Back to school. Sort of......

September is here! The nights are full of buzzing insects, loads of toads, and velvety darkness with a hint of cool. Overnight it seems the trees have shifted from green to green-with-a-tinge and you can pop the seeds on jewel weeds. But that’s as far as usual goes otherwise

The beginning of the school year is usually a whirl wind of preparations, last minute shopping for that binder you never knew your kids needed, doctor visits to fill out health forms for school sports, and the agony of waking up in time to catch the school bus. This year? Not so much. We have prepared by having Luca plug in his laptop and update it. His first lesson on the first day of school will start with the arrival of a link in an email 7:30AM on Tuesday. And that’s it! That being said though, it does seem like his middle school has went above and beyond to ensure good teaching, social interactions online, teacher follow ups etc etc, and I think they will do great considering everything is online. They planned for a hybrid option with kids being allowed in school some days, but they quickly realized that the teachers would be spread too thin.

Ulrik on the other hand is back in Michigan. Umich decided to open their campus and even though I am not worried about Ulrik contracting Covid, I doubt they can keep campus open until thanksgiving as planned. He is aware and will try to get as much done in the studios and the few in-person classes as he possibly can. This gave us a chance to be back in Ann Arbor and since working from home is a legit thing these days, we could stay for the week. We have good friends that opened their doors for us with no restrictions. We figured that if one of us actually had the virus and we were sleeping inside their house, face masks and distancing won’t be sufficient anyways. It felt SO good to be able to hang out without restrictions❤️

We celebrated Ulrik’s birthday early with take out dinner and a boat ride with cake

We got to install the joys of flute playing in a new generation of kids (which may or may not have ended with me chasing an angry 4 year old who insisted on torturing everyone’s ears and mental health by her mad recorder blowing skills🙉. Ahem)

And we got to buy dinkelbrot at Zingermans. Best bread ever! Period!

The only one who does not regret being back in the too-quiet house in Doylestown is poor Bailey. Households with crazy puppies are not his thing. Here he is. Trying to hide. Guess who found him anyways.....

Being back I am preparing mentally for a looooooong quiet winter. With the craziest cross stitch pattern. Looks nice, doesn’t it:

Well. Here are the printed instructions:

What have I done to myself????😩