A New Type of School and a Sensational Spring

After nine weeks away from the school building and eight weeks of school-from-home, the kids are now at school for four hours, every other day until July 3rd.  With holidays, it ends up being 14 days total.  It was a bit of a stressful weekend helping them prepare, going through all their supplies and books and worksheets, finding small toys to play with alone at their desks and packing a bag for alone play in the schoolyard, making sure they understand the new procedures for arrival and departure, when they must wear masks, when they must wash hands, and on and on.  Oh, and Abstand, Abstand, Abstand!  *distance*  But we made it, and I must admit the admittance into school at 7:45 (for the two first grade "half" classes and their siblings) was not as stressful as I expected.  The 20 or so kids were all quiet and nervous and excited, and the adults were all simply doing our best to guide and encourage them in this big step.

On my walk home from school drop-off, I was simply overcome with the sights and sounds and smells of Spring.  I love every single season, and I love the changing of seasons.  Each season has its unique sensory stimulation, and Spring this year is definitely not disappointing.

The sweet scent of the wild rose bushes in full bloom all over is sensational.

 

And that scent mixed with the elder flowers is heavenly.

We have both types of wild flowers growing along our driveway!  But we enjoy the scents when we take walks along the stream as well.  We collected elder flowers a couple evenings ago and made syrup together as a family.  It is incredible mixed with soda water or even with a little white wine!

The sounds of the birds all around delight me as well.  We have a couple families of birds which visit our bird feeder multiple times a day.  One of these days we'll capture a picture of them.

This was my walking buddy along the stream.  I had seen him off and on over the last couple of months, but there was something special about greeting him again on this morning after dropping the kids off at school.  It just felt normal.  I like the continuity of finding him still in his habitat.

 And of course the ducks.  Gregory informed me there were ducks on our roof yesterday evening!

 These are some of my favorite trees.  I love the sound of the wind in the leaves. 

 And the wheat fields are beautiful right now.

Eva said to me on our bike ride yesterday, "Wow, Mom.  That farmer is working so hard.  He could feed the whole city with that field, right?" :)

This Kansas girl loves that we have wheat fields nearby.

Wrapping up week nine

Nathanael and his friend Elias created a large and detailed city last week on the floor of Nathanael's room.  It was so sad to make them clean it up!

Eva and I road our bikes along our stream to the McDs near Draschepark.  We had a wonderful ride, and it was fun to order and eat McDs outside.  (Restaurants opened on Friday!)  After finishing her french fries, Eva looked at me earnestly and said, "I feel like I'm dreaming this." :) 

Virtual Worship from our Living Room

I just realized I never posted our video from the end of March.  Gregory and I had fun doing this, and it was a great encouragement to us in the midst of the initial stressful adjustments to pandemic life.  Music and specifically songs of worship have always been a big part of our lives and our marriage and our ministry.  We are glad to invite others into this piece of our hearts and lives.

We also made one for our Austrian church a week earlier than the above video.  This one is a bit lower quality, and two of the three songs are in German. ;)

And finally, I made this one the day after our schools were suddenly closed to be available for our church members for our first Live-Stream church service on March 15th.  As you can see, it was really low quality, but when everything first started, anything was helpful!

Angel Food Cake for Mother's Day

Eva felt bad that she didn't finish her gift to me for Mother's Day.  (It was a ''school assignment'' which she wanted to do on her own without my assistance.)  I told her that having her as my daughter is the best gift ever, and I get to enjoy that gift every single day. ;)  Also, she constantly draws me pictures and writes me sweet notes to say she loves me.

Gregory asked me on Saturday if I would feel sad if I didn't receive anything.  I assured him that I would not (gifts are not one of my love languages), and I reminded him that we have enough to help our kids accomplish without requiring an additional project!

I did however make myself a cake.  My sister had sent me a picture of an angel food cake she made a few weeks ago, and ever since then, I was craving angel food cake.  My Grandma made my mom angel food cakes for birthdays growing up, and so I also grew up with angel food cake in my home.  My mom always made almond flavored icing for it.  So I tried out a gluten-free recipe I found online, added almond icing, and it was splendid.  It quickly disappeared in our home!

Allowing myself time to bake a cake for no specific purpose was a great Mother's Day gift.  I am blessed.

A new type of school and an adjusted birthday party

A week ago, we received the letters from the kids' school detailing what school will look like for the last seven weeks of the semester (May 18 - July 3).  Divided classes.  School every other day for each class half.  Staggered start and end times between 7:45 and 12:15.  No physical interaction or sharing of supplies with classmates or teachers.  No music.  No outings.  No gym class.  No handywork class.  The letters were a bit disturbing.  But the entire situation remains disturbing.

As I attempted last week to begin preparing the kids for this type of school, Nathanael finally began to realize that his ''postponed'' birthday party for 12-15 friends with a Pokemon theme is not realistically happening this year.  It was a sad realization, but he used his awesome creativity to begin to brainstorm other ideas.  He came up with an incredible plan.

Our family practices social distancing.  For the first month, we were extremely stringent.  For the last month, we have remained stringent with the exception of a few kids.  We have a small circle of kids with whom we allow our kids to play as 6-7 and 9-10 year olds need.  Mostly neighborhood kids.  So Nathanael decided to have two of these boys (two classmates and neighbors who are also in his Boy Scout troop) over for an overnight party.  What a fun adventure it was!

The boys helped Gregory put the tent up in the backyard.  The plan was to sleep in it, but the full moon and the cold night air caused them to move in to our living room around midnight. ;)

In addition to grilling burgers and wurstl for dinner, the evening included a film projected on the wall.

And Gregory took them on a bike ride in the dark!  So cool!

Both Friday afternoon and all day Saturday were spent mostly in nature, riding bikes together, playing at the newly reopened playground, and then of course playing in our local stream.

 

 

 

 

Nathanael's breakfast request was Kaiserschmarrn with applesauce (that is not the recipe I use, but it is similar and in English), one of our family favorites, and we ordered from our local pizza place for lunch.  What fun!   It took a few days to recover from the lost sleep and extra excitement, but it was totally worth it to celebrate this ten year old with a couple friends and some really really special activities!

Pandemic Normalcy

Post Easter life feels strangely normal now.  Well, normal for pandemic life.  Normal for having our kids home 24-7 without any extra-curricular activities.  Normal for holding school-from-home for a first grader learning to read in German and a fourth grader concluding the last weeks of his grade school career before switching schools to the next Austrian school - Gymnasium.  Normal for said first and fourth graders having only each other and us as playmates.  Strangely, we are doing well with it now.  We expect quite little from ourselves and our kids as far as productivity, and we are impressed when we have productive moments and even days and weeks.  We enjoy lots of time together and outside.  We break up a lot of sibling bickering.  And we experience lots of moments like this:

We finally purchased our Christmas gift to ourselves, a grill!  Wahoo!

And our grocery store had garden arches on clearance, something we have been wanting to add to our yard for a year now!

I attempted a no-yeast Irish bread, which wasn't bad accept the dough was too dry with the gluten-free flour.  Next time (if there is one), I will add more milk and maybe an egg.

We spent our first ''free'' Saturday morning (no more restrictions on our reasons for going out) going to the hardware store to purchase window boxes and plants and flowers to fill them.  Eva chose pink, purple, and white flowers.  Nathanael chose rosemary and lavender.  Without a car, this is how we take things home from the store! 

Our home is looking a bit less sterile with the added greenery.