Category: Covid-19

Lexi, William and Kater-Taters,

Hallelujah!! School is out. For Summer. After 10 weeks of distance learning, we are done. To say this experience has been a journey is a minor statement. I felt like we started off strong with schedules, a routine and consistency. However, with each passing week and warmer weather each one of those things deteriorated a little bit. We kept trying to adapt and adjust and find something that worked and I think the constant adaptation was the only thing that did work.

Lexi, I know you act differently with Daddy and I than you do at school, but boy am I grateful for all that your teachers do. As hard as these last 10 weeks have been, I’m also really grateful for them. It has been really wonderful to have special 1:1 time with you and be more involved in your school work. I can see areas that you get excited about (Art & Science) and areas that you need a little extra help in (math). Now I know the things we can do at home to give you that extra practice to build up your confidence. Your reading also has really improved a lot these last 10 weeks. We have been much more consistent in read-out-louds and you’re getting better and faster everyday. I’m so proud of you.

William, you have been done with school for a few weeks and I’m astonished at how much you have grown and learned this year. At the beginning of the year, the only letter you knew was ‘W’ and now, not only can you identify the uppercase and lowercase, you can write them and identify the sounds they make. You are thoughtful, respectful, a good listener and very inquisitive about how things work. I am so excited for you to go to Kindergarten next year and really have very little stress or worries about it. I know you are going continue to learn and love kindergarten.

This week, Daddy also started working on remodeling our Master closet. The space hasn’t been working for us for quite some time, so it will be nice to get some drawers and and more hanging space and have things be a bit more organized.

As excited as I am for school to be complete for the year, I’m also a little scared about what this summer is going to look like. We can not continue to ask you guys to brush your teeth 7 times and nobody doing it. We just can’t fight these battles everyday. So starting on Monday, you kids need to brush your teeth, get dressed, do a chore and some of your workbooks before you can play outside, watch TV or play with toys. We need to get into some kind of routine where the basic things aren’t so challenging.

As far as Covid goes—the stay at home order in Minnesota was officially lifted and many stores were able to open back up. Restaurants, salons and experiences that are harder to social distance are still closed, but should be able to open in early June. About 100,000 people have died in the US from Covid at this point with the sweeping majority of them being 80+. As awful as it is to know so many people are passing, it is encouraging to know that most people contracting the virus are recovering at home and it isn’t quite as scary as I thought it was going to be when this all started to unfold 10 weeks ago.

That is all for now my favorite little monkeys. It is Memorial Day weekend and we’re looking forward to an outdoor BBQ at Grammy and Papas. Let’s have an awesome summer!!

Love,

Mommy

Lexi, William & Kate,

The highlight of this week was spending a few days with Kenzie at our house. Auntie Sheila and Uncle Dustin dropped Kenzie off on Sunday evening as they were preparing to go to the hospital to welcome your new baby BOY cousin, Lincoln, into the world. The weather was amazing so you guys had a lot of fun playing on the swing set, in the sandbox, drawing with chalk, running, reading books and just caring for sweet Kenzie.

It was so fun to watch you all interact together, but it is amazing how quickly I forgot how much work little kids are, changing diapers, getting them down for naps, the extra messes they make and watching them like a hawk to make sure they don’t get hurt or put things in their mouths they shouldn’t.

As a result of the extra attention Kenzie needed, I became much more lax about the school work and started doing most of it at night while the other kids were getting ready for bed. But it kind of worked. We also found out that school will officially be over by May 22nd. At first, I was stressed about this as they are supposed to go to school for another two weeks. As I sat on this information the more OK and relieved I became. It is one less thing to keep track of, worry about, and lets be real… it is getting harder and harder for Lexi to focus and be motivated to do her work. We started off doing all of these extra things to keep a routine as much as possible but, now 7 weeks in, we are doing the bare minimum.

Work has gotten much more stressful. Projects are starting to kick off, which means a lot more meetings and the kids seem to be interrupting a lot more and I’m just having a really hard time focusing and being productive when I need to be. I’ve worked late several nights this week in an attempt to get caught up, but I just never feel like I can dig myself out of the hole I’m in. I’m working on finding time to go for a walk, do yoga and just get some endorphins flowing to help with the anxiety.

With all that said, we have so much to be grateful for and continue to thank God for what we have and what we do know.

Love,

Mama

 

 

My three munchkins,

Week 1 of distance learning in the books! I mentioned this last week, but the Governor officially closed schools through May 4th, which means teachers and schools are figuring out how to teach kids at home over the next 4 weeks, but likely through the end of the year.

This really only applies to Lexi as Pre-K has paused for William. On Sunday, Miss. Schwartz sent out a guide for the week of the things you will be doing and then each morning uploads the daily assignments into SeeSaw. She records videos of herself providing the instruction or teaching the lesson and then gives you an assignment to do. SeeSaw allows you to write (handwrite or type), draw pictures, upload photos, and even record yourself asking a question as a way to interact with Miss Schwartz. We’re also using a site called class-kick for Math and BenchMark for reading.

Monday was rough. The SeeSaw app was overloaded with many of the schools using it, I didn’t know the difference between any of these sites or understand the direction to help Lexi know what she was supposed to do. Things took a really long time. She spent over 2 hours doing math problems!

Fortunately, each day got a little easier and by Thursday we were done with assignments a little after lunch time. We’re also learning what works and what doesn’t work. It is really hard to have all three of you working and doing assignments in the same room together. You each need direction and get distracted by each other pretty quickly. Half way through Wednesday, Lexi came into our room and sat at my desk to get some of her work done. I let her listen to some music and it really helped her focus and get through her work faster. It also helped that I was providing her the direction for her assignments verses Daddy. It’s not that Daddy wasn’t being a good teacher, but Daddy hadn’t been going through all of the different apps and schedules and reading all of the emails to figure out what was going on, where I had. So I didn’t have to try and teach daddy who then needed to teach Lexi.

In fact, Daddy has been a great teacher to William. Last week, you were working on the letter ‘T” and the number 9. This week, you were working on the letter ‘R’ and learned almost all of the tricky-teen numbers and is pretty close to having Daddy’s phone number memorized. William, you are LOVING Sampson School. You are eager to learn each day and never complains about your ‘assignments’ for the day and are turning into quite the little artist.

Kate, you are the sweetest tornado you could ever meet. You are constantly snuggling, giving hugs, kisses and tells me ‘I love you mommy’ BUT turns into tornado mode in a flash as she climbs onto the counter and sneaks food, demands to get her way, throws some epic tantrums and can get pretty aggressive (hitting, biting) your two big siblings.

Overall, the week was decent. We had some nice weather that allowed us to get outside. Grammy came over to play with pipe-cleaners with you. She read some stories and you have a snack outside (you all sat in lawn chairs outside at a socially acceptable distance). You kids don’t seem to mind or even notice that you’re not really going anywhere or seeing people and are perfectly content playing at home with each other. There have been very few times where I hear you complain about being ‘bored’. Wednesday was April 1st, which was also the first day of the 30-Day Lego Challenge. Day 1 was build an amusement park.

Lexi definitely gets what’s going on. You have used the analogy of the virus spreading, like the way ink does on paper when you hold it down. The Dot keeps getting bigger and bigger and that is like more and more people getting the virus. But overall, you seem pretty unfazed about the whole thing.

For me, things got a little better at work. It wasn’t as crazy as the last two weeks have been and am learning how to be more productive. Our stores continue to stay closed and we are paying our retail employees another two weeks, but after that we’ll see what happens. There were also some hints about some things changing at corporate temporarily to help manage cash flow, so praying that mine and my team’s jobs won’t be impacted.

Similar to Mom, Dad is adjusting to everyone being home. He had gotten into a good rhythm of figuring out how to get his work done while Lexi and William were at school/ in the evenings and now he has to get everything done at night–which is a lot harder and mentally taxing. But hopefully with Mom teaching Lexi and Dad teaching William that will reduce some of the chaos and noise and make things a little more manageable

Next week is officially ‘spring break’ so we’re switching back into Sampson school for the week. Look forward to another riveting update of Covid-19 Week 4.

Love,

Mama

My three little munchkins,

All the days and events are just starting to blur together. The virus, society, the government  and work continue to change at morph speed and you can’t keep up with what is what. Our Best Buy stores closed for customers to enter them on Sunday and we transformed to a curbside only pick-up. Considering I support the mobile business and almost all of our sales are done in store, we had some pretty big changes to make as we modify to helping customers navigate the idea of buying a cell phone online, which is uncomfortable for a lot of people.

Then on Friday–Minnesota officially when to ‘shelter-in-place’, which basically means all non-essential businesses/services are closed. Grocery, gas, connivence, liquor, and hardware stores, daycare and take-out restaurants are open. Everything else is closed and people are encouraged to stay home. The governor also announced that schools will be closed until May 4th, at the earliest. So starting on Monday, we will officially transition to distance learning.

From a ‘Sampson schooling perspective’ I felt like we were starting to get into a decent rhythm. Kids got paint by sticker and do a dot daubers and have been super excited to use them all week. They are fantastic for Kate as she can do little worksheets in her activity book, while the kids are doing their activities. Things we are working on this week: learning our address, memorizing dad’s phone number, learning to write Sampson, telling time, lots of read-out-loud, tons of coloring, spelling words, journaling, each morning, verbs, nouns, prefixes and suffixes, exploding snowman science project, the letter ‘T’ and the number 9, and some good old outside play time.

Kate’s world has been turned upside down and inside out and she just doesn’t know how to process it all. She is getting the least amount of attention as Daddy and I are focused on learning activities for Lexi and William and she doesn’t understand why she can’t sit on my lap at any given moment throughout the day.  Kate, you have become very attached to Momma and want demand to be carried everywhere. With everything going on, it is hard to stop and remind myself what this looks like from a 2-year-old’s perspective. You’re used to quiet Daddy-time 3 days a week for 6+ hours. To suddenly have everyone home and stealing the attention you used to get can be some tough cookies.

To sum everything up, things could definitely be worse. I feel good we’ve been keeping you on a good schedule and you haven’t been watching a TON of TV–but it is hard to keep you focused and all of you pre-occupied at the same time. It is mentally exhausting to balance working and participating on conference calls, making sure Daddy can work, and you guys do some stuff and don’t watch TV all day.

But, we are healthy, have lots of food to eat, plenty of toilet paper, a roof over our heads and jobs to pay our bills and our faith, which is a lot more than many other people can say. So I’m choosing to be grateful for everything we do have, including the three of you.

Love,

Mama

 

Dear kiddos,

Check Mark. We survived the first official week of social/distancing–which has really turning into social isolation for Covid-19.

Although SVDP, technically had school on Monday–we kept you guys home. It sounded like it was mostly for people who needed to figure out childcare, get assignments/technology or medicine and since we didn’t have to worry about any of that, we kept you home. I went to work for a half day to get a few things and then came home and got things set up.

Over the weekend, I explained to you and William there is a virus going around and we can’t go to school for awhile because we need to help slow down the rate at which people get it. BUT, that means we’re going to have Sampson school each day. We will do our best to make it fun, have play time, but we’re also going to have learning time and we need them to be good cooperators with it.

Monday night, I looked through all of the items that were sent home and was completely overwhelmed trying to figure out what your day should actually look like and what work we should be giving you. Thankfully, someone I follow on Instagram has a first grader and is a former teacher, so followed a similar approach to how she was structuring her day. For William, I just guessed on a whole bunch of stuff.

I also worked on setting up and organizing each of your work spaces to make it a little bit more exciting. You each have your rack of activities, a cup of pencils, colored pencils and markers.

Tuesday was filled with a lot of excitement and equal parts groaning and complaining from all parties. Nobody wanted to get dressed, brush their hair or teeth, but were excited about their work spaces and the worksheets. Go figure. I did my best to work, but there was lots of interruptions, distractions etc… and I really didn’t get any work done, respond to any emails, was just on a few conference calls. By the end of the day, I felt so exhausted and defeated. I felt guilty for not being very productive at work and discouraged that this school thing was going to be even harder than I had originally thought. BUT, Daddy did manage to help you decorate and build leprechaun traps.

That evening my leader at work sent an email to everyone sharing her Day 1 experiences and talked about how she wasn’t very productive with all the distractions and it was hard and is going to take time for all of us to adjust to this. I’m so grateful to be working for leaders that are so supportive and understanding in hard times like this. It makes the hard things a million times easier.

After the kids went to bed, I went through the school materials again and put together another schedule, that was similar, but tried to mix up activities and what not.

Wednesday morning was met with some pushback on the usual getting dressed and brushing of teeth and hair, but it was a tiny bit better. Overall, the school part of the day went better. I was a little more productive at work and I could see the kids were actually learning. It also helped that you went on a field trip to Great Grandma’s house to visit and brighten her day.

Wednesday night I prepped again and was feeling more confident in the schedule, how to break the day up how much time it takes for things to be done.

Overall, Thursday was pretty good. There was less push-back from you kids, Kate was wanting to learn, Daddy was doing an awesome time keeping you guys focused and helping you through your assignments. I had a lot of conference calls, which made things tough to stay focused in my chair that long and that I wasn’t able to help out as much with some of the school stuff.

By Thursday evening as I was lesson planning, I felt like I was in a good rhythm. I was understanding the packets of info better and was getting ideas on how I could start to build different schedules out for each day of the week so it requires less planning on my behalf each night. Work that day went a little better too. We started to leverage the web-cam, which felt awkward at first, but made it so much easier to connect with people. We even had a virtual happy hour together.

As I was lesson planning for the Friday, was reflecting on how much easier things got as the week went on. I also felt like I was spending more quality time with the kids, was actually making decent meals, was decently caught up on laundry and the house wasn’t a complete disaster. So despite all of the really hard and challenging things happening, I’m also seeing some great benefits too. It is forcing us to slow down. We aren’t even half or a quarter as busy as a lot of other families, but the fact that I’m not rushing home to quickly make dinner and run to an activity or get baths done is really nice. If the kids go to bed a little later, that is OK because they don’t have to wake up at a certain time, and if we don’t get bathed tonight, we can easily do it tomorrow. I love having the time to play Sorry! together as a family after dinner or time the kids riding their bikes up and down the sidewalk. I’m hoping these aren’t novelty moments and continue as the weeks unfold.

Finally, Friday was not the smoothest. Daddy took you to Great Grandma’s and Aggies for a visit and a few of you were pretty naughty. Work was also pretty crazy. On Wednesday, they announced store hours were being reduced and starting on Monday, they would limit the amount of customers in store. They were also modifying how Geek Squad, Delivery/Install and In Home Advisors reduce their face-to-face interactions with customers. Then today, some governments decided the products we sell are no longer deemed as ‘essential’ and our stores must close. As a result, starting on Sunday, all of our stores will be closed and only available for customers to pick up products at curbside. I spent the afternoon developing new messaging to support this change as well as reviewing all the existing messages we have in place that need to be updated.

Hopefully the work craziness will subside a little next week and we’ll get into a good rhythm of Sampson school.

Love,

Mama