Kittens and Pool Fun

The students at Violet's school were asked to decorate these "trees" to hang together on the main hallway bulletin board. Here's Vi's - you can see that she's still very interested in her Wings of Fire dragons.

Sue and Sophia got a new kitten, and we stopped by this week to say hello. Coconut is adorable, but was a bit scared of the girls. We persevered to get this one photo.

Chris and Aiden came over to play, and we spent some time in the pool. Chicken fight!

Melanie, Nick and Ellie came over for dinner Saturday, and we captured this sweet pic of the girls together.

It's cooled off enough that the mornings are nice, and Violet asked if she and I could go for a walk in Quigley Canyon on Sunday morning. There's a request you don't turn down!

We ended up seeing a rabbit and a few deer! Very nice morning together. Meanwhile, Stace and Cora went out for a coffee drink in the MG; he took Vi on a bike ride to Dink's for bagels Saturday morning.

Sunday afternoon pool fun

How many Howards can you get on a raft? Three!
 

Week in Review

A little more pool fun...

Comfy kitty on a relaxed Sunday

We have one Howard who's a fan of distance learning...

Violet and Victoria are in the same class, so they've done school together a couple of times. It's nice to hear them collaborating, as they would be doing in school with classmates.
 

The girl finally got haircuts after a number of months - somehow, our governor determined that salons should stay shut because of Covid, despite various safety measures. I feel so bad for all our small-business owners who are kept from working, despite no evidence they are spreading the virus.

For this week's beach adventure, we took Melani with us. 

Week in Review

With both girls finished with their live meets by around lunchtime, I figured we should take advantage of the one big benefit of distance learning. That would be, the ability to take off midday and hit the beach!

We hadn't seen Cora's friend Violet in months, but her mom Lara was up for the beach, too, and met us there.

It was great seeing the girls reconnect, and have screen-free fun together outside in the fresh air.

This was a game of "knock the stick off the log with the frisbee." Harder than it looked!

As obsessed as Cora was with the Warriors cat book series in recent years, she's now a die-hard aficionado of the Rick Riordan Percy Jackson books. He's written many over the years, and Cora has the huge stack checked out from our library. 

(For history's sake - our libraries have been closed for six months, but you can request books online, and then pick them up "curbside.") 

Cora also wants to collect the books for herself, and bought one of the sets at our used book stores this week.

We went to my friend Liz's house on Saturday for dinner, pool and fun. The kids enjoyed themselves, as did the adults.

Tidbits

Liana came over for a couple of hours Wednesday evening, and the girls had a giggle over their games. We also had Char over, and we all went to the pool.
 

Cora had sneaked the ice cream container into her room and was eating from it with a spoon. I called her on it, and she put it away. The next time I got the ice cream out, I found a frozen spoon.

With the girls home, one of Violet's daily assignments is P.E. She agreed to come with me on my near-daily walk, and was rewarded on the first couple o days with the sight of a rat near a big rock. 

Our nature lover is always noticing things - birds, lizards, squirrels, trap-door spiders. Seeing a rat in the daylight was strange!

My family came over for dinner, and Ellie had fun in her baby pool in the yard.

The girls' friendship continues. On this night, Cora was writing and Violet was drawing; most nights, Cora reads to Violet before bedtime. 

It's always hard to be the mean mom and make Vi go to bed when they're having a great time together! But, school does start at 8 for Cora, and it should start at 8 for Violet, too. (But her first "live" online meeting with her teacher is at 9:20, so the start time is a little loose at our house.)

First Week of School

We returned home from our trip just in time to register Cora for 8th grade. We drove through the pickup line Monday morning to get her books. Such a difference from last year, when registration day took a couple of hours, with photos, ID cards, etc.

We celebrated with a Day Before School breakfast - pastries and a drink from Honu Coffee. We put on our smiles for the photo, in this very strange year. Cora is bummed to be continuing distance learning, and disappointed that some of her friends don't plan to be at school all year, even if they're allowed to return on a part-time basis.

It's all anticlimactic - no back-to-school shopping or getting ready, since doing school on the couch requires little preparation.

Tuesday was the big first day.

Cora's taking math, English, science, history, PE, and Spanish for her elective (because it'll put her ahead in high school).

Her online classes are much more school-like than the spring; the student must be logged in for a live video meet every class period. Obviously, the social interaction is lacking completely.

On Wednesday, I took Violet out for her Day Before School breakfast. We went to the Waystation in Newhall, which is one of the local restaurants serving outside, because indoor dining isn't allowed because of Covid.

School?! NO!!! 

Violet is in the class we were hoping for, with Mrs. Dallaire as her teacher. Victoria and Melanie are both in her class. We had an online Back to School Night on Wedndesday, and her teacher seems wonderful.

She has live instructions twice a day, and other assignments to complete on their own.

 

We celebrated both girls' return to school with ice cream Thursday night.

The Great American Road Trip: Day 15

We packed up Saturday after a bit of a long night - whether it was from the long day in the sun or a bad food reaction, Cora had a headache Friday night, and Violet threw up around midnight. Stace and I worked hard to clean it up, and thankfully she felt fine Saturday morning.

We said good-bye to Michelle and Rob, and then drove to the Mammoth Mountain area. We visited the beloved Schatt's Bakkery to pick up lunch, and took it to one of the area lakes.

This is Lake Mary. We struggled to find parking - with overseas travel and many other travel plans messed up for so many people, the SoCal lakes have been a popular destination. 

But when we found a place to put the car, it was easy enough to find a quiet spot on the lakeshore.

So peaceful and beautiful! Even if the lack of fishing luck continued.

On our drive home, I had one more historical and educational stop to make - the Manzanar Relocation Camp, where thousands of Japanese-Americans were forced to live during WWII.
 

Between the foreboding Sierra skyline and the armed guards on the towers, it must have felt like being in prison, simply because of your heritage. 

America is a great country. But we have some very disturbing parts of our past to reckon with.

The memorial to those who died while interred.

Our last stop - we pulled over in Lone Pine to get a photo of the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States - Mt. Whitney, which is over Stace's head. It's 14,505 feet, and not that far from Death Valley, the lowest elevation in the U.S. at 282 feet BELOW sea level.

We carried on, and made it home before 8 p.m. A very successful road trip, with lots of memories made in the 2,700 miles traveled.

The Great American Road Trip: Day 14

We got to June Lake Thursday evening, and got settled in to our room before meeting up with our friends Rob and Michelle, their daughter Brooke, and Brooke's friend, Leah. 

After dinner, we walked around and saw June Lake and nearby Gull Lake. Two additional lakes in the area make up the June Lake Loop, which we explored on Friday.

 

Michelle captured this shot of this overly friendly chipmunk Friday morning, while we hung out together at Gull Lake. I think he wanted to try fishing with the rod, too.

There were friendly ducks, too, so Violet was in her element.

We found a cliff over the lake, perfect for jumping off of and cooling off.

You can see the swing above Cora's head here.

Later, we drove around the loop to Silver Lake, where we tried fishing again, and the girls played in our blowup kayak.

That evening, we got dinner and had a picnic near June Lake.

Then, back to Gull Lake for a little more fishing. 

Cora really wanted to catch a fish. But f you know Cora at all, actually "fishing" isn't really her speed. After casting, she asked, "So, you just stand here now?"

Yep.

Violet, on the other hand, has a personality better suited for quietly taking in nature. She and her dad enjoyed this serene moment.

Stace and I had been hoping that with Rob, the girls would have better luck fishing. It's his hobby, and he has been coming to June Lake his whole life to fish. But, sadly, this year, there were just very few fish to be had. The lake normally is stocked, but the farmed fish had a virus and had to be killed instead of put into the lakes. How 2020 is that??