June 2020

It was finally June.
Time does NOT fly when you are stuck at home.

Usually, June is a happy month full of school-year-end festivities.
Not so this year.
All festivities were cancelled and rescheduled as some sort of remote or online celebration.

With both kids ready to transition to the next level - Katie onto high school and Mikey onto middle school - there was quite a sense of loss surrounding these "Moving On" celebrations. It was all very anticlimactic.

Everyone felt a little bit like Ralph does every day of his life.

Speaking of Ralph.

It was shedding season.

The first week of June was pretty hectic.

I was finally able to present the PTA award videos that I had been working on.

It was such a relief to get that off my plate.

Ralph had his yearly check-up.

The doctor commented that he was a bit over weight (they say this every time), but was otherwise pretty healthy.

Katie's school had a virtual Spirit Week and a video conference Movie Party where they watched "Ratatouille".

Katie had a follow up telehealth appointment with her GI.

The acid reflux meds she had been taking to help with her EOE symptoms didn't seem to be helping her at all.

The choice was either to move to oral steroids or to make a diet change.

She decided to try a "Top 8 Elimination Diet". 

On this diet, she would eliminate dairy, eggs and soy. 

She already can't eat peanuts, tree nuts due to allergies. Can't eat wheat due to Celiac. And, does not eat shellfish and fish because Huzbend and I don't like them so we never make them.

A follow-up endoscopy was planned for August to see if the eosinophil levels would decrease with the diet changes.

If they did, then she could begin to add a food back into her diet for a bit and then scope again until the main culprit was found. And so on. And so on.

She officially began the diet on Friday the 5th.

She also burnt herself on something.

I think it was our toaster/convection oven.

Ow.

She was quite proud of the burn mark.

That first Friday in June our county officially moved to Phase 2 of the state's reopening plan. 

This allowed for more outdoor recreation opportunities as well as more businesses reopening - like, hair salons, some office work, retail stores and restaurants at less than 50% capacity.

Saturday judo practices started happening outside.

Mats were purchased to cushion the break falls.

We headed out on the first Sunday of the month to go frisbee golfing.

Unfortunately, the disc golf course didn't get the memo that we had moved into Phase 2.

It wasn't open.

It wasn't really it's fault. It's actually in another county.

We decided to take a walk through the park for some fresh air and to enjoy some scenery that was different than our backyard.

It was a beautiful sunny day.

We were all good and wore our masks the entire time.

Even Ralph came along.

Mikey had to do a year end science experiment.

It had to include a hypothesis and variables.

Of course, he chose to burn things.

I mentioned above that in Phase 2 of reopening hair salons were now open.

Mikey was sick of having his hair pulled while practicing judo and decided that it was time for a haircut.

The salon we went to took loads of precautions to make sure all were as safe as they could be......

But, it was still nerve wracking to go.

It took a few days before I could stop worrying about the potential exposure.

Here is the before......

.....And, here is the after!

He aged, like, three years in twenty minutes.

Damn.
You should've seen all the hair on the floor.
Yikes.

The next day, Mikey had to say goodbye to "Jazzmin", his trombone.
The store that we had rented it from was finally open and taking returns.

Waaaaay back at the end of February, the district 5th grade band was supposed to perform on stage at the performing arts center.

The school building that the arts center was at was shut down due to a positive coronavirus case.

And, well, you know the rest.

They never went back to school.

5th grade band is a district-wide extracurricular and, as such, didn't have any structured lessons that continued through the shut down. The teachers that volunteer to head up 5th grade band had actual classes to teach.

Mikey really enjoyed trying out the trombone.

He bid a sad goodbye to his probably first and last instrument.

The second to the last Friday of school brought with it a "5th Grade Reverse Parade".

Mikey was invited to drive through his school parking lot to see present and past teachers and receive his yearbook.

 

These teachers.

I don't know what to say.

They stood in the POURING RAIN and cheered and greeted Mikey, waving signs and ringing cowbells.

Here are Mikey's three teachers.

YES. He had three teachers in his classroom!

One teacher, one student teacher and a paraeducator.

 

He was also able to wave to his principal and the dean of students, both of whom had helped him multiple times throughout his years at the school.

As we drove out of the parking lot, Mikey commented,

"Well, that was REALLY nice!"

I think he felt the love.

We will miss that school.

When we got home, he took a quiet ten minutes or so to flip through his yearbook and reminisce about the six months that he was able to be at "actual" school this year.

But, school wasn't over yet!

Monday morning, his class challenge was to dress up or show an object that related to a biography that they had read and done a project on.

Mikey was Leif Erikson.

Katie's Virtual National Junior Honor Society Induction Ceremony was released online.

Yay!!!!

Each year, the principal would "knight" the eighth graders.

He did it "virtually" this year.

The Thursday before the last day of school was official "Pick Up Your Shit" Day.

No. Really.

The kids had to swing by their specific schools to pick up the stuff they had left inside when buildings were vacated in March.

Katie was up first.

It was set up like a drive through.

We gave our name and they brought out her stuff.

They included a school mascot branded face mask as a goodbye gift.

It was good to see the staff and some teachers.

Later that afternoon, we stopped back in to the middle school to pick up the decorations I had set up earlier.

The staff and teachers were packing up and Katie was able to say a few more socially distanced goodbyes to some of her favorite teachers.

She won't be too far away though.

Mikey will be at the same school next year.

Speaking of Mikey.....

It was time to pick up his stuff over at his school.

He was stuffed in the back with all of the balloons from the middle school.

This actually worked out great because both schools share the same colors.

He got to say one last goodbye to his teacher and some of his favorite staff members.

 

The last day of school was the next day.

This is what it looked like.

As the kids finished up school, there was a bee disaster next door.

I guess our neighbors have a bee hive in their yard.

Sometimes the bees get to be too many and decide to swarm to a new home.

Well, they swarmed all right!

Into our backyard and eventually into a tree that bordered our two yards.

I spoke with the neighbor, who is a Junior Bee Keeper (!), and he said he'd move them.
He got his bee suit on, jumped on a ladder and poked them with a pole saw.

They left the tree.

The afternoon of the last day of school, Katie and her 8th grade class were invited to visit the school one last time in MINECRAFT!

Some students put together this crazily detailed and very accurate replica of the school.

That weekend, we celebrated their "Moving On" with a fondue dinner and dessert.

 

Katie did not partake in the cheese part of the meal because of the new diet.

She got her own specialty....bacon wrapped dates.

Dairy free chocolate fondue was enjoyed by all, but mostly by myself and Katie.

During the summer months we have many plants in our yard that attract these cute little visitors.

I keep telling myself to buy some feeders and always forget.
Maybe putting this here will remind me.

The parks department opened up the disc golf course during the week, so we made Huzbend's Father's Day dream come true and headed over there to play.

Katie doesn't like touching the frisbee because it's "gross."

Here is Mikey doing his pre-throw lucky dance.
Or maybe just dancing.

And, yep, Ralph and Huzbend were there.

A rare frisbee golf smile from Katie.

Frisbee golf is NOT her favorite thing.

After dinner, Huzbend got a "Father's Day" no-surprise-'cause-he-found-it-hiding-in-the-fridge individual serving banana cream pie.

It was officially summer.

I promised the kids that I wouldn't make them jump into 

"Mommy School" for the first week of summer.

They did manage to keep themselves busy with a moderate use of video games, Disney + and some other activities.

One such activity....

Pool Noodle Sword Fight to accompanying fight music.

This activity actually lasted about an hour and a half one day.

We also drove out to a berry farm to do some harvesting.

First, we hit up the raspberry bushes.

The farm was great for social distancing.

There was no one near us at all, so I let the masks come down.

Katie had her own box to fill this time around.

Someone likes to "sneak-eat" berries as he's picking.

We spent a good 45 minutes or so picking.

It was hard to stop.

There were so many "good ones".

Very hard to resist eating them....

Here was our haul.

Katie had never picked strawberries before.

We headed over to the strawberry field to let her try.

Mikey, who had experienced strawberry picking before and was not a fan, decided to take a break and "guard" our raspberries.

Katie soon learned why Mikey did not like strawberry picking.

It's hard on the back.

AND, since the berries are so close to the ground you can't "sneak-eat" them without getting a mouth full of dirt.

We didn't last nearly as long picking strawberries.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

I wonder how long it would take Ralph to clear a row?

We had lots of berries to use for our weekend desserts and some leftover to freeze.

I decided to take Katie back to an allergist.

It had been five years or so since she was last tested.

I also wanted to discuss the new EOE diagnosis and get some tips.

We talked things over and they agreed to retest her for peanuts, various tree nuts, egg, soy and dairy.

Her results were almost the same as before.

Those three huge welts on her arm are reactions to peanuts, cashews and pistachios.

It was insanely itchy.

We spent the last weekend in June creating berry-licious desserts.

First up was strawberry, raspberry, rhubarb crumble.
We get the rhubarb from a local "grandma" who sells it door to door in our neighborhood.

With a little tweaking, I was able to make this gluten free, nut free, dairy free and egg free.

And it was delicious.

I also took the strawberry and rhubarb and made a sangria.

There was a non-boozy version for the kiddos.

It was time to roll into our socially distanced COVID-19 summer.