We are in the middle of a move...and also school started. Our new school district in Washington is going all remote right now, which allows us to still be in school as we move, rather than having to go early and live in a hotel for a few weeks. We started school in the beginning of September while we were still in our house in Utah. I made the kids go take a first day of school pic in the bright sun. Sorry guys! Matthew and Anna will be in middle school in 8th and 7th grade respectively. Grant is in 4th grade, John in 2nd grade and Emma is starting Kindergarten.
Scott's grandmother passed away in the week between our house hunting trip and moving out of the house. She was such a sweet and fun grandma and we'll miss her. Scott and Matthew traveled up to Oregon for the service. Because they were unexpectedly back in the northwest during that week they were able to bring us some of the school issued chrome books and supplies to start school. Scott's parent's brought us the rest of the supplies during the first week of school. Here is Anna in a zoom call on the first week of school.
Grant getting his work done
Matthew working
John and Emma need a little more help from me
Emma doing some of her kindergarten work
Emma on her zoom call
We did two days in our house in Utah before we had to be out.
Then we went to my parent's house in Utah for a few days. The kids did one day of school there.
Remote learning in Lehi
Grant was feeling truly "over it" on this day
And on Labor Day weekend the kids and I drove from Utah to Oregon. We drove to Scott's sister's house in Boise on one day and then from Boise to Portland the next day. It was windy and as we got into Oregon we noticed a steep drop in the air quality.
The air around Boardman was what I would call apocalyptic. This picture doesn't do it justice.
Little did I know our bad air problems were only just beginning. We did make it to Gladstone in the early evening - although it was very windy on the drive - and then the wind got a lot worse. We hunkered down in the house on Monday night as a crazy wind storm came through. The power was in and out but went out completely in nearby areas, so we got lucky there. We were all worried a tree was going to fall on a house. Luckily no trees fell on us although many fell nearby. And the crazy winds - which were a lot like Santa Ana winds that we have in Southern California, hot, dry and quite stiff - greatly exacerbated the local fire situation. The skies got worse and worse over the next 48 hours and currently we are just living under a gross and dense cloud of smoke and praying for rain.
Some of the gross air
The big wind storm on Labor Day stoked a lot of fires, which is very bad, but did blow away a lot of the smoke...but only temporarily. The new smoke drifted in from the south late the next afternoon.
Another view of the leading edge of the smoke coming in over Gladstone. It was super smoky on Monday and then the big wind blew some of the smoke out Monday night - but here comes more on Tuesday afternoon. Ew!
Here we are remote learning at Ma2 and Pa2s house in Oregon. The first couple of days were pretty easy then Scott and his parents arrived from Utah and Scott's brother and his family came to stay at the house 'cause their town was under the "get set" evacuation level. So things were pretty crazy for a few days of remote learning. We were all struggling for the bandwidth in the house and there was a lot of dropped zoom calls and videos we just couldn't get to play. I guess beggars can't be choosers.
John has been having some frustration with remote learning
Learning, learning
Grant loved doing all his work in Pa2's big chair
Grant and Anna also tried to sweep up a little of the debris from the storm.
It was a big job, but they helped a little bit.
Matthew is involved in making the daily news videos for school, so that's fun to see him do his little spots for the show.
One evening we drove up to Camas to pick up supplies for all the kids. The elementary kids didn't get to see the inside of their school, but the middle school kids did briefly. It was very exciting. We were able to get their math books and language arts books. They even got a free school t-shirt! I'm impressed with the school district so far - they seem to be working so hard to always put the kids first and adapting to these crazy times. We closed on our house in Washington and as I type this workers are carrying boxes and furniture into our new house. I'm excited to be able to start unpacking and getting settled.
