To School or Not to School

 As a seasoned parent of 5 children, I feel pretty capable and in control most days...I feel like I have most of it figured out.  One of my favorite parental tactics is offering choices, so when Ella Forever comes up the stairs in the morning wearing a tutu and ballet slippers, I offer her a couple of more appropriate choices for bike riding, or whatever other adventure she may be about to embark on.  Generally, these choices are met with great dissatisfaction and lots of flailing (because we have created a bit of a monster, possibly), but eventually, I (usually) win. She, on the other hand, may not have won as big as she wanted to, but she got to make the final pick.  After this last month, with school approaching and real decisions needing to be made, I suddenly "get" my youngest daughter's displeasure at having to pick from a bunch of lackluster options.

Don't get me wrong...I LOVE our schools here.  My kids love our schools.  I am a bus driver for our schools. I have great respect for our teachers and administrators who have worked tirelessly to come up with a plan to have school and keep students and teachers safe.  Being an overthinker, however, this is how my brain has processed all of this: if I send my kids to in-person school, how long before they are home working virtually because of the petri dish factor? If my kid is puking, coughing, has a sore throat, has a mild fever, has diarrhea how do we determine whether he has Covid or just a run of the mill bug?  Are they automatically sent home to work virtually again? Does anybody realize that in a family with 5 kids that we will experience such illnesses 5 times per kid in any given school year? Will my 1st grader be able to sit all day in a forward facing desk, mask on, distanced from her favorite people and actually be able to really learn...not just log hours? How will my anxious 3rd grader take it when people close to him start to disappear from the classroom for weeks at a time because they're sick? If I choose virtual the state is requiring students to log 6 1/2 hours a day...how is it feasible for me to facilitate that for 5 kids in 5 different grades on crappy rural internet when the 3ish hours a day last spring nearly broke me?

This is just a smattering of the questions that have swirled around my head for weeks on end now.  Most of them have been addressed, usually kinda vaguely because I honestly feel like we are all in the same place...we. just. don't. know!  How will this play out? Sure, there's a possibility that I will be wrong...school will go on, with all of its modifications and there will be very little fall-out.  I fervently PRAY that's the case! But, if I'm right, as cold and flu season arrives, best case scenario is that everyone will be sent home to learn virtually and worst case scenario is that people get sick or worse.  Neither of these scenarios work for my family.  Take away the risk of illness, the whole feel of school this year, our beloved schools...it won't be the school we know and love! All the things we love...the connections, the group activities, the spark, the community involvement...all of that will be muffled.  Our school, or any other school for that matter, has no fault here...it's just the situation we are in.  They are doing everything right and they are creating the opportunities they can for the people that need them.  They are strung up in an impossible balancing act and there is no right answer. I absolutely stand behind our district and the accommodations that have been made and the care, thought and love that has been poured into creating a working education for the kids in our community. I also stand behind every other parent out there that is having to make this impossible choice.  None of it feels right and I, of all people, completely understand that.  I have obsessed over this topic for the last month and know that what is right for my family will not be right for all families.  We are all struggling right now and you will get zero judgement from me in your choice when it comes to school.

When J and I were engaged and we talked about kids, he really wanted to homeschool.  He being the primary breadwinner, however would have left me to the task of teaching and I wanted NO part of it.  I had a great public school experience and knew that was the route I wanted to go with my own children.  I also said I wanted 2 kids...he said he wanted "as many as God would grant him".  Anybody else see a pattern here??? It's annoying how this man always wins! Truth be told, he is as in love with our public school system as I am (and I am quite smitten with the brood that God granted us), so this hasn't been a cut and dry decision for him either.  Nevertheless, he may not have foreseen a global pandemic, but he called it on the homeschool thing and we will officially be embarking on this new adventure next week. I have poured over information and curriculum and I think we are (will be) ready to dive in.  Maybe even with a little excitement.  This decision gives us the power and most importantly, the consistency that my kids need to truly learn. After having them home 24/7 for the past 5 months, we have kinda hit our groove. This pandemic has driven the restlessness and angst out of us and we have grown quite content with our little sliver of paradise out here, so why not use it for our kids' education as well as our day to day? Our plan is to return to public school again, but who knows what this will bring?

Welcome to Kneuper Acres Academy!

This is our school room! We're getting it ready and the kids have taken it upon themselves to create banners and posters of affirmation for this space. ❤️

School hasn't even started, but the life science lessons are in full swing this week!

The kids have also been working hard in the kitchen with me and we plan to continue this through school.  Measurements, meal plans, budgets.  We will be very intentional with our lessons!

 

This was the scene of our family read-aloud book during last week's cooler weather.  I think this is my favorite classroom!

What in the World is Going on Here?

In this season of resurrection, I thought this might be the perfect time to resurrect this blog.  Besides, I MIGHT need a little bit of an outlet...for some reason.  What a weird time we are in!

When this school year started last August, I STRUGGLED.  My sweet little EllaForever went off to Kindergarten and suddenly I was alone for the majority of the day.  What was I supposed to do?  Who was I, actually?  What now?  Thankfully, over the summer I had picked up a part-time gig as a substitute school bus driver, so this provided a little bit of an outlet and interaction with real people day to day.  At the same time, J started working 4 ten hour days a week, which gave him a weekday off every week and we relished in that alone time together which, for the last 12 1/2 years has been so hard to come by.  Suddenly we had a solid 8 hours of "us" time every week and this whole sending all of the kids off to school every day wasn't so bad.

Fast forward to Spring Break...BOOM!  Our school year (and every other aspect of "normal" life) was turned on its head.  All of my kids plus my lovely husband have now been under this roof for 3 solid weeks now.  If it wasn't apparent before, it certainly is now...when this is all over, OUR TEACHERS DESERVE A RAISE!!!!!  I am on the backside of week one guiding all 5 of my kids through their schoolwork (their teachers have done the REAL work, I'm just supervising) and I am beat.  Not only do we sorely miss our teachers and regular routines, but man, are we disappointed with everything we will miss.  Which brings me to the real point for this post...this past Friday was supposed to be the Daddy/Daughter dance at the elementary school.  This is an event that J and Jillibean love every year and this would have been EllaForever's first dance.  To say they were bummed is an understatement.  Leave it up to J, though...he decided we should do our own homeschool version of the event to make up for it and create some memories in the midst of this strangeness.

In the past, he has always taken Jilliann out for dinner before the dance and that wasn't an option this year, so he hired Lolo to be the server at our very own Kneuper Acres Fine Dining.  J bought flowers, we implemented candlelight and classical music, there was wine for him and sparkling juice for the girls (in fancy glasses, no less).  They all dressed up and the boys and I "made" dinner (read: picked up the pizza from Casey's and served it).

Cheers!

His Italian is amazing!

The cheapskate stiffed us on the bulk of the bill, but 

he's cute, so...

After dinner Squeaky D announced their arrival to our basement dance floor and they all got their groove on.  We had a blast!  Except for X-man...he's way too cool for these kinds of shenanigans these days.  All in all, I think we succeeded in turning a big, fat bummer into a pretty big deal and both girls say they want to do the dance this way every year.  Memories made!

Winter Wonderland...

I'm pretty sure that probably the majority of my blog posts starts with a lamentation about how behind I am in posts...so hopefully this sentence takes care of that requirement.  Yes...life is busy, but it's so very good!  After several winters in a row with hardly a flake of snow, we have already experienced THREE snows this fall...and we're not even halfway through November yet!  I can hear the collective groans of most adults living in this region, but I am NOT one of them.  I am truly ready for the snow this year and waking up to the soft blue glow pouring through my bedroom window this morning, indicating a blanket of snow on the ground before the sun was up got me just about as excited as the kids were. We really only got enough to cover the ground today and the wind is quite atrocious, but last week we were on the very southern edge of a really wet, heavy snow that fell with no wind and gave us a good 3-4 inches.  The kids were in heaven!  And I went on my normal paparazzi duties...

Can you see the tiny snowman photo bombing to

the left? You can thank Jilliann for that one...

Mother Nature is SO confused! Is it fall??? Winter???

Original snow melted and today we just have a 

dusting, but it is WINDY and miserable.  The 

chickens are all huddled up against the house today.

Spring Broke

I need to get back on this blogging bandwagon, so here goes.  Spring break...ahhhhh...tiny seedlings popping through the dirt, birds singing their songs of twitterpation, March Madness, sunshine, blue skies, freedom from our mundane obligations.  Oh...wait...we're parents.  Illness.  We've been plagued with it.  It seems my many comments that went something like, "we have had SUCH a healthy fall," caught up to me and decided to murder my optimism.  We have been sick since a few weeks into 2018.  Even J and I fell to a horrible, but thankfully fast-moving virus at the beginning of all of this, but miraculously, we seemed to have hit a healthy stride the week before spring break.  We were ready!  We booked a large house in the Ozarks of Arkansas for the first part of spring break and we were ready for fun.  Until we woke up Saturday morning, stacks of luggage by the front door, notes for the pet-sitter on the counter and X-man plodded up the stairs, cheeks flushed, throat aching.

Ella in her travel-style with her
box o' princesses

Hoping for a quick resolution and knowing that his class has been passing strep around and that Ella Forever had just kicked the bug a week prior, J took him to Urgent Care.  Nope...not strep.  We decided to dose him with ibuprofen, pack everyone up (a bit later than we were planning) and went on our merry way with our fingers crossed.  The trip was uneventful.  We stopped for lunch along the way and one potty break...not that bad when you consider a Swagger Wagon full of 5 hooligans, a puppy (Avedis, our newest 4 legged addition) and 2 middle-aged fuddy-duds.  As we were nearing our destination, however, I noticed that Squeaky D was getting particularly whiney, but I attributed it to being over-done with the drive at that point.  We arrived to our 5-star-ranked-AirBnB-that-should-have-been-a-2-star (different story for a different day), unloaded the car and headed into Fayetteville for dinner.  Upon arriving at the unique eating establishment called Taco Bell (gimme a break...our standards have fallen after 5 kids), I pulled D out of the car and noted that he was rather toasty.  Another one bites the dust.  He opted out of eating and just wanted a water.

They look healthy right?

The next morning, with the help of some ibuprofen for those who might have been a bit under the weather and some beautiful Arkansas sunshine, we decided to go on a short hike in the Ozark Mountains.  The kids had a great time, the puppy was over the moon, J and I were care-free and life was good.  Until it wasn't.  Went to another little known culinary wonder called Whataburger and it was there that J jumped on the sicko wagon.  He was hurting.  My partner in crime was down for the count, but his sister was joining us for our vacationing adventure and was supposed to arrive that afternoon, so I put the sickies to bed and eagerly awaited her arrival for some much needed camaraderie and pep-talking.  After she got there, we chatted on the porch and Squeaky D came out very puny, complaining of ear pain.  I tried it all and made 2 separate trips to the local grocery store for different meds trying to keep him comfortable.  We made dinner, tended to our sickly charges and that was the end of Day 2.

Did I mention that J broke the camera on my phone trying
to take the following selfie?

At least we're cute...

Day 3 brought Jilly-bean down.  She started fevering that morning.  We made a quick outing to a sleepy little air and military museum in the little town we were staying with the help of ibuprofen, once again and then called it a day.  Day 3 in the books.

At least we have one family photo faking health!

A girl and her auntie...

This kid was in his element!

Couldn't resist this cool photo op!

Day 4 J woke up with his throat completely swollen and swallowing a chore. A quick run to Urgent Care confirmed that he had strep.  We decided to find an activity that would keep us quarantined from the general population and found a well-reviewed drive through safari less than an hour away and decided that it would be a perfect activity for a boat-load of petri dishes.  Let's just say that unless you want to see the puppy mill of exotic animals, you should probably skip Wild Wilderness Drive Through Safari...we made the best of our day and the kids had fun, but my heart hurt quite harshly knowing that I funded any part of the establishment.  It was just another perfect example of our doomed trip and I could not have been more ready to be home.

My new friend!

Because a little chaos within the vehicle is just what
we needed!

*smooch*

Ella Forever just being her goofy self

After feeding this emu everything he had, X-man emphatically
begged for an emu all his own. No.

Despite our failed attempt at an adventure, here are some things that I learned...

1. I should have known after last year's spring break blog post.

2. It's possible to have fun in less than ideal living conditions with minimal health...it's the company that really matters.

3. Ibuprofen is our friend.  I really try not to take a lot of medications myself and only give it to the kids when they REALLY need it.  Usually.  This week I handed it to them like candy and we wouldn't have survived with out it.

4. Sisters-in-law are invaluable.  I am forever indebted to Liz for bringing lots of goodies to keep the kids occupied when we were laying low, for piggy-backing one particular sickie through an entire museum and just for being good company.  Oh...and for risking your own health to "play" with us for the week.

5. Arkansas is beautiful and Fayetteville is a really cool little town.

6. Home is really really great.

Everyone finally got better...mostly.  I took Squeaky D into our regular doctor the day after we got back and she confirmed that he had ruptured his ear drum for the 2nd year in a row.  He is trucking along on his antibiotics and seems to have made a full recovery.  Jilly-bean still had a mild fever this morning.  I really need summer to get here.

We got some good ballin' in at the school once we got back

Don't be jealous of the skillz, ya'll!

Turns out...he's a monkey!

I LOVE Ella's face in this pic!

*melt*

Dog pile on the dog bed this morning

We have had beautiful weather since we got back and the kids have spent nearly every day outside all day digging holes in our field...because, you know...holes are fun!  And I truly did miss my little sliver of paradise and our challenging time away just reinforced that.  Home is a really great place to be.  Which is really good because it is probably where we will be next spring break! :)

Home sweet home