Pandemic School

So, school started.  I should say "school" since we're doing it all virtually here, which was absolutely 100% NOT what I wanted.  It's really a shame because I am a huge cheerleader for teachers, but this is destroying a LOT of my good will towards them.  

Anyway.  The first morning was a chaotic mess.  Bentley had seminary from 7-7:50, and then we were planning on having our Come, Follow Me lesson in those ten minutes before Ryder and Colton had their 8am Zoom meetings, but seminary ran over and CFM was rushed and I barely managed to snap a picture of everyone and Kendra hadn't bothered getting dressed yet (because her meetings don't start until 9:30 and she's gotten in the habit of staying up all hours reading and can't get out of bed in the mornings now), so she was mad at me for taking her picture and then Craig was trying to reach around and change what I was doing and it was all frustrating and annoying.  Why am I incapable of taking those adorable first day of school pictures that every other mother in the WORLD manages to take???  Blurgh.

At least the other kids are dressed and happy.  4/5 is a passing grade, okay?  And yes, Ryder insisted on wearing a top hat for the first day because he's awesome like that!  

And then we were frantically trying to get kids signed on to their Zoom meetings.  We had lost Ryder's password to his laptop, so he was using my iPad.  Then we couldn't find the zoom links.  Camille got to start a half hour later, which was nice, but also meant she was bouncing around asking how much longer until she got to start school, too, every thirty seconds.  Any time someone got kicked out of their meeting there was panic and frantic shouts for, "MOM I NEED YOU!!!"

I thought our (new and improved, faster) internet would be okay for this, but it doesn't seem to be.  So even though I set up the basement as an awesome learning environment for the elementary school kids, now everyone is sitting in the family room, huddled around our router.  I'm trying to get ahold of the schools to see if we can qualify for a hot spot, but they're super busy with all the other people who are in the same boat.  

So learning-friendly!  So worthless if the wi-fi isn't working!

This is all so dumb.  No one is going to learn a thing this year.

Anyway, despite my terrible attitude, the kids are all fairly happy:

How did I not take a picture of Ryder???

When Colton and Camille were all done, they went to play with their friend Sydney.  Her grandma sent these adorable pictures:

And that evening, after dinner, we took the kids to the school playground so they could run around there, even if it was a few hours late!  And we discovered that Bentley is too tall for the zipline-thing:

He cracks me up.  But seriously, Bentley is in high school now (!!!), so that's probably a good thing!

Yesterday I took the little kids to Pen Park once they were all done.  It kept threatening to rain, but never really did, so that was fortunate.  And the kids had a blast, so that made everyone happy!

It takes a lot of strength to climb like that!

And I just love this picture-- I love that they're flying on those swings, and I love that they have barefeet!  How carefree and summery is that?

Last story-- while Camille was doing her Zoom meeting this morning, she turned to me, held up three fingers and started saying, "Today is my third? my threeth day of school!"

So, yay for the threeth day of school!