Good Luck, Math Teacher.

It's the day after Labor Day, and they say that summer is fading into fall... although not anytime soon, if these guys have anything to say about it.

Upon realizing that there were no life guards in their stands this evening, Ford looked up at me, confirmed their absence, and said with a conspiratorial look, "that means we can do all the bad stuff... like throw sand!"

We started home school today.

Mine and Seth's nostalgic sniffles about our baby starting kindergartem were drowned out entirely by the realization that we had to teach it.

Which wouldn't be so bad, if there weren't also an expectation that I telework and be fully available.

I've already lost one work laptop, likely to pancake batter, and whoever authored the idea that parents of young kids should be "allowed to telework" so they could also be fulltime teachers should be tarred and feathered.

Lots and lots of "f*cks" were uttered before we abandoned the letter "A" and fled for the lake. We talked about how lakes were formed, and I called this PE time and a win. It's going to be a long year. To be fair, we're also still recovering from a long Labor Day weekend which accidentally consisted of a lot of house guests. Including four additional kids.

Especially in these nutty and isolationest times, friends are gold; so we capitulated to a lot of chicken nuggets and laundry so ours could feel semi-normal. Not our usual Labor Day jam, but we were grateful for the lake. And Oxyclean. Especially Oxyclean. And friends-who-are-family.

Other than long weekends and the sudden absence of lifeguards, we've kept ourselves entertained with a new quest (since we ran out of best swimming holes, we've moved onto waterfall hikes)

(otherwise entitled, visiting my Mom's favorite spots);

swim school;

Davy Crockett-ing;

socially responsible "date nights,"

and terrorizing grocery stores when we forget something on instacart.

Wish us luck as we transition to some semblance of order. This crew is not going to take to structure very well, and we're OK with that.

It means they've had a good summer. But heaven help their math teacher...

We're ba-ackkkkkk!

For the first time, I think, since Seth wound up at Walter Reed and we really started this wild adventure together, I’ve taken a couple months off of this regular update. Most of it was the move, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the reason I always found time was Mamma Gran, who enjoyed it so and who passed away this year. Somehow it made it easier to shove aside, knowing she wasn't anxious for an update.

Since I last wrote, we survived a frenetic, chaotic, COVID-impacted PCS move.

It included sainted grandparents driving kids back and forth to North Dakota in the space of a single week.

Hasty and inadequate goodbyes.

Six weeks of me driving back and forth to work two jobs in two different states because the Army simply could not figure out how to move people amidst a pandemic. Couch surfing. Meals taken at gas stations. Too little sleep. Patchwork childcare. A computer broken in the move. A treadmill still sitting in the carport. Zero bandwidth for anything.

A totaled C-max, and a new (to us) Subaru.

So. Many. Mask adjustments.

But also, friends-who-are-family.

Much-needed pool time.

A stunning new house that I’m only just now settling into,

but which includes lake access that has radically improved the quality of a COVID summer.

Not to mention fishing.

Now that I'm finally here fulltime, we're unpacking the last few boxes and getting used to a new routine. Fairfax County is doing a full virtual back to school and we're a hard pass on six hours of screen time for kindergarten, so instead we're doing letter flashcards and hitting the best swimming holes in driving distance).

COVID has cut down on crowds, so we've also done a tiny bit of tourist-ing.

But mostly we're settling in, enjoying the last few weeks of summer,

feeling wildly grateful for Grandma, without whom none of this move would've been possible,

and- in this season of turbulence and uncertainty- grabbing all the silver linings we can.

(Ford seems to be the best at this.)