So with August comes starting school again. With so many things up in the air with the pandemic still going on, and the COVID cases rising again, I tried getting all the kids into a charter school that does virtual school most of the time anyway and is highly recommended. I was only able to get Samuel in, but Austin's high school is going to be all virtual for the entire 1st quarter anyway. Caleb and Malachi I got into a charter school, that partners with Harmony school to provide you with homeschool curriculum. We got a bunch of resources and curriculum sent to us. We started getting a routine figured out, and enjoyed doing school like this for two weeks, when we got an email stating we were unenrolled from the program due to an enrollment cap error the school made. We were upset because we just figured everything out, and didn't know what to do now. After a few weeks, we've finally been told that we will need to completely homeschool or enroll back into our regular schools. They did decide to let us keep some of our curriculum, and might get to keep some of the resources we've used. So we've been able to keep going with what we had planned with a few adjustments. Some of the language arts lessons I'm using are designed by someone in the church, so Caleb loves that God is part of his school education again. Betsy decided to go back to Aiea High School with Austin, since she has been struggling to get her BYU classes done, and everything is virtual right now, so perfect for her. Seminary is online as well right now. They have a zoom (video conference) meeting twice a week at 8:30pm, and a online lesson they complete on their own the rest of the week. Since Austin works, she can only go to a zoom meeting on Thursdays. The girls refused to do the zoom meetings at first, but they finally consented to getting on the computer together on Thursdays, and it seems to be working out. I've been teaching a full load of piano students again as well, so our days our pretty busy. I do schoolwork with the younger kids all morning, then in the afternoon I teach piano lessons. Then it's clean up time and dinner time, so the days have been going pretty fast. The corona virus cases have been in the triple digits here on the island, so the mayor shut everything down again with a stay at home order, and shut down all the parks, hikes, and beaches (you can exercise in the water, but that's it). It's been difficult to not be able to take the kids anywhere. We've gone on a few walks, but that's it. Caleb takes the rules very seriously and wears his mask anytime we leave the house. He won't even play with his friends outside anymore, because they don't follow the rules. The missionaries have been trying to meet with Joseph and Jessica occasionally. When they come over, I have to take the boys somewhere else, otherwise Jessica gets too anxious. So I decided to take them to a walk on Hickam Air Force Base, that is a walking path right along the water's edge. We got there, and started our walk, we'd only been there 5 minutes when Samuel's flip flop broke. The boys were content to mostly play by the water's edge anyway, but then Malachi and Gideon kept scraping their knees on the rocks, and used up all my bandaids. Malachi picked up a tupperware lid that someone had thrown out, and threw it into the ocean. I teased Samuel and said he should jump in and get it, since we shouldn't litter in the ocean, but Caleb took me seriously, and jumped right in the water, fully clothed, with his shoes on and swam to get the lid and brought it back, and took it to the trashcan along the path. Poor kid, was soaking wet, and took off his socks and shoes so they would dry out, then stepped on a thorn that went through his foot. All this happened within 10-15 minutes of our walk, so we ended up going back to the van, and then drove to a McDonald's and went through the drive through to get french fries for everyone to share, then sat in the van and ate them, while we waited for it to be time to come back home. Gideon is quite the interesting child. One night he climbed into bed with Travis and I in the middle of the night, after he tossed and turned for a while he climbed back out and left the room. I figured he was going back to sleep in his own bed, so I went back to sleep. The next morning, he slept in for a while, but when he finally woke up and came down the stairs, I couldn't believe my eyes. He was completely covered in orange. He would have looked exactly like an oompa loompa if he had had green hair. He looked so completely pleased with himself, he came down to me and closed his eyes and grinned and said "see, I even got my eyeballs!", his eyelids had been colored orange too. He had gotten a hold of an orange marker and colored his entire body, except his back and underwear area orange. He had also colored the walls, bed, and bedsheets orange as well. He was so happy with himself he was skipping and smiling. It's hard to be mad at such a happy boy, but I made him go take a bath, and scrubbed most of the orange off of him. I couldn't get it out of his ears (he stuck the marker in his ear to color it!), but I got most of the rest of it off. The bath water kept getting too orange, so I just had to have him in the the shower for a while, then turned it into a bath. Next we worked on cleaning the walls and bed in his room, and washed his bedding while we talked about better ways to color. Another morning while we were trying to do schoolwork, I kept hearing a high pitched whistling sound. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Finally I realized it was coming from Gideon. He was plugging his nose with his fingers, and closing his mouth and blowing air out of his ears, making a whistling sound. I've never heard of anyone being able to whistle through their ears, it was crazy. I realized it was probably because Gideon had tubes put in his ears a few years ago. He did it for a little while longer, then stopped because he said his ears were hurting. He hasn't done it since, but for one morning he was an ear whistler. Joseph and Jessica are still living in our garage, and Joseph still doesn't have a job, and hasn't lost the weight to join the army, but we've been able to get him to help out a little more by taking away his internet until he does so. August was also interesting because when Travis got home, we thought he was going to need to quarantine for two weeks, but they told him to come into work the 1st week, then they told him he better quarantine for the second week, which is kind of ridiculous, since he had already been at work for a week and showed no symptoms, but it was nice to have him home. Then one of the drivers at Austin's work tested positive for COVID, so she had to quarantine for two weeks. We've loved having Travis back home again. We had our 20 year anniversary on August 9th. We were going to go on a backpacking trip to hike the Na Pali coast line in Kaui'i, but had to cancel it due to COVID restrictions. We ended up locking ourselves in our bedroom for the evening, while Austin watched the kids, since we couldn't go anywhere since Travis was still in Quarantine. Malachi had his birthday August 6th, turning 7 years old. We went on a hike that morning (this was just before they shut the hikes down again). Played in the watering hole and picked guavas, since Malachi wanted a guava themed birthday. The hike was hard, because it was raining and everything was super slippery and muddy, and steep, and I was wearing my heavy pack. We eventually made it, although we were pretty covered in mud, from slips and falls. Gideon had guava pancakes for breakfast, with guava syrup and smoothies. He had a guava cake and ice cream, and got to open lots of presents. Coincidentally most of his school supplies arrived the same day, so it was like he had a ton of presents. He was a pretty happy boy. Betsy turned 16 on August 23rd, I made her a yummy cake and she opened presents, and we played a game or two with her, but she mostly just hung out in her room like she usually does. I did make her, her favorite dinner, steak and cheese soufflé and lettuce, with raspberry lemonade to drink. Travis wanted to set her up on a blind date for her birthday, but with all the COVID restrictions it wouldn't work. I can't believe my little girl is 16 years old already.
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