The Cook's Recipe for Life: April 2020

GARCIA'S TO GO

We took dinner to Grandma and Grandpa as a thank you for all the help with the yard!

One of the BEST things that came about from COVID was having Church at home. I especially loved Sundays at my parents' house. Lessons from Grandma are the best! I also loved taking the sacrament just at home with my little family. It was an amazing experience. Having lessons that my kids were interested in and able to understand instead of fighting them for an our in Sacrament Meeting at Church was priceless!

DATE NIGHT

Ty and I enjoy just going out to dinner and visiting for date night every week. COVID made that a little bit trickier, but it didn't stop us. Cafe Rio in an empty Edwards Parking Lot made for a fantastic night! PS An empty Edwards parking lot was very weird.

RIGBY WIND: 342

US: 0

This wind here keeps getting us. First the trampoline in the neighbors yard and now we come home to the grill trying to escape and the smoker trying to stop it! Haha. If the cord to the smoker hadn't gotten tangled in it who knows where it would have landed!

ROCKS

Another thing Rigby has a lot of are ROCKS. SO SO SO SO SO SO many ROCKS! And our kids HATE moving rocks! But we promised them an awesome prize if they help pick up rocks WITHOUT COMPLAINING. It has come with some resistance, but they are handling it better than before. Haha.

I snapped these pictures because I thought it was cute how the kids had their headphones on listening to music while they worked just like Daddy does!

Grandpa Gordon came over with this crawler and leveled things out for us. He helped us take out the back fence, bury and level the back ditch, and literally bury a Russian Olive tree. Haha.

SCHOOL AT HOME

Well our 2 and a half week spring break ended and Covid was still here, so every parent in the nation was suddenly teaching kids at home. I am a teacher. I love teaching. But let me tell you, this was something else entirely. The teachers did their best to help these kids learn from home. Jay had zoom meetings at least once a week to start off the unit. Lily's teacher pre recorded math lessons and reading lessons and they had zoom meetings once a week as well. Crystal though. Her 5th grade teachers didn't have even 1 single zoom meeting. Not even one! Her math teacher gave them youtube links to help and she was just expected to do what she could on her own.

Anyway, none of them were going to focus on their own without an adult present so guess who got to sit with them till noon every day while still working 40 hrs a week from home? If you guessed Ty you were WRONG! Haha.

I spent my mornings making sure they all got their work done, helped them when they needed it and kept them on task. Jay was the hardest. He also had the most work. He had just been transferred into the Spanish Immersion program and was already behind since everyone else started in Kindergarten! They were confident he would catch up but then the cancelled in-school learning. We did our best and made sure he did his Spanish lessons on Imagine Learning every day. But he also had reading and math worksheets. 1st graders tend to have a lot of busy work. I don't know. I think most of it was helpful, but he definitely had the most work out of the 3 of them. Lily did okay on her own once she got the hang of Schoology and the routine. Crystal was actually quite easy and I just had to double check with her to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything everyday. She stayed focused pretty well.

Every night, I had to plan out their mornings and write it all down to make sure we didn't miss anything the next day. I would set their stuff out and make sure their tablets and Ipads (yes both) were charging and would be ready for the day. Then I would get the work done that I didn't get to during the day. Every morning we would do chores and sit down to get school started. I could just give Crystal her schedule and she would get it done. Lily I would tell her what was next as she completed each task. And help her when she needed it. Jay I pretty much had to sit with 100% of the time and force him to get his work done (may or may not have done some of it for him... just the unimportant stuff). All while attempting to work myself. With Jay we set a lot of timers! Haha. Then at 11:30 we would pack it up and go get sack lunches from the school.

It wasn't long before I just told my mom and coworker I was not working till noon. Then I would work from home some days or go in to work afternoons (my co worker would then work from home). I'd come home and repeat the process. It was exhausting!!!!

Ty was working from home 4 days a week and going in to work 1 day a week. He would help when he could but he wasn't any more patient (less so) than I was. Haha. He was helpful when it came to math issues. I love math and love teaching it but it's hard to do without a lesson plan, especially since I know they are learning to do it differently than we did.

My friends kept saying how nice it was to stay home and enjoy the family more, but I felt like I was burning both ends of the stick and I wasn't getting more family time or relaxing at all! I was having to work nights to catch up from what I missed during the day. And this thing they called 'school' was not what I would call wholesome family fun time. Haha. SOOOO anyway, I was glad people were able to relax and spend more time together ... and don't get me wrong we did do a lot of evening activities together that maybe felt more exciting than otherwise just because we were tired of being at home doing the same thing every day. The school did still announce things like crazy hair day and pj day (lets face it, every day was pj day) so that was a fun atmosphere change for a few days! Haha.

EASTER

FYI Maddie and I immediately decided to quarantine together. We would still go to family events with Grandma too. That made us all a little nervous with her immune system but we took extra precautions and made sure if we even had a sniffle we stayed away. We were able to hang out all together for Easter and we had fun Easter egg hunts and everything with both families! With no school, we had plenty of time to decorate Easter eggs ... unlike other years when sometimes it didn't happen because of time restraints.