Corona

Spent another day at the beach, but this one felt very final. I'm back to work tomorrow, kids sports start this week, and the kids are back to school next week. We are unprepared and unwilling. We've been living in Michigan for over 5 months, and while we don't want to stay here forever ... we also don't want to go home either. There's a sense of dread. A sense that is different than the initial lockdowns and fear of the unknown. This is more like the fear of the known - the world we need to live in.
Despite the little feeling of dread in our hearts, it was a perfect beach day. Water was calm (which actually disappointed the kids but makes US feel safer) and the weather was perfect.

Luke has a habit of yelling out "I have the Corona" and I've been unable to get him to stop. He yelled it at the way into the beach and also on the way out. Except on the way out he refused to walk anymore and stood frozen in one spot. Apparently, this time he really DID have the Corona.

Seems pretty suiting to 2020 that we were unable to avoid the Corona on our way out of the beach as we wrap up our summer.

Upping our S'mores Game

We've been using wooden skewers for s'mores, which has been fine for everyone but one kid. And, you just need the one. The one kid never ceases to let the stick catch fire, and then wait too long to put it out, and then panic and do all the wrong things. It was an accident waiting to happen.

So we went big time and got the steel extending skewers. They allowed everyone to stay far, which was good. They made it hard to blow out a fire on the marshmallow, partially because they were fully extended. When you pulled it back, the marshmallow would be over your head. Not only can breath not reach to blow, but firey marshmallows in the air are bad. The other con is that the boys thought they were weapons and when not paying attention almost poked some eyes out.

All issues were human error and hopefully we will learn to use these without injury. Only time will tell.

How 'bout them apples?

Today we hit the roads for Jollay Orchards to pick apples. We skipped strawberries this season because there was too much buzz about it online and I figured distancing would be hard. We did blueberries, and while the crowds were not overwhelming we had issues with masks and personal space. Apples, however, were pretty great.

While not everyone was wearing masks, most were. And there were barely any people. You can see from this pic we were actually alone in the orchard at this time! Temps were perfect, the sky was the bluest of blue, and the apples were plenty. The best part was the dozen apple cider donuts we grabbed after. I would have shared a pic of those ... but they were immediately consumed. The kids want to go back tomorrow :)

Bookworms

The kids have torn through books this summer and we are (again) at the point where everyone claims to have "nothing to read." Between three kids rooms we have well over 1,000 books so the past few days we've been sorting.

Many of Luke's books are legitimately too easy, so I created a pile of books to get rid of. However, it seems weird to just let them go ... so I made him start reading them. He got through a few and I told him to go to bed, but he was angry because I forced MY choice on him and it wasn't fair so he needed to still read HIS choice.

Ryan's room seems to have become a central repository. He had all sorts of books. He's got two piles to go to Luke, a pile of he will not read and a pile he will reread. He started back though an old book he forgot he had.

Brooke was the recipient of some of the books he no longer wanted. She always claims she won't read them because it bothers her to share interests with her brother, but she eventually reads everything. As I went to bed tonight I found her under her bed with the light glowing. I yelled at her to "give me it," expecting to see the iPad. Instead she pulled out a book and complained that she couldn't stop because it was just too good. It was MIDNIGHT!