February 2020

February 1st brought with it Katie's second Science Olympiad Invitational tournament.

This time around, the tournament organizers needed volunteers to help judge and score.

I ended up judging and scoring Machines with a friend and a few other people.

It was crazy complicated!! These kids are literal geniuses. I swear.

The kids had to design, build and test a simple lever machine before the competition.

The morning of the competition they "impounded" (turned in) their machine.

When it was their turn, they had to test their machine under a time limit and then also had to take a written test on machine concepts.

I put myself in charge of proctoring the written test. Honestly, it was the only thing I thought I was remotely qualified to do.

Katie checked in with me between her events - Fossils (identify fossils and answer questions) and Experimental Design (we give you random items and you come up with an experiment using them).

Overall, her team did pretty good.

Their next event would be the Regional competition in March to determine which schools would move on to represent at the State Tourney.

Here she is cheering on her teammates.

Mikey was busy being Mikey.

He joined the winter sessions of Chess Club and STEM Club at school and started an Improv class at the local kids theater.

I can't remember if I mentioned that he was having problems sleeping......like, since September.

He was sleep walking sometimes too.

Sunday nights were the worst and then tapered off as the week wore on.

It wasn't a good time.

Sometimes it was nightmares.

Sometimes he just couldn't get his brain to shut down.

Sometimes I would have to sleep on the floor until he fell asleep.

And, sometimes, he would read until he passed out.

I got my Pokemon pottery back from the Crohn's and Colitis event.

Say hello to Oddish.

The first full week of February, Katie and I attended an informational session about a new high school opening in our school district for the 2020-2021 school year.

This was not going to be a traditional high school, but more of an expeditionary learning high school.

Here's a blurb about expeditionary learning: "Students learn by doing long-term investigations on important topics that mirror real-world challenges". The students can work independently and/or in teams on these projects. Most projects are interdisciplinary, so they incorporate English, math, science, history into one project.

A brand new high school - located in a renovated office building - which would have a new school culture and a new way of learning.

Katie was hooked.

As soon as the session ended, she had me put in her name for consideration.

If there were enough students, a lottery would be held.

 That same week, Katie let me know that her toe hurt.

It was bright red and very swollen.

It was also causing some significant pain.

She had just started PE in January for second semester and all the running was making it worse.

We tried to remedy it ourselves at home to no avail.

She had to go in to see a doctor.

Turns out that she had an infected ingrown toenail.

The doctor sent us home with some tips on how to get it to go back to normal sans antibiotics or surgery. She asked us to call back if anything changed or if it got worse.

Mikey was supposed to go to his first Improv lesson, but instead went and tried Judo at a local club with Huzbend.

He really liked it and they joined the club and began workouts on Saturdays.

The second week of February got a little busier.

I spent Monday through Thursday volunteering at the middle school to help the kiddos sell 

KIND-y Grams to make money for the ASB.

KIND-y Grams were notes, with candies attached, that the kids could purchase and send to friends.

I had to make sure the notes they wrote were "appropriate".

Ha.

As a family, we went and listened to Tony Wagner talk about innovation and how important it is.

He was a consultant on the new high school that Katie was so interested in.

It was only Tuesday and Katie's toe was killing her.

I called the Doctor's to get an appointment to fix it.

It was minor surgery.

The doctor had to inject a topical anesthetic into her toe to make it numb and then cut off the part of the toe nail that was causing all the trouble.

She did NOT like the injection.

Yikes.

It must've been painful. There was some screaming.

But, after that, it was smooth sailing.

All done in about 5 minutes.

She left with a giant gauze wrap around her toe with orders to rest it for a week or so.

She begged the Dr. to let her go to school the next day.

The doc acquiesced with the suggestion to take it easy and take the bandage off in about 24 hours.

That evening, she had a National History Day Open House at school.

All parents/guardians were invited to check out the websites/documentaries/papers and informational tri-fold boards the kids had been working on for months.

Here's Katie's paper:

From Radioactivity to Role Model: How Marie Curie Broke Barriers in Science and Society

Even though she was under orders to limit the amount of walking on her foot, she was still Ms. Social Butterfly and hung out with her friends the whole time.

We were able to catch her for a quick photo.

The next day, I had a phone appointment with the Travel Advisory Service offered by our health insurance company. We discussed Katie's upcoming school trip to Costa Rica and what, if any, vaccines and precautions she could take to protect herself while traveling.

Now would be a good time to bring up the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Back on January 21st, Washington State became the first state in the United States with a confirmed case of Covid-19. This first case was a gentleman that had returned from travel from Wuhan, China - the epicenter of the outbreak - on January 15th and lived in Snohomish County.

We had been hearing about Covid-19 throughout the month of January.
Our thinking about it was that it was only a matter of time before it reached the good ole US of A, if it wasn't all here already. 

Well, it was finally, officially, here.

In Washington. Just a little bit away from us.

Because, of course it would be.

The Travel Advisory nurse I spoke with gave me some tips to how to keep Katie safe from sunburn, mosquitoes and dirty water. She recommended just one vaccine for typhoid.

Our talk turned to Covid-19.

She relayed that only time would tell what would happen with the virus.

That washing hands and not touching your face was the way to keep yourself safe.

The worrying began.......

That evening, Katie had us record her English-assigned TED talk about universal health care.

How apropo.

Things got a little silly......

It was a family affair.

I held the camera, Huzbend held the cue cards and Mikey advanced the slides.

It took about 10 tries for her to get it all the way through.

Here's a snippet of the presentation.

That next day was a Friday AND Valentine's Day AND the day before Mid-Winter School Break!

I headed to Mikey's class to help out with his Valentine's Breakfast Buffet and to watch him in a short little play.

Here's a necklace that he made.

It's a "guy".

Mikey ate about a dozen croissants.

Even with his tummy full of French pastries, he was able to waddle over and perform in a play about Clara Barton.

He played Clara's brother David, who she helped nurse back to health after a head injury.

Mikey wasn't a big fan of the script.

Unbeknownst to his teacher, he had taken a pencil to the script and changed the lines.

His new creation was called "Time Barton" and was a crazy time travel adventure.

I have to say that I think I would've preferred "Time Barton".

We pushed our family Valentine's celebration to the next day, which was Saturday, so that we could do our "Eat Whatever You Want for Dinner" celebration.

Katie chose mashed potatoes, garlic bread and cupcakes.

Mikey chose fondue.

Which was not a bad choice at all!

Huzbend and I enjoyed it as well.

That Saturday, I went with the boys to the Judo club to take some pictures and video.

 Warm up time.

Cartwheel.

Still warming up.

Waiting for instruction.

Time to work out!

Mikey practicing a throw. 

The workout ended with "randori" (free style practice).

You can tell he was having a good time.

Check out the smile.

It was on to Mid-Winter Break.

It was a pretty crappy break.

Well, Monday wasn't bad.

Katie volunteered at a local Wildlife Rehab/Pet Shelter for the day.

Huzbend was home for the day (it was President's Day).

There was some video game playing and then they went mountain biking while I walked Ralph.

As we were parking in a school parking lot across from the park entrance, we saw a bobcat run across the road into the woods. Never saw one of those before!

He was too quick for me to take a picture of.

Ralph made a new friend on our walk through the woods.

On Tuesday, I took Mikey for his HPV vaccine booster.

He was very nervous about it hurting a lot and was surprised when it didn't.

But, his arm was sore the rest of the day.

Katie had an IV infusion that afternoon and Mikey hung at a friends house.

That Tuesday also began Katie's prep for her Endoscopy/Colonoscopy that would be happening on Thursday. She had to eat low fiber foods.

The next day, Wednesday, was the day she had to switch to clear liquids only and drink the Mira-lax.

And when I say drink the Mira-lax, I mean a WHOLE container of the stuff mixed with a bunch of Gatorade.

AND, she had to drink it all in 6 hours downing a glass every 20 minutes, if she could.

She did a great job sucking it all down.

She was very upbeat through most of the process.

There were lots of giggles......at first.

Toward the end, it was not so happy.

I think she laid down on the couch and fell asleep when she was done.

She has vowed never to drink lemon/lime Gatorade again.

Thursday we were up SUPER early.

We had to check in at the hospital at 6am.

Lucky for her, she was the first procedure scheduled that day.

Which meant that she didn't have to go too long without eating anything.

The entire procedure took about 60 minutes.

But, there was pre-op time (taking meds, answering questions) and then the wake up from anesthesia time added to that. So, maybe we were there 4 or 5 hours?

All looked well on the scope. Her Crohn's looked under control and there was no inflammation to worry about. We would have to wait for the biopsy results and talk about them at our next appointment.

Soon, she was up and ready to roll.

Literally!

She spent the rest of the day Thursday recovering/sleeping.

You know the weather is getting nicer when Ralph chooses to chill in his chair.

It was Friday. 

Because we had had such a crappy break, we decided to do something fun.

We went to the zoo and took a couple of friends with us.

You can't go to the zoo without pretending to drive the tractor.

You. Just. Can't.

They had fun being "kids" again.

It wasn't very cold, so some of the more elusive fuzzies were out.

Here's a maned wolf.

And, a red panda.

This is a cute one.

They tried to recreate a picture from a long time ago.

Maybe from preschool?

That's what they told me.

The bigger kids got a little hysterical when they realized how hard it was to get down off of the thing.

Emus.

Katie thinks they're cute.

I will let you be the judge.

Mikey ended up coming down with a cold the next day, so the weekend was shot.

We just hung out at home.

He missed the first day back to school that Monday, the 17th, because he still wasn't feeling well.

Boogers, cough and upset tummy. No fever.

Mikey slowly got better during the week, but then Huzbend came down with the same yuck.

Even though I sanitized everything LIKE CRAZY.

He stayed home from work for most of that week.

February 25th was Fat Tuesday.

King Cake time!

This time, I made the cake myself with a GF box mix.

I hid two babies in it so both kids could find one.

At this point in the month, Covid-19 news exploding and the virus itself was hitting Europe badly.

A teacher at our local high school had traveled with family over the break.

One of the relatives that they had traveled with came down with flu-like symptoms.

Out of an abundance of caution, our Superintendent shut down the high school so that it could be deep cleaned as they waited for the test results to come back for the relative.

The high school remained closed Thursday, the 27th and Friday, the 28th.

Mikey had his second ever band performance scheduled for Thursday at the high school.

Because the school was closed, the performance was postponed.

He was happy because it meant that he wouldn't have to wear "fancy clothes."

"Fancy clothes", in his mind, equals a button down shirt and khaki pants.

Katie wanted me to get her some "fancy clothes" as well.

She's been wanting a suit for a while.

I bought some super-on-sale size 14 clothes, but they didn't really fit her.

Much to Mikey's dismay, I put them in his closet for him to grow in to.

That Friday, the 28th, Mikey's teacher told her students bring home everything that they would need to learn. Just in case......

Saturday, the 29th, was the first of two Girl Scout on-site cookie sales for Katie.
She was parked outside a local grocery store with some other girls.

They did brisk cookie business.

It was a busy Saturday. 

I noticed that almost all of the people wiped down their carts with sanitizer wipes.

We got home that afternoon to find out at the Governor had declared a State of Emergency.

The first Covid-19 death was recorded in Washington on this day. 

It was also the first confirmed Covid-19 death in the United States.

There were many more positive cases discovered at a local nursing home, dozens within our community and a high school student in another district had also tested positive after returning to school thinking he was fine.

Things were escalating quickly.