It's been a little while since the boys turned 10 (end of September). A whole lot of nothing has happened since then, haha! Well maybe a whole lot of boredom. Ok I'm exaggerating a bit...Since my last post we've had a couple of small adventures that included a 3-day vacation to the coast and a dangerously crowded trip to a corn maze (fully regret! thankfully nobody got the 'rona). Yup that's all. A few weeks ago our COVID numbers were getting too high and some new stay-at-home orders were put in place for our county. The funny or sad thing about it is that as I read the list of restrictions I thought to my self, well that doesn't change anything AT ALL! Like we seriously are living as carefully as possible (except for the corn maze, ha!). 

    So the school year started and we quickly found out that there was no way we could keep up with the boys assignments (on average they completed 30 out of 150 when we checked in with the teacher mid November). I barely have time to cook dinner every night let alone hand-hold three boys through all of the assignments they were getting. After some thought and sacrifice ($$$) we were able to hire our friends 16 year old son to tutor the boys. He comes three days a week and helps them with their assignments and when the weather allows he takes them to the park for some fun. I gotta say it's been magical to have him as their tutor. This has been so good for the boys mental health. They really look up to him and get very excited on the days he comes over. I mean the poor things are home 24/7 with no other human contact besides their lame parents. So another human coming to the house has been VERY good for them and of course for their school work as well. But seriously though can we all just stop pretending that kids are learning anything from online school? I mean unless they have a fully invested and present adult to keep them on track every hour if not minute of the day it's next to impossible at this age. I just hope their book knowledge is at a plateau and not in a decline until they can get back to real school. Someday...

At the coast in October, we love flannel!

Fresh haircuts!

So I was flipping through the blog and noticed I never posted the boys' 3rd grade pictures from last year. Since the kids are doing online school this year I did my own at home school pictures. Below you can see how good my in-door photography skills are, haha!

PERSONALITIES 10.0

Caleb 3rd Grade

Caleb 4th Grade

Caleb is my snuggly boy and stands out from his brothers so much more. He's laid back and likes to take the easy way when possible. Caleb is always excited to know what I'm making for dinner, he loves to eat! He is the biggest fan of my cooking and tells me I make delicious food. But every now and then I make something not so good and he'll be very vocal about it, ha! He loves to chat and says some very silly things, I wrote some down:

We were talking about how un-snuggable Thomas is (more on that later) and Caleb, gold star snuggler, says as if giving advice to his brother "you have to act squishy."

His aunt sent him and his brother some masks in the mail and Caleb barely looking up from his video game says, "Oh good now I can go to the gym."

"Why is it that when people are gonna die they tells their secrets?"

Looking down at his chest he says, "I have blended chichis (nipples)."

"I saw an alfredo papi, you know an alfredo." Dad replies, "do you mean an Alpha Romero?" "Yes papi."

At his 10 year check up Caleb weighed in at 65.7 lbs and stands 52.2 inches tall. I was surprised to find out he jumped from the 10th percentile to the 16th percentile. Looks like he's on track to be 5'7" just like his dad. 

Eli 3rd Grade

Eli 4th Grade

Eli is quick witted and always a loud voice in this house. Always bargaining or trying to make me compromise. We call him "mom" sometimes because well he seems to think he's the mom. He calls out his brothers for breaking the rules and talks to me about what should and shouldn't be a rule. Eli has been pretty sweet lately, making sure he says thank you when I do nice things for him (all three have not had a good track record of this). Eli has lots of emotions lately usually over dumb stuff like video games or not being able to find his tablet to play video games. Recently he said something that made us all laugh, he asked if we could watch "The Golden Garry's." He mixed The Golden Girls and The Goldberg's but he meant the latter, ha! He was a pretty good sport and laughed about it himself. At his 10 year check up Eli weighed in at 60.4 lbs and 51.2 inches tall, he also jumped a few percentile points. From the 4th percentile to the 8th percentile. He's a light weight but I think he'll grow up to be pretty close to 5'7" as well. 

Thomas 3rd Grade

Thomas 4th Grade

Thomas is a boy of few words that listens to his mom like a good boy should. I don't have to negotiate, beg or plead to get him to do what I ask of him like I do with his brothers. He doesn't crave attention like Caleb and Eli do. I try to snuggle him at times and the boy just doesn't tolerate it for more than a minute. Thomas is smart and loves to be around his family. At his check up he weighed in at 63.4 lbs and stood 51.6 inches tall. He went from the 6th percentile to the 11th percentile. Right in-between his two brothers. He's also on track to reach dad's height, all three will tower over me, ha!

The boys as a group are becoming more independent. The latest thing they are doing is cooking for themselves. They make eggs, quesadillas, and grilled cheese sandwiches. It's a big weight off our shoulders just to tell them to go make something when they complain that they're hungry. It's pretty cool to see them need you less and less. 

Summer 2020

 

CET 9 yrs and 9 mo

Since the boys literally had no human contact except for Phil and I for months on end and not to mention we had among the lowest COVID19 rates in the country (and still do, woohoo!). We started off the summer by visiting my mom and sister in CA. The boys spent two, much deserved, weeks with a change of scenery. Phil and I didn't do much back at home since everything was still very much in shutdown mode, but it was a nice break from child rearing, ha!

On a day that was going to be 100F in Portland we escaped to the beach were it was 86F! The hottest we've ever experienced on the coast. You are lucky when it gets to 75F. The water was still of course ice cold but we'll take it!

CET turned 9 yrs and 10 mo old while we were camping in eastern Oregon.

Thankfully we camped near a lake because it was over 100F! The boys played their little hearts out for 5 hours straight here. They were exhausted afterwards, ha!

We canceled our big international trip due to the pandy (aka the pandemic). So we planned another big trip! First stop Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. We only planned to camp here for one night on our way east because we hadn't realized how beautiful it is here. We'll definitely be back and I can't believe it's only 6 hours from Portland, like why didn't anyone tell me about this place before!

CET turned 9 yrs and 11 mo old in Glacier National Park!!!

This is a long hike we did to Hidden Lake. It was breathtaking how beautiful it was here. Phil and Eli caught some huge trout in that lake. 

We explored and fished a river in the Park. They say this is big sky country and it really does seem like the sky is so much bigger than normal!

We went backpacking just outside of Glacier. We trekked through the densest brush ever but we finally made it after 3 miles straight uphill. Caleb and I joked that it felt like 7 miles!

Caleb was the keeper of one of our bear sprays, he carried it around the whole time.

Thank goodness we never saw a single bear, I was so paranoid!

Montana spoiled us, the boys and Phil caught so many fish!

We practically had this whole lake to ourselves.

First day of virtual learning. It barely deserves a picture, ha! I couldn't even bring myself to write out "First day of 4th Grade." All it deserved was a 4. Here we go again with this nonsense...

I feel like we made the most of this summer and had a lot of fun outdoors all while avoiding "the sickness." It scares me to think what winter will be like when we can't go outside as much as we want. Our COVID19 rates here in Oregon are doing so well and if they go even lower there is a chance they could actually go back to in person learning. But with cold and flu season coming I just don't see this happening. It's going to be a tough next season in all respects so I'm glad we did so much this summer!

Corona Madness part 2

CET are 9 years and 7 months old!

CET are 9 years and 8 months old!

Flirting with danger, that cat will turn on you when you least expect it, ha!

Online school.
Don't let this picture fool you, "virtual school" ended up being a total joke!

Snuggle bums

TEC on a little nature adventure

A bit of French baking with Caleb

Where is my third child, those feet are too far
away to belong to either of those two boys?

Oh that explains things, haha!
Let me tell you, they all love to share the same bed and
most of the time I can't see where the third kid is!

Learning Virtually Nothing

We started online "virtual" school shortly after my last post back in late March. At the time I thought my attempts to home school were less than great but after going through almost two months of online school, which is mandatory by the way, I have to give myself more credit, ha! Two hours a day with the teacher and a few random assignments. None of the kids are doing the assignments because they are far too young for this type of learning. There is a huge disconnect between the teacher and the parents. I ask the kids what their assignments are and none of them know whats going on. Then there are so many different platforms for the assignments like Khan Academy, Raz Kids, Common Lit, Google Classrooms. There needs to be regular updates to the parents about what assignments need to be done and where so that we can enforce them. But at this point I'm thinking this year is a wash and what's the point in complaining to the teacher, she's probably more frazzled than I am. No one signed up for this. I wish I could just home school the boys by myself but of course I really couldn't have since it was mandatory they do the online version. Plus I'm back at work so I also don't have the time to do it...and don't get me started on the teacher furloughs...actually yes I will...

With two hours of instruction each day how much preparation and grading where the teachers really needing and doing? My guess is not much so they are probably really only working a fraction of 40 hours/week. Then they furloughed the teachers to 4/5 time, which sucks I totally get it, especially when you consider the insane backlog Oregon's employment office has. But instead of continuing with things the way they were they cut out Friday instruction! There is already so little learning going on and you go and cut out an entire day, so ridiculous! ...But then again everything is a mess, ugh!

I feel bad for kids with all this isolation. At least Phil and I get to keep busy with work, grocery shopping and cooking but the poor kids don't have a lot going on. I have them signed up for three weeks of private sports camps later this summer and I'm really hoping those don't get canceled but we shall see. 

Anyways, just venting here. We are trying hard to follow all the rules but it's just all around a crappy situation we all are in. On the bright side we are looking forward to camping soon like it was an international vacation, haha! 

Corona Madness

CET are exactly 9.5 years old!

Oh how the times have changed my friends! At the start of it I thought it was just like every other years epidemic, Ebola, SARS, Swine, Avian, West Nile etc. Never did I expect to be on "lock down" or "shelter in place" nor had I really ever heard those phrases before. The first big blow for us was when they announced that school was letting out a week before spring break. I thought ok I can deal with this but then soon after it was extended to May 1st (as if they'll even go back by then, I'm not holding my breath).

I was getting prepared to work evenings and weekends because of the whole school situation when I learned of another new term "modified operations," (I work for a hospital). And I guess there are different levels of modified operations, 1-4. Because I'm not as essential worker, at level 1 I was to curtail working as much as possible. If I can work from home I was to do that (I can do maybe 10% of my job from home). I was also not to start anything new so I could decrease my presence in our building. We had a week of this then we went to level 2, which meant to "shut everything down" that could be shut down and only keep going the most essential critical things (which amounts to a task that one person/day can handle, out of dozens of workers). Also we should expect to reach level 3 or 4 soon. The hospital has also been recruiting research assistants, like myself to help with COVID-19 testing which I volunteered to do if they want me. I'm on their list but not sure I'll be drafted but I'm ready, able and willing should they call!

Phil by the way has a very work-from-home friendly job (architect) so he's been home most days and only goes to the office one or two day a week. The kids have been good, I've been keeping them busy. Once I found out they'd be out of school indefinitely I came up with my own curriculum to keep their minds from deteriorating. We do a good 2-3 hours of hard work each day which includes mostly reading and writing assignments. We're also working on memorizing our times tables. I am not a teacher nor would I be a good one if I tried so I think this is sufficient for now. The kids seem challenged and haven't complained too much so I'm happy with that. I also make sure they do chores everyday and get outside as much as possible. The rain has been quite challenging.  

It was a rough start for myself, lots of bored over-eating and online impulse-shopping, the sales need to STOP!! My returns pile is out of control. I was able to over come both by reading the endless corona virus articles and watching the endless news updates, yes that's much healthier, ha! I also used to enjoy grocery shopping but a deep sense of dread flows over me every time I need to do it. I was not one of those crazed TP hoarders, which btw I just don't get? You can't eat toilet paper!!! You can always improvise or take a shower! If I had to choose to hoard anything it would be rice and beans, all else would be icing on the cake. Thankfully, I love a full pantry so I always have plenty of my Costco favorites but that only covers some of the basics like soap, peanut butter, fizzy water, rice, coffee, etc. I still need to do weekly shopping trips for our fresh produce, meats, milk, bread and the like. I never know what the grocery store will be out of and it's different every week which makes meal planning impossible! One week all out of meat/seafood/chicken and eggs. So the next week, I plan pasta-centric dinners and guess what they were all out of? Not one single box. 

Until next time, survive and take care!

First week of quarantine the weather was fantastic!
Then the rain came back with a vengeance : (

Home school : )

The boys are obsessed with the new show Lego Masters (a reality competition show, it's on Hulu). They watch each episode at least 10 times each. Before the show their giant Lego pile went mostly un-played with. Such a good hobby especially now that we have no where to go, ha!

They created a building being taken over by a giant spider,
I was impressed with everything that is going on here : )

Testing the strength of their Lego bridge (32 lbs)

Now some meme's that have made me laugh! If you obsessively scroll through your phone too then you've probably already seen these, haha!