Living Arrows 2020 – 50/52

A little over a week ago I was chatting to one of my friends after dropping the children off at school.

I commented on how lucky we’d been so far this year, with only Rhys’ class having to isolate at home for a week.  I knew as soon as I said it that I should’ve done the whole “jinx back, double pinky, round the side” thing from Gilmore Girls to unjinx us; and that instinct was right.

Touching my head and saying ‘touch wood’ didn’t do it.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Nerys has been at home for the past week, isolating along with the rest of her class.

She’s been great about it to be fair, and I’ve quite enjoyed getting to watch her doing an online lesson every day.  It’s like a little insight into how she is in school, and it’s been so sweet to listen to this class of 6 year olds chat and giggle each day before the lesson actually starts.

Nerys needing to isolate did mean that last week was a pretty quiet one, with her not able to go anywhere and there still being work and school work to do at home (and school runs still with Rhys).

I did go and pick out our Christmas tree though, and we spent a lovely Saturday afternoon decorating it together – after we finally got it secured in its stand.  Apparently I didn’t look all that closely at the trunk of the tree and it’s slightly skewwhiff.

The biggest bit of excitement we had last week came with a knock on the door on Sunday.

One of the girls from cubs had popped an envelope through the door, full of badges for Rhys that he’s earnt over the last few months.

We knew he had a badge or two on the way, but weren’t expecting the little pile that arrived!

He’s so proud of himself, and I’m so proud of him for sticking with all the meetings that’ve been held over zoom this year.  He’s not always found them easy, but he’s commited to showing up and joining in each week and it’s so lovely that he’s now got these badges to show for it.

What’s really lovely is that there was even a ‘camping at home’ badge in there for Nerys, after she joined in with the big camping event back in the summer, camping out in the living room in sleeping bags for the night.

Steve actually pulled the sleeping bags out of the cupboard again when he was getting all the Christmas decorations out, and I think we may well end up doing a festive lounge sleepover one night during the holidays.

For now though, we have this one last week of term to get through.

We’d actually decided to keep both the children home for this last week, after a few more cases emerged at the children’s school and coronavirus rates across Swansea in general are getting really quite high.

As it turns out though, the council have decided to close the local schools and move to online learning for the week.

So we have a bit of juggling to do this week, but I think it’ll be quite nice to all be at home, with the tree and the lights and a few early finishes to watch some festive films.

Are your children in school this week or are you keeping them at home?