After nearly 5 months home with Molly I returned to my elementary campus on August 10th. We had two days of training and the teachers began meeting their students in what was called a "Soft Opening". In the past two weeks each child has come into meet their teacher and get supplies for Distant Learning. After helping the teachers prepare supplies my team was assigned to our 5 teachers in grades 1st to 5th. Beginning this week each of us will be conducting a small group for reading in each grade, each day, four days a week.
I've done this face to face for the past five and a half years, but conduction reading groups online is a new experience. This last spring my university classroom was in this format. Only once was I the presenter. Now I have a mini classroom with a white board of my own. I have created the lessons for the first few weeks and just wait and see what it will look like in realtime.
To unwind Molly and I watch hummingbirds.
Sometimes I just watch Molly, watching for hummingbirds.
There is a bright orange glow outside from all the fires in California. Molly and the Hummingbirds don't seems to care. My son is out there fighting the fires. Breathe...watch Molly watch the hummingbird.
Last weekend these three grand-kiddos got together for a birthday party. I bought them a Pier 1 Imports shopping cart to use outside in the garden. After I left someone decided it should be a go-cart. All three littles piled in and got pushed around the house by adult men. They wont be that little again. What a great memory.
Judah loved getting to see his girl cousins and they were wild about him.
The Birthday girl was great at sharing her day with her little cousin and he was a great sport with all the girly stuff going on around him.
I've never met a better 4 year old hostess. She meet every guest with a lei and patiently allowed her best-friend to share opening gifts. My daughter had made cake and had a lunch for everyone. So many small children and hardly a tear. I couldn't stay long as I was headed for a weekend of wedding in Grass Valley, but my youngest granddaughter having my people watching temperament sat on my lap for a good long "People watching" session.
After a busy weekend of birthday parties, rehearsal dinner, bride's breakfast, wedding and lots of driving, I returned to my world of masks and online students. I didn't eat out at all on my journey, so I did my part to support the economy at home with take out this week. A dinner can be three lunches, so that is not too bad on the checking account.
All our restaurants are closed for indoor dinning. Many people are dealing with the smokey air and sitting outside with misters and fans as it is also over 100 degrees with poor air quality. This week my middle daughter had air quality in the Danger Zone. I'm sure the air quality where my son is working is very Dangerous.
Meanwhile, we wear these masks as mandated by the State of California. Our children stay home for Covid-19 not the smoke. Two years ago they stayed home because of the smoke for a couple of days. There was panic from poor air quality and how to deal with the smoke, indoor recesses and trauma of lost homes in the Redding and Paradise area.
Our community is still building after the devastation. My friends who have retired and wanted to move out of the area have often sold their house as soon as they go on the market. I have had a lot of friends sell and move to greener pastures.
I wont be moving anytime soon. My landlady just had a brand new self-cleaning oven and hood installed in my apartment. I celebrated my fifth anniversary here in the Nest. This week Molly and I also celebrated her 5 month "Got You Day" anniversary.
Breathe in, breathe out...
It's gonna be okay.
God has my back.
