Halloween 2020

 

Alia decided to dress up as a unicorn for her online classes.

 

 Since Halloween was cancelled downtown this year, Camp Burton with the help of various businesses made a spooky, glow in the dark drive through. 

 

 

 Instead of trick or treating downtown this year we made our own trick or treating in the woods.  We hid glow bugs and sticks in the school forest and hid candy near them.  The kids ran through with a few friends hunting for candy.  They both decided to wear all black to be spooky and well hidden.

 

October Birthday Camping Weekend

Today was a beautiful day on Vashon.  We decided to explore some trails and go geocaching.  Our first stop was Point Robinson.  The cache was cleverly hidden among the driftwood. 

 

 We did creme brule in place of a cake this year. 

 

 A wonderful gift from Alia.

Last weekend we went camping on Whidbey Island.  We had fun hiking around some of the lesser known parks in the area and went geocaching.  

 

After geocaching we visited a local pumpkin patch and corn maze.  We had a blast playing hide and seek in the corn even if it was only knee deep in some places.

 

 

 

We had fun picking out pumpkins.

That time he shattered his wrist

 Avery was in a biking accident on the Dockton trails.  He was cruising down flying monkey, the first in his group of friends.  It had been a very rainy week before this day and even though he had cleared the jump a few times, his tire hit something and he went flying over his handle bars.  His wrist looked terrible and he and Scott headed off island to the emergency room in Tacoma.  9 hours later, he was given a temporary cast until he can see a doctor.  I think the most exciting time at the emergency room was when Scott passed out twice from hunger and stress and Avery had to give him his bed.  A week later he went into surgery where they inserted 2 large pins and recasted him.  He will have those pins removed in 3 weeks and then he is recasted while the bone heals.  

Life continues amid covid and now the smoke

We had a drive in theater this summer at The O Space, where we watched The Goonies and enjoyed lots of snacks.  Maia really liked this arrangement. 

Game night playing video games outdoors on a friend's box truck.

Since we can't swim indoors at the gym pool, we took up open water swimming in the sound.  We are all really enjoying the new adventure.

I've been lucky to have great friends that joined me on this new adventure!

Swimming at KVI is my favorite place to swim but we also swim at Dilworth and Gold Beach.

Tacoma has amazing flower gardens at Pt Defiance. 

School started virtually this year.  We had to go pick up chrome books and materials and were greeted by this sorry looking sign.  2020 continues with it's sense of humor.

 

 

The kids are both set up in their spaces and school has been going okay this last week.  The first week was a disaster when the school chrome books kept crashing and kicking them out of the meetings.  We have switched to using our own computers now and we don't have any issues.  This year they are both in middle school which is nice because it's only one set of emails from one school.  Our school went to a quarter system for now which means they both only have 3 classes.  Avery has algebra, english and advanced science this quarter.  Alia has math, humanities and computers.  They are online from 9:00-3:00 with a few short breaks here and there.  All classes are an hour and 20 minutes where the teacher teaches lessons virtually on a google meet. 

We had a picnic at Lisabuela after school on the first day.  It was amazing weather with blue skies. 

Alia had done a great job training Ginger.  She enjoys a walk around the house at night and playing in the large maze the kids made for her.

Wildfires have been raging across the West since Labor Day weekend.  It's been a dry year again and the perfect conditions.  We were warned that Labor Day weekend could be deadly if fires started because the hot, dry conditions combined with strong winds could start any spark.  We all held our breath hoping for the best but unfortunately fires started everywhere.  Many of them are so bad it's the worse we've seen in over 100 years.  We have 9 major wildfires in Washington.  All of these wildfires pushed smoke to Seattle this last weekend and the smoke is still here.  We are unable to go outside due to the hazardous conditions.  We were handling covid restrictions fine but taking away the outdoors has been a challenge for us. 

The overlook at the Dockton trails. 

The kids created a track in the basement to race their plasma cars since they are stuck inside.  We had a lot of fun racing each other.