Week 8 Social Distancing

Another week of social distancing, another Dutch holiday. May 4th is Remembrance day, a somber occasion, followed on May 5th by Liberation Day, a celebratory day. This year was meant to be extra celebratory as it marked 75 years since the Netherlands was liberated from the Nazis. And every 5 years it is a public holiday (our first year and this year). I had tickets to see La La Land in Concert with friends and I'm sure the night would have been really fun in the city. Yet another thing that was not meant to be. In explaining the holidays to the kids, we talked about how we celebrate the anniversaries of happy and sad occasions. We talked about the day in the future when a vaccine is created for COVID-19 and everyone is protected and how we hope new global holidays will be created- a remembrance day and a "liberation day." And the thought of that and how it will hopefully help unite the world brought me a lot of peace.

So much creativity has come out of this pandemic. I forgot to post about it, but Pete got to record a song with his long time singing partner and our college friend, Sam, as part of her Split Screen/Quarantine series, which was just highlighted on MIT's website (Sam works there). Here is their beautiful cover of "O Little Light."

Then last Sunday, we got to watch a family friend of Pete's perform with her partner in a two person play staged at their apartment in Brooklyn. There were over 60 households watching including her family and Pete's parents. So cool to get to Alice and Grant act from the comfort of our living room!

As part of an earlier Dutch press conference, in addition to the announcement about schools, we learned that sports trainings for kids 12 and under were allowed to resume. Jude has been back at Saturday morning soccer since then and Pete gets to catch up with his fellow soccer dads from the sidelines.

Monday's gym assignment had us playing Kubb in the park.

The NYT published this article and I felt so ahead of the curve!

On Liberation Day we biked in the late afternoon to the bos (hard to get an early start when you let the kids watch TV until 1pm). I love seeing all of the Dutch flags on these holidays. Jude has been taking really long bike rides these last few weeks in preparation for biking to school when it opens.

Pete was thrilled to play some tee ball with the kids.

We attempted the mentos experiment and failed (I ordered the wrong size/container of coke)!

We enjoyed the last of our huge tulip shipment. That will be it for tulip season this year. Luckily, other beauties are in bloom including our Rhododendron plant and our California Blue Lilac Ceanothus bush (both from the former owners of our house). 

Shark Class Pride

A lot of time is spent on the third floor of our house. It is Pete's office, my pilates studio and the kids jungle gym. They love to create a mountain out of the sleep sofa and mattress topper and play the "pull down game" where we yank them down the mountain. They also had the idea this week to turn the room into a real jungle and proceeded to create decorations and tape them all over. I took a few deep breathes and then helped them. 

More gorgeous weather on Thursday so we headed to Beatrix Park to hang by the mud pit. We were late in leaving the house again so Pete picked up some pizza and some beers and we had a picnic dinner. One of the many moments where we forget we are living through a pandemic.

I love how she uses her hands when she's explaining things.  

On Friday, Jude had a google meet with his class where they all got to share their "how-to" books that they had been working on since the start of distance learning.

Pete enjoyed the beautiful evening with friends along the Amstel River. 

Saturday I had somewhere to be- so strange to have "somewhere to be" and to wear something other than sweats! I attended a beautiful baby shower for Sharon in her garden. Have you seen a more glowing expectant mom?!

I have missed talking with adults in person so much! We all had so much to say and the 2 hour shower lasted much longer!