First Grade with Miss Claudia

 This year Elliot has the best teacher ever- his Aunt Claudia! Claudia did Prenda's homeschool program last year and decided to open a 1-2 grade Prenda microschool this year. 

School started the week we were at the beach. We called it "marine biology," and didn't have to worry about school truancy officers coming after us which was nice. We would have missed the second week as well, but there was a covid incident that shut down the class for a week. 

A boy with his minecraft backpack (holding his minecraft lunchbox) marching into his first day of school. 

We had him wear a mask for the first week just in case he had any lingering sickness depite being all pretty much better by that point.

I love this picture. What an idyllic learning environment. Claudia gets the kids outside as much as possible. 

Claudia is awesome. Elliot has this habit of talking with a "baby voice." He does it a ton, but especially when he is around lots of people. He's hard to understand when he talks like that, and it's also just kind of weird. Claudia came up with this idea to have a code word to remind him to talk with his normal voice so that she woudln't have to keep saying "don't use the baby voice" in front of all his friends. Elliot got to pick the code word. "Poop" and "Pee" were rejected, but "toilet paper" was accepted. I adopted this at home too. People probably get confused about why I interrupt my son by saying "toilet paper" at seemingly random times, but it works well. 

We walk to school every morning and pick up Eva Mae and Brynlee on the way. It is so nice having school start at 8:30, although I do still need to drag Elliot out of bed to get him there on time. That kid is a night own if I've ever seen one. School is Monday-Thursday, 8:30-1:30. 

"kindness is a superpower" day

This was the day they learned about the Mars Rover and got to make their own rovers out of recycled materials

The class store- they earn Prenda bucks and lose them if their cubbies are too messy

We had our first field trip! We combined with two other Prenda classes in the area to have activities in Madera Canyon. There was also a thanksgivingish potluck meal, because why not?

Claudia ran a craft/scavenger hunt station

This one was my favorite. She hid stuffed baby animals around the area. The kids worked in pairs to rescue a baby animal and build it a shelter. 

I tagged along to "chaperone" with Annie and Isaac. I love that I can bring the little kids along. 

Prenda is working really well for Elliot. I love that he gets to move at his own pace with math and reading. I love that he has a small class with some kids who are a grade older than him. I love that they learn while sprawled on couches or soaking up the sun. I love that we get to walk there. And most of all I love that Elliot gets his Aunt as a teacher.

ER Trip

 The drive from Holden Beach back to my parent's house went smoothly. Isaac slept most of the 7 hour drive and was chill the rest of the time. When we put him to bed that night, he was wheezing a little bit. Around midnight he woke up and was having more intense trouble breathing. Mom and I took him to the ER. We were there until around 3 in the morning. Eventually they diagnosed him with asthma and sent him home with an inhaler. The next day he wasn’t better, and the inhaler didn’t help like it was supposed to. Aaron and I took him back to the hospital in the morning because his whole chest was caving in with every breath. To make things more stressful, we were supposed to be catching a flight back to Arizona later that afternoon.

A breathing treatment helped open things up, and a different doctor diagnosed him with croup. Luckily croup has a one time treatment that pretty much clears it up in a few hours. It would have been nice to get the right diagnosis the first night, but boy was it a relief to have something with a simple fix. He was immediately about 80% better and we were assured he was not contagious. We didn’t have to change our flight, and the poor little guy got to catch up on sleep in my arms on the plane.

Isaac is such a champ. He was happy even when we were in the ER in the middle of the night, even when we were sticking a breathing tube in his face. He’s a one of a kind happy little dude. 

This trip was definitely the most stressful we have ever had in terms of sick kids. We dealt with puke on the Farm, at Alpine, and and Calvert Cliffs. The ER thing was super scary. We did still have a good time and are glad we went, but this was the first time I’ve come home feeling like I needed a vacation from my vacation. 

Fried Sand Crabs- Holden Beach 2021

Our classic “let’s just walk down to the beach but not get wet” thing that we always do

Watching babies see the ocean for the first time in their memory is always fun. Especially when the baby is as happy and cute as Issac Mark Blood. 

I hatched a plan when we were at the beach last year and was determined to carry it out this year. I was going to try to eat sand crabs. And oh boy were they delicious. 

Look at that beauty. It tasted like well seasoned popcorn shrimp. 

Clio’s girlfriend Karissa gets major props for making the recipe much more delicious than what I was planning. We made a tempura of flour, water, and old bay seasoning and rolled the crabs in that followed by some Panko bread crumbs. Then we tossed them in the frying pan. We tried them both with and without shells, and they were delicious both ways. 

We got pretty dang good at harvesting the sand crabs and low tide. We would find areas where there were just tons of them. It was so fun pulling a crab out every time I stuck my hand in the sand. The kids got in on it too and a good time was had by all.

Morgan being cute

Annie following her example

Weirdly, we have no pictures whatsoever of the other Bloods! Jonnys family, their friends the Knox’s, and Timmy had a house that was 2 miles down the beach from us. Megan’s family was there too at a house across the street from them. We took turns meeting up at each other’s beaches in the mornings. 

One of the most meaningful parts of the trip was that Timmy came out to us. We had great chats driving him home at night and long walks on the beach over the following days. It was eye opening to hear about what he has been going through. He’s such a great Timmy. 

Rainbow as viewed from our deck, dedicated to everyone’s favorite Timmy

Those red marks are my jellyfish sting! This was several hours after, and the swelling had gone down a lot. It wrapped all around my calf and hurt like the dickens. Not as bad as a scorpion sting though. 

TURTLE PATROL 2: THE NEST BOIL

We are all sorts of knowledgeable after’s last year’s adventures with the turtle patrol. We quickly located several nearby turtle nests (not hard, there are big signs and neon orange tape around them), and deciphered the numbering system. One number is the number of turtle eggs in the next, and the other is the order in which they were laid. The nests near the other Blood’s house were quite low. Melissa Knox made a friend with a turtle patrol lady and got her phone to get updates about turtle activity. She got word that a nest was going to be dug up and that the nest next to it was likely to boil. Naturally we made the hike to go see it (minus Elliot who elected to stay behind and play video games with Max). Unfortunately we missed the dug up nest by a few seconds. A few turtles were still in there and made their way to the ocean. Some movement was observed at the nest next to it, so we hung out with Timmy and some of the cousins to see if anything would happen. 

The most detailed sand castle ever kept us entertained while we waited. It had a bowling alley and all sorts of little Easter eggs. 

The turtles did eventually come out… after it was too dark to really see them. No flashlights were allowed other than these red ones the turtle patrol had, and they kept turning them off. We could barely see them, but there were about 130 that hatched!

The Knells came to visit us! We had a lovely time catching up with them, even if our kids refused to talk to each other. 

Snuggles with Grumpa

Annie sure loves her Aunt Morgan

These two love their filters

The walking cane crew- Karissa and Breezy

Mimi and Annie did a whole project where they collected seashells that had holes in it and made it into a mobile which is now proudly hung over her bed. 

Attempted family pictures. My hair was not cooperating.

Adding a bonus generation

Aaron attempting to do something with my windswept hair. It was futile. 

I love him anyway. 

Dennys stop on the drive home

We love the beach!

Creepy crafts and the merry-go-round

When we got to McLean, Breezy took it upon herself to make my kid’s craft related dreams come true. She took them to Micheals and said that they could each buy whatever they wanted. This event was talked about and anticipated greatly for weeks before we flew out. The result: 

The creepiest masks of all time. 

Possibly even creepier now. 

Some other crafts. Elliot was was in heaven. 

We met with Jonny’s family at Calvert Cliffs! I hadn’t been there in over a decade. Calvert Cliffs is this beach in the Chesapeake Bay where an eroding cliff releases fossilized shark teeth into the water. It was one of my favorite places growing up, and it was great to go back. 

The entrance to the park has a recycled tire playground. The plan was to eat our lunch there so that we wouldn’t have to carry food on the mile hike to the beach area. My kids were having too much fun being reunited with their cousins on an awesome playground to eat much. The centerpiece of their attention was a merry go round- those are hard to find on playgrounds these days! They had been playing happily on it for a while when Annie tried to jump off and ended up with a mouthful of dirt and blood. I got it rinsed out and left her cuddling with Aaron to go get Elliot to eat some food. He got off the merry go round, took one bite of a sandwich… and threw it up. Too much spinning. Not the most auspicious start to a trip. 

Grumpa cheered up the kids by feeding the fish and turtles in the pond. 

These two struck up a conversation about the biggest numbers within minutes of being reunited. The distracting power of cousins is great- both of my recently distraught kids were hiking along happily and didn’t whine at all on the mile hike in. 

Digging at the beach! Predictably, Catherine was my most dedicated scavenger. We found a handful of shark teeth. Some of the kids got stung by jellyfish which put a damper on the swimming, but we still had fun digging in the sand and talking to some of our favorite people. 

Annie sweet talked Grumpa into carrying her part of the way home. Calvert cliffs is where the famous Breezy quote of “Daddy my walking is broken” took place and I think my dad was sentimental about it. Unfortunately it started pouring rain on us for the last half mile or so. Luckily we brought a change of clothes so we were able to dry off before going to Bob Evans for dinner and driving home. 

We also went to visit my Grammy and Papa! Grammy saves all the comic sections of the newspaper and had a stack of them for Elliot to read. He was quite absorbed in them and was completely rolling his eyes when we made him do things like take a group picture.

Isaac loved these little robotic birds that Grammy has. 

Another highly anticipated activity: making wands in the shop with Grumpa.

Isaac’s classic pose of sucking his thumb while holding his ear with his other hand.

Next stop: Holden Beach!