Long time, no post

As you might suspect, not much has been happening over the past six weeks. We are still in lockdown and Emily has been finding various ways of entertaining herself.

Looking more mature

She spent a few weeks doing camps with Abbie. They did a baking camp and a gardening camp, but then Emily started to prefer a less structured experience so they have mostly just been hanging out together. Sometimes they go for short bike rides in the morning before it gets too hot. They also play games together and Abbie has Emily help her with various projects like filming videos, etc. Emily has also been getting some of her summer work done, but the teachers assigned more this year than they had in past summers, meaning that there is still quite a bit left to do over the next month.

As for friends, Emily still has tons of FaceTime calls, some of which seem to go on for entire days! As usual, it is tough because so few of her friends are quarantining, so they may be at camps during the day and not able to chat other than at night and on the weekends. Emily also had me set her up with a penpal website called Students of the World. She started corresponding with girls from Canada, Austria, Russia, etc., but it quickly started to get overwhelming. Her typing is still a hunt and peck approach, so responding to even one person takes a long time if she doesn't have someone helping her.

With all of the hot weather that we have, I would have thought that Emily would be spending more time in the pool than she has been. I think that she got it in her head that she wants to stay out of the sun, so she has stopped going in the pool unless it is shaded, which doesn't happen until about 4pm every day. Even at that, I don't think that she is swimming more than once a week.

Although most days seem pretty uneventful, we do try to come up with sources of excitement from time to time. For the 4th of July, we planned a Mexican cookout that included fajitas and homemade salsas and guacamole. Then we bought Disney+ so that we could watch Hamilton together. Emily doesn't care much for fajitas, salsas, or guacamole, but she does love tortilla chips. :) This past weekend, we made a bunch of fruit syrups so that the girls could mix their own mocktails. Of course, anything sweet is right up her alley. Tomorrow, we are planning on homemade pasta and angel food cake in honor of Abbie's birthday. Emily helped me put together clues for a scavenger hunt for Abbie, so hopefully that will be fun, too.

As for school this fall, we have already told Emily's school that she will be on-line and we are fortunate that the school is offering that as an option for the families that need/want it. We have a parents' meeting next week so I suspect that we will get a lot more information about how classes will look, but Emily is definitely resigned to the fact that there is no safe in-person option at this point. To help with her workspace, she decided that she needed an actual desk for her room, so we have ordered one that will hopefully arrive at the end of August. I know that she is looking forward to getting a system set up for herself so that her papers can be more organized than they were this past spring!