Fall {2020}

This fall the boys have gotten into school a bit more and have gotten to know their classmates and teachers through zoom meetings every day. Brett has a really patient and helpful teacher that has done her best to try and help him succeed in remote learning, but he has a couple subjects that he just doesn't want to complete and it has become a daily battle. He has plenty of time to complete his work before the end of the day and we had to make a deadline for him to finish his schoolwork or he wouldn't get his fun electronics (gaming YouTube channels and mobile games on his phone) for the day. It's taken a couple months and we have started to get into a rhythm, but getting writing done each day has never gotten easier. His counselor suggested we set a timer and that seems to have made it a little less painful. Since this has been so hard, we've decided to have Brett go back to in-person learning next semester. 

On the plus side, Brett has really gotten into building things with legos and k'nex during his soft start time. Also, his gifted teacher showed us where we can go do an online Set Game puzzle every day so that is fun to get to do with him as a work break (although we typically finish it in a minute or less).

Blake has done fairly well with remote learning comparatively. His teacher has been really helpful with trying different schedules out and trying to figure out what works best for all the students. She came up with a way to offer meetings for each subject throughout the day to make it feel more like in-person learning. She has also done an amazing job of offering advanced learning opportunities for the gifted children in the class (which there are quite a few of). It does add a lot of zoom meetings for the day but it has been a good way to make sure the students feel connected. In the end though, Blake decided he didn't want to do remote learning second semester so we have decided to sign him up to switch back to in-person for second semester as well. We had to make such an early decision and the case numbers of Covid in the schools have been surprisingly low so we're going to cross our fingers and get the boys back in school. It will be very different next semester without having an Alexa alarm go off every little bit to remind someone of their next zoom meeting.

We always have to talk about car makes when we're out of the house. We're constantly seeing how quickly we can name all the different car brands that we see while we're driving on the road. A big topic of discussion is who can spot the most rare car on any given trip out of the house. Blake took the most interest in this initially, but Brett couldn't help but get sucked in and he mentions all the different car logos he sees now.

One of the YouTube channels that Blake has become interested in is CNBC. They have a lot of interesting topics that they feature and even Chris and I have learned a lot through their videos.

Pics:

Brett's balancing creation.

We had a heart shaped cherry tomato.

Our beautiful surprise hibiscus! 

Only Brett wanted to paint a pumpkin this year.

So I painted the other one.

And the back.

This was the front of Brett's.

And the back.

Since the forecast called for the first major frost of the season, I decided to harvest all the remaining tomatoes and peppers from the garden.

Blake was the only one who wanted to help gut the pumpkins this year.

A couple photos of the masked ninjas. Brett looked like he would totally win in a battle even without a weapon. 

I decided last minute to put on all the black clothes I could find and join in as a ninja. 

The dragon pumpkin that Blake chose.

The fox pumpkin that Brett chose.

Then the dragon in complete darkness. This might be one of my favorite carvings ever.

Then the fox and the moon in darkness.

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