Good news, everyone!

The oven element arrived, the Webmaster swapped it out, and now the oven is working again!

Just look at that bright, happy light.

And then I made chicken nuggets for the boys, because Thumper was not satisfied with the quality of chicken nugget that was coming out of the toaster oven, the spoiled little turkey.

It has now been 30 school days since the kids have been out of the classrooms.  We are still getting used to all the Zoom meetings and online check-ins.

Meanwhile, I am still adding in interesting things – like the fact that today is Jackie Robinson Day, so I had a new book for Rerun to read.

Man, I miss baseball so much.

And with the new emphasis on wearing masks, a good friend in Texas made some specifically for the kids, and sent them to us.  Thumper, who hates wearing things on his face, is having to desensitize himself to wearing one.

At first he was holding his breath while wearing it for 10 seconds at a time (not good), so I began to distract him with music and talking and making him count.  We made it all the way to two minutes!

Teaching Thumper to wear a facemask was definitely not on my list for things to do this year, but here we are.

And happy birthday to my dear niece Berry!  We miss you so much and hope your day is a happy one!

The kids started online school again yesterday, and now that we know they won’t be going back to a school building for classes at all for the remainder of this academic year, we now feel the full weight of what that will mean.  All the kids are now having regular check-ins with teachers – if not daily, then every other day – and we are getting an idea of what the homework load will be (you know, everything is now homework, because you’re at home).

And the boys are getting checked on by their specialists as well.  I had a quick meeting with Thumper’s school OT/PT teacher, and she sent along some “assignments” that she wanted him to try.  One of them was hopscotch.

Problem: Thumper had no idea what hopscotch was.  Recess teacher Ane, you’ve just been made the OT/PT teacher as well!  She drew him a hopscotch grid of chalk on the driveway, and began to walk him through it.

Thumper still wasn’t getting the concept of balancing on one foot (clearly, something that needs more practice), or only putting one foot in each box.

So Ane came up with a genius solution.  She traced Thumper’s feet in chalk, and showed him how to jump from footprint to footprint.

And he understood it!

Thumper still needs more practice, but hats off to Ane for creativity and being a great teacher!

We might be on lockdown, but Christ is still risen, and Easter still happened.  And the kids were excited about it – excited enough to dress up, just to please their mother, and to take pictures.

Don’t they look nice?  All dressed up and ready for Easter Sunday church… on the TV.

But there were full baskets, too!  The Easter Bunny was a little generous, knowing that certain gifts (i.e. LEGO sets) equal peace and quiet.

And with the oven out of commission, our normal Easter menu went out the window.  So Ane helped me prepare a Belgian waffle brunch, complete with eggs of your choice, and sausage links.

This was a hit with everyone but Thumper, who apparently believes that Eggos are the only proper kind of waffle.  (I’ve failed him.)

Our Easter was also full of surprise guests, as Grandma and Auntie came by to drop off Grandma’s traditional Easter cream cheese coffeecake for us, and then Friend and Doc and the boys stopped by for a quick social distance Easter greeting – we all stayed apart from each other in the front yard and chatted for a while.  Those visits definitely made the day much better!

I hope everyone else’s Easter Sunday was spent in as pleasant a way as possible, even in quarantine.